The other thing I was thinking about in 2.1 is the fact that it will take 30 shots to maximize your new Hunter's Mark to 440 RAP. Having 5/5 serpent's swiftness will decrease the time it will take to get you to that max level especially if you're the only hunter in a 25 man raid, (which is quite often the case in my guild).

random answers:
- BM hunters use replacement cycles with 2.7 and faster weapons: special, auto, special, auto.. etc (where special is steady, auto, multi)

- multishot from a BM is generally a waste of mana on a single target though.

- when imp hawk procs, steady shot's cast time is sped up. most epic weapons are 2.6 or slower, so even with that proc, you can still maintain your shot cycle w/o too many issues

I need to do more research, but for post-patch I'm changing from MM to BM and will be stacking leather agi/ap extensively. a lighter mana burning steady/auto replacement cycle and dropping multishot will help alleviate mana issues. it really seems like this setup will be a good mix of dps and endurance.. just need to math it out more w/ gear availability. i'm almost ready to start believing that a BM in complete leather who FD+drinks (25-35% of their dmg continues while drinking) would do more than a hunter who tried to avoid FD+drink with mail int/mp5 gear.

BM also has fringe benefits:
- BM is much more welcome with a shadow priest than MM, potentially resolving mana issues when in full leather.
- replacement cycles are much more forgiving with your latency unless you are trying to thread a needle with a 2.3 type weapon (not a typical speed for epics though)

My BM rotation is Auto-Steady unless TBW is up, in which case I will use the higher-damage specials (Multi and Arcane) in place of Steadies, since they cost 20% less mana under the effect of TBW.

I also use Multi and Arcane with Rapid fire, since weaving Steadies between every RF Auto is impossible.

I pretty much believe the devs intended BM hunters to use the Auto-Steady predominantly, since it's very mana efficient. The surplus mana to be used for Mends.

I'm not sure what you mean by a auto/special rotation with BM. How can you fit specials in with a 1.95 attack speed?

Here is what my theorycrafting on BM found:
There's hardly a reason to use special shots at all. You can't fit them in properly, they have to replace a steady. They do provide larger DPS, but at a very large cost.

The damage per mana of upgrading a Steady to an Arcane comes out to 0.65 damage per mana, the cost of a multi is 1.35 damage per mana (single target). To give some perspective, Serpent sting has around 4 damage per mana.

Specials are good for the following situation for a BM:
If you are with a Shadow priest
If it is a burst phase
If you have mana near the end of a fight
When you use The Beast Within.

Other than that, you are just wasting mana, and you are better off stacking the AP/crit. The BM build really breaks hunter's reliance on mana. So far the best builds I've found have used iAotH with a 2.6 - 2.7 after accounting for lag. At low latency 2.5 is viable but there's no good guns in that range.

One other interesting thing I turned up, is that the +haste enchants are still viable for the BM build. My spreadsheets showed the +10 haste rating to gloves slightly above +24AP

Are Cats the new best-BM pets considering the LB nerf last patch? Or any pet with a Gore ability like a Ravager?

That was one of the questions I had. How does a BM use rapid fire effectively? I'm going to be running some numbers on that and looking at how to best combine TBW, Rapid Fire, iAotH, and Trinkets.

One question for the hunter community, what happens when you swap bows in combat? Is there a cooldown on your autoshot?

steady shot *is* a special. auto/special rotations are called replacement cycles. the core cycle is auto/steady, but you replace arcane/multi in as mana allows.

btw, another bonus to BM is that you can sync your best trinket with TBW.

that's part of the beauty of a replacment cycle.. its so simple. since most epics are 2.7 or slower.. when haste effets proc, you continue with your cycle. it would take an effective post-haste weapon speed of about 1.5 + latency to start delaying autoshots.. even then.. its best to continue with your cycle (possibly focusing on instants instead of steady at that point tho).

LOL same here man. There's nothing worse than leveling up a pet at that level to 70. I did it with a wolf at 67 and it was painful.

With Rapid Fire, a 2.7 becomes: 2.7/1.2/1.15/1.4= 1.397 sec. That's too fast, unfortunately. Taking steady out may be the best idea, but once arcane/multi are both on cool down there's not much you can do. You may even have to do the unspeakable and use Serpent Sting (ewwwww). Either way you won't get the same amount of damage out of a rapid fire that a MM/SV would get since taking out steady or delaying auto both hurt DPS a lot.

My mistake, I see what you mean now.

I've been using an Owl for some time now. Screech/Claw instead of Bite/Claw, +7% dps instead of +10%, 0% health adjustment instead of cat's -2%. Apart from the really annoying screeching noise every few seconds, Owls perform pretty well. And the latest rank of Screech is -210 ap to all targets, more than double the previous best rank.

I tamed the red and purple one from Sethekk Halls, and he gets a lot of attention =)

I would go with Ravager pet for Gore and Bite with BM spec. I know they are a bit of glass cannon for a pet but dps is quite a bit higher with them.