Okay...so I'm bored, so I thought I'd start laying out some ground work. These numbers were generated using Femaledwarf.com/haste

1st Haste Cap: 3/3 Pathing - 1/1 Hunting Party
Haste Rating: 810
Haste from rating: 6.325%
Total Haste: 20.467% attack speed bonus

Discussion: Allows for 3 cobra shots between each explosive shot.

2nd Haste Cap: 3/3 Pathing - 1/1 Hunting Party
Haste Rating: 4150
Haste from rating: 32.407%
Total Haste: 50.018% attack speed bonus

Discussion: Allows for 3 cobra shots and 1 arcane shot between each explosive shot. I don't know if the focus regen in this rotation will allow both the arcane and explosive to go off.



The jump in needed haste from the first to the second cap is tremendous and we will probably never reach that outside of rapid fire and blood lust bonuses. However, perhaps it's worth considering a stead shot rotation?

Alternative Haste Cap: 3/3 Pathing - 1/1 Hunting Party - 3/3 Improved Steady Shot
Haste rating: 1940
Haste from rating: 15.15%
Total Haste: 50.034% attack speed bonus

Discussion: Allows for 2 Steady Shots, 1 cobra shot and 1 arcane shot to be cast in between each explosive shot. I don't know if the focus regen in this rotation will allow both the arcane and explosive to go off.



1940 haste rating is a much more reachable goal, however, is it worth going to a rotation like this? You do get the advantage of sneaking in that extra arcane (possible), but you are trading 2 CS for 2 SS which is a dps loss.

Maybe there are other good spots to hit without blasting explosive every 6 seconds. For instance, consider the following...

Haste rating: 2260
Haste from rating: 17.648%
Total Haste: 33.296% attack speed bonus

With Pathing and Hunting Party only, this allows for 1.5s cast times...so a CS>>CS>>CS>>AS>>ES rotation fills a 6.5s time slot. We could begin to analyze how detrimental this is to our dps if we attempt to express ES in terms of AS maybe? Like...1 ES is equal in dps to 3 AS (as an example). Then we can look at the above rotation and say...

In 12 full rotations we will have lost 1 ES.

(6.5s - 6s)*12 = 6s [cool down of 1 ES]

In 12 full rotations (as compared to a rotation of CS>>CS>>CS>>ES) we have gained 12 AS.

Using our fake exchage rate that I made up, 12 AS = 4 ES. So we are up 3 ES overall... Granted, this is still only viable if we have enough focus regen to get each of those shots off.

Let's pretend hunting party works correctly for focus regen (even though it still doesnt'? right? Sad day..)
We have from our total haste for this rotation:

4 fps * 1.33296 = 5.33184 fps

So in a full 6.5s rotation, we will generate (6.5 * 5.33) + (3*9) = 61.66 focus. So unless I am missing something, this rotation would not sustain itself. You would have to throw in CS>>CS>>CS>>CS>>ES rotations to pool focus for Arcane Shots. Since CS is on a 1.5s cast instead of 1s for a GCD, you lose more ES time than originally intended. Also you lose an AS which is the sole reason that you might justify losing an ES in the first place.

So maybe there is a haste cap slightly higher than this one where the focus regen will sustain a CS>>CS>>CS>>AS>>ES rotation?

I'm going to stop to allow people to pick this apart and comment.

For TotH: if you take the base focus cost of each ability that triggers it, multiply it by the refund from TotH (40%), and then multiply it by the proc chance for TotH. This will give us the average regen for each shot each time we fire it so we can see if the rotation will support it's self on average.

Explosive Shot: 50 focus base cost
(50 * 0.4 * 0.15) = 3

Arcane Shot: 25 focus base cost
(25 * 0.4 *0.15) = 1.5

Black Arrow: 35 focus base cost
(35 * 0.4 * 0.15) = 2.1

Reducing the cost of each shot by the average refund from TotH you get:
Explosive: (44-3) = 41 focus
Arcane: (22-1.5) = 20.5 focus
Black: (35-2.1) = 32.9 focus

So a rotation of CS->CS->CS->AS->ES would use 61.5 focus, less than the 61.66 focus generated according to Luasokor's modeling.

A rotation of CS->CS->CS->BA->ES would use 73.9 focus, more than the 61.66 focus generated by the cycle. So either the round prior to BA coming off CD would need to include an extra CS, or we would have to explore the use of Explosive Trap as an alternative.

Because TotH gives focus in large chunks we have to make sure we'd never cap out on focus during a rotation. Toe base rotation generates 61.66 focus. If both AS and ES proc TotH, that would generate another 30 focus (20 from ES and 10 from AS), putting us at 91.66 focus (61.66 + 30).

If we get two rotations in a row in which TotH procs on both AS and ES, then we will cap focus.

I don't think 3xCoS ES 3xCoS AS ES would ever be a valid rotation to shootfor, though I could be wrong. I'm assuming for that rotation you are sticking with a 1.66s cast time on CoS. In this case, you are delaying every other ES by 1s ... although at that haste rating I can guarantee that you will not be able to sustain that rotation consistently -- you will run out of focus.

