Best way to use lock and load

To my knowledge, yes, firing three explosive shots back to back waiting for the DoT to tick between each one is the correct way to do so. What I did back when I did a brief stint as survival (shudder Never again) was weave another shot in between each ExS, something like this:

LnL procs: ExS -> AS -> ExS -> Refresh Sting or BA -> ExS. It was a slight loss due to the GCD but I felt that way was better than relying on my own judgement and latency was better than clipping the DoT or waiting too long between each shot. At least that way you're doing some damage in between the DoT ticks.

I recant my original argument after running some tests with simulationcraft.

The core of a Survival Hunter's rotation is

  Explosive Shot > Black Arrow > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot (or Multi) > Steady Shot.

When Lock and Load procs and Explosive Shot is ready, how does it change?

The simulationcraft baseline is

  Explosive Shot (skip to avoid clipping) > Black Arrow > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot (or Multi) > Steady Shot.

Changing it to

  Explosive Shot (wait to avoid clipping)

results in a DPS loss of almost 50 for my gear and talents.

Changing it to

  Explosive Shot > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot

is a few DPS gain over the default.

If Explosive Shot is on cooldown when Lock and Load procs, the priorities do not change until Explosive Shot is available. Some of the simulationcraft output from my testing is here.

This was my original argument:

Can you beat the DPS of one Explosive Shot tic in 0.5 seconds?

According to femaledwarf.com on my current gear/spec, my overall DPS is 8.8K and Explosive Shot averages 15643 damage, which would be 5.2K per tick. If I delay 0.5 seconds, I am effectively getting 10.4K DPS for half a second without blowing any cooldowns. In fact, my cooldowns all get shorter. Any active DoTs will also be ticking during that time too.

A little bit more formally, imagine your rotation playing out over an entire boss fight where you always clip the last tick. My spreadsheet DPS is 8.8K DPS, and suppose yours is about the same with this clipping. Now, stretch out the fight a little bit by inserting 0.5 seconds with the lost ticks. All those extra seconds are at 10.4K DPS which will bring up the overall average. Maybe you lose a little of the burst DPS at the end since some kill shots move past the end of the fight, but you'd really just adjust your rotation to move them back to the natural times, so that should be pretty minor. You'd also adjust the rest of your rotation to match the earlier cooldown finishes which would again pull the overall DPS up. There are also possible DPS losses from buffs not stretching enough, but those would likely be small too.

A better answer probably will need to run a real simulator.

Note: I no longer support this theory, as it misses some pretty important calculations of what happens 6/60 seconds later. I will leave it as an example of how this question might eventually be answered.

My napkin math based on your understanding (note I am not a hunter, and welcome any math wielding hunter to correct me in comments/edit my post if they have the rep)

Propsition

Measure the DPS done by Firing 3 explosive shots back to back, being very quick and accurate ( firing the explosive shots within .01 seconds of the last tick ) then back to "steady shot heaven", vs. being patient and weaving steady shots in between on GCD's. Not sure how autoshots calculate in or any of that, just hoping the math theory might help...

Scenario 1 - Delay 0.5 for Explosive

Made up numbers..

• ExS does 15,600 damage divided evenly through 3 ticks, one instant, and 1 each second for 2 sec:
• Steady does 4k

    Shot #  |  TimeCode |  Damage
    1-ExS   |     0     |    5.2k
            |     1     |   10.4k
            |     2     |   15.6k
    2-ExS   |     2.01  |   20.8k
            |     3.01  |   26.0k
            |     4.01  |   31.2k
    3-ExS   |     4.02  |   36.4k
            |     5.02  |   41.6k
    4-SS    |     5.52  |   ---
            |     6.02  |   46.8k
    (4)     |     7     |   50.8k
    5-SS    |     7     |   ---
    (5)     |     8.5   |   54.8k
    6-SS    |     8.5   |   ---
    (6)     |     10    |   58.8k
.... end logging

Congrats- 10 seconds worth of 5.8k DPS

Scenario 2 - Weave

Still taking advantage of the ExS quickly, but also capitalizing on the lack of cooldown:

    Shot #  |  TimeCode |  Damage
    1-ExS   |     0     |    5.2k
            |     1     |   10.4k
    2-SS    |     1.5   |   -----
    (1)     |     2     |   15.6k
    (2)     |     3     |   19.6k
    3-ExS   |     3     |   24.8k
            |     4     |   30.0k
    4-SS    |     4.5   |   ----
    (3)     |     5     |   35.2k
    (4)     |     6     |   39.2k
    5-ExS   |     6     |   44.4k
            |     7     |   49.6k
    6-SS    |     7.5   |   --
    (5)     |     8     |   54.8k
    (6)     |     9     |   58.8k

9 seconds at 6.53k dps

Summary

The theory I'm providing then is: Skipping 0.5 seconds of time you COULD be shooting something is a bad idea, unless the mob would die very soon. If you compare the #'s early on (4 sec for instance - 31.2k in sc1 vs 30k in Scenario 2) it looks like the sacrifice is worth it, however if you look at the long run, the same amount of damage will be dealt 1.0 seconds quicker if you had not wasted your GCD.