I remember when I started playing WoW my second character was a priest, that was back then when TBC was at its peak. I didn't know anything about the class but I did notice the shadow talents had a lot of damage bonus on them so I figured that was the dps spec. And so I did, I played spriest for a long time after.
Shadow priest is a fun spec, not as fun as affliction warlock, but still fun. It's one of those dps specs that shines on high mobility bosses since your dots will keep ticking as you move.
The spec I use is the following:
You have 5 points left which you can place anywhere you like.
Shadow Afinity: If threat is your concern, you can put one point here. Two points is a bit too much.
Improved Mind Blast: You should Mind Blast once per Vampiric Touch cast. On bosses where mobility is crucial, you might have to Mind Blast more often. You don't have to put any here, but you can spare 1 or 2 points if you think you will move too much in a specific fight.
Focused Mind: With Shadowfiend as a small dps boost, you shouldn't worry a lot about your mana. If this still concerns you, you can spare a point or two here.
Improved Power Word Shield: If you want to be helpful, you can put a point here. It comes handy for some boss mechanics like Sindra's Frost Beacon or Putricide's Oozes.
Stat prios
- Hit until capped (11% or 10% with Draenei in group).
- Spell power.
- Haste until Mind Blast and Vampiric Touch are 1 second cast (1269 haste with 5% totem and 3% aura)
- Critical Strike.
- Spirit.
Spirit is fine, but too much of it will harm your dps. It's actually very close to Critical Strike in damage per point. With talents and Blessing of Kings you're making 60% of your spirit into spell power. However no spirit will harm your dps in long fights where you might oom, forcing you to use dispersion (if you didn't need to use before to avoid damage) thus lowering your dps. Imo, if an item with spirit is an upgrade considerable enough (at least 13 levels) over another one without spirit, consider switching them. Check the stat prios every time you want to get an item higher level than your current one, if it has Spirit and Critical it might not be worth, but Spirit Haste combinations are fine enough until you get a Haste Critical one.
Glyphs
- Glyph of Mind Flay: A must.
- Glyph of Shadow: A must.
- Glyph of Dispersion: Situational. Best when boss has many 'Avoid this or die' situations.
- Glyph of Shadow Word Pain: Situational. If boss is chill and you don't need to Disperse.
- Glyph of Shadow Protection.
- Glyph of Anything.
How to start fights:
The first thing you need to know is: Never open with dots. Using dots right from start is the worst thing you can do with Spriest.
Mind Flay full duration>Vampiric Touch>Devouring Plague>If you have 5 stacks of Shadow Weaving only then you should use Shadow Word: Pain.
The reason behind this is Shadow Weaving, your SW:P preserves the % damage modifiers when you cast it, so if you open with it it won't get the 2% bonus per stack no matter how many times you refresh it with your Pain and Suffering talent. Once you have 5 stacks and SW:P and other dots are on boss your priorities are as follow:
- Pop and send your Shadowfiend.
- Shadow Word: Pain on target.
- Vampiric Touch.
- Devouring Plague.
- One Mind Blast per Vampiric Touch (You can skip this check if you're doing a 10 mode with a Retribution paladin in your raid).
- Mind Flay spam.
- SW: Death only when you're moving. It's like another dot tick.
Tips
- Use your Power Word: Shield to shield yourself if your Dispersion is in cooldown, or use it on someone who's about to take massive damage.
- Remember your Fade removes all your threat temporarily, and removes slow effects.
- When dealing with low health targets, you might just put Vampiric Touch on it, followed by Mind Flay.
- Be helpful: Use Hymn of Hope or Divine Hymn if your raid so requires them.
Addons
Class Timer, the best addon to handle dots and timers.
That's pretty much everything you need to know about Shadow priest. Have fun.
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