The Mastery instead of Haste reforging option is good for:
- People not using the CS glyph and who do not want to or cannot support the high haste option
- People with high latency
- People who switch a lot between MM and SV and wants reforging that works for both

This option is a perfectly viable option, it just is not the most ideal for the general player focused on MM. The difference is within a few hundred DPS depending on your gear and latency, so its not a big hit to MM and really helps those that switch to SV as well.

One thing to note on the low haste case is that your AI cast times when not under RF are a lot slower. This reduces the benefit of casting AI outside the CA phase and when not under dynamic haste effects. You definitely want to use AS under those conditions since your AI cast is so slow and using AS instead of AI takes advantage of your mastery better.

That would make sense, except they are still using the CS glyph apparently. It's worth noting that casting AiS even with high haste can be risky if you somehow have to interrupt it, I believe this is one of the factors which contributes to the reforging to mastery idea.

First, you make it sound like I state that using the CS glyph is always bad with the low haste case, and that is not true. The CS glyph and the low haste case is perfectly fine for people with relatively high latency. However, for people with low latency, it really does not make sense to me to use the CS glyph with low amounts of haste since you can have dead time in your rotation and a lot of wasted focus. However, in the right situations, it can still work out to be the best third glyph, but usually RF will be better. The following will illustrate this:

The suggested rotation for someone with the CS glyph and the recommended haste amounts is CS-ASx2-SSx5. Disregarding latency, this cycle requires 15.12% haste to be tight on normal cycles or cycles where an MMM AI proc replaces and AS and 10.52% haste to be tight on cycles where an MMM AI proc replaces and SS. The focus can be balanced well with proper decisions of replacing an AS with an MMM AI proc when focus is low and an SS when focus is high.

At low amounts of haste, this cycle delays your CS casts a lot. At 5% haste, your CS cast is delayed by almost 0.6s on normal cycles and is delayed even more when factoring in latency. Thus, this rotation is not really ideally for taking advantage of the CS glyph, so let's look at option of removing shots from this rotation.

The first option is removing an SS for an CS-ASx2-SSx4 rotation. Here is a table on this option with the CS glyph:

CS Cycle Time	Tight Cycle#	Focus*	Focus^
10.0	-21.06%	26.21%	-0.49%
9.9	-19.91%	27.49%	0.52%
9.8	-18.74%	28.79%	1.55%
9.7	-17.52%	30.12%	2.59%
9.6	-16.27%	31.47%	3.66%
9.5	-14.99%	32.86%	4.75%
9.4	-13.66%	34.27%	5.87%
9.3	-12.29%	35.71%	7.00%
9.2	-10.87%	37.19%	8.17%
9.1	-9.41%	38.70%	9.36%
9.0	-7.90%	40.24%	10.57%

# Haste required from gear for a tight cycle
* Haste required from gear to focus balance on a normal cycle
^ Haste required from gear to focus balance on cycles with a MMM AI proc replacing an AS

This table illustrates several problems:

1) Even with a highly unlikely 0% haste from gear, the cycle has about 0.47s of deadtime. To use up that deadtime via latency, about 157ms of latency is required. With lower than that latency, this rotation still has deadtime. With between 157ms and about 323ms latency, the rotation still take advantage of about 0.5s of the benefit of the CS glyph. Above that level of latency, well... a better connect is recommended.

2) On normal cycles, between about 33% and 40% haste from gear is required to balance focus for a tight or near tight CS glyph rotation. This is in contradiction to the low haste case.

3) Since the rotation only has 4 SSs, the only choice for shot replacements for MMM AI procs is an AS. But even when replacing an AS with a MMM AI proc you still need decent levels of haste. Considering that you will only be getting an MMM AI proc on average every other cycle, the haste requirement for focus balancing a tight rotation is about 25% haste from gear.

Hence, this rotation is really not ideal since it possibly has a lot of deadtime and is focus starved.

