For these two major reasons, and a couple of minor ones, hunters don't have to concern themselves with pulling aggro by doing too much DPS...
In that case, Feign Death and Misdirection essentially become a part of your rotation, so you're no longer just spamming Steady Shot. You say:
If your relentless mashing of the Steady Shot button is causing you to do too much damage, then the answer is to stop mashing that button for a bit
But in this case, there might be some other rotation that outputs more damage than "Steady Shot, Steady Shot, nothing". Or there might not be, I don't really know, since I'd quit WoW long ago, as I said. All I wanted to do was to point out that thinking along the lines of, "I'm a DPS class, my goal is to maximize DPS without looking at any other variables" is exactly the kind of thinking that gets you wiped (and it sounds like you agree).
In a more general sense, this ties in to my other comment on the thread: it's easy to say, "this action is worse than worthless", but it's not nearly as easy to say that and be right about it.
They might have found their play style "more fun", while understanding that it was less than optimal — but as I mentioned previously, I've never heard anyone actually claim this as the reason for their behavior.
Just because they did not claim this as the reason, does not mean that this was not, in fact, the reason.
In that case, Feign Death and Misdirection essentially become a part of your rotation, so you're no longer just spamming Steady Shot.
No... that's not what a "rotation" is. The term refers to a sequence of offensive abilities. I say in this comment that
...... to say that hitting that one button repeatedly is the only thing you needed to do to win was a bit of a simplification. True, your rotation was as simple as can be; but there are other aspects of correct play, both in-the-moment (DPS cooldown timing; mana management; positioning and other
There are things that are worthless-- that provide no value. There are also things that are worse than worthless-- things that provide negative value. I have found that people sometimes confuse the latter for the former, which can carry potentially dire consequences.
One simple example of this is in fencing. I once fenced with an opponent who put a bit of an unnecessary twirl on his blade when recovering from each parry. After our bout, one of the spectators pointed out that there wasn't any point to the twirls and that my opponent would improve by simply not doing them anymore. My opponent claimed that, even if the twirls were unnecessary, at worst they were merely an aesthetic preference that was useless but not actually harmful.
However, the observer explained that any unnecessary movement is harmful in fencing, because it spends time and energy that could be put to better use-- even if that use is just recovering a split second faster! [1]
During our bout, I indeed scored at least one touch because my opponent's twirling recovery was slower than a less flashy standard movement. That touch could well be the difference between victory and defeat; in a real sword fight, it could be the difference between life and death.
This isn't, of course, to say that everything unnecessary is damaging. There are many things that we can simply be indifferent towards. If I am about to go and fence a bout, the color of the shirt that I wear under my jacket is of no concern to me-- but if I had spent significant time before the bout debating over what shirt to wear instead of training, it would become a damaging detail rather than a meaningless one.
In other words, the real damage is dealt when something is not only unnecessary, but consumes resources that could instead be used for productive tasks. We see this relatively easily when it comes to matters of money, but when it comes to wastes of time and effort, many fail to make the inductive leap.
[1] Miyamoto Musashi agrees: