Hunter Alt help using Arcane shot

[mcnasty78]

Hey all. I'm hoping you guys can give me some guidance on how to play my Hunter better. I'm having issues with knowing when to shoot Arcane or when to hit a Cobra Shot. Alot of times I find myself focus starved and I know thats an issue. anyone have any tips to help me out?

[Deleted]

Use Arcane Shot when Serpent sting has time to fall and you'll have focus for your next shot. Either way use Cobra.

[Flaim]

non-sv:
focus >= 60? arcane shot
focus <= 40? cobra shot

as sv it's slightly diffent.
BA about to come up again: same as non-sv
BA still has a "high" cd:
focus >= 45 arcane shot
focus <= 25 cobra shot


when between these values it depends when your main ability is about to come up.
if more than 2 sec cd left -> arcane shot
less than 2sec ->cobra shot


simple as that, but hard to force yourself to not just spam AS whenever it's not greyed out

[Deleted]

Arcane Shot is a filler you only use when you have focus to burn* and casting a Cobra Shot will cause you to cap on focus.

*Clarification on ''focus to burn''. Basically if you have enough focus for your next important shot you need to use on cooldown like Kill Command, Chimera Shot, Explosive Shot and so forth, then you can use an Arcane Shot. You should never be standing around doing nothing for even a second so you either fill downtimes between shots with Arcane Shots or Cobra Shots.

[gulder]

Arcane Shot is a filler you only use when you have focus to burn* and casting a Cobra Shot will cause you to cap on focus.

*Clarification on ''focus to burn''. Basically if you have enough focus for your next important shot you need to use on cooldown like Kill Command, Chimera Shot, Explosive Shot and so forth, then you can use an Arcane Shot. You should never be standing around doing nothing for even a second so you either fill downtimes between shots with Arcane Shots or Cobra Shots.

This. To elaborate a little more, arcane is meant to prevent your focus bar from filling up or 'capping', because we naturally regenerate focus. Cobra Shot is meant to give you more focus than you would naturally generate, in case you need some for your next important ability (anything other than arcane shot). And you always want to be doing something, so you Cobra Shot at low focus and Arcane Shot at high focus.

[Lovestar]

As a Hunter, you're one of the spastic DPS types that needs to be hitting a button every single GCD from start to finish of every fight. Abilities with cooldowns fill GCDs whenever possible. When that's not possible,

Arcane Shot fills GCDs when you have lots of Focus.
Cobra Shot fills GCDs when you're low on Focus.

"Lots of" and "low on" Focus basically correspond to the question, "If one of my rotation abilities comes off CD in the next 1-2 seconds, will I have enough Focus to use it?" Usually you can see ~50 Focus as the dividing line between high and low, although with practice you'll get a sense of exactly what point your Focus bar feels most comfortable to you.

Of course, it gets ludicrously more complicated than that, especially with all the unnecessary junk thrown into the rotation in MoP. But if you're just starting out, this is the basic framework.

[Conando]

A good, simple way to explain what you should be aiming for:

You always want enough focus to use every ability right when it comes up but you never want to focus cap. That's 80% of playing a hunter. If you do those two things and follow a priority list when multiple things come up at the same time then you'll be well on your way to good DPS.

Picking a number that you'll CS if you're under and AS if you're over works, although I'd suggest sitting a bit higher than the numbers people are mentioning. I usually sit at 60-70 as SV and 70-80 as BM.

[Thorazyn]

BM's a little more forgiving with arcane vs. cobra because of the larger max focus pool, but Conando is right -- pick a number and then tweak until you're not finding yourself focus starved. Do it in LFR because the raid buffs make quite a difference to haste and focus regen.