Shadow Priest

Single Target: Auspicious Spirits

1. Devouring Plague when possible, having 3 or more orbs.

2. Keep Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death on cool down.

3. Make sure to use Halo/Cascade optimally with adds/aoe phases. Don’t forget to position yourself at optimal casting range. Refer to boss guide/Aoe section per what ability to use.

4. Shadowfiend/Mindbender are used on cooldown. If you know you wont be able to fit in a second cast make sure you use these cooldowns with Pot/Lust/Trinket procs for best results.

5. Shadow Word: Pain all possible targets, if the target is going to die quickly don’t dot them. Play smart, if you can’t get more than a few dot ticks, it’s not worth it. Remember you are dotting targets to get Shadow Word: Pain crit ticks to generate orbs.

6. Keep Repudiation of War debuff on your main target. Don’t let it drop. 

6. Maintain Vampiric Touch on your main target(s). Don’t waste GCD’s putting VT on targets if you can use a GCD for the above abilities.

7. If you have time when not casting the above priority list, cast Mind Flay, Mind Spike or Insanity

Advanced Rotation

• Be aware of how many targets have SW:P ticking on them and how many Shadowy Apparitions are out.

• Maintain the uptime on Item – Priest T17 Shadow 4P Bonus as much as possible. With tracking SA’s and Mind Blast CD you never want to cap on orbs. Wasting orbs is a significant DPS loss.

• Mind blast on CD when you DP to get the most out of Item – Priest T17 Shadow 2P Bonus

Auspicious Spirits Openers 

5 Orb Auspicious Spirits Opener

1. Pre-Draenic Intellect Potion
2. Pre-cast Vampiric Touch
3. Shadow Word: Pain
4. Devouring Plague
5. Mind Blast
6. Shadowfiend
7. Cast Halo or Cascade only if you adds wont spawn while it;s on cooldown
8. Proceed with priority list

No Orb Auspicious Spirits Opener

1. Pre-Draenic Intellect Potion
2. Mind Blast
3. Vampiric Touch
4. Shadow Word: Pain
5. Shadowfiend
6. Cast Halo or Cascade only if you adds wont spawn while it;s on cooldown
7. Proceed with Priority List

Single Target: Clarity of Power

One of the most important things to note for CoP, is that you always get 3 GCD’s in between Mind Blasts. Optimizing those three GCD’s is the key to playing CoP well. While over 100% haste, you can fit 2 MS into 1 MB CD.

1. Mind Spike/Mind Blast until you have 4 Orbs
2. Mind Spike
3. Mind Spike
4. Shadow Word: Pain
5. Mind Blast
6. Vampiric Touch
7. Devouring Plague
8. 1 GCD worth of Insanity (2 ticks)
9. Mind Blast
10. 2 GCD’s Worth of Insanity (4 ticks)
11. Devouring Plague
12. Mind Blast
13. 1 GCD worth of Insanity (2 ticks)
14. 2 GCD’s worth of Insanity (4 ticks)
15. Mind Blast

Execute Priority List

* You want to make sure you don’t have dots up on your main target that you are casting Shadow Word: Death on your target below 20%. It’s a dps loss to Shadow Word: Death more than two times on your target if they have dots on them. Try to time it so this doesn’t happen.

1. Devouring Plague when possible, having 3 or more orbs.

2. Keep Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death on cool down.

3.  Keep Repudiation of War debuff on your main target. Don’t let it drop. 

4. If more than one target, keep Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch on other targets.

5. Use Insanity as a filler. Shouldn’t ever run into a situation where you can’t cast Insanity as filler when everything is on cooldown.

