Chain or fork?

Chain or fork? Search has netted me no clear results so I would like to ask the ranger community.
Which one and why please.

Fork is a smaller version of chain. If you can feed chain - chain is better.
Fork

Lets presume you meet pack of mobs. You shoot at them with 3 projectiles. Central projectile hit first mob (chain via LA itself) then fork into 2 projectiles and hit 2 more mobs to left and right from central mob (and chain via LA again). Total hits: 3 * 3 = 9.
Other 2 projectiles will hit pack at it right and left side, after they fork only 1 forked projectile hit the target, other one will fly even more to the right or even more to the left. So only 6 hits for each. Total hits by 1 shot: 21 with 30% less damage and 1.25 cost multiplier (you pay with your life for that, right?).

Chain: All 3 projectiles that hit mobs will automatically find another target 2 more times and after that another 2 times from LA, for total 27 hits with 50% less damage and 2.0 multiplier.

21 * 0.7 = 14.7
27 * 0.5 = 13.5

Fork is better for raw damage and more cost efficient, but you need to aim better while shooting. If forked projectiles from left and right main projectiles won't hit target you'll get only 15 hits and this lead you to 10.5 damage per hit only. This situation quite common: you kite mobs, small pack of the mobs, mobs in pack not in the circle but in a line and so on.

So if you can feed your chain, I'd use chain. If cost with BM and LoH not an issue, then chain in ideal situation have same damage as fork, but in others chain better.

You can test both at Ledge, just take out weapon elemental damage and turn off auras.