The other option is dropping an AS instead for a CS-AS-SSx5 rotation. Here is a table on this option with the CS glyph:

CS Cycle Time	Tight Cycle#	Focus*	Focus^
10.0	-13.66%	-49.03%	-36.19%
9.9	-12.56%	-48.51%	-35.59%
9.8	-11.44%	-47.99%	-34.99%
9.7	-10.29%	-47.45%	-34.37%
9.6	-9.11%	-46.91%	-33.73%
9.5	-7.90%	-46.35%	-33.09%
9.4	-6.66%	-45.78%	-32.43%
9.3	-5.38%	-45.19%	-31.76%
9.2	-4.06%	-44.60%	-31.08%
9.1	-2.71%	-43.99%	-30.38%
9.0	-1.32%	-43.37%	-29.67%

# Haste required from gear for a tight cycle
* Haste required from gear to focus balance on a normal cycle
^ Haste required from gear to focus balance on cycles with a MMM AI proc replacing an SS. The cycle time is also reduced by the extra SS cast time being eliminated

This table illustrates several problems:

1) Even with a highly unlikely 0% haste from gear, the cycle has about 0.1s of deadtime. At just 5% haste, the deadtime is about 0.42s. Once again, at low latency, this rotation still has deadtime, but with relatively high latency it can be somewhat tight. The bad news is that on cycles where a MMM AI proc replaces a SS, the cycle time has an additional 0.3-0.4s of deadtime.

2) This rotation wastes a large amount of focus.

Hence, this rotation is really not ideal since it possibly has a some deadtime and wastes a lot of focus.

Now the focus consumption can be balanced out by kind of using both cycles as necessary to balance focus, but even then, you are still left with a lot of deadtime in your rotation unless you have relatively high latency. What is more often than not the best decision for someone with low haste is to forgo the CS glyph for the RF glyph (to help speed you AIs during RF back up) and do the same CS-ASx2-SSx5 rotation that those with the CS glyph and high haste do. For this rotation the data is:

CS Cycle Time	Tight Cycle#	Tight Cycle MMM#	Focus*	Focus^	Focus&
11.0	-13.66%	-21.06%	-5.12%	4.81%	-29.39%
10.9	-12.56%	-19.91%	-4.25%	5.77%	-28.74%
10.8	-11.44%	-18.74%	-3.36%	6.75%	-28.08%
10.7	-10.29%	-17.52%	-2.46%	7.75%	-27.41%
10.6	-9.11%	-16.27%	-1.54%	8.77%	-26.73%
10.5	-7.90%	-14.99%	-0.60%	9.80%	-26.03%
10.4	-6.66%	-13.66%	0.35%	10.86%	-25.32%
10.3	-5.38%	-12.29%	1.33%	11.93%	-24.59%
10.2	-4.06%	-10.87%	2.32%	13.03%	-23.85%
10.1	-2.71%	-9.41%	3.34%	14.15%	-23.10%
10.0	-1.32%	-7.90%	4.37%	15.29%	-22.33%

# Haste required from gear for a tight cycle
* Haste required from gear to focus balance on a normal cycle
^ Haste required from gear to focus balance on cycles with a MMM AI proc replacing a SS. The cycle time is also reduced by the extra SS cast time being eliminated
& Haste required from gear to focus balance on cycles with a MMM AI proc replacing an AS.

Items to note:

1) Focus can be balanced in this rotation by making smart decisions on whether to replace an AS or a SS with a MMM AI proc.

2) This cycle has the same haste requirements on normal and MMM AI proc replacing an SS cycle as the previous two cycles for the CS glyph case. Hence, it will have some deadtime to unless you have sufficient latency to use it up.

Concerning you AI comment, that is a given. Anytime you cast you have the chance to have the shot interrupted by movement or other interruptions. However, a smart player will know the boss mechanic well enough to know when you are in a safe period for casting AI and when you are not in a safe period and should cast AS instead. If you have more haste from gear and a faster AI cast time, it will be the perferred shot to use for higher DPS when it is safe to do so. of course, you still want to use AS when its not safe to cast AI.

EDIT: By the way, this analysis was done with assuming that you still have 3/3 Pathing. Removing points in Pathing roughly increases the amount of haste from gear required by a little more than 1% per point and reduces the deadtime in the cycle by roughly 0.05s per SS. On the other hand, removing Pathing hurts the focus balancing a little.

