Your Hunter's Focus.

[WaggleBaggle 4]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I thought it would actually help some people so that's why I'm writing this topic on a hunters focus.

Starting off with beast mastery since that specilization generally has the most focus at all times; beast mastery hunters have a passive that increases their max focus by 20(total of 120). They have a class specific ability called focus fire, using kill command will give your pet an attack speed bonus stack, at any stack(5 being the max & recommended) you can activate the ability for fast focus regeneration. Most beast mastery hunters will choose the talent dire beast, which calls a pet to you who will damage your target and give you focus every time it does damage.

Moving on to survival, hunters with this specilization are generally the inbetweeners with focus. Since survival hunters mostly use abilities for DoT's, they are not always using abilities since they are usually on cooldown and their effects present. But while all dots are being maintained and up, SV hunters usually use arcane shot for damage, and rely on cobra shot for a bonus to focus and to refresh serpent sting. Most SV hunters will use thrill of the hunt as their focus regen talent, because while their DoT's are up, they can spam arcane shot without much of a penalty to their focus, then switch to cobra shot until they are full on focus and to refresh serpent sting, and their ability serpent spread will make multi shot apply the effects serpent sting to any thing hit by it, which is another reason TotH is chosen, to increase DPS and lower multi shots large focus cost.

In my experience with MM hunters, I found that I couldn't keep my focus up like others can, so this is the specialization I know the least about and have the least experience with. The main focus regenerating attack they have is steady shot.Since they do not get cobra shot like BM/SV, they can either refresh serpent sting with another serpent sting or chimera shot, both take up focus and don't regenerate any. Their main damage dealing attack, aimed shot, takes up a lot of focus. MM hunters are usually evenly spread across all three focus regen talents, since DB increases dps and ferver is an instant and TotH allows for a quick burst. The passive MM skill bombardment makes any multi shot that gets a critical hit cost 20 less focus, further increasing the usefullness of TotH. The passive rapid recuperation generates 12 focus every three seconds, while under the effects of rapid fire.

Comment telling me of any abilities not included, if something did not make much sense to you, grammar mistakes and that sort of thing so people can understand this and it could actually help them, please and thank you.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Deathclaw98

[Tidalwavex 3]

It feels accurate for the most part coming from a die hard MM hunter.  The issue with aimed shot though is you should only really be hard casting it at above 80% enemy health.  Past that you should be using arcane shot to spend your focus while chimera shot is on cd.  As long as you cast chimera shot almost on cooldown your serpent sting dot won't drop.  Dire beast is a very useful talent for focus, especially with the bonus to your focus.  Steady shot should not be overlooked either due to the haste bonus that MM hunters get from two in a row.  As fast as I burn through focus that buff never falls off.

[Fouton 266]

Everything looks right, but I suggest splitting that giant paragraph into split sections for your intro, 3 specs, and conclusion of post. Might stop people from looking at it and deciding against reading ;)

[Orthios 271]

BM looks good, though on survival, I was really pressed for focus (using TotH) on most fights. MM is one of my favorites, since I can easily switch for single to multi target without loosing to much. Don't forget that MM gets free aimed shots for using steady shot, so use those when you get that proc. Using TotH will give free multi shots, and with the 60% dmg bonus from bombardment (the other 20 focus reduction) you can spam it during multi target scenarios (shamans slimes) for some pretty decent and cheap dmg. I'd also say that MM is the inbetweener on focus. They have rapid recuperation for focus regen during rapid fire, so while on a bit of a long cd, it's a pretty big focus gain.