The intention of this post is to create a consolidated resource on theorycraft pertaining to Hunters.
It will deal mostly with PvE, but comments on PvP will be added where appropriate. Currently, the thread is under construction, as I am feeling very sick (do I get pity points for this?).


ABBREVIATIONS & TERMS
A list of some abbreviations and terms often used by Hunters:
1:1 - A shot rotation with 1 special per 1 Auto Shot. Also called a priority rotation
1:1.5 - A shot rotation with more than 1 special per 1 Auto Shot, typically 3 specials per 2 Auto Shots
AS - Attack Speed, Arcane Shot, Auto Shot, Aimed Shot (take your pick)
BM - Beast Mastery
BW - Beastial Wrath
GCD - Global Cooldown.
MM - Marksman
MS - Multi-Shot
QS - Quick Shots (Improved Aspect of the Hawk proc)
RF - Rapid Fire
RWS - Ranged Weapon Specialization
SU or Sur - Survival
TBW - The Beast Within


STATS
A brief summary of the stats a Hunter is interested in.

Agility - Increases RAP by 1 and Crit by 0.025%
Crit Rating - Increases Crit by (1/22.08) %
Hit Rating - Increases Hit by (1/15.77) %
Haste Rating - Increases Haste by (1/15.77) %

All hastes affect Auto Shot and Steady Shot. No hastes affect the global cooldown.


HIT & MISS
All raid bosses are considered to be 3 levels higher than you in terms of calculating Hit, Crit, etc.
Against a target 3 levels higher than you, there is an innate 9% Chance to Miss. This can be negated by Hit Rating or Weapon Skill.
There is NOT 'always 1% Chance to miss that cannot be negated'.


WEAPON SKILL
The first 4 points of Weapon Skill each add 0.4% Chance to Hit.
The 5th adds +1.4% Chance to Hit.
Each additional Weapon Skill after 5 adds 0.1% Chance to Hit

So, +3 Weapon Skill gives +1.2% Chance to Hit, +5 Weapon Skill gives +3.0% Chance to Hit, +8 Weapon Skill gives +3.3% Chance to Hit.

Weapon Skill is rounded down. If you e.g. have +7 Weapon Skill Rating (+1.77 Weapon Skill), it will be counted as +1 Weapon Skill for calculations.



TALENTS
Noteworthy talents, and their worth.

Trap mastery
Equal level: 4% chance to resist.
+1 level: 5% chance to resist.
+2 levels: 6% chance to resist.
+3 levels: [Mob] 17% chance to resist / [Player] 13% chance to resist.

Traps always have 1% to be resisted, regardless of your hit chance.
Resist checks happen both on initial application and on heartbeat ticks.

What this means in terms of talent point allocation:
Unless you're trying to trap something that's 3+ levels above you, 2 points in Trap Mastery is useless. Even against a target 2 levels above you, adding a second point does not provide any boost in trap success rate or longevity.

Expose Weakness
Expose Weakness is based on total Agility (after all buffs).
The Raid DPS contribution can be approximated in the following way:
In terms of total DPS, after all modifiers, crits, etc, taken into consideration, 1 AP generally gives 0.2-0.3 DPS per person, usually closer to 0.3.
Based on this, the DPS gain from an Expose Weakness proc can be written as
(Agility/4)*[Physical DPS in Raid]*0.3



Talent builds
Examples of various 'cookie cutter' specs.


Itemization & gems
What to aim for, and why.


Raiding
What to do, what not to do, and how to blame things on others (Misdirection).


Shot rotations
How to do what we want to do (damage). Includes oddities such as haste, global cooldown, weaving specials between Auto Shots, etc.
- 1:1 rotation
- 1:1.5 rotation


If anyone has anything else they'd like to see added, or comments/questions, feel free to leave a post.

Hehe, i was aware this is just the drawing board, and that it will be reduced to a tabula rasa when it's no longer work in progress, but it's better we submit our thoughts now rather than find a great idea after the thread has already taken shape.

Oh, and just to play the devil's advocate, how's about a marksmanship thread? Would there be any noteworthy materials to warrant a thread of its own?

Updated first part of post, going to bed due to headache.

I'm not sure if 1 thread per spec would be needed.

I'd follow Lactose's lead on making 1 general thread as opposed to 3 different ones. While there are playstyle differences based on spec, they are not as large as the ones between enhancement and elemental shamans, for example.

Gear and gem choices might have larger rifts but not so much to warrant opposing threads, in my opinion.

The paragraph about weapon skill is very interesting.
Can anyone give me some further links on this please? Dwarf hunters using guns would have 3% hit for free? Well that sounds awesome. Does this affect melee weapons too? (I ask this mainly for human tanking warriors) Would they gain the 3% hit bonus for swords too?

If possible, a description of the synergy between the hunter and other classes would be great.
What's the best group composition for each spec and who brings what ...

I believe all the information came from collaborations on these boards but there is a good write up on it which can be found here TKA Something - A World of Warcraft Hunter's Resource

Scrap that. Or keep it, but remember to scrap it before 2.3 comes live.
According to patch 2.3 on the PTR:

WoW -> Test Realm Patch Notes

the .5 second cast on the auto shot can get clipped and consequently reset by other special shots and I believe kill command as well. Does the most common steady shot kill command macro prevent that from happening? If so any explanation on how to avoid that could help.

As a MM Hunter using a 1:1.5 shot rotation, the best way I found to work in Kill Command was right after Steady and before the special in the rotation. Unfortunately, although Kill Command is instant, it cannot be used along with arcane or multishot in one button click...you have to click twice. As a result, autoshot can be delayed a little. That, along with a mana/damage ratio that isn't exactly great, prompted me to forget about adding in Kill Command to my shot rotation as MM.

I know, heresy, sue me. :p

It would be nice from an organizational standpoint but then you would miss valuable crosstalk. You wouldn't get other smart players of other classes "checking our work" as it were. We probably wouldn't throw our feedback in other class threads either.