Clarity of Power Openers

5 Orb CoP Opener

1. Pre-Draenic Intellect Potion
2. Pre-cast Mind Spike
3. Devouring Plague
4. Mind Blast
5. Shadowfiend
6. 1 GCD of Insanity (2 ticks)
7. Shadow Word: Pain
8. Mind Blast
9. Vampiric Touch
10. Proceed with Dot weaving Rotation

No Orb CoP Opener

1. Pre-Draenic Intellect Potion
2. Pre cast Mind Spike
3. Mind Blast
4. Shadowfiend
5. Cast Halo or Cascade only if you adds wont spawn while it;s on cooldown
6. 3 GCD’s of Mind Flay to apply Repudiation of War debuff
7. Mind Blast
8. . Every 3 Mind Blast‘s you’ll need to Mind Flay to keep up Repudiation of War debuff
9. Mind Spike x3
10. Mind Blast till 4 orbs
11. Proceed with Dot Weaving rotation

AoE: Auspicious Spirits

Whenever you know adds are going to be incoming, you need to make sure you position yourself correctly to maximize Halo or Cascade. These two spells are a big portion of your damage and maximizing their potential is very important. The following sections are priorities you should keep in mind based on how adds are grouped as well as the health of those targets.

If adds are spread out use Cascade and apply dots.

•If adds are going to die quickly and are spread out, it’s better to Cascade and keep up your single target rotation. Snipe Shadow Word: Death whenever possible on low health adds.

• If adds have a decent amount of health and are spread out, try to dot all of them with Shadow Word: Pain. You shouldn’t need to cast Vampiric Touch unless it’s a cleave rotation such as Iron Maidens. You will be using higher priority abilities over VT in this case, mainly spamming Devouring Plague into your main target.

• As a general rule of thumb, if SW:P doesn’t tick down to at least 50% of it’s duration, it’s not worth it to put up.

If adds are grouped together use Halo and Mind Sear/Insanity

• Make sure you position yourself at 25 yards from where the adds are going to spawn. If your guild has a Death Knight and you know the adds are going to be gripped, make sure you are positioned around where they will be gripped to.

• Mind Sear deals initial damage on cast. If you recast Mind Sear after the 2nd tick, the initial damage portion is reset and you can recast it to gain that additional damage. Try to maximize this! If you spam refresh, this won’t reset the initial damage hit.

• Have orbs going into an aoe phase. Don’t waste orbs right before you go into a phase that requires aoe or right before adds spawn. Maximize Mind Sear Insanity uptime. Try to refresh Shadow Word: Pain on your main target(s) before so you will gain orbs for Mind Sear Insanity uptime. If the Insanity buff is about to expire make sure to recast Mind Sear to get an additional full cast off and extend the duration of  Mind Sear Insanity.

• If possible Cast Shadow Word: Death to increase orb generation and Mind Sear Insanity uptime.

AoE: Clarity of Power

Whenever you know adds are going to be incoming, you need to make sure you position yourself correctly to maximize Halo or Cascade. These two spells are a big portion of your damage and maximizing their potential is very important. The following sections are priorities you should keep in mind based on how adds are grouped as well as the health of those targets.

If adds are spread out use Cascade and apply dots.

• If adds are going to die quickly and spread out, its better to just cascade and and keep up your single target rotation.

• If adds have a decent amount of health and are spread out, try to dot all of them with both Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch.

• If adds are spread out and have a medium amount of health, simply apply Shadow Word: Pain to all the adds.

• As a general rule of thumb, if SW:P doesn’t tick down to at least 50% of it’s duration, it’s not worth it to put up.

If adds are grouped together use Halo and Mind Sear/Insanity

• Make sure you position yourself at 25 yards from where the adds are going to spawn. If your guild has a Death Knight and you know the adds are going to be gripped, make sure you are positioned around where they will be gripped to.

• Mind Sear has initial damage on cast. Try to maximize this, if you recast Mind Sear after the 2nd tick the initial damage portion is reset and you can recast to gain that additional damage. If you spam refresh, this won’t reset the initial damage hit.

