The Focus System
“I’m having trouble finding any guides explaining the pet focus system. I’ve seen some hunters who have all their abilities all on auto and I’ve seen some where they’ll leave bite off and just claw on etc.”
You pet starts off with 100 Focus. Woot.
Your pet Dashes and uses 25 Focus, leaving 75.
Your pet Growls and uses 25 Focus, leaving 50.
Your pet Claws and uses 15 Focus, leaving 35.
Your pet Bites and uses 25 Focus, leaving 10.
Your pet will continue to do white damage until more Focus is built.
Your pet regenerates 24 focus every 4 seconds, so 4 seconds after the Dash, he’ll have 34 Focus.
Your pet Growls again using 25 Focus, leaving 9.
Your pet has to wait another 4 seconds for another 24 Focus, but continues white damage.
And so on. That’s the Focus System. Tada! /bow
Something that BRK does advocate is the extremely efficient Claw talent. On a damage/focus basis, we believe it outshines Bite and have done some mathematical analysis to justify our position.
As for regenerating Focus, you can put 2/2 points into Bestial Discipline and jumpstart that to 48 Focus every 4 seconds. Also, Go for the Throat will dump 50 Focus on your pet every time you crit. If you spec for both of these talents, and if you crit once every 10 seconds, you’ll regen 96 Focus in 8 seconds, grab 50 Focus from a crit, so you’ll have to chew through 146 Focus in 10 seconds just maintain an equilibrium. That’s a lot of Claw, and we love it, baby.
Toolio on 15 May 2007 at 3:25 pm #
Those who had King B prior to 2.1.0 didn’t have to spend points in Cobra Reflexes. It was passive. Now it’s trainable. Here are a couple curve balls for you:
1) Are we getting a free pet respec? I don’t expect they’ll automatically refund our points.
2) Will those who have King B now be charged points for CR? And if you have KB at 70 with all his points spent, will you go in the hole? Will he unlearn the skill? Are the casters laughing at us?
ANSWERS!
Terthos on 15 May 2007 at 3:30 pm #
Wow free respec huh? If it’s true then thats good for me! On to my serious and highly relevant question- Yes I’m a newb and anyone who can answer me will be highly appreciated. Does humanoid slaying in the SV tree affect PVP? As in, do players fall under humanoids or are they some other twisted and completely seperate category altogether? Next question is…Damh, for the sake of viability in PVP, what’s your take on Imp Concussive shots? Think the extra 20% chance to stun for 3 secs is worth the points in MM tree? I’m Pro-BM, but also Pro-PvP.
I play Anvilmar/Alliance Dwarf L48 BM hunter 25/11/3. I’m not too keen on the whole “burst dmg and then die” playstyle of a MM hunter, but at the same time in PvP i notice that there isnt a lot of time for the DPS of a BM hunter to show up and really decimate the offenders. Anywho, as much as it pains me to say it, the Alliance in AB isn’t the most coordinated faction i’ve seen in many MMORPGS. Thus, with that in mind, I’m not looking to be Godly in Pvp but I want to get out there and “level the playing feild” in terms of odds. I want to help the Alliance out by rushing in, targeting a nice cloth wearing mage or lock, take it out fairly quickly and move on to the next one, and yet still require about 3 hordies to actually take me out. However i dont want my ability to instance to suffer either. I guess im looking for a good comprimise between the two. Any thoughts?
Terthos
Joe on 15 May 2007 at 3:34 pm #
I’ve got Bite turned off because I like collecting talents. It’s what I classify as part of the fun of playing a hunter. I use a Kitty or a Ravager, depending on if I’m using my Horde or Alliance hunter, so when am I going to use scorpid poison? Lightning breath? But it adds that Pokemon addiction to having a hunter (gotta catch all the talents).
Now, here’s my retard question, how do you ‘turn off’ a pet talent. There are times I’d rather NOT have growl on, but I do spend most of my time soloing or 2 man grouping, and growl is useful in those scenarios.
Noah on 15 May 2007 at 3:37 pm #
You can turn growl (or any other pet ability) off by right-clicking on its icon in the pet bar. this will remove the sparkly border around the icon, which indicates that your pet will no longer autocast it.
Lofgrin on 15 May 2007 at 3:39 pm #
“Now, here’s my retard question, how do you ‘turn off’ a pet talent. There are times I’d rather NOT have growl on, but I do spend most of my time soloing or 2 man grouping, and growl is useful in those scenarios.”
Go into your spells box, click the Pet Tab at the bottom, find the talent you want to switch off auto, and right click it. The glowing “thing” around that talent will disappear.
Anonymous on 15 May 2007 at 3:48 pm #
i all ways turn growl off when i pvp it just burns focus and does not do anything to them….
once you turn it off you can still left click the button if you need him to use it….
Adrus
Anonymous on 15 May 2007 at 3:50 pm #
Bite gets you more damage per focus than Claw does, even though it has a cooldown.
Of course, to me this means i should get both Bite and Claw on the same pet! I believe the game prioritizes Bite over Claw if it has to cast only one.
Anyway, i wonder what active abilities BRK is using. Growl, Dash, and Claw, certainly, but what, if anything, is his fourth? Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, but i’m new to this blog and i haven’t read too many comments.
Sayth on 15 May 2007 at 3:56 pm #
Hi Damh!
Foremost i’d like to thank you for this great blog! Its very informative and interesting to read.
I have a few questions about bite and claw:
Bite 9 does about 120 damage average, and costs 35 focus, thats 3.43 damage pro focus point.
Claw 9 does about 65 damage average, costs 25 focus, thats 3.6 damage pro focus point.
Isnt it a good idea to train both claw and bite and leave them on to max the damage output?
Goeben on 15 May 2007 at 3:57 pm #
Re: Turning pet abilities on and off. It may help to clarify the difference between pet skills YOU know and pet skills your PET knows. When you open Beast Training, you see a list of all the skills YOU know, even if your pet doesn’t know them, or you can’t teach them to the current pet. You can tell what your pet currently knows by the different color text (gray I think) at the bottom of the list.
You can also see what your pet knows by opening the pet tab in your spell book (P). This will show both passive and active pet skills. This is what REALLY counts, not what is on your pet bar on the interface. You can drag your pet’s abilities off the pet bar (just like with your own skills) but they aren’t really gone unless you respec your pet at the trainer. When you teach your pet a new skill, it shows up both in your pet’s page in the spell book and the pet bar. A skill is on auto-cast if there is a glowy border around it. Right click (on the icon either in the spell book or on the pet bar) to turn it on or off. This does not un-teach the skill, just toggles it.
Sayth on 15 May 2007 at 3:59 pm #
whooops, I meant 2.6 not 3.6
Goeben on 15 May 2007 at 4:04 pm #
Personally, with my BM hunter (Level 64 Tauren) I love my Windserpent pet. I have both BD and GftT, and she spits lightning constantly. I only gave her growl and dive (which I use situationally), no bite, since I want as much focus going into LB as possible. High damage pet + BM spec + LB focus dump = incredible DPS.
Goeben on 15 May 2007 at 4:19 pm #
One more point. You are not limited to just having a pet ability “on” or “off.” You can also activate pet abilities with macros, for skills you want to use situationally.
Weezoh on 15 May 2007 at 4:51 pm #
Is there any logic to which skill on autocast gets used at what time? Can this be modified?
Damh on 15 May 2007 at 4:51 pm #
“Bite gets you more damage per focus than Claw does, even though it has a cooldown.”
Sorry, wrong answer. Factoids bereft of solid research do not belong on BRK. Our own computer modeling shows conclusivly:
When a pet generates 40 Focus every 10 seconds or more, Claw will do more total damage…
http://bigredkitty.blogspot.com/2007/02/bite-or-claw-google-search-answered.html
“I only gave her growl and dive (which I use situationally), no bite, since I want as much focus going into [Lightning Breath] as possible.”
See how nice that arguement is? Perfectly reasoned and explained. +5 BRK Cool Points.
Sayeth, BRK has shown that the Bite cooldown is the limiting factor as to how much damage it can do. For the limited amout of damage Bite can do, we believe it is worth neither the Focus nor the training points. Frankly, we’d rather you have Cower.