EDIT2: Another item to realize (and I do not know whether its applicable to the hunters at which you were looking), but the CS glyph and low haste is a good combination for MM PvP.

Minor comment on the openers you list which use SrS and CS Whitefyst, which is that if you open with SrS and then immediately Aimed, this cuts into the amount of threat you Misdirect quite a lot - you likely get just SrS, an auto and the aimed. This isn't necessarily an issue for everyone, but it's come up a few times when the only rogue/hunter in a 10 man. If you're the one initiating the pull (or can time when your tank will do it well), a higher threat alternative is to open with Aimed, and follow with SrS then 2 steadies. It means losing an Aimed shot's casttime worth of Tolvir uptime if you're prepotting though, and shifts the focus regen around a bit - you do get a "free" AiS cast time before the fight begins, but lose the ability to regen your first SrS's focus cost during the first AiS cast.

If as you later point out you're not using SrS until after RF wears off, this doesn't matter.

If you prefer to use the mastery enchant, go for it. It is not wrong to do so with the difference being small either way; however, there are a few things to keep in mind.

FD is an ideal simulation, so you need to weigh the benefit of stats against each other under non-ideal situations. In less than ideal situations, you are going to end up taking less shots. The 20 agility will still have the same benefits per shot taken, but your mastery will be worth less since you are getting less chances to proc WQ. Additionally, benefits from your agility are transferred to your pet, but benefits from mastery are not. Hence, whenever you are not attacking at full capability but your pet is, the agility enchant is better.

There may be some situations where having the mastery enchant may work out better, but generally, having the agility enchant is the better route in application.

With the Prestor's Talisman, what would be the haste rating you should reforge to? Something like 1400 (so same as without it), or would a low haste rating (say 700-800) be more efficient?

I wouldn't even use non heroic. Although with heroic, I'd still reforge high haste for a tight rotation out of proc (aiming for latency issues).

Trinket based haste procs are treated as averaged on the site (mainly because adding special handling for each individual trinket proc would be very messy). Only the cooldowns currently are supported as timed events in the shot simulation. Simulationcraft might be better at testing that sort of thing.

Prestor's Talisman of Machination is really an interesting trinket. For hunters, here are the currently available trinkets:

Fluid Death (359): 321 hit static, 380 agi stacked (about 360 agi on avg. - depends on fight length)
Darkmoon Card: Hurricane (359): 321 agi static, nature damage proc
Unsolvable Riddle (359): 321 Mastery Static, 1605 agi proc (267.5 agi avg.)
Prestor's Talisman of Machination (356/372): 321/363 agi static, 1926/2178 haste rating proc
Essence of the Cyclone (359/372): 321/363 agi static, 1926/2178 crit rating proc

At the non-heroic level (359), there are five choices. Of these, for MM, the best two are Fluid Death and Essence of Cyclone. The reason that Fluid Death is on the list is because it provides the highest average agi (360) and also provides our second best stat, hit, although it may be reforged to lesser stats. Essence of the Cyclone is next since it provides the second most average agi (321) and then our third best stat, crit. The only downside with Essence is that if it procs during the CA phase that some of the crit will be lost since AI and SS will be crit capped.

DC:Hurricane has the same amount of average agility as Essence but its proc does not do as much damage as Essences does with how dependent the MM spec is on crit.

Prestors also provides the same average agility, but its proc is haste (about 15%), which is generally worse than crit. Also, how well that haste helps depends on your situation and how you use it. Will discuss this more later.

Riddle is by far our worst trinket since it has by far the lowest average agility and then our worst stat, mastery.

At the heroic level (372), we only have two trinkents, Essence and Prestor's. Essence definitely remains one of the choices. The question is whether heroic Prestor's is better than Fluid Death. From an agility point of view, the trinkets are roughly equal. So the trade off is between 321 hit rating versus 2178 haste rating (17% haste) for 15s every 1.5 mins for roughly 363 haste rating on average. On the surface with a simple comparison, 321 hit rating is better than 363 haste rating. Thus, Fluid Death may still be the second best trinket at 372 for many situations.

But the comparison is not that simple for a couple reasons:
1) You probably have plenty of hit on gear and am reforging it away to crit or haste. This devalues the hit on Fluid Death.
2) You do not get the average effect of Prestors. You get the whole haste benefit about 17% of the time. So the question comes down to whether the haste from Prestors helps you.

Since the trinket only has a 17% uptime, you really do not want to design your rotation and haste rating around it. If you do, you may have an ideal rotation 17% of the time, but you will have a less than ideal rotation the other 83% of the time. However, there are ways where you can use the haste proc to your advantage. I have not previously thought this out since heroic Prestors is not a trinket that will be accessible to me for a while still so I haven't bothered. He are some quick thoughts, if anyone has anything to add please reply.

Let's think of how it can be advantageous with the recommended MM build with the CS glyph and somewhere around 10.52% haste. The table below shows the effects of various dynamic haste abilities/procs on the SS and AI casts:

	10.52% haste	Prestors 17%	Bloodlust	Unglyphed RF	Glyphed RF
Total Haste	1.440	1.685	1.872	2.016	2.160
Focus Regen	4.553	5.328	5.919	10.375	10.830
SS Cast	1.250	1.068	0.962*	0.893*	0.833*
AI Cast	2.014	1.721	1.549	1.438	1.343

* GCD capped

As the table above shows, your AI cast is below 1.8s when the trinket has procced. Hence, as Smrkey asked, it is beneficial to cast AI when the trinket is procced for a DPS benefit. Plus, the additional focus regen from the 17% haste should help make up for the extra focus cost of performing the AIs instead of ASs.

Furthermore, the improvement in SS cast time saves at least 0.73s in the rotation for the minimum 4 SS casts. Add on top of that the savings of an AI cast versus 2 ASs, then you have saved about a GCD every CS cycle. Thus it can be beneficial.

Caveats include:
- You really have little control as to when the trinket procs. If it procs during a Bloodlust or RF, then its benefit is greatly reduced since your SS cast is already GCD capped. If it procs during a movement phase, then a lot of its benefit is lost. Since the trinket should proc at the beginning of the fight, you may want to wait to use RF until after the proc fades.

Looking at the non-CS glyph case with low haste (assuming 5%):

	5% haste	Prestors 17%	Bloodlust	Unglyphed RF	Glyphed RF
Total Haste	1.368	1.601	1.779	1.915	2.052
Focus Regen	4.326	5.061	5.624	10.056	10.489
SS Cast	1.316	1.125	1.012	0.940	0.877
AI Cast	2.120	1.812	1.631	1.514	1.413

With the AI cast time being 1.812s with the Prestors proc, the proc allows you to be able to cast AI instead of AS. Plus, once again, about a GCD is saved per cycle due to the decreased SS and AI cast times. The same caveats still exist.

Finally, the best way to test procs like this in FD is too remove the trinket from the gear slot and to hand adjust the static effect (including any reforging). This gives the DPS for the 83% of the time without the proc. To see the impacts with the proc, then just hand adjust in the proc amount too. To get a simplistic average DPS, then average the two numbers out with a 83% and 17% weightings, respectively. Of course, a more accurate estimate takes into account the fight phases, possible dynamic haste stacking, etc.

I am unsure whether you are already aware of this, but I have not found anything using the search function (and reading some of the thread).

I have recently observed that MMM currently is bugged to allow two free AIs when cast at the same time.
If you cast a SS with 4 stacks of MMM and start an AI cast before SS lands on the target, MMM may proc, letting you instantly cast another AI. Both the AI you started casting before 5 stacks and the instantly cast one will be free.

This may be relevant for hardcore optimizers, even though it is somewhat random.

Just confirming that I just tested this on live and it has been fixed. While you can and do get the Fire! proc while an Aimed Shot is casting when your 5th Steady Shot lands, the non-proc Aimed Shot will now consume 50 focus rather than also consuming 0 focus.