• Have orbs going into an aoe phase. Don’t waste orbs right before you go into a phase that requires aoe or right before adds spawn. Maximize Mind Sear Insanity uptime. Cast Mind Blast when off CD, you should be able to sustain aoe for 3 DP casts if you start at 5 orbs. If the Insanity buff is about to expire make sure to recast Mind Sear to get an additional full cast off and extend the duration of  Mind Sear Insanity.

• If possible Cast Shadow Word: Death to increase orb generation and Mind Sear Insanity uptime.

Talents Cheat Sheet

Level 15: Defensive Tree
Spectral Guise can be used to deter yourself from certain targeted types of mechanics. Angelic Bulwark is my personal go to choice if there’s nothing to spectral guise.

Level 30: Movement 
Body and Soul easiest to use compared to the micromanagement  of feathers.

Level 45: Multi Purpose Fillers *
Surge of Darkness is generally used when you have the ability to keep dots up on secondary targets and movement is involved. Mindbender is better used when you have very high levels of crit and will be GCD capped when playing Auspicious Spirits. Insanity is generally your go to talent for Clarity of Power.  It allows you to “dotweave” and nuke down priority targets. generally chosen when Single target and low movement.

Level 60: PvP talents – Rarely used in PvE
Dominate Mind is only useful for Blast furnace this tier.

Level 75: Damage Enhancing Abilities *
Twist of Fate – Passive that can be abused with orb sniping and killing adds. Go to talent.

Level 90: AoE Ability *
Cascade is used when there are spread out targets. Halo is used when targets are grouped up and AoE’d.

Level 100: Play Style *
Clarity of Power Single Target/AoE – Auspicious Spirits Multi Target/Cleave

* Mastering when to choose the correct ability in this tier is crucial for maximizing shadow’s potential.

Advanced Talents

Level 15: Desperate Prayer, Spectral Guise, Angelic Bulwark

Desperate Prayer
Off gcd, can activate whenever you want. Can be used as a reactive defensive cd. If you know damage is incoming, you can combine with a health pot and heal all the way back up after dipping low.

Spectral Guise
Can be used to disjoint targeted mechanics. Helpful on fights like maidens where you can spectral guise and save a raid cd/stacking point instead.

Angelic Bulwark
This is my go to talent choice for this tier when spectral guise isn’t able to be used.

Level 30: Body and Soul, Angelic Feather, Phantasm

Body and Soul
Very useful when your healing priests know not to shield you. Combining this with the Reflective shield talent allows Power Word: Shield to be one of the best abilities in shadows toolkit. Combined it’s a movement increase, damage reduction, and does damage if you take boss specific damage.

Angelic Feather
More tricky to use than body and soul. Not a reliable movement speed increase when used near other players. Does have a higher movement increase than Body and Soul, high risk high reward type of talent.

Phantasm
Doesn’t serve a purpose in PvE, more of a PvP talent. Other options of this tier are better choices.

Level 45: Surge of Darkness, Mindbender, Insanity

Surge of Darkness
You want to pick this when there are adds to cleave or high amounts of movement. If playing CoP, you want to keep your main target clear of dots and off dot targets and pummel your main target with procs. You want to save procs for when you are moving. You can prioritize other abilities over SoD procs unless the proc is going to wear off, then you want to use the procs. You can use SoD procs to better position yourself as well.

Mindbender
Insanity and SoD are generally better choices than Mind Bender. There will come a time when choosing AS, that you are GCD locked and unable to pick SoD, where mind bender will shine. Mind bender synergizes really well with PI.

Insanity
The go to talent when playing Clarity of Power, allows you to dotweave. Strong for low movement and single target fights. The ability now has it’s own buff that is independent to Devouring Plague uptime. Now usable with Mind Sear.

Level 60: Void Tendrils, Psychic Scream, Dominate Mind

Void Tendrils
Some times works on adds in PvE. Can be used to group adds together to help CC.

Psychic Scream
AoE fear around the player.

