There are a couple problems with that line of thought. For example in wrath there were a number of fights where "spawned" adds dying did not give any focus. Although I do not play Marksman at the moment i really do not see Blizzard changing mechanics like that. That being said on fights like heroic maloriak the swills have over 1.8 Million health this can result in you doing a significant amount of aoe for a very very long time without any power gains from kills. Not to mention competing with other players AOE who gain benefit from getting the killing blow.

I do agree with the damage from ISS, that can really add up significantly over the course of an AOE fest.

An example of the logs from our attempts on him last night.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

(focused on the swill which are AOE'd)

4.5% serpent sting
2.5% improved serpent sting
2.3% cobra shot
1.8% multi-shot
1.7% autoshot
0.5% explosive shot

I'm curious as to why you didn't even mention Glyph of Raptor Strike.
In the talent spec you have glyph of Misdirection chosen which really should be replaced with Raptor Strike.
The 20% reduction is almost mandatory for certain mechanics, such as the crackles on Nefarian (especially if you're pushing crackles during phase 2). Also during feud on Chimaeron, you're already in melee range of the boss anyways, so hitting raptor strike right before the splash damage starts (just before halfway through the cast, and then again right after it comes off cooldown to mitigate the 3rd splash) can be a real lifesaver. There are other cases too, such as stacking for blackout on valiona (raptor strike right before the dispel), but those 2 are the most blatant ones I could think of.

The reasons are simple. First, most of us did not know the glyph's benefits for certain boss strats since Raptor Strike is usually not a talent that we think about using. It is not until recently that the use of this glyph has become common for certain strats. At the time that the guide was made (right after Cata came out), the glyph was not a consideration for most people. I know that I did not personally hear anyone talking about using the glyph at that time (and had not heard anything at all until a week or two ago), and I am sure most other hunters overlooked it as well. It definitely was not common knowledge.

Next, the talent spec and the glyphs in it are a sample one and not meant to be the best for everyone in every situation. In the Major Glyph section, I may not include it (since I didn't know it was beneficial yet and since it has no specific MM impacts), but I do say the following:
- There is not much DPS benefit with any of the major glyphs for the standard actions that MMs take, so I will not go into as much analysis as for the Prime glyphs. The ones with DPS potential are: ....
- All of the remaining glyphs are utility glyphs. A couple of note are: ...
- In summary, there are no consistently great DPS or utility benefits from Major glyphs. So pick the ones that meet your raid strategies and personal preference.

Hence, although the Major Glyph discussion does not mention the Raptor Strike glyph, it does not preclude it either. Definitely for certain boss fights, all hunters will want the glyph (although it is not required - it just makes things easier). On other fights that do not require the mechanic of the glyph, we may want or need a different glyph instead.

Now, although I am aware of the benefit of the glyph, I had not planned to add it into the glyph discussions since it has no specific MM impacts (although I do discuss one (the MD glyph) that does not either since it is a popular one for leveling and soloing, which most were doing at that time). Its benefit is survivalablity only with equal benefit to all hunter specs, and it is used to help mitigate damage in certain boss strats where the strat is independent of hunter spec. However, if enough people think it should be added to the guide, although it is not MM specific and is boss strat dependent, then I will add a brief discussion on it.

I wonder if the common understanding (shared by FD and WHU sites) that MM best telnet tree is the common 8/31/2 is indeed true for all gear combinations when it come to haste levels. In my current gear level (iLevel of 349.3) I always try to reforge haste with hit (until hit cap) and then replace haste with crit/Mastery. As getting to hit cap is so easy, I found my haste level to be as low as 429/3.35% from gear alone.
As Whitefyst mentioned in his awesome guide, haste got a recommended floor level of 5.4%, so it seems I'm 2% under the haste floor level from gear alone. For that we have the pathing talent that adds 1% of haste per level. With pathing 2/3 I reach the 4.25% haste level but here comes the factor of latency and reflexes that still put me below the floor level of haste.
What I'm thinking is replacing [Frenzy 3/3 and Pathing 2/3] with [Frenzy 2/3 and Pathing 3/3], based on the numbers alone (and the FD site), this will increase my overall DPS by a small amount of points, but I'm not sure when will be the end result mergian in real raid situations.

