Or, on fights with close range AoE, let pet stay in middle of both you and melee (within 15 yards of both) ;)

This is something I've been 'feeling' for a while, but I still don't know to what level the dps differential exists- is it worth it if you have 2 warriors, 3 rogues, 3 hunters, and 2 shaman? Would you do warrx2, sham, hunt, rogue w/ WF, and hunterx2 + roguex2 + GoA, or is the dps differential THAT much? Well, that's probably a bad example because of the lack of battleshout...

I just have no sense of what relative dps the totems add....

Couple hunters in my guild have the FH worgs and they use it on Twin Emps, cast the FH as the melee cross the room to head to Vek'nilash post teleport, their first attack would then have the ~+50 dmg multiplier (not having auto-attack on, making your first attack a SS, BS, MS, w/e). Not like you need to have the extra dps, but they do it none the less ^_^. I'd see no reason why not to have the extra 25dps per party (alliance) on fights like patchwerk. (pre-mitigated fromt he sounds of it)

While taking a shower this morning it dawned on me, hunter should want to be in a dps group with a warrior. By dps group i mean the normal hunter/sham/rog/rog/war. The reason is the 290 AP your pet gets from the warrior's battleshout, effectively 362 APwhen hes happy, that is a 26 DPS increase which is way more than you would get from GoA totem, even the improved version with LR and it even outshines the crit from all that agility. I could be speaking out of my ass here but im almost positive that on patchwork at laest where your pet is meleeing hunters would prefer a warrior with WF over not having a warrior and GoA.

I did only test rank 1 multishot, maybe that makes a difference, and I also did it a few months ago.

the lack of +Paws weapon skill cuts into that +26 dps increase quite a bit, in addition to dodges, parrys, blocks and armour.

That is true, being a hunter i dont have to worry about that with ranged attacks :P.