I normally use a potion of wild magic as pre-pot if we have heroism on the pull, or if I'm going to burn rapid fire. I avoid stacking RF with heroism or pots. This generally means 90% of all fights. I avoid stacking haste modifiers, and instead spread them out. If we would not use hero at the pull (for fights like putri heroic, sindra) my own cooldown rotation, assuming a 4 minute fight would look like this:

Snake trap, explosive trap, MD
Pre-pot Wild Magic
*pull*
Rapid fire, call of the wild
10 seconds of a 'normal' shot rotation, using aimed over chimera.
Readiness when aimed and chimera have been put on cooldown (roughly 13 seconds?)
Rapid fire once the old one fades (roughly 15 seconds after pull)
.
. (Using a potion of speed if I have a decent set of procs (excluding IAotH)
.
210 seconds after the pull Rapid fire and Readiness come off cooldown - I usually pop rapid fire instantly, and use readiness to have rapid fire up to be activated straight after the previous one fades.

I had a question about the TSA glyph vs. Chimera Glyph. Its been a few weeks since I searched the forums about this subject, but I noticed when I plugged in TSA Glyph over the Chimera Glyph I get about a 200+ dps increase on shandara's spread sheet. Is the spread sheet over valuing TSA Glyph? Also if I remember correctly the glyph doesn't get over written by the abom's might and the shaman ability. Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this or if it has been discussed.

@ Pentagram: while Wild Magic is certainly nice on pulls and heroism, i personaly think using potion of speed increases your chances to proc T10x2 set, at the begining at the fight, and boosting your serpent sting straight away.

@Vulkrin88...TSA still gets overwritten, ofcource you can still cancel both with

/cancelaura Abomination's Strength
/cancelaura Unleashed Rage
/cast Aimed Shot

Now whether TSA is a better glyph for you then say Kill Shot, Glyph of the Hawk or Chimera Shot will depend on gear, fight duration and so on. Test it for your self.

To illustrate the glyphs, I will use your character as an example, but the situation applies to MM hunters in general.

The TSA glyph is a good option, but there are a couple things to keep in mind when evaluating it. First, at the high end gear that some MM hunters have now, some are approaching the crit cap on Aimed Shot when you factor in the +22% crit on it from IB and the glyph. With ArP food to get you to 1390 ArP, that puts you at 91.85% crit with AiS. This is awesome and helps your average Aimed Shot damage factoring in PS to outdo the non SrS part of CS by 17368 to 14514. Theoretically, if you do get to the crit cap, then the value of the glyph will decrease, but you have options to remedy that, such as dropping points in IB.

The CS glyph can be a good glyph too in the right situations; however, it can also be bad since it is sensitive to timing issues, such as lag and human reaction time, and your SS cast time. First, when evaluating it in the spreadsheet, make sure to prioritize CS over AiS. The problem with the CS glyph lies in two situations:
1) When you lose a SS in your rotation CS->AiS->SSx4 rotation to shoot CS at the new 9s CD with leaving a big wasted gap of time between the 3rd SS and the CS.
2) You go past that 9s CD by a good amount to shoot your 4th SS. This wastes a lot of the benefit of reducing the CD by 1s and devalues the glyph.

For your current situation, I do not think that the CS glyph is a good option. With only the 52 haste rating on gear, your SS cast is 1.81s when under no dynamic haste. Even with IAotH procs (estimated 53% uptime with your current haste), it is still a 1.60s cast.

Hence, even in the situation with no lag or reaction time negative impacts to your rotation, CS->AiS->SSx3 takes 8.43s with no dynamic haste and 7.8s when under IAotH. In both situations, there is not enough time to shot a 4th SS before CS comes off CD. If you do shot the 4th SS first, you waste .93s or 0.3s of the 1s CD reduction, diminishing the value of the glyph. If you do not take the 4th SS, you give up the damage of that shot (9400) while gaining an extra CS every 90s. That is 9400 * 9 = 84600 SS damage versus 23175 damage from the extra CS.

To optimize the CS glyph, you need your SS cast to be at the 1.5s GCD ideally 100% of the time so that you can still squeeze in 4 SS shots between 9s CSs with the only wasted part of the 1s CD reduction being from lag, reaction time, or stuns or moving. Obviously, it is very unlikely to see an MM hunter with the 750 haste rating necessary to make their SS casts always at the 1.5 GCD. So the next best option is getting enough haste to get your SS cast to the 1.5s GCD with IAotH procs, which takes about 270 haste rating, which also increases IAotH uptime to about 57%. Thus, with factoring in other sources of dynamic haste from RF, Bloodlust, and potions, you will probably have the ideal 1.5s GCD SS cast about 70% of the time, which may make the CS glyph worth it. (However, even then it is still susceptible to lag and human reaction times.) The other about 30% of the time your SSs will still be 1.71s to cast, in which situation I believe it is still better to delay the cast of your CS if did not have any other delays in your rotation, in which case you would not delay for another SS.

