question about Anticipation

[Ron Burgundy]

i'm a little confused on how this works. are you supposed to get 5 charges before you use a finisher? lets say for combat for example

[Flukz]

It just stores five extra combo points for you. So if you are at four and then proc two combo points you can do a finisher and it will give you your one left over combo point afterwards.

[Sotsu]

It gives you a buff whenever you apply more than 5 combo points on your current target. Once you consume the combo points with a damaging finisher (Eviscerate, Envenom, Rupture, Deadly Throw) it consumes all of the stacks of the buff on you and applies as many combo points on the target. The buff stacks up to 5 times.

[Kael]

Sotsu has precisely described the mechanic. To clarify one oddity, if you have 5 CP and 5 anticipation as Combat, you'll gain 1 CP for using a finisher, and "lose" 1 of the 5 anticipation points which try to convert to CP, since you can't just have 6 CP, mechanically speaking.

For more details on why you use anticipation or when you want to have how many points, see threads on each relevant spec. Closing this, since the question has been entirely answered.