That makes me wonder, what dps numbers can be seen as good for a hunter in various gear levels and for various specs?

Personally, BM in my five man blues and a few early Kara pieces, I've managed about a 1000 dps on the stupidly hunter friendly Murmur, with AotH and BoK. On the more valid bosses In Kara I do between 700 and 900, on fights where I can fire fairly continously. Is this ok or sub par? And are the dps numbers from Damage Meters and the FuBar dps meter even accurate enough to be valid?

It'd be nice to have some benchmark numbers to aim for, knowing that if you reach them you are not underpreforming.

Edit: Very informative illustrations in the OP, btw. Really useful for us less experienced players.

A change in Global Cooldown would only change the timing around, not magically fix anything.

Correct me if I'm wrong, so the best rotation for a BM hunter with >2.0 Bow Speed would be:
Is that correct?

No. The /castsequence command only works with 2 spells, if i recall correctly, so to avoid excessive automation and botting. But still, spam the macro i provided, and weave arcane shot through every time it's available.

Came late to this thread since my old hunter is now just an alt, but it's very useful and really well illustrated. I will definitely be linking this to some of my guild's hunters who are, how shall we say it, slightly lacking, on their dps. Positive rep left!

As Lactose says, no real discussion of haste effects, but I think asking the majority of hunters to know what their optimal hasted rotations for each combination of haste effects is possibly a bit much!

Lactose, I just wondered, because I compared my Sunfury, which for me as BM has 2.1 speed, with the Barrel-Blade from Doomwalker, which would be 1.88, using Cheeky's spreadsheet and saw a very substantial dps increase. I might be missing something (averaged haste from IAotH etc), but going below 2.0 speed would mean delaying autoshots. So maybe the spreadsheet is wrong on modeling this or do I really gain this dps despite delaying auto?

Okay, so what would be a viable /castsequence to fit an optimal rotation, then? Would it work the way zork created it?

There's a fairly easy way to determine the minimum weapon speed for a given amount of haste to ensure steady does not clip the 0.5s auto 'refresh time' (not sure the established terminology here...). Do this:
Now, I'm not sure what the server/client mechanics are so you may or may not have to double the latency and reaction time values (Tl and Tr, respectively) - someone with more knowhow can probably answer that question.

Example:
Quiver, 5/5 SS so H%=1.38
Tl=latency=100ms=0.1s
Tr=reaction=100ms=0.1s
Therefore min weapon speed to not delay auto with steady is
1.38*[(1.5/1.38)+0.1+0.1+0.5]~2.47

A couple of conceptual things to note. The partial derivatives dF/Tl=dF/Tr=H%. This isn't surprising, since those values are unmodified by haste and consequently F should only vary proportionally with H% if they are held constant. The partial derivative dF/dH%=Tl+Tr+0.5; if haste percentage is held constant, F varies proportionally with the sum of Tl, Tr, and the constant 0.5. This is all pretty much exactly what you'd expect, so the equation makes a reasonable amount of sense to me in that fashion (sorry, sometimes I need to check my own work like this).

Anyway, as you'd expect, since Tl, Tr, and the constant 0.5 are unaffected by haste, as you get more haste your min weapon speed goes up linearly. If we put the equation into a more clear line form (y=mx+b) we can see F=H%(Tl+Tr+0.5)+1.5. The slope of the line, depending on which variable is held constant, is either the haste or the sum Tl+Tr+0.5 (again, you'd expect this by looking at the partial derivatives). The y intercept is always Tl+Tr+(0.5+1.5), since H% can't be less than 1 (well, it could if you had some debuff that decreased attack speed, but I'm not gonna get into that because it's irrelevant to the conversation).

Anyway, hope that equation can answer some questions (there was a bit of confusion related to auto/steady times with haste).

I forgot about the global cooldown of Arcane Shot so basically you can add only 1 special between auto shots as a BM hunter.

But lythrdskynrd said that the most efficient special for a BM is the steady shot.

So its really just spamming this kind of macro.

/castsequence Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast Kill Command

Interesting question: Does arcane shot hit for a higher damage than the steady shot?
If yes you can alternate the macro and put a Arcane Shot in.

sth like: /castsequence Arcane, Auto, Steady, Auto, Steady, Auto

Problem: If you activate rapid fire your rotation will screw up even with a 3.2spd bow because you will fire much faster than 2 seconds and therefore a arcane shot will hold the macro until it is fired.

fastened_bow_spd = bow_spd / (quiver * iaoth * serpents_swiftness * rapid_fire)
bow_spd = 3.2 / (1.15*1.15*1.2*1.4) = 1.44

So its probably the best to just use steady and auto shout. Steady shot scales with haste effects, cooldowns do not.

Yeah, it should do. But add the lines in the macro i posted above, or you'll be spammed with 'that ability isn't ready yet' messages

In fact, i'm gonna add the macro again. I got this off the wow-europe forums, but i was already using the same simple version that you presented, and believe me, my screen and my headphones were painful already...

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [exists,target=pettarget] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

This is exactly the shot rotation macro I use with a shadow priest avaliable (95% of the time this is the case on our raids as we take 3). I have done a lot and I mean a lot of testing on DR Boom and adding in the arcane shot definately yields more dps for me than a simple steady/auto spam. Sure it can clip the following Auto Shot slightly but not by a massive margin. I often think hunters worry to much about delaying the auto shot slightly especially as a BM spec. On Multiple targets with no cc going on I place a multi shot into the rotation as well, again clips the auto but the damage is still more despite this.

The proof in the pudding is to just test it out and find a macro that works best with your gear, spec and latency. Thats exactly what I have done on Dr Boom. Others with higher latency may find that just using steady/autos without the arcane shot is better for them.

Obviously it all depends on the situation as well, I would revert to just using auto/steady spam if I found myself without a shadow priest. Doing this, using mana oil and drinking a pot every now and then removes the need to totally gimp your dps by using 6/8 crypt stalker. I have about 2200rap and 30% crit raid buffed without flasks or pots and this is usually enough to easily pump out a good 800-1k+ dps inclusive of the pet data ofc.

On certain fights such as morogrim it is perfectly possible to get 300-400 dps from the pet alone. Scorpid poison owns for static fights like this. Ensure the pet has kings/might then just pop all you ap trinkets and bw and send it in. Using rank 4 of the poison (longer duration so less likely to fall off) it can tick for 600-800+ every 2 seconds! This is crazy dps from 1 pet ability and of course doesn't even include it's melee dps. The last Morogrim kill I went on my scorpid did 700k damage on just Morogrim alone hehe. Obviously its situational, some fights where you need to pull your pet back or the mob is immune to poisons would favour a wind serpent for example. I have all 3 of my pets configured for different situations, the scorpid for static fights, the wind serp for more hectic encounters or in cases of immunity and a carrion bird for when the extra damage reduction from screech is of more benefit.

*edit* When rapid fire is up or quickshots procs I switch to just auto/steady as these shots will not hold up the macro like the arcane would.