Without knowing what gear you have with haste, the biggest jump to get to the desired 270 haste rating would be to replace the Greatness card with Herkuml War Token. This still leaves you about 60 haste short (with regemming non-ArP gems to haste being a DPS loss). Although it improves your CS glyph DPS, it still leaves it about 70 DPS lower than the KS or TSA glyph options.

Personally, I prefer the TSA glyph since it is a noticeable DPS increase and is not sensitive to timing issues like the CS or KS glyphs are and I recommend it for your current gear on the armory.

About the best situation for the CS glyph are ones where the player has bad latency and other issues where they cannot get the 4th SS cast within the 10s CS CD like most players with low latency should be able. In that case, since you either are delaying your CS cast to get in that 4th CS or already giving up the 4th SS with leaving a sizeable time gap between the 3rd SS and CS, the CS glyph is a good option since it fits naturally into the situation and actually tightens the rotation.

This was exactly what I was looking for Whitefyst. I do have the Herkuml War Token, and also the Shadowvault Slayer's Cloak heroic.

To add to what has been iterated extensively by Whitefyst, there has been a test performed by one of the hunters among the hunter blogger community, showing that apparently the permanent UR and Abom's Might aura does NOT deactivate or interfere with the TSA glyph's functionality. However, to my knowledge, the result has never been cross-tested extensively afterwards, and as such it is up to you to value the test result.

The scenario that has not been tested with regards to TSA glyph interference thoroughly before, is when there is another hunter present with his TSA on. Personally, I refrain from using TSA glyph due to this very reason, which happens almost consistently on the raid groups I have been involved with.

Ok so, I asked this question in the simple question/simple answer thread but maybe it's just to hard
and since this is a MM related question I'll try here.

Now, I've been wondering how you know if it's worth putting up Hunter's Mark before dpsing a target.
How long does this target need to be alive for me get real benefit from Hunter's Mark instead of using
that extra SS which I would have used instead?

Is there any easy way for myself to calculate this or has it already been done and if so, can someone redirect me
to that thread?

If no one has done it, do we have any smart people that know how to do this?

Midnight's BiS spreadsheet tells me that an average Steady Shot does 7807 damage.

And if i disable the unglyphed and unspecced Hunter's Mark it costs about 1060 dps. So the target has to live more than 7 seconds for the Hunter's Mark being beneficial.

Since the BiS spreadsheet is BiS, Top dps at most beneficial circumstances, I don't think we can use that as a base.

Time for my 2 cents.

I tried to do roughly what you said in the other thread. I took the total modified damage of Auto, Steady, Aimed and Chimera and compared it with and without HM (untalented and unglyphed; I also used to BiS spreadsheet setup to not bother and set up mine again). For a 10 sec rotation, you gain roughly 2500 damage if you have HM on the target (3 Steady, 4 Auto, 1 Aimed and 1 Chimera).

Since we assume its a Steady you miss to put HM up on the target, the damage of one Steady with this spreadsheet setup was roughly 7722 without HM. With those numbers, you'll need anywhere from 25 to 35 secs to make up for the loss Steady. Of course, if you have 2 hunters on the same target, then you'll cut down the time in half.

The problem is that there are a lot of things that will change those numbers - the number of hunters in the raid, crit chance, the number of Auto Shots that can connect with that target, the ICC buff - are just the few I could think of right now. So it gets quite complicated.

If I remember correctly, somebody, somewhere around here calculated that a while ago. From what I remember, the breaking point was at around 10 secs. And since it was not a recent post, it means that the calculation was done with a lower gear level that the one we have currently available, or maybe even for a survival spec. All that means that the damage of a single Steady shot was lower, making the time to break even also lower.

If the numbers above are correct, then you'll need at least 15 secs of dps time on that target with 2 hunters to make up for the loss of that Steady shot, possibly even up to 20 secs with all the variables in play.

Here is more data on various situations using a friends character, starting with the new target being fully raid buffed.