Dominate Mind
Allows you to take over a humanoid. Can be used as a crowd control if needed.

Level 75: Twist of Fate, Power Infusion, Shadowy Insight

Twist of Fate
The go to talent this tier. Synergizes very well with out execute/Shadow Word: Death. Try to maximize it’s potential by keeping dots up on low targets or sniping shadow word: Death. Being able to utilize it;s high uptime in fights is crucial.

Power Infusion
Synergizes very well with Mind Bender. Can be used on fights where there are periods of down time that you wont be attacking anything. Possible talent to use with Auspicious spirits.

Shadowy Insight
This talent bumps heads with Clarity of Power and Auspicious Spirits. It messes up your dot weaving rotation when playing Clarity of power. When playing AS, You have very few free GCD’s that it wouldn’t utilize it’s potential. Very possible this talent and Glyph of Mind Harvest become a strong duo at some point in the future.

Level 90: Cascade, Divine Star, Halo

Cascade
Does most optimal dmg from far range. You want to make sure any time that adds are spread out or that live long enough, so that every mob gets bounced to.

Divine Star
This talent doesn’t really serve much purpose. You always want to choose one of the other two. It’s better to use any filler at this point over this ability. It has no Niche.

Halo
Provides great burst aoe. This talent does its most optimal dps when standing at 25yrds. Using Halo Pro or a range tracker is the best way to maximize this talent.

Level 100: Clarity of Power, Void Entrophy, Auspicious Spirits

Clarity of Power
Changes your rotation up significantly. Great for single target, quick add switching, and AoE. Does require you to learn how to dot weave and how to maximize every GCD in between MB’s CD.

Void Entrophy
Unless playing because you like the play style this talent provides, there is no reason to play it. It’s weaker in every possible situation than AS or CoP. It needs a mechanics change or to be buffed so far that it;s broken to ever be used competitively.

Auspicious Spirits
Requires a high amount of crit in order to be sufficient. Great for fights with high movement, constant adds, or cleave potential. Keeping track of your shadow orbs and shadowy apparitions is crucial to mastering AS.

Glyphs

Mandatory

Glyph of Reflective Shield
One of Shadow Priests best abilities in your kit. When using with Body and Soul, this ability does damage, protects you  from damage, and increases your movement speed.

Personal Choice

Glyph of Vampiric Embrace
Pretty standard. Pairing this ability with Halo or Cascade can really pump out a lot of healing. If used and timed correctly is effectivly one of the best raid cool downs.

Glyph of Restored Faith
Allows you to position yourself in a more optimal spot for dpsing so that when you need to group up and don’t have to waste the time or GCD’s while moving.

Glyph of Fade
Great for fights that have timed incoming damage.

Situational

Glyph of Mind Flay
Good for fights where lots of movement is occurring. Glyph tends to be less useful for CoP/AS due to low uptime on Mind Flay.

Glyph of Shadow Word: Death
Can use as a GCD for moving

Glyph of Silence
Great for fights that require a lot of interupts

Auspicious Spirits Stats

Intellect > Spell Power > Crit > Haste >  Multistrike > Versatility > Mastery

This is the recommended gearing path. Other than gathering an off set for strictly stand still fights, there’s no point in gearing for only CoP

* 25% crit is a safe number to be at in order to play Auspicious Spirits competitively. You can play at lower levels of crit if you have Goren Soul Repository.

Intellect increases Spell power and increases the scaling of our abilities.

Mastery Increases the damage of Mind Blast, Mind Spike, and Mind flay

Critical Strike increases the chance to critically hit with abilities.

Haste increases attack speed and reduces Mind Blast’s cool down.

Versatility increases all damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Multistrike causes abilities to have a chance to hit a second and a third time, each dealing 30% of the initial damage.

