This 5 % damage buff does no address the core issues of the spec. the spec lacks proper essences, talents, azerite traits and scales poorly with all 2ndary stats due to this.
Here are some fixes id make to improve on the spec.
conflict an strife major changed to trueshot mastery, currently this is not even taken in pvp, explosive trap is clunky useless and has no uses as a pvp talent, trueshot mastery is better in all 3 forms of content. having trueshot more often and having it return 100 focus would make the spec feel a lot better in m+ and raiding.
vision major adjusted to if it procs inside a trueshot window the proc extends your already stacking uv proc and vice-versa if it procs outside trueshot an you use trueshot ontop of the proc after it reaches 5 stack uv then you would cont getting stacks up till 10 stacks. this fix allows you to extend your crit uv stacks for longer duration and make vision major a more viable option.
hunter marks redesigned to being passively applied on anything hit, increases damage the target takes by 5% from everything, similar to the monk debuff.
In The Rythm buff duration activates on cast of rapidfire, instead of finish channeling, this is to prevent mobs from dying before the channel finishes an you dont get the haste buff.
Focus fire extra focus per shot changed from chance to always. never understood why our traits and talents have so much rng in them, this would make rapidfire a better focus return ability and eliminate the need to steadyshot.
Since a lot of fights benefit cleave how about they just move the Min requirement for tick shots from 3 to 2 targets hit and remove the max all together. Suddenly or aoe isn’t that broken anymore.
I wouldn’t call Explosive Trap useless; I find it very useful in battlegrounds (although I don’t do arena at all). However, it definitely needs improving; if a player is particularly laggy they can run over the trap before it gets triggered and get knocked towards me. Also, I can’t ignore the fact that this used to be semi-baseline (up until Legion you would glyph into a knockback Explosive Trap) and it’s now a PvP talent. That’s really frustrating and I’d like to see it come back (along with the entire Glyph system, to be honest). So it would be good to have Trueshot Mastery on Conflict and Strife but I would like to see Explosive Trap knockback come back to baseline.
This is how it was in MoP. The downside of this is in PvP you sometimes want to keep HM on a target in case they stealth away. I think they should just take it off the GCD. This way it would be equivalent to having it passively apply on hit if you macro it while you can still keep it on a particular target if you want.
I don’t think it should be always but it should be RPPM instead of raw, unweighted RNG.
Over all the suggestions are pretty good. I would also really like to see the Sniper Training mechanic from WoD returned along with Aimed Shot becoming a mobile cast again. I think this was a much better and more interesting mobility compromise. As the poster above me said, they should also uncap our AoE.