It’s time to melt some faces! I’m not entirely sure why shadow priests are so associated with faces and the melting therof, but it seems to be a Thing, so hey. In any case, if there are faces in your future which you wish to melt, here’s a guide to the shadow priest glyphs, gems, stat weightings, and rotation you’ll need, plus advice on enchants, reforging, and more, for World of Warcraft Patch 4.3.
Updated March 6th 2012 for Patch 4.3
Shadow Priest Changes in Patch 4.3
Short version: None.
Long version: absolutely, totally, utterly nil, nothing, nada, nuts-all.
Our Tier 13 bonuses are fun, but they don’t change our rotation, gearing, or anything else.
DPS Rotation / Priority
Shadow Priests don’t have a strict DPS rotation – instead, they operate on a priority system.
Absolute first priority is to keep all your Damage Over Time spells ticking on the target: Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague, and *Shadow Word: Pain *. Use an addon like DOTimer to track these.
Next, cast Mind Blast whenever it’s off cooldown, unless your Empowered Shadow buff is about to drop off or has dropped. If it is or has, carry on with your priorities but wait for a Shadow Orb to proc before casting Mind Blast.
If the target is below 25%, also cast Shadow Word: Death whenever it’s off cooldown.
Finally, if everything else is on cooldown and your DOTs are still ticking, cast Mind Flay. This will also refresh your Shadow Word: Pain.
DO NOT worry about Shadow Orbs (one of the Shadow specialisations) unless Empowered Shadows is about to drop or has dropped. Mind Blast does so much damage that you should cast it whenever it’s off rotation, regardless of how many Orbs you have. DO NOT cast Shadow Word: Death when a target is above 25% health.
Cooldowns: Use Dark Archangel and Shadowfiend as soon as you need the mana, unless you are sure you won’t run out of mana in the current combat, in which case use them on cooldown. Whilst it’s not a cooldown spell, you can also use Shadow Word Death (provided you’re specced into Masochism, as our standard spec is) to regenerate mana reasonably quickly.
Shadow Priest Talent Spec
The theorycrafting experts consider this talent spec to be overall the best option for Shadow Priesting in 4.3.
That spec leaves 2 spare points. Good options for those two points are:
- 1 point for 3/3 in Mental Agility, bottom tier of Discipline. Reduces your mana cost for instant cast spells, potentially increasing DPS in longer fights.
- 1 or 2 points in Inner Sanctum, 2nd tier of Discipline. The bit we care about here is that it boosts your movement speed by an additional 2% or 4% whilst you have Inner Will up, and movement speed is likely to boost DPS in many situations.
- 1 point in Psychic Horror, 2nd from top tier of Shadow. A short CC/disarm. No DPS benefit, but VERY useful against bosses like the 2nd in Grim Batol which are affected by disarm. Your tank will love you.
- 1 or 2 points in Phantasm, 3rd Tier in Shadow. Gives you a 50% or 100% chance for Fade to remove movement impairing effects. Primarily PvP oriented, but useful in some circumstances.
For raiding, Mental Agility and Inner Sanctum are probably the way to go.
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Stats, Reforging and Gems
Intellect and Spellpower are FAR more important than any other stat. Gem and enchant for them whenever possible unless a single gem will enable you to reach haste cap (see below).
Reforge Hit, Spirit, Crit and Mastery to Haste if you can. If not, reforge Crit (by preference) and Mastery to Spirit (not Hit) until you hit 17% hit cap (Spirit also boosts Hit for shadow priests). Finally, reforge anything left to Mastery.
What, you’re saying don’t go for Hit Cap? Yes. There’s a fair amount of debate about this in the Shadow Priest community, but it appears that both Intellect and Haste are more valuable than Hit.