A - Improved and glyphed HM on target
DPS: 14067
SS: 9368

b - HM on target (not improved or glyphed)
DPS: 13855
SS: 9254

c - no HM on target
DPS: 13397
SS: 9025

Between b and c, the DPS loss is 458 on the unmarked target. Hence, it will take about 19.7s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly. For 2 hunters on the target, the switchover is 10s. For 3 hunters, it is about 7s, For 4 hunters, 5s.

Between a and c, the DPS loss is 670 on the unmarked target. Hence, it will take about 13.5s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly. For 2 hunters on the target, the switchover is 7s. For 3 hunters, it is about 4-5s, For 4 hunters, 3-4s.

If your raid marker has somewhere between a fully improved and glyphed mark and the standard mark, the difference is somewhere between.

However, that doesn't tell the full story since that data assumes the new target is fully raid debuffed except for the HM. In most cases, the new target will be missing debuffs for the full or partial duration you are on it. In the case of the only debuff on the target being an HM since it is a hunter target only:

d - Improved and glyphed HM on target
DPS: 11266
SS: 7434

e - HM on target (not improved or glyphed)
DPS: 11096
SS: 7343

f - no HM on target
DPS: 10728
SS: 7161

Between e and f the DPS loss is 368 on the unmarked target. Hence, it will take about 19.5s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly. For 2 hunters on the target, the switchover is 10s. For 3 hunters, it is about 7s, For 4 hunters, 5s.

Between d and f, the DPS loss is 538 on the unmarked target. Hence, it will take about 13.3s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly. For 2 hunters on the target, the switchover is 7s. For 3 hunters, it is about 4-5s, For 4 hunters, 3-4s.

For the cases (g, h, and i, respectively) with ranged debuffs only (HM, minor ArR, and magical attack damage), the summaries are:

Between h and i the DPS loss is 389 on the unmarked target with a 7311 SS. Hence, it will take about 18.8s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly.

Between g and i, the DPS loss is 569 on the unmarked target. Hence, it will take about 12.8s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly.

For the cases (j, k, and l, respectively) with melee debuffs only (HM, major and minor ArR, 3% crit, extra bleed damage, etc), the summaries are:

Between k and l the DPS loss is 442 on the unmarked target with a 9025 SS. Hence, it will take about 20.4s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly.

Between j and l, the DPS loss is 646 on the unmarked target. Hence, it will take about 14.0s for a single hunter before the lack of the HM is costly.

There are many more different boss debuff combinations, but the main item illustrated above is that the cutoff points do not change much with boss debuffs. No matter the raid debuff combinations, the cutoff point for each HM loss are all within about 1.5s for a single hunter on the target. Thus, the numbers for either a fully debuffed target or a non-debuffed target are valid estimates to use.

That is actually wrong. Debuffs do not have the same mechanic as the % damage modifier buffs do. That means that whenever a 13% magical damage debuff is placed on the target, it will increase the damage of all the Serpent Sting ticks after that, regardless of when you fired the shot.

Is there a reason to use Readiness right after Rapid Fire (or after Aimed/Chimera) and not after 1 full rotation?
I usually do all the prepull-stuff and then use Serpent/Silencing/Rapidfire/CotW in one macro, then CS,AS, SS,SS,SS,SS,CS,AS (1 full rotation +CS,AS) and then Readiness, Rapidfire... (usually works perfekt)
When I planned my opening like this, I thought that I would get more out of the debuffs the boss gets by waiting with the extra round of AS and CS untill all debuffs are on the boss. So I figured this would be the best way.
Any thoughts?

In the context of rapid fire, I generally use readiness after the 15 seconds of active use have expired by before the 2 minute CD has been reached. In this case, you do not want to use it immediately, but after a couple rotations. My process is to watch for the Rapid Fire expiration, wait until I have used my "money" shots once more, and then to hit Readiness.

The main thing to keep in mind is that the only time you are guaranteed to have both of your trinkets off of ICD together is at the beginning of a fight. This is why you are better off popping everything together at the beginning of a fight on most occasions. Popping as much as you can at the beginning of a fight will on average yield more dps. This is just an average though, there are some fights like Northrend beasts (right after the last beast charges he will take more damage than normal) where it might be more beneficial to save your cooldowns.

Additionally you need to take into account fight length / kill times. I recently joined a guild with much faster kill times and noticed a drop in my dps because of the way I was using cooldowns previously and had to adjust accordingly. Say you are in a two minute fight - You arn't going to get a second round of rapidfire/readi/rapidfire off after your first one. You just need to be hyper aware of your trinkets and the fight length.