Despite the theorycrafting pre-analysis I can report that 5.1 did a massive DPS gain for me in MOP raids. For sure the data collected by one hunter during single raid night does not represent the entire MM population. The bow upgrade and the blue upgrades also does not help to have apples to apples comparison. I've compared my DPS on 2 fights that I've done last week and this week on norm HoF's Zor'lok and Ta'yak. Both were done on MM spec with the same guild group. Same glyph, talents, pet, full raid buffs were used in both evenings.
Zor'lok, last week (pre 5.1) 55K, this week (post 5.1) 61K --> +11%
Ta'yak, last week (pre 5.1) 59K, this week (post 5.1) 65K --> +10%
It is hard to say which element provides the biggest buff as MM got so much love, CA extension, SS on the move, AotIH surprising last minute buff, item (epic and blue) upgrades. But for me it was clear that the SF duration double made the twist. It now never drops and does not require the massive attention it used before.
One buff that seems to be left outside of the official patch was the buff that was mentioned few weeks ago about buffing and changing the damage type of wild quiver (80%-->100%), it is fine, MM got tons of other love

Just wanted to add some quick thoughts on how the SrS buff (doubling its tick damage) benefits MM.

1) Using SrS and CS was already recommended during the CA phase. It is even more recommended now. By itself, SrS does almost half the damage of a AI crit with including the PS effect and costs 30% of the focus while being instant cast. Hence, add in the CS damage with including the PS effect and the extra WQ and auto damage, and it is not even close.

2) The SrS damage buff makes multidoting more profitable for MMs. A SrS that runs to duration is about 2.16 times the damage of an AS according to FD. Even with factoring in that the secondary targets probably have no debuffs on them, FD still shows that SrS on a secondary target is 1.97 times the damage of an AS on the primary, fully debuffed target. With both being instant cast shots and SrS costing 5 less focus now than AS, it is now usually even more profitable to toss a SrS on a secondary target in place of an AS on the primary if you can do so without interrupting your rotation much on the primary target (e.g., using mouseover macros).

3) The next question is when to multidot and when to AoE. We know that MS beats out AS on 3 or more targets. On a single target with including the WQ effects, SrS does 110K to about 30K for MS. Hence, its beneficial to multidot instead of AoE on up to 3 targets, which is the cut off for AoEing already. Thus, if there are 1 or 2 secondary targets, the recommendation is to multidot the secondary targets with maintaining the single rotation on the primary target, unless the boss strat requires full focus on the primary target or if their is no benefit to damaging the secondary target.

While pew pewing Wind Lord Mal'jarak I wondered if the AOE rotation for this specific fight is optimal, this fight is unique in the sense it is you have a 2.5 minute period that most of your activities are 100% AOE damage (I didn't have any CC role in our 10 man combo).
Looking at the MM WOL top ranking hunters for this fight I noticed that there were various options, one option was to totally ignore the use of Explosive Trap and Barrage in this fight. Another way was to ignore the use of Glaive Toss. I can only assume that TotH was use in by all top ranked hunters
Based on WF guide for AOE most abilities should be used as part of the fight (KS, RF, SF, MoC, DB, GT, Readiness, Stampede, ET, MS) I wonder if the use of all such single target abilities as part of a long AOE fight is not a waste of too many GCDs and it is better to select a sub-set of AOE abilities for such a unique fight?
Also for such long and multiple target AOE fight, do you think that GT or Barrage would generate better DPS?

While there is an extended period of AoE inthat encounter, remember that it is not indiscriminate aoe. While you want to output as much damage as possible overall, you also want to be able to focus your damage. MoC on 2 menders for example is better than MoC, wait 30 seconds, MoC.

Yes, my MS numbers averages in crit and WQ. The crit is averaged in by FD already in the average damage and I manually calculate the expected WQ damage per target per shot.

And I agree that SV does more AoE damage than MM currently, mostly due to the Serpent Spread damage.

Concerning the single target abilities used in AoE;
- RF: Unless you need to save it for something later, RF is an awesome AoE burst. You should use it in long AoEs.
- Readiness: It is useful in AoE situations mostly for the extra RF, but the extra damage from other CDs is also good.
- Stampede: If its worthwhile to use your RF/Readiness, then it is worthwhile to use your Stampede as well, especially if you have a primary target that you want to get down faster than the general AoE, which you do on Windlord.
- ET: My belief is that you want to use ET on CD. It does a lot of DPS in large AoE packs and only costs 10 focus every 30s. I suggest only forgoing ET if the AoE pack is small.
- DB: DB is a large amount of damage, especially when hasted by RF, on the primary target while also generating enough additional focus for more MSs
- GT: Does a large amount of AoE damage for only 15 focus.
- MoC: As Soulgin stated, MoC does great damage per GCD on the primary target and is good for AoE in general, but great in Windlord where bringing down the primary target faster actually kills 3 targets. Also with Readiness, as he stated you can place MoC on 2 targets.
- SF: With the 20s duration now, I see no reason not to maintain it over the AoE once you done your initial focus depletion, which is usually done under RF, and need to cast a couple SSs to regain focus. It is not necessary to have 100% uptime, but you generally deplete your focus, then you should have plenty of opportunities to refresh it. One benefit is increased autoshot and WQ damage on the primary target. The primary benefit is that when you cast SSs to regain focus, you get 3 extra focus per cast and each cast takes less time, meaning that you have to spend less GCDs of SS during the long AoE and more GCDs on higher damage abilities.
- KS: Generally, KS does not buy its way 100% onto AoE fights with the exception being when you have a primary target you want to finish off fast or where the number of remaining targets is small enough where the KS damage and focus savings outweighs the MS or other abilitiy damage.