Sayth on 15 May 2007 at 5:07 pm #
Damh, so, assuming unlimited training points and unlimited focus bite+claw would do more damage then only claw?
One more question: what is the best pet ingame DPS wise?
A ravager? Or a windserpent?
Collin on 15 May 2007 at 5:15 pm #
Damh, I don’t think your results actually disagree with the passage you qouted. I believe that poster was saying that every time your pet uses Bite, the amount of Damage done per point of Focus used is higher than it would be if the pet had used Claw, which is true. However, because of the cooldown, if you have enough Focus, Bite won’t be enough to use it all up. As a consequence, just using Claw becomes more effective then just using Bite if you have enough Focus to spend, as your simulations showed.
However, if you wanted to maxmize damage, having both would probably be most effective, since you’d squeeze out a little extra damage every now and then by replacing a Claw with a Bite. I could run through the numbers on that later if people are interested. I suspect it’s a small difference though, so if you have another skill you’d like your pet to know, or more training points for other abilities, it might not be worthwhile.
A situation where you might want to vary which abilities you have active-
I know some non-BM Hunters don’t have enough Focus to keep Growl going every cooldown if they use Claw, so they use Growl and Bite during PvE to keep Growl active while picking up some Focus efficient damage. On the other hand, if they wanted to use the same pet in a situation where Growl wasn’t useful, Bite alone wouldn’t eat up all of their Focus, so having Bite and Claw active with Growl off would be more effective.
If you have GffT and Bestial Discipline, though, you will probably waste a lot of Focus if all of your pet’s abilities are limited by cooldowns, so you want Claw or something like it. Having Bite as well might let you squeeze out a little more damage, but the cost might be greater than the reward.
Anonymous on 15 May 2007 at 5:20 pm #
I’m sorry, apparently i wasn’t clear. I did indeed mean that, per attack, Bite is getting more damage out of the focus it’s using than Claw does. Divide the damage by the amount of focus used.
Bite:
108 to 132 damage averages to 120 damage
120 damage / 35 focus = 3.43 damage per focus
Claw:
54 to 76 damage averages to 65 damage
65 damage / 25 focus = 2.6 damage per focus
Obviously, Claw is a better choice if you’re taking only one of the two, as you have shown, provided your pet has a halfway decent focus regeneration rate. I’m certainly not trying to suggest that anyone use Bite without Claw! But it certainly seems that substituting a Bite for a Claw every now and then will increase both the pet’s dps and its focus efficiency.
On the other hand, your suggestion of Cower is intriguing. Perhaps i should consider dropping Bite for that. I’ll have to wait and see how the pet performs in a group setting. If what i’ve been reading around here is true, the pet just might pump out enough damage to pull aggro off some warrior.
Damh on 15 May 2007 at 5:42 pm #
We apologize if we didn’t get your gist. You all seem to have Claw/Bite dynamics down well, so we’re happy.
If you are running with a undergeared or underperforming tank, having Cower is wonderful. Tanks have very delicate egos; they do one thing and they want to do it well. If your pet walks up and grabs aggro with a Kill Command crit, that tank is gonna pout. We love tanks on BRK, and we want to keep them happy.
If you find that your pet never grabs aggro, then you probably don’t need Cower. It is a very situational spell that, when needed, is the schiznit.
WRATHofGOD on 15 May 2007 at 7:52 pm #
Damh,
OK. I’m a newly converted BRK BM. I really don’t have much experience with hunters. I understand about focus, etc. - but in your original post you start with a run down on what happens when you have your pet attack. Dash, growl, claw, bite, etc.
Are you saying you are clicking on those different abilities, or do you just click on one of them and let it auto-attack whenever there is enough focus?
Sorry, I’ve just found which ever ability I wanted (as a former marksman - it was just growl to keep aggro) and kept it there. Sorry to make you explain this down to the kindergartner level, but in this case - I’m drinking apple juice and taking naps my friend…
Great blog, keep up the great work.
WoG
p.s. I swear I would have been to your hunter training class in the wetlands, but there was thing…and I had to wash my horse and stuff…
Anonymous on 15 May 2007 at 9:59 pm #
A pet can have four “active abilities”, the options of which depend on the pet species. Growl, Dash, Bite, Claw, Screech, Dive, Charge, Gore, and Warp are examples.
