Beastcannon and Focus pooling

[CHrippey]

So I suck at focus pooling, as a beastcannon spec I'm having extremely difficulty pooling properly due to 38% crit, the direbeasts are coming out in bunches and even with the lack of the t19 4 pc I just cant reliably save up focus to be at or near cap when I pop BW, at least without not holding it till it ticks up a bit, which feels self defeating (and probably is).

I do have the belt, so at least focus starvation is slightly less punishing.

I love the beastcannon playstyle, and actually started theorycrafting it the instant mantle came into play before it was even a "thing", but I'd be curious to know how other BM hunters are handling pooling.

[Vaerys]

I'm confused here. Dire Beast generates focus. Usually focus starvation is due to overcasting Cobra Shot.

[Inerras]

You handle pooling by doing exactly that, pooling. I don't cast CS outside of BW unless above 90 focus with nothing else to cast. I pop BW only when >100 focus, and very close to max when I have to cast AMoC first. With beastcannon build and belt, you should have no problem with focus during BW.

If you just can't keep yourself from spamming CS outside BW, you could make a weakaura that pops up a few seconds before BW comes off cd, to remind yourself that you should start watching your focus bar closely to get ready. Adjust the delay accordingly to fit your focus regen.

[Deleted]

If you have difficulty with pooling slot in Dire Stable. It's something like a 20k DPS ST loss (depending on gear and etc, so sim it yourself with https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/talents) which boils down to 1 or 2 percent, but leaves you flooded with focus. As a bonus it works for AoE intensive fights where WotC is a dead weight.

[Halyon]

Always keep 1 charge ready for when you go into BW (even better if you can get 2 charges right as you go into BW with the cdr, and in case of many procs, happy spamming!), when BW is up, you spam it. Save focus a few seconds before BW, only dump with cobra if you're about to cap beforehand. If you get the shoulders, only use DB/Frenzy when the buff is about to run out, and ideally always have 1 charge ready to go when BW is up again, but always use DB/Frenzy if it procs up to 2 charges. That has yielded the best dps for me.

Granted, if you have the old T19 4-set and no shoulders, spamming was the way to go, as that was dire beast, now I have T20 4-set and use frenzy, and now I find myself focus starved often, so I swapped to dire stable, problem solved, and now it's better...also better for AoE because MS w/o stomp.

[Deleted]

The problem with Dire Frenzy is the juggling we have to do with it. We need to play with:

A) Focus
B) BW reduction
C) Dire Frenzy stacks.

If we have not expended all our Dire Beast charges we are nullifying the 'legendary' effect of having two charges while DF requires us to stagger out the releases of our beasties to upkeep the stack duration. This stack duration also clashes with need for focus or BW reduction. It was -very- common for me to have DF stacks about to expire with less than five seconds to go on BW, making me having to chose between keeping my stack up or waste 13-15 seconds to keep up the stack.

Now, when we had T19 and OwtP briefly was the top contender we farted DBs like no tomorrow. I would not mind throwing a DB to keep up the stacks since not only I'd be getting more procs thanks to OwtP but each would take a large chunk out of BW's reduction. Still the most fun tier I played.

Now that we are back at hoarding BW because it has become scarcer (to the point the belt, which was our BiS, has dropped down in the rankings, which is further exacerbated if playing DF and doling it out which slows BW upkeep)


I'll quote Khallid from another thread where he explained the charges business in more detail.

What is wrong with you people? Sit at 1 charge? Where did you read that crazy recommendation? That's the equivalent of having 1 charge to begin with, and it completely negates the bonus of having 2 charges, which is to maximize the bonus of Wild Call.

You should never sit at 1 charge of Dire Beast. The only reason to keep 1 charge for a few seconds is when using Dire Frenzy, in order to accumulate the Haste buff of Dire Frenzy. That does not apply to Dire Beast. You need to spend Dire Beast immediately. You will get on average 100% of the effect of Wild Call. This is the exact reason why the Mantle of Command was so overpowered.

Plus, the author of this post said he uses the zoo build, the build that revolves around generating Wild Call procs as much as possible. You obviously cast Dire Beast as soon as it comes up, and you never sit at 1 charge.

You also want to cast most of your Dire Beasts during Bestial Wrath if you have the tier19 2-piece.

(...)

You achieve exactly the opposite of what you claim. By sitting at 1 charge you are wasting the proc of Wild Call. By spending it, it deals damage and reduces the cooldown of the next Bestial Wrath. It's like you don't understand what the second charge is there for.

[Vaerys]

I will hold a charge of Dire Beast if I know adds are coming out soon, or if BW is about to come off CD, but other than that, I can't think of a good reason to.

[Nythiz]

I'll quote Khallid from another thread where he explained the charges business in more detail.

This pretty much. There is little reason to sit on stacks.

The only reason you wouldn't want to cast DB right when it comes up is:

a) Your BW comes off cooldown in the next 2 seconds or so, casting DB would waste some CDR on BW.
b) Your KC comes off cooldown at the same time, benefit of the charge system is that you can overflow a little without wasting casts. KC in that case would be higher priority
c) Adds are about to spawn, but frankly I wouldn't wait too long on this. It's really hard to judge what the cutoff point is where it's worth holding and the risk of losing DB procs.
d) You're full on focus, but frankly this is just just bad focus management earlier on in your rotation.

Another case could be made for maximizing legendary shoulder buff, but I'm not sure what the trade off is between losing an entire DB when you DO get procs vs losing uptime on the buff because you DON'T get procs.