Now that we finally have Sinestra under our belt, I want to commit some thoughts on the fight and my role in it to internet posterity.
This was one of my favorite fights to learn this tier for a number of reasons. The pacing of every phase felt great - no drawn out starter or transition phases which you have to dredge through every attempt just to get to the meat of the fight. Nefarian was like that, in my opinion, and I remember doing some attempts with no crackles in p1 just so we could get to p3 faster and learn that. There are no hard phases where the onus is on one or a handful of people and everyone else (or at least me!) has very little responsibility. Nefarian is an example again here, this time with p3. I also like that it is difficult without being completely random - not that the whole thing is scripted by any means, but I can plan several things in advance. Every pull I really had an opportunity to perfect my play just a little bit more in a variety of areas.
With Sinestra, the first two phases seem crisp as everyone pushes for that high DPS threshold. The Lich King heroic fight at times seemed long for the sake of being long. With Sinestra you still have to master the mechanics, but only a few times. The third phase starts off chaotic as you deal with remaining adds and orbs/cutters at the same time, and by the time you have really finished that transition (respawned whelps killed again) you are deep into the phase. We also get to see three very different ways of having DPS thresholds in the same fight.
As far as my own strategy for this fight, in a generalized sense it is about the same as what I'd do as a hunter with any strat, but as a ranged DPS role it is heavily dependent on my guild's specific strat. We start off with heroism for two reasons 1) You don't have much use for it in p1 with Essence of the Red GCD capping a lot of your raid and 2) To meet some damage checks here. Ideally you want to get through phase 1 before a second set of wracks, third whelp group, and third pair of orbs. Our healers tell us that a second set of wrack isn't the end of the world because they don't have much to do in p2 (no clue if he's full of shit), but transitioning with a third orb pair is awkward and unnecessarily adds potential for mistakes.
We reset her to get better positioning for the pull, which means that you can't open with a hard cast aimed shot MD'd to the tank. Instead, I start with the usual prepot and MD and have a chimera shot immediately followed by a serpent sting right when she's targetable. From here I pop rapid fire with heroism going up and get some burst in. You will easily get through one rapid fire before the first orbs come out. Some hunters are averse to using rapid fire with heroism because your steady shots are severely under GCD cap, but the full picture is a bit more complicated than this. With heroism and rapid fire, I am down to 1.09 second aimed shots - and importantly I am generating a lot more focus with Rapid Recuperation which lets me cast even more aimed shots at this time. Obviously this is somewhat countered by the "wasted" haste on steady shots, but my math and experience suggest the payoff is worth it or a wash at worst. I also have another incentive for popping RF right off the bat - this lets me use it right at the start of p3, which means it could be back up again at the end of p3 if the fight goes a little bit longer than ideal.
I am very rarely using arcane shots at all in this fight. I use them 1) after heroism falls off before p2 transition 2) while moving (dancing around orb spawns, kiting orbs). Once we get to p2 the whelps are brought to the back of the room and AoE'd down. Hunter AoE is perfect for them, so take advantage of it - spam steady shot on Sinestra as they are brought to the back to cap focus and keep ISS rolling, then do a full focus dump. I leave my pet on Sinestra at this time so he's hitting her right away after Twilight Extinction goes off. Pets easily survive that, but you can also hit a cower to prevent a bit more. I'm always on one of the eggs so I switch my pet to mine right away as I'm running over into position. Again, this is to get the pet in position for when Twilight Carapace drops off and also to make sure mangle is up already. A short timer starts after Calen says "You are weakening Sintharia, accept the inevitable!" which lets you prepare for the carapace to fall and the eggs to no longer be immune. I think it's about 4-6 seconds. If you don't have the timer you can also judge it by her emote "You mistake this for weakness? FOOL!" - the carapace falls right about when she says "FOOL". Time it so that a hard cast aimed shot starts to wind up before the carapace falls and hits just after it falls. Normally I would doing aimed+chimera on Careful Aim (+80%) targets, but this one has so little health that I like to delay it a bit by doing a second aimed shot after this pre-cast one hits. You should be able to get both aimed shots and not much else off just before the egg drops below 80%. Both will crit so congratulations, you just did 80-100k damage to the egg in about 2 seconds!
The start of phase 3 is clean up duty for our ranged. We knock off the spitecaller and then the drake and then have a bit of a breather before the whelp tank is ready for us to kill those so he can switch to Sinestra. Our priority has been spitecaller first, but he's not quite in range yet. As I head to my p3 position I am normally dumping focus with chim+arcane or Fox+steady, switching to the drake when it's in range, and then switching to the spitecaller when it is in range. Finish off spitecaller, then finish off the drake - it should be dropping a few seconds after Essence of the Red goes off. Then it's burn time
I will confess that I haven't completely mathed out my strat here, to make sure there isn't something I could do better. But it's been working for me so far. You could either 1) hold RF until after Essence of the Red falls off or 2) use it now and adjust your rotation. I do the latter. My aimed shots are at about 1.01 seconds with ISS up but no RF. What I do at this time is let ISS fall off while RF is up, which still has my aimed shots at the GCD cap (.85s here), and do a simple Aimed Shot+Steady Shot, repeat cycle. I'm generating a lot of focus with the haste buff and RF up, so only the one steady every other shot is enough to keep this going! This lets me take advantage of the extra focus without capping and frankly shooting a ridiculous amount of aimed shots - while Careful Aim is still active so they are also crits. Again, I could stand to do some more math here but I believe it is at least a solid working hypothesis.
Right about the time RF falls off (at least the first time, depending on how much I had to move for orbs), the whelps are getting dragged to the back of the room. Our strat involves killing them once there to drop the puddle, and then continue to kill them (they rez after creating a pool) as that add tank runs up to Sinestra. As they are running across the room after the first kill I normally switch back to Sinestra until they stop again - their deaths are normally staggered a bit so they aren't clumped up as they run. After they are down this second time, all that is left is to kill Sinestra and handle orbs correctly. All of our best attempts and kill had Essence of the Red falling off after she was at 25% at the highest - meaning you are already in Termination range, generating more focus, so there is no "normal" time for all of p3 for the Marks hunter.
After the kill, don't forget to teabag any DPS who died!
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