These abilities sit on the pet bar between the “attack/follow/stay” and “aggressive/defensive/passive” sections by default, although you can move them around freely from what i have observed, since i’ve accidentally replaced “follow” with “defensive” in my time. Anyway, pet abilities can be activated manually by the hunter, but are generally set — and default to — autocast.
Autocasting of an ability means that the pet will constantly try to use the ability if 1) it is appropriate (it doesn’t dash unless it’s trying to chase down an enemy) and 2) it has the focus for it. An ability indicates that it’s autocasting by having a sparkly golden border around it, and you toggle this feature on and off by right-clicking on that ability.
Generally, we leave our pets to autocast all their abilities as they see fit, disabling them only in circumstances such as “growl is not for instances” and “don’t cower -and- growl as it’s self-defeating”. The pets have been unverifiedly observed to give preference to Growl, then specials, then Bite, then Claw, etc, which is basically a Good Thing. The reason some hunters used to want to manage them manually (and when i say manually, i mean letting an addon toggle things on and off for them) is because it was believed that the pet might use Claw so much that he never has the focus to cast Growl. From what i have observed and have been told by other hunters, however, we can just leave the pets to manage their own focus and they will very nearly max their threat generation because they prefer to cast Growl rather than Claw when it comes right down to it. It’s not something to be worried about.
Thus, use that autocast!
Collin on 16 May 2007 at 4:55 pm #
I find what the last poster said about the preference order given to abilitiies pretty interesting. Does anyone know if there is any harder evidence showing how pets decide which abilities to use? Because I had heard of people turning off Claw in order to leave Focus for Growl, in fact I think I mention it above, and I’d like to know whether or not it is necessary.
Do you think there is any risk of the following happening- your pet has enough for Growl or Claw, but Growl is on cooldown. So Claw gets used as well. Then Growl becomes available, but there is no Focus available, so the Growl is delayed until your pet gets more Focus. I think that could actually lead to significantly less Growls if it works like that, and I think this is consistent with the model described above, so turning off Claw might still be wise.
Anonymous on 18 May 2007 at 4:54 am #
I have dash, charge, growl and gore on my pig. Are dash and charge too similar to have both and is gore enough as a damage dealer or should I get claw or bite instead. Ultimately it will be for pvp.
J on 18 May 2007 at 2:07 pm #
Collin:
It DOES work like that. If Growl is on cooldown your pet will spam Claw until it is out of focus.
Growl gets used less often in this scenario, but at the absolute worst it is only delayed by the amount of time it takes for your pet’s Focus to tick, either two or four seconds, and if you’re fighting something that can totally take you down in that amount of time, then your pet probably can’t tank it either and you’re better off kiting.
From personal experience I haven’t really noticed a problem with my pet holding hate, despite him spamming Gore for damage.
Anonymous:
My boar also has dash, charge, growl and gore, and I will never change that.
When he’s tanking, you can’t beat Charge’s threat generation. According to KTM, Growl generates about 1000 threat, and Charge generates…. almost 3000 threat. It has really helped my pet keep hate, and it’s a rare string of crits that is able to outpace his threat generation when he’s started combat with Charge and is spamming Growl.
In instances, I turn off Charge and use Dash instead. Charge will never allow your pet to catch a mob that is running away from you since it has a maximum range, while Dash goes into effect immediately, letting him start DPSing sooner.
Gore I leave on all the time. I think it actually averages out to more damage than Claw thanks to its ability to radomly hit for double damage, which is good, since boars are by nature defensive.
Plus it’s an absolute riot to have it critically hit for 2 damage on a partial block.
Anonymous on 22 May 2007 at 5:32 pm #
How do you know how much focus the pet has and how fast it is used up? I look at all the numbers coming off a mark and get confused. I’m sure there is a specific place to look that I’m just not observing. This forum is wonderful. Sorry about the low level question.