However, bringing Goldengiff's comments to light, I have designed my rotation on the assumption that TotH never procs. This is the only way to sustain your rotation even in the presence of horrible luck. The key then is to have meaningful mechanics to dump focus without interrupting your rotation. By meaningful, I mean that you maintain the important parts of your rotation (casting ES as often as possible or close to it, keeping BA applied as often as possible, keeping Serpent Sting up) and that you also maintain good ratio between dps and spent focus. I am not a proponent of KC for focus dumping. I prefer instead to prevent focus capping, and in the event of focus capping, not crying inside about it. Focus capping is not an immediate dps loss.

Consider an untimely LnL proc. The best way to spend an LnL is ES>>CoS>>ES>>AS>>ES. I see no reason to deviate from that just because I'm at focus cap. Consider that if I was doing my job correctly, I wasn't in immediate danger of focus capping prior to the LnL proc. So the amount of focus over the cap will be:

FPS * (2+CoS_cast_time) + 9 - (100 - current focus) = (-63 + current focus) focus (estimate for my current haste)

Or anywhere from 0-27 focus over cap. Why blow 44 focus on a KC? Why waste ES ticks on a less efficient LnL rotation? Focus capping isn't inherent dps loss...it just makes us feel bad. If you had 100 fps regeneration, you wouldn't worry about how much your dps sucked since you were focus capped all the time.

So, back to the point. I believe that a solid rotation will be sustainable without counting on TotH, but have good ways to dump the focus that you will inevitably gain from them. So for instance, I am running a CoS cast time of 1.64-1.66s depending on my gear at the time.

My rotation: CoS>>CoS>>CoS>>ES
Variations commonly used for dumping extra focus:
CoS>>CoS>>AS>>AS>>ES :: delays my next ES by .34s but executes 2 AS for a dps gain
CoS>>CoS>>AS>>BA>>ES :: delays my next ES by .34s but executes AS and BA for a dps gain
CoS>>CoS>>BA>>ES :: causes a .66s delay before I can begin casting again. I try to avoid this by using the above rotation and find it preferable to CoS>>CoS>>CoS>>BA>>ES which delays ES by 1 full second.

Using this scheme, I focus cap only on LnL procs and only on occasion.

Now, going back to the original purpose of this post...rotations.

My reasoning for picking the rotations that I did was because they are logical steps for sustainable rotations. AS will always be a faster cast than CoS because the amount of haste it takes to get to a 1s cast time is too high. Therefore, if the current rotation is 3xCoS, the next smallest rotation would squeeze in AS, and the next smallest following that would be 4xCoS.

My goal in dps is long fights, so I have been running on the assumption that a sustainable rotation is the best way to go. It is possible that I'm wrong though, and that we could get better dps by counting on TotH procs? I should mention, however, that really my rotation DOES count on TotH and LnL procs to gain focus because without them, I will not gain excess focus fast enough to cast BA on each CD.

I've made some changes to the OP:
1. Glyphs, recommending Explosive/Kill and some note about Arcane and Serpent being at least close on the third (to be honest, I thought I had updated with this information already)
2. More information on relative stat weights, especially including recent discussion of haste thresholds and crit vs. mastery.
3. Enchant recommendations.

I would like to add some words on gem selection, but this is entirely dependent on meta gem choice which could use some discussion I think. Personally, I could not make the current gem requirements for [Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond] or [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] yield a higher result than [Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond] or even [Thundering Skyflare Diamond] due to the loss of agility (and the diminished importance of 3% crit damage due to our lower crit than in WotLK). I still people using Thundering and Relentless though.

I am using Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond - Item - World of Warcraft, which is very good for agility stacking.

Argh, that's me incorrectly using 179.28 as the crit rating ratio instead of the correct 128.05. This puts the value for that example at 750 or 751. Sorry for the confusion.

Perhaps the haste rating required has changed then?

I'm currently at 1057 haste rating (8.25% according to paper doll) with Hunting Party and 3/3 Pathing. My Cobra tooltip is showing 1.63 cast time and I predictably can fit three in between Explosives.

For comparison here is my gearset with different Metas, which shows that Relentless is a clear dps gain for me. Might depend entirely on available sockets and bonuses though.
Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer (Relentless + 7 Blue)
Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer (Destructive + pure Agility)

Maybe they mean that the damage will scale with haste? I don't really know how those other abilities work...

I completely forgot good old relentless. It's just we might need to regem after every epic upgrades with sockets, and also with more than 8 sockets, at some point it will become a DPS loss by meeting the requirement.

I hope the next patch will come soon, and neftbat will never hit us!

Here are my setup, Destructive on live, Relentless for testing, fight length set to 5.5mins, all hit capped, tried to keep secondaries as close as possible, but still, as Abyssa mentioned above, it might just come from reforging.
Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer (Destructive)
Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer (Relentless)