Enchants

Rings: Enchant Ring – Gift of Critical Strike
Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Gift of Critical Strike
Neck: Enchant Neck – Gift of Critical Strike
Weapon: Mark of the Thunderlord
Gems: Greater Critical Strike Taladite

Consumables

Food: Pickled Eel
Potion: Draenic Intellect Potion
Flask: Greater Draenic Intellect Flask

Clarity of Power Stats

Intellect > Spell Power > Haste > Multistrike > Crit > Mastery* > Versatility

* Mastery only excels at low movement and single target scenarios, any movement or additional adds drastically lowers the value of mastery. There’s not really a reason unless you have a Gruul set to ever gem/enchant mastery over going crit for easy switching. If you mainly play CoP, I suggest going haste or multistrike gems and enchants. You never want to go for the haste weapon enchant while playing CoP because the proc decreases in haste as it’s time goes on, which will mess up your dotweaving rotation and give you a dps loss.

Intellect increases Spell power and increases the scaling of our abilities.

Mastery Increases the damage of Mind Blast, Mind Spike, and Mind flay

Critical Strike increases the chance to critically hit with abilities.

Haste increases attack speed and reduces Mind Blast’s cool down.

Versatility increases all damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Multistrike causes abilities to have a chance to hit a second and a third time, each dealing 30% of the initial damage.

Enchants

Rings: Enchant Ring – Gift of Critical Strike
Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Gift of Critical Strike
Neck: Enchant Neck – Gift of Critical Strike
Weapon: Mark of the Thunderlord
Gems: Greater Critical Strike Taladite

Consumables

Food: Pickled Eel
Potion: Draenic Intellect Potion
Flask: Greater Draenic Intellect Flask

Gear

Generalized tips that will help improve your play

*Work in progress*

– Minimize your movement on fights. Shadow suffers the most out of any range class when moving. Once you get familiar with fights try to position yourself in spots that you can minimize your movement. If you are going to be running for long distances, learn to stutter step casts. Move a little get a cast in, move a lil more.

– Make sure you are sniping SW:D when you can. If you know adds are going to spawn and you can get a SW:D off, make sure you try. Increasing orb regeneration is huge for shadow. DP is a big chunk of our damage, so maximizing your orb regeneration is crucial.

-Make sure you are using the correct talents to optimize each fight. Shadow only gets one dps spec so you need to make sure you are making the most of your talents.

– Learning how to aoe is pretty crucial for a shadow priest. Learning how and when to dot or mind sear is huge. Will the adds be living for a full dot to tick through? Are there many adds? Are they all grouped up? These are the questions you want to be asking your self each time you are on a fight like protectors. If adds will live for a decent amount of time, dot them with VT/SW:P. Are they going to die some what fast and are not grouped? SW:P them then mind sear when they get grouped. If they have very little HP and grouped, Mind Sear. Learning when to do this will help you out a lot on those non single target fights.

Useful Addon’s

Weak Auras2
Simply put, weak auras2 is the best addon in the game. It’s so customizable that it’s the only addon you need. You can make it  track your dots, track boss health, cool downs. There’s no limit to what you can make and how you want something to appear.

HaloPro
The most accurate addon to track your range of your self to your target. Great for halo/cascade utilization.

Gnosis
The only accurate latency tracker on a cast bar. Allows for better Mind Flay clipping.

My Weak Auras

Orb Tracker – http://pastebin.com/hQ1YJc4J

Mind Blast – http://pastebin.com/zTJRB0rV

Shadow Word: Death Tracker – http://pastebin.com/rQyf6X17

Reflective Shield – http://pastebin.com/4krMsa1q

General Buff’s/Procs – http://pastebin.com/58DdKabU

Shadow Fiend/Mind Bender Tracker – http://pastebin.com/Bkb44TcK

Aspect of the Fox – http://pastebin.com/XTtkZ0Le

Twintop’s Imba WeakAura’s

Shadowy Apparition Tracker – http://pastebin.com/H44tyL1r

4pc t17 Tracker – http://pastebin.com/GSwVjkQp