Howdy
Anonymous on 26 Aug 2007 at 12:50 pm #
hi love the blog Damh
for instances to keep the tank happy would this pet set work:
Growl(not on autocast) dash, claw and cower(autocast).
both you and our pet will be gouging great chunks out of your targets hide and only pay attention to the tank.
Anonymous on 28 Aug 2007 at 2:53 pm #
Ralowae here, Zangermarsh server, 70 Tauren Hunter, lifetime BM spec (except for the time I’ve spent as marks trying to level Humar up to 70, but we won’t speak of that). I can confirm that pets put growl first, then claw and bite. I also have a little ritual when I respec: I train growl first, so it appears first in the bar, then bite/claw, then everything else, placing them in my order of preference. This habit comes from before I knew that pets had a built in skill preference, but i still follow it anyway. I have spent time watching my pet’s behavior, and when i get a crit, thus providing 50 focus for GftT, Echeyakee always Growls first.
Anonymous on 20 Oct 2007 at 6:07 am #
I absolutely love this blog. For more information on the theorycraft of pet abilities including all of the above you can visit http://forums.tkasomething.com/ in the Pick of the Litter section. There are extensive discussions of these issues with a very large amount of evidence and math behind the opinions (enough to make your eyes bleed). All in an easy to use index and search function. Also the excel spreedsheet by Cheeky of the guild Havoc models ALL hunter abilities including gear as well as pets. This is extremely useful in modeling max DPS and for comparing whether or not claw or claw+bite (or whatever abilities the pet has) is better for your spec/gear. Thanks again for such a wonderful addition to the world of Hunter’s.
Learned on 03 Dec 2007 at 4:48 pm #
IMHO cower is utterly useless, it is a waste of an active talent. If you are running with a tank who can’t keep his threat over your pet, he is either:
a)r-tarded(yes some people are, just find a new tank)
b)wearing +healing gear, and thus also falls under “a” or
c) much lower lvl then you (so his ego won’t be damaged if your pet pulls aggro, since your pet can probably tank better then he can)
so basically dont waste training points in cower, unless your pet can’t learn anything else.
Valarias on 28 Jan 2008 at 2:53 pm #
In regards to Dash, is it worth keeping on for instances such as Kara, or is it better to save that focus (and let the tank build some aggro while your pet runs up, assuming you aren’t MD for that pull), so that your pet can use it for Claw or Bite (or both)?
Right now I’m BM spec, I run Echyakee w/Dash, Growl (turned off for instances), and Claw. I’ve been thinking of trying Bite & Claw together.. would that adversely affect my kitty dps?
-Val
tweekgeek on 24 Feb 2008 at 3:37 pm #
Why not train and autocast just CLAW and GROWL for a kitty??? Seems to me, DASH is a waste of Focus… Oh it’s kool to watch my kitty zip to the target, but that doesn’t generate any more agro from the target. (Does it???) Either way, you need to wait til the pet attacks and gains agro… with that 1st GROWL… then u can start shootin. So wut if u wait another second or two to start shootin, til he gets there and the GROWL goes off… Wouldn’t the cat have 85 Focus left for 1 Claw (60 left), 2 Claws (35 left), 3 Claws (10 left), then wait for more Focus, at which time another GROWL, CLAW, CLAW, CLAW… etc. Seems to me you get one extra Claw, possibly two, every 4 second cycle… More DPS and better holding agro… plus leaves extra training points for more stamina or resistances!
Tweekgeek
Trei on 04 Jun 2008 at 1:15 am #
The faster your pet gets to the target, the sooner your pet can start attacking the target….
It may also come in handy when you really really need to get your pet out of Bad Things, fast.
Ezekiel on 25 Jun 2008 at 3:52 pm #
To confirm once again:
Last night I did an experiment: in DamageMeters I divided my and pet’s damages so that I had 2 separate bars and first let my pet run on bite only. The damage done was something like 34% (pet) vs 66% (me). Then I turned just claw on and grinded for another hour. Damage was 37%(pet) vs 63% (me). I have also tried having both on (bite and claw) and it seemed that claw was never or rarely autocasted, because bite was eating all the focus. Now I’ve unlearned bite and run on only claw, and have 250+ more training points to spend on resistances as needed. Go Claw!!!!