do you prefer mana or focus?

[Thereign]

the limited mana pool of the enhancement shaman

They just use Shamanistic Rage at around 50% mana, and keep going. How is that a limited resource? A buddy of mine ends fights with full mana on his enhance shaman.

[.Aen]

I voted for focus. I am going to miss Viper Sting. Maybe they will make a "Energy Venom" that drains energy from the target (Maybe 5% slowed attack speed) and gives us X amount of focus every 4 seconds.

[Cyph3r]

That actually makes sense, but in a way doesn't. Dunno about the new Kill Command, but Chimera Shot scales with your weapon damage and will always do more than weapon damage. Unless it was changed, Explosive Shot doesn't, so I suppose if it scaled bad enough then it could potentially do less than autoshot damage.

I was kinda thinking that myself, either way it's confusing. It seems to me that they just flat out CAN'T have autoshot cost focus, especially for BM with it's crazy high attack speed. you'd never have focus to do anything but cobra and the occasional arcane. For now we should probably just dismiss this statement, maybe he's referring to something that's not implemented yet or whatever.

[Rhodair]

I voted for focus. I am going to miss Viper Sting. Maybe they will make a "Energy Venom" that drains energy from the target (Maybe 5% slowed attack speed) and gives us X amount of focus every 4 seconds.

They were originally going to have Viper Sting give you 9 focus every 3 seconds, but I think they realized that'd be OP in pvp since you could toss up a Viper and STILL steady shot. Now, it's Viper Venom, and burning mana will be a pvp MM thing (Although I rarely see myself using that venom on anything but a mage/lock in bgs)

Btw, I vote focus because I like raiding as marks, and focus is going to make everything feel more fluid. Right now, you do some steady shots and there are moments where you may have .3 or .7 or whatever seconds until your Aimed/Chimera shots are up. In Cataclysm, it'll be back-to-back nonstop firing. I'm excited because it'll give good players even more opportunity to set themselves higher than the just alright hunters.

Lastly, I love Fox. It'll still keep me awake in 5mans, because I'll still be switching aspects between pulls just like I do now with Viper, and it may be a good boost on gauntlet moments or things like phase 2 of Halion. I'm already brain storming on ways to macro it in like perhaps attaching Fox to Disengage and Hawk to Steady while still keeping a button that toggles between them manually. The only dps loss I could see in that would be if you're firing while Disengaged through the air and don't have the little bit of attack power from Hawk. Perhaps that small avoidance of autoshot delay or extra bit of focus gained in that second would make up for it /shrug Only brain storming since I'm not in beta :'(

[garnath]

I'm in the beta, and I'm currently not a huge fan of focus. You open with aimed, which does HUGE damage, but then I find that you end up using steady shot over and over while your focus creeps up slowly. I read here that the focus regen rate is bugged (3.1 per sec instead of 6), but I'll need to confirm that. The problem is that you now end up using steady shot 90% of the time while waiting for enough focus to fire any shot - typically arcane shot, since that seems to have the lowest mana cost. Once you've played that shot, its back to steady. Also steady shot now clips auto-shot.

I've yet to find out what increases focus regen rate. I'm currently in ICC10 gear, gemmed for Agi, so my haste is low - but the tooltip for haste doesn't mention focus regen at all...

I'm gonna pewpew a test dummy today to work out my current out-of-the box DPS. No addons allowed in beta currently, so it might take a while to get accurate results.

[psycon]

That change with viper aspect and stuff (which they implemented in wotlk right?) sucks big time, it made me drop my hunter as raid char and play with my other toons. Im considering to start my hunter @ cata now!