This week is the first i have raided since early WoD and first ever as a hunter as i mainly play pvp. I was just doing the normal castle Nath fated run and i notice that i was focus starved quite a bit in the fights. I never have this problem in pvp but i know the ebb and flow of pvp better than raiding right now
I am working on a pve set of gear as i thought that could help as i am not l going to be high end dps or any thing but want to have the right gear / build ect also i figure i just have to manage focus better. Are there any tricks or advice that experienced PVE hunters can give ?
BM doesn’t actively generate focus like it did in WoD. It now generates focus faster passively + over time with Barbed Shot. This means the spec is not as GCD capped as it was in WoD: there are times when the best thing to do is wait a bit to pool focus rather than pressing Cobra Shot whenever you can.
Better gear will also help with focus. More crit means more procs of Barbed Shot and more haste means more focus regen and a shorter cooldown on Barbed Shot.
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Having a few weakauras to track the Pet Frenzy buff, the beast cleave buff, the Barbed Shot Charges and it’s CD makes life much easier, because if you are pacing the casts of barbed shot properly you should rarely be focus starved. BS gives you focus regeneration, refreshes the pet buff and reduces the bestial wrath CD and also proc’s the Thrill of the Hunt crit buff, which can result in more wild call procs.
You can hit a rhythm in single target situations of: cobra-cobra-kill command, with barbed shot sometimes being inserted into that mix like cobra-bs-cobra-kill cmd. In a 3+ target situation, you would replace one of the cobra shots with Multi-shot to maintain the beast cleave buff. Once the target’s health gets low enough you replace a cobra with Kill Shot because that costs only 5 focus for a ton of damage.
It’s pretty common sense but just making sure. Make sure before you Bestial Wrath, you dump every charge of Barbed shot so you have 0 left. Doing this will overlap stacks of Frenzy on your pet but BW give you max BS charges with Scent of Blood (mandatory) and each BS gives you 20 Focus over 8 Seconds, the focus gen buff does NOT overlap and will give you 20/8 with every shot you do. This will let you pump out KC>CS>CS much easier during your BW.
As stated by others, there will be periods of downtime where you’re not pressing any buttons. Occasionally I find myself KCing twice in a row just to pool focus back. The pooling rythem is:
Prep for BW my pooling almost max focus, End BW with 0 focus and having casted as many KC/KS as possible.
Outside BW prep, maintain mid-high focus while not capping. If you know you wont be in range for a bit (i.e. doing seeds on Xy’mox), dump it so you avoid capping and are back in time to prevent it.
It will feel weird not casting abilities because we associate abilities with damage but remember your Pets are pumping 100% of the time 
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