It seems that Bliz got a quest in life to push more and more hunters back to the warm hug of MM, but the hunter community refuse to go to this direction and leave small population of MM around. Patch 5.2 is no different: AI duration is getting shorter, Glyph of Aimed Shot can be used instead of MfD that is cancelled, and based on GC last post AI will also trigger the 4PCS buff.
I didn’t see DPS analyze of these changes and the comparison between specs and I didn’t see if AI will become part of out standard rotation yet but I've this feeling that unless MM will gain a clear advantage, most hunters will stay as BM and SV. It is kind of pity to get ranked on WOL every time as MM, but no one said MM life is easy. Do you see any change in 5.2?

Sorry, I have not said anything yet, but I usually do not get too excited about proposed changes on PTR until they have been out there for a while or unless we are close to the patch and have a good idea the change willl exist in the patch. However, I did talk a little about the change in the Simple Question forum since a direct question was asked.

Since the change is still preliminary in my mind, I have not done a detailed analysis yet, but here is what I think about the proposed change of reducing the base cast time of AI from 2.9s to 2.5s. Currently in T14 gear, the cut off where casting AI instead of AS as the focus dump is worthwhile is around 1.3 to 1.4s cast time. I still need to evaluate when we get closer to the patch and see the gear whether the cut off point will be the same. I am hoping that with AI scaling realtive to AS that it will become a little higher.

Even is the cut off point for using AI does not increase, the reduced AI cast time appears like it will make AI both more usuable and usable more often. Below is a table of haste levels needed to make the cutoff points under different scenarios.

Haste from gear needed to meet AI use points with a 2.5s AI base cast time

Scenario	1.4s	1.3s
T14 4P Unhasted	29.87%	39.86%
T14 4P BL	0%	7.58%
T14 4P RF	0%	0%
Unhasted	41.16%	52.02%
BL	8.59%	16.94%
RF	0.83%	8.59%

As can be seen, while we still have the T14 4P and using the recommended at least 9.09% haste from gear, using AI as the focus dump is beneficial now not only just during RFs in the CA phase, but during all RFs and even BL. Note that during BL that the AI cast is already below the 1.4s cut off without any haste from gear at 1.398s. The AI cast time is naturally below the 1.3s cut off during RF without any haste from gear.

Once we lose the T14 4P, more haste is required to make using AI an option; however, with the at least 9.09% haste from gear, AI is recommended for use during any RF since the cast time will be below 1.3s and is probably worthwhile to use during BL since the cast time is below 1.4s. I assume that with gear scaling that the cut off will rise a little and be closer or over 1.4s, such that it will be beneficial to use AI during BL outside the CA phase.

What still needs to be evaluated is whether it is still maximum DPS for MMs to stack both RF and BL during the CA phase or whether it is better to have BL outside the CA phase to allow more AIs. I am anticipating that still stacking them during the CA phase will be best, but I am not certain on that.

Regardless, this change will make it worthwhile to cast AI more often. It helps that the T15 4P will proc off either of the MM focus dumps. If we are using AI more often, then I agree its beneficial to use the AI glyph in most situations.

Looks like another buff for MMs:

•Aimed Shot damage +10%.
•Chimera Shot damage +50%.
•Steady Shot damage +20%.

I will try to do some analysis this weekend or next before the patch comes out, but I have been busy and may not be able to complete it before the patch. Definitely increases to 3 of the 4 primary shots for a MM is great, especially the large buff to CS.

Using the T13 MM Max DPS profile in FD with no changes, Zeherah's initial implementation yielded a 7.5% increase. This may change some after she determines the actual performance. Some reforges and other alterations may yeild better results too. The criteria concerning at what haste level to use AI should improve some more. With the T14 gear, it was close to being better not to stack BL and RF anymore where it may become the right choice with T15 gear scaling.

Looks like they toned it down a bit. Chimera Shot is only getting +25%. Source: GC post

I had a quick question about spamming SS and ignoring a focus dump completely. Is there any crit level where the bonus damage of piercing shots from all the extra SSs and AI procs would make up for the loss of AS?

There is a special case which is worth looking at, which falls in the realm of "experts could benefit from this": when you cast a steady shot pair, 25% of the time they will both proc master marksman. Starting from there, is it worth fishing for MMM procs? (i.e., the first two SS were a sunk cost). To get a feel for the technique, I compare the damage of different shot sequences over 6 seconds based on your damage numbers above, where the last chunk is the fraction of an AS that would fit in the remaining time.

a. 1xSS MMM AS... 329,695
b. 2xSS MMM AS... 289,400
c. 3xSS MMM AS... 249,105
d. 4xSS AS... 125,020
e. AS... 286,200

The last case is for "MMM never procced". Since there's only a 50% chance of a proc per SS, fishing for a proc is the expected value of getting it immediately, plus the expected value of failing to get it. That series over 6 seconds is:

.5a + .5(.5b + .5(.5c + .5d))) = 283,963

which is less than just spamming AS (283k < 286k). However for example, a 1.3 cast time for is SS or a 1.1 cast time for AS (e.g., due to latency) results in fishing for that last proc being an improvement. The most variant at the moment is one that can actually be applied fairly easily:

f. SS AS... 245,905

Basically fish for one proc, using the sequence SS AS MMM? AS... where the MMM is only if the proc happened. That nets 287,800, which beats AS spam with a fairly simply shot decision.

This doesn't include wild quiver impacts. More importantly, this doesn't include the fact that the master marksman procs will last until the next SS pair, so they would likely not be otherwise be wasted. However, this sequence could squeeze in a little more damage in a burst phase.