Shadow Priest Dragonflight Class Guide

General Information

Welcome to our Shadow Priest Guide for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. We will help you to learn and master Shadow Priest in either Raids or Mythic Keystone Dungeons.

Last Update: 16-03-2023

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Basics of Shadow Priest

Corrupting the minds of their enemies, Shadow Priests deal most of their damage with their Shadow spells and periodic damage debuffs. Depending on their chosen Talents, they can output very strong single-target, but also punish all their foes regardless of how many they are.

Stat Choice for Shadow Priest

General Stat Priority for Shadow Priest with our Build is:

Intellect
Haste
Mastery
Critical Strike
Versatility

Basic Rotation

Please read our Rotation and Cooldown section for further information.

Builds and Talents

General Talent Tree

Most Notable Talents

Your bottom row Talents are Mindgames and Power Word: Life. These have the biggest impact in your rotation and playstyle. Divine Star or Halo can be talented aswell, which offers you an additional Heal/Damage ability.

Other Damage Talents

Shadow Word: Death and Shadowfiend are granting you additional abilities to deal damage with. Holy Nova also offers a strong AoE ability. Throes of Pain and Twist of Fate will grant passive boost in damage.

Crowd Control & Utility

Shackle Undead, Void Tendrils and Sheer Terror, Mind Control and Psychic Voice are your Crowd Control Talents. Power Infusion and Void Shift are your biggest Utility cooldown. Vampiric Embrace, Angelic Feather, Leap of Faith, Mass Dispel, Purify Disease and Dispel Magic are your other Utility Talents.

Defensive Talents

Angelic Bulwark, Light’s Insipration and Crystalline Reflection are located in the bottom row of the Talent Tree, and increase your own Survivability.

Specialization Talent Tree

Single Target Talents

Dark Ascension, instead of Void Eruption, boosts the damage of your periodic damage.
Mind Flay: Insanity empowers frequently your Mind Flay, making it deal more damage.
Mind Spike and allocated Talents grant you a new ability, damaging your Target.
Idol of Y’shaarj causes your Mindbender to grant you additional passive bonus.
Idol of C’Thun causes your Mind Flay to spawn a Void Tendril.
Void Torrent is a 1-minute cooldown dealing damage and granting a lot of Insanity.
Damnation immediatly applies all your debuffs.

Multi Target Talents

Shadow Crash and Mind Sear are very easily achieveable Talents.
Dark Void applies Shadow Word: Pain to 15 enemies
Void Eruption has to be chosen over Dark Ascension to grant more AoE damage.
Psychic Link grants your Mind- Blast, Flay and Spike to deal AoE damage.
Mindbender and it’s Inescapable Tormet deal damage up to 5 Targets.
Pain of Death causes your Shadow Word: Death to deal damage on all targets debuffed by your Shadow Word: Pain.
Idol of Yogg-Saron summons a Thing from Beyond, blasting all enemies within 10 yards.
Idol of N’zoth causes your periodic damage to explode for additional damage to all enemies.

Mythic+ Talents For Shadow Priest

Import:

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Aberrus, The Shadowed Crucible

Kazzara, the Hellforged

Molgoth

The Forgotten Experiments

Assault of the Zaqali

Rashok, the Elder

The Vigilant Steward, Zskarn

Magmorax

Echo of Neltharion

Scalecommander Sarkareth

Aberrus, The Shadowed Crucible

Kazzara, the Hellforged

Molgoth

The Forgotten Experiments

Assault of the Zaqali

Rashok, the Elder

The Vigilant Steward, Zskarn

Magmorax

Echo of Neltharion

Scalecommander Sarkareth

Rotation and Cooldowns

Basic Rotation for Shadow Priest in Single Target

Use Shadow Crash
Use Vampiric Touch, which also applies Shadow Word: Pain
Use Mindbender
Use Dark Ascension
Use Mind Blast
Use Shadow Word: Death twice
Use Mind Blast
Use Devouring Plague
Use Power Infusion
Use Halo
Use Mindflay or Mind Flay: Insanity when available
Use Devouring Plague to spend Insanity

Basic Rotation for Shadow Priest in Multi Target

Use Shadow Crash
Use Vampiric Touch, which also applies Shadow Word: Pain
Use Power Infusion
Use Mindbender
Use Mind Blast
Use Shadow Word: Death twice
Use Mind Blast
Use Halo
Use Void Eruption
Use Void Bolt to gain Insanity
Use Mind Sear to spend Insanity

Stat Priority

Stat Choice for Shadow Priest

General Stat Priority for Shadow Priest with our Build is:

Intellect
Haste
Mastery
Critical Strike
Versatility

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Intellect is your primary stat, meaning that Itemlevel is superior in most cases. Higher Itemlevel will also increase your Stamina and Armor that you gain.

Critical Strike increases the chance for your abilities and spells to deal double damage.

Haste reduces your global cooldown, your time to cast spells, and reduces the cooldown of many abilities.

Versatility grants you a flat damage increase, but also a damage decrease for half of its value.

Mastery increases the damage of Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague.

The further we are getting into the expansion, the effects of diminishing returns start to limit your effective gain of your secondary stats. After reaching 30% (by rating) of any given stat, you will start to receive a penalty that reduces the gain from more of the same stat over this treshold.

Stat priority can differ on every character. Make sure to simulate yourself on Raidbots get the perfect results for you.

Gear and Trinkets

Best In Slot Gear for Shadow Priest

This List shows the current Best-In-Slot Gear for Dragonflight Season 1. Many Items can be potentially substituted with any Profession Gear, especially early on into the Season.

Additionally, there is the option for Profession Gear to be crafted with additional Buffs/Perks, which can benefit your character in certain situations.

Slot	Item
Head	Draconic Hierophant’s Archcowl
Necklace	Eye of the Vengeful Hurricane
Shoulders	Draconic Hierophant’s Wisdom
Cloak	Acid-Proof Webbing
Chest	Draconic Hierophant’s Vestment
Wrists	Chilled Silken Restraints
Hands	Draconic Hierophant’s Grips
Belt	Magatha’s Spiritual Sash
Legs	Draconic Hierophant’s Britches
Boots	Sandals of the Wild Sovereign
Ring 1	Seal of Diurna’s Chosen
Ring 2	Seal of Filial Duty
Weapon 1	Stormlash’s Last Resort
Weapon 2	Icewrath’s Channeling Conduit