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:

  1. Intellect
  2. Haste
  3. Mastery
  4. Critical Strike
  5. Versatility

Basic Rotation

Please read our Rotation and Cooldown section for further information. 

Table of Contents

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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Rotation and Cooldowns

Basic Rotation for Shadow Priest in Single Target

Basic Rotation for Shadow Priest in Multi Target

Stat Priority

Stat Choice for Shadow Priest

General Stat Priority for Shadow Priest with our Build is:

  1. Intellect
  2. Haste
  3. Mastery
  4. Critical Strike
  5. Versatility

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.

Best Trinkets for Shadow Priest

This List shows the current Top 30 Trinkets, based on simulations for damage in a Single Target Situation.

This list might not reflect the perfect choice for your specific situation.

Trinkets can differ at any boss or in different dungeons.

To see a full overview of Trinkets – Please visit Bloodmallet

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Gems, Enchants and Consumables