Shadow Priest enchants
It’s worth checking to make sure your own professions can’t provide better buffs than these, by the way!
| Head | Arcanum of Hyjal |
| Shoulders | Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone |
| Back | Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect |
| Hands | Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery |
| Belt | Ebonsteel Belt Buckle |
| Legs | Powerful Ghostly Spellthread |
| Feet | Enchant Boots – Lavawalker |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent |
| Off-Hand Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Superior Intellect |
Glyphs
At last, a simple choice!
Prime Glyphs: Glyph of Mind Flay, Glyph of Shadow Word: Death, Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
Major Glyphs: Glyph of Fade, Glyph of Psychic Scream, Glyph of Spirit Tap
Minor Glyphs: Glyph of Fading, Glyph of Levitate, Glyph of Shadowfiend
Yes, Shadow Priests actually have useful minor glyphs!
Links
- How 2 Priest guide – Excellent, very complete guide.
- Spiritual Guidance: Shadow – WoW Insider’s Shadow Priest column.
- Elitist Jerks Shadow Priest Guide – excellent and updated to Patch 4.3.
- ShadowPriest.com – HUGE shadowpriest forum.
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
I have a silly question…Inner Will OR Inner Fire?
Most of the time I like to switch them, depending on what I’m dps’ing. Fire for boss fights and Will for trash mobs. Is this a good strategy or should I really be using one over the other, full-time? Thanks in advance.
@Konrad – Always inner fire
I have heard if you just mindblast along with 2 stacks to 3 stacks of shadow orbs you always do more dps. Just saying.
@Another guy – Feel free to point me to theorycraft contradicting this, but to the best of my knowledge the top theorycrafters do not recommend this approach.
The “melting faces” i diea comes from very early vanilla, when a shadow priest would mindflay a target it would cause the face to look distorted. Hence melting faces.
Wouldn’t Masochism make Shadow Word: Death a nice spell to use to make good use of regen. I mean, I’ve been derping around on my spriest and my dps doesn’t alter greatly when I put it in my rotation, and I last a lot longer on long extended fights.
@Derp – That’s a good point! I wouldn’t recommend weaving it into your regular priorities (it does lower your DPS a bit) but it’s a good spell to use if you’re running low on mana (and aren’t taking tons of damage!)
Thanks for the reminder – I’ll add that to the guide.
[quote] Next, reforge Crit (by preference) and Mastery to Spirit (not Hit) until you hit 17% hit cap (Spirit also boosts Hit for shadow priests). [/quote]
[quote] What, you’re saying don’t go for Hit Cap? Yes.[/quote]
?
@Nienke – Don’t go for Hit Cap *first*. Go for Haste 2588 before Hit.
ok what is 17 percent spirit i dont see it its a number not percent
@jason – Look at your hit percentage. Spirit changes your Hit as a Shadow Priest, so stack Spirit until you have 17% Hit.
ok thanks but one more question when you say hit cap witch one you looking at ranged are spell each one has a different amount
@jason – You need spell cap.
I have been playing a spriest for a while, and noticed my damage was very low. i read your rotation and it seemed so match up with what a lot of people said to do, so i used it and still, my damage remained low. i then looked at another priest who was pulling like, 44% of all raid damage O.o i saw his top spells were Mind Spike and Mind Blast. i looked into it and saw there was indeed talents i put into for that.
so all that being said, is a Mind Spike Priest (for lack of a better term) effective?
@morkane
mind spike rotation is ok, but falls well behind a good dot rotation on every fight sparing short timed bursts such as burning tendons in spine.
Additionally to the writer of this, haste is the most beneficial stat regardless of what rating you’re at. If you’ve read Kilee’s guide on shadowpriest.com his sims all come out with haste as king even at certain breakpoints. Additionally the 3200 haste ranking to get the second breaker for improved devouring plague is quite easily attainable in normal mode DS gear, so that should be the top priority for any shadow priest. (also, again at this point in the expansion, it is possible to be at both the 3200 haste rating level and hit capped without breaking a sweat so there is no reason not to be capped on that stat, especially since missing a mind blast cast will cost a large amount of damage that can’t be easily returned.)
