I looked up the avg. price of black grasp, 1100g, then I looked major mana potion, 3g.

So 366 pots or sub-par gloves?

I use the BGotD in my horde guild, as our DS rates have been abysmal enough that our highest geared hunter has 6/8 (currently on the twin emps). As is usually the case, we don't have a shaman dedicated to us, so the lack of mana spring/tide really pushes the bounds of my mana pool, even with chewing on major mana pots and double mana oil on my weapons.

I've done modifications to Rooke's hunter simulation spreadsheet, adding the 24 mp5 to the BGotD, and adding a separate row on the damage tab listing how much damage I would do before going OOM, since the spreadsheet factors mp5 quite nicely. I've even modeled major mana potions as a 60ish mp5 buff (can't remember what I set it as exactly). After equipping and unequipping the BGotD in exchange for DS gloves, the benefit of using the grasp is seriously huge. It allows me to go balls to the wall on farmed content without going to the consumables extremes that are typical of new fights, and it makes each consumable that i do use that much more effective.

Since mp5 scales your uptime with respect to itself, each point of mp5 you can acquire allows you to be up for longer, thus making further mp5 even more valuable.

And in the case where you get those ideal situations of having a stationary short fight, with mana spring/tide down and getting 100% efficiency from them, and it's not towards the end of the night when your stacks of consumables have dwindled, then sure, slap on your highest ap/crit gloves. If I had 15 agi enchants on all my gloves, I'd probably use DS over BGotD on trash and short fights where mana isn't an issue. But I could only afford one, and now my gloves are 58 RAP, 1.57% crit, 24 mp5.

Compared to the crappy plate belt, crappy mail belt, and the PvP toy Breastplate, Mail Tunic and Shield, the Black Grasp is the optimal use of Obsidian Shards. So, your Out Of Pocket Expense is:

1 Flask of Supreme Power (50-90 gold)
8 Enchanted Leather (3.25 each, or 26 gold total)

Even assuming the worst, this brings you to 116 gold, plus a 50 gold combine fee (assuming your guild doesn't have the pattern).

166 gold, divided by 3 gold per potion, is 55 potions.

1800 average mana per potion use: 99,000 mana gained.

The gloves average at 24mp/5, so that's 20,625 seconds attacking.

They pay for themselves in 5.8 hours in combat, or less than two raid nights.

Except for the fact that 55MMP (11 stacks) would last me at least one raiding week, if not two whole raiding weeks. (5 raiddays per week).

Using Thug's HunterCalc spreadsheet, going from Dragonstalker gloves to Grasp of the Destroyer is a 3.9 dps loss (for me.) Yes, for those that have no problem farming large amounts of consumables (or are Alliance) they aren't worth the loss of damage.

Using Rhok against a single target, Destroyer's are equivalent to 24/mp5. This is roughly equivalent to Blessing of Wisdom.

Personally (as Horde that hasn't had a chance to complete a full 8/8 DS yet), I love them. At the cost of ~4 dps, I get to have a psuedo-BoW and see how the other half lives.

(And yes, I realize that I am at a totally different point than those of you in Naxx, and my opinion on their value is therefore different.)

I am curious how much DPS horde hunters are getting with normal buffs and totems. What seems average at least.