For your calculations on MM's multishot vs SV's multishot, aren't you neglectiing the talent in MM that makes your next multishot half cost?

Nope. I stated in the post that the MM build used in the analysis had 2/2 Bomb, which is my standard MM build and the one listed as the example build in the guide.

Yes, even during the CA phase you will still want to be casting your CSs, even if AI is doing a lot more damage. Even hasted with RF, your AI cast is still going to be around 1.5s, meaning that it will have to do 1.5x as much damage to do as much DPS as CS. On the PTR during the CA phase, it does seem that your AI is doing more than 1.5x the damage of CS, but you still want to use CS even while hasted because of the additional benefits of CS, which include:

- costs 6 less focus
- refreshes your SrS (the combined DPS per focus from CS and refreshed SrS is still better than AI's)
- heals you

If it gets to the point with scaling that it is better DPS to forgo both SrS and CS during the CA phase, then I consider that a broke where the damage of AI needs to be nerfed (it may need to be nerfed some already).

Concerning 4.0.6 updates to the guide

I do not plan to update the guide until after 4.0.6 is released and I see the actual final changes. I also still have some analysis to perform, which I am a little behind on. Until I have completed my detailed analysis and updated the guide, most of the current guide content still applies with the following being the major changes if the current PTR situation goes live:

- You will want to drop AS from your rotation and use the cast AI as your focus dump during all phases, but especially during the CA phase or anytime when under dynamic haste effects like RF and Bloodlust. What's the "optimal" rotation at each SS cast time, I still need to work out.
- Note that you will still want to use AS as your focus dump when moving or when under periods of frequent cast interruption/pushback.
- Since you are not using AS as much, you no longer need the AS glyph. I currently recommend using the AI glyph instead, but I still need to analyze it since using it just occurred as an option to me last night.

Arcane 15% buff is on the RAP-dependant part only, resulting in like 100-120 non-crit damage increase. Atleast it was like that last time I checked PTR. Sad.
AiS does more damage than 2xArcane+2xAuto(and you'd almost never realistically lose 2 Autos for its cast), so even during non-RF/BL/etc times you'd only end up using Arcanes when having to be on the move. And well, any time you're under 2s AiS cast-time it's automatically non-contest between them :/

I'm not too sure whether you thought about the fact that AiS benefits from the 60% extra crit during the CA-phase. Considering hunters will be very close to 100% crit-rate raidbuffed (CA-phase), AiS will hit for twice as much as CS. What I am comparing here is the damage from an AiS-crit versus the average damage of a CS in FD.

According to your theory of AiS needing to do more than 1,5 times the damage of a CS, the above would mean that we do not use CS in our rotation during the CA-phase or at least under haste effects such as RF and bloodlust.

Think he explained it:

Simming the above discussion in FD gives the following results:

Settings:
- PTR enabled
- Default MM spec and rotation
- Glyphs: CS, SS and AiS
- Disable AS during CA
- SS in pairs if ISS has <= 4 seconds left
- AiS behaviour: Manual and instant
- 100% of the fight spend in CA range

DPS

Combined: 33977.67 100.00%

Hunter: 30173.65 88.80%

Pet: 3804.02 11.20%

For the sim without CS and StS, I disabled these shots from the rotation:

DPS

Combined: 35425.09 100.00%

Hunter: 31479.71 88.86%

Pet: 3945.39 11.14%

Previous: 33977.67 +1447.42

So not using CS and/or StS will result in higher DPS during CA. Note that this is under perfect circumstances, where you never have to move or heal yourself with CS.