Thanks very much for pointing that out – the stat weights have been updated since I last reviewed this guide.
This is good news, as it makes reforging advice simpler!
you use to show your haste cap is it still 2588 are what ?
please confirm thanks
There’s no Haste cap any more – or more accurately, there’s no number at which you should do anything except reforge to Haste where possible. If it ain’t got Haste on it, get Haste on it, stat.
Hello all, first of all thanks for this guide.
I have a question: I recently leveled my priest to 85 and with a few LFR and hc managed to put together an average 377 gear. My haste is around 3000, spellpower around 7400 and hit past 17%. When I run tests on dummy my dps is VERY poor, 10-12k, with a few 15k spikes. Looks like improving gear is not improving my dps at all. I use the following ‘rotation’: SWP, VT, DP, MF till a shadow orb procs, then MB, Lifeblood+trinkets, MF, redo dots when needed and MB when shadow orb(s) up. Do I do anything wrong? What my dps should supposed to be? Thank you in advance!
@Pretea, I’m not sure why your dps is so low, I have the same problem though, 393 ilvl and sitting at around 20k average on non buffed fights. Unfortunatly the armory is currently down, so i can’t compare my stats, what I can do though is give you the best opener I’ve ever seen (courtesy of a 35k average on a dummy member of The Sentenced):
If you have a useable trinket that gives spell power or anything, start with that, then shadowfiend, mind spike x3 for a practically guaranteed instant cast mind blast crit, after this DoT up, 1x mind flay, which should proc archangel, and will also then proc mind blast again. After this I resume normal rotation of mind flay until mind blast’s off cd, and keeping DoTs up (if you do let them fall off, this can have a decent impact on your dps over the course of a fight).
On fights with multiple mobs who aren’t grouped (ie Warmaster Blackhorn..horrible fight for shadow priests) the best I’ve come up with is to VT and Sw:P all the mobs who are up, then focus your attention on one mob and give that one DP and the rest of the rotation. For the last bit of that fight, you can VT, Sw:P, and shadowfiend Blackhorn, while focusing your casting on Gariona (sp?).
One last thing, I know you’re not meant to use Sw:D much, but on bosses where you have to move (Zon’ozz), in the short time where I’m running, i like to throw out a DP (for 30% instant damage if specced) and Sw:D, otherwise I feel I’m wasting dps time!
Wow I can talk, but one final final thing for those just starting out in DS, don’t forget that you can still dps Morchok during the blood of the earth stage if you line up properly between the pillars.
Great tips – thanks very much!
Ty for the answer Salva
I’ve started to believe my main problem is the lack of a decent weapon. Being an alt I have no chances to run DS with my guild and LFR is just a stupid frustrating roulette where Blizzard blesses us to be mean trolls and get out the worst of ourselves (You see shamans and druids exploiting the spec flaw all the time, needing on stuff they can’t even use, people leaving without rolling just to leave the rolls hanging forever and people needing on unique items they already got and leaving, just to troll and waste someone else’s time). I tried using volcanic potions at dummy and the increase of dps is substantial with the sp scaling. I’ll try this opener with the MS on start, I usually open with Lifeblood, Fiend (immediate 3 orbs), Trinket, MB, Sw:p, VT, DP, MF, AA and then normal rotation.
To note that any of the above rotations just create a “fake” burst dps. During the duration of the fight your dps will drop down to your “real” one.
Can you expand a bit upon that? Is there an alternate rotation you would suggest, or are you simply pointing out that SPriest DPS tends to be bursty?
Why are you saying go spirit over hit? It is my understanding that early on in cata it was changed that spirit does NOT give any in combat benefit to dps.
That may have been the case early in Cata – I can’t recall – but in the current patch, Twisted Faith in the second tier of Shadow gives Hit equal to Spirit, making Spirit functionally more useful than Hit (because it also grants mana regen).
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