Ranged Weapon?Follow

Go with whatever's best. You only gimp yourself by sticking to one weapon type. There's no reason not to pick a bow over a crossbow it it's got better stats and damage/DPS/speed.

The reason a lot of Outlands Hunters use Xbows is becaue you get the Expidition Crossbow shortly after starting questing there, which is better than pretty much any ranged weapon you'll have at the time. I believe you also get one in Nagrand as a quest reward, one of the first epics you'll have if you start raiding will be the Steehawk Crossbow, and the PvP Xbow is also pretty common because it's pretty good.

So they're not better, they're just plentiful.

2.6-2.7 speed is the way to go for BM
2.2-2.3 speed for MM / SV

the first speed listed is only if you have consistent low latency, the second is easy enough to do.
Another +0.1 and you have some left over time.

While it's true that the speed doesn't have any effect on the damage of one SS, it does have an effect on the damage you do with steady shots. The reason these speeds are ideal is because they maximize the number of steady shots you get out.

As BM you'll never really have time for a 1.5 shot cycle, and so you want to get as close to 2.6-2.7 as you can to maximize the 1:1. The wolfslayer in kara is your best weapon in the game atm.

For MM/SV you can try through haste and weapon speed to get your weapon down to close to the GCD, but this is fairly unlikely. I believe most MM hunters end up going with a 1.5 shot cycle, which requires a shot speed of ~2.6-2.7 (2.5 assuming 0 lag.)

edit: Am I missing something with the MM/SV? my numbers are different, but I've never really played as them, so maybe I have a mistake somewhere. My rational is that it takes 4.5 seconds to fire the 3 specials, and then a .5 sec auto cast. = 5 sec 5/2 = 2.5 sec.

Edited, Feb 4th 2008 10:25am by Xsarus