Of /castsequences and haste

So, due to my own mediocrity, I am the user of a /castsequence macro. During most of Wrath, with our 1.5 second global cooldown, there was only so much wiggle room in the rotation - you could do one Chimera, one Aimed, and a combination of one Arcane and two to four Steady Shots, depending on your Armor Penetration, talents, and haste.

In Cataclysm, our GCD has dropped to 1 second. One second, with instant-cast, no cooldown but the global cooldown Arcane Shots. Steady Shot still has a base cast time of 2 seconds. Chimera Shot's cooldown is still 10 seconds (since I don't glyph it).

Our goal is four Steady Shots to every Chimera Shot. Why? Improved Steady Shot. We want these four in bundles of two. With 1 second of the 10 second rotation given to Chimera itself (GCD), a maximum of 8 seconds will go to the four Steady Shots. With no haste, that gives you time for one Arcane Shot, preferably between the bundles. When haste pushes your Steady Shot cast down, however, you're looking at extra time in your rotation, and face it - you're probably carrying extra focus. Add in Rapid Fire and your Imp. Steady Shot haste and you're probably rolling in focus and GCD time.

This was what I noticed - my focus bar was always too full. My Steady Shot cast is down to 1.54 seconds - that's about an extra two seconds in my rotation, which is two extra Arcane Shots. Obsessively watching focus consumption in a heroic (the only of two heroics I have successfully completed) got me killed on Anraphet, so it probably wasn't the best idea. I had been popping an extra Steady Shot onto the end of my rotation when my haste procs were up, waiting for Chimera to cool down, but more focus doesn't do me any good. Arcane is a focus dump for a reason.

So! The /castsequence now looks like:

/castsequence Chimera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

With my usual lines for the engineering tinkers, tooltip, error clearing, and such, of course.

I couldn't leave it the way it was and manually add the Arcanes - I really want to be hitting two Steadies before my next Chimera to assure I have the focus for it. The flexibility comes between the Steady bundles. There's still enough room in this for Aimed procs without losing Serpent Sting, although the shorter Serpent Sting duration due to the glyph change does make things a little tighter.

I would say that my DPS did edge up afterwards, but that heroic was really not a good run to judge one's DPS on.

As haste probably continues to edge upwards, additional Arcane Shots will, at some point, be untenable to add - three in a row seems to be about the limit for the focus pool following a pair of Steadies. Further shots added to the rotation will probably be Steadies, depending how the haste goes.