On Shadowpriests

A guide to the basics
Even with my recent conversion to holy in the name of keeping the game interesting, shadow has always been my chosen specialisation as a priest. Having been caught offline for a whole week and a bit (!!) I ended up yearning for my shadow tree again, and the result was a good old fashioned brain-splurge of information onto screen. As such, I give you a quick rundown of the shadowpriest and its skills, aimed largely towards people who are new to the class and want to get some familiarisation in before Wrath knocks us all back into touch.

Originally a PvP spec in vanilla WoW, the priest’s shadow tree was given a unique role in raids when TBC rolled around. Able to put out a healthy bit of damage and even top the meters in early raids where the pure shadow power given by the Frozen Shadoweave gave the spriest a hefty head start in gear, their main function lies in their support abilities, which come from talents.

Vampiric Embrace: This skill places a debuff on the target that causes a small percentage (changing depending on whether points are placed into Improved Vampiric Embrace) of the spriest’s shadow damage to come back as a heal for their group.

Vampiric Touch: This skill places a debuff on the target that deals damage over time and, more importantly, causes a percentage of the shadow damage dealt to that target to come back as mana for the spriest’s group.

Misery: This debuff is placed on the target after it is afflicted by one of the spriest’s shadow spells. It increases all spell damage from any party or raid member dealt to that target.

Shadow Weaving: This debuff has a chance (affected by the number of talent points placed into Shadoweaving) to be placed on the target whenever a shadow spell is cast on that target by the spriest and stacks up to five times. This increases all shadow damage the target takes from any party or raid member’s shadow spells, increasing with each stack present.

As can be seen, this means that the spriest’s role is to increase the overall magic-based damage output of the raid whilst aiding any mana user in endurance fights. Often referred to as a “mana battery”, the spriest is most commonly placed in a caster/hunter group or with the healers if they persistently find themselves out of mana during a particular fight. This means that while an spriest may drop positions in terms of damage output during the later stages of raiding they are nevertheless an extremely valuable asset to the raid. They are also able to cast the same buffs as Circle of Healing holy priests, although they lack the spirit buff of a discipline priest.

Power Word: Fortitude: This buff increases the stamina of the friendly target by up to 75 depending on the rank cast. Can also be cast as a prayer, which consumes a reagent but affects the party members of the target as well.

Shadow Protection: This buff increases the shadow resistance of the friendly target by up to 75 depending on the rank cast. Can also be cast as a prayer, which consumes a reagent but affects the party members of the target as well.

Fear Ward: This buff makes the target immune to one fear spell. It lasts three minutes or until a fear is cast, at which point it is consumed.

All priests are also able to cast Shackle, a crowd-control spell that affects the undead only. A shadowpriest is still best equipped to do this, however, due to their spell hit gear, which a healer will lack.

SPELL ROTATION

A shadowpriest doesn’t have a spell rotation so much as a spell priority system. Your main task is to micromanage your damage over time effects and the short cooldowns of Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death. The order of importance is as follows:

Vampiric Touch
Shadow Word: Pain
Mind Blast
Shadow Word: Death
Mind Flay

This turns mind flay into a filler spell, used when both DoT effects are ticking away and both SW: Death and MB are on CD. Shadowpriest zen is achieved when MF ends just as a DoT needs reapplying or something comes off CD; note that the best time to cast VT is not after the last tick, however, but just before it due to the 1.5 second cast time. Your target should always have VT applied and even that split second during the casting time works against that goal.

Another unique spell in the shadowpriest’s arsenal is Vampiric Embrace, an effect applied to the target that causes the priest’s shadow damage dealt to that target to regenerate health across the group. This is limited to the specific party the priest is in as opposed to the entirety of a raid group, for which we are currently thankful. Why? Because one of the main factors limiting a well-geared shadowpriest’s damage output is being threat-capped.

MANAGING THREAT

To be threat-capped is to be riding on the tank’s back bumper threat-wise, meaning that to do any more damage would be to pull aggro. As a rather squishy beast even with Inner Fire and Shadowform’s armour buffs, pulling aggro will often result in bloody murder and possibly the subsequent bloody murder of any other ranged damage dealing classes around you who suddenly find themselves under the jurisdiction of melee range threat rules. For any damage dealing class, pulling aggro is right up there at the top of the sin list.

The shadowpriest must be especially mindful of threat because we have several major threat generators and no threat dump.

The most commonly problematic spell for new shadowpriests threat-wise is VE. When soloing or PvPing this skill is invaluable and so we get into the habit of casting it, but to make use of it in a raid situation requires you to be aware of something called effective healing. Effective healing is when a spell or effect actually causes a player to regenerate health – the part of any heals that try to take the character over 100% health is referred to as overheal because it’s superfluous – and it is effective healing that earns you a nice bit of healing threat. Overheal generates none.

Most of the time damage will be focused on one player – the tank – so you don’t have that much to worry about with VE. Other times, however, damage may be spread out across a few if not all the members of a group, and suddenly the effective healing of VE will soar, dragging the shadowpriest’s threat along with it. In some situations this instigates refraining from casting VE so as to continue putting out the same sort of damage as normal and attaining the highest possible mana return and DPS; at others the player must take note of when the group takes damage, observe their threat meter especially closely and adjust their level of nuking appropriately.

Another spell to watch is Mind Blast, which has higher threat generation than Shadow Word: Death. Both, however, are able to crit, so if you’re right behind the tank on threat these are two to watch. Using MB as an opening move is rarely a good idea.

One of the most misleading spells, however, is actually Fade. It likes to pretend it’s a threat dump, but this isn’t the case. When activated, Fade reduces your threat until the end of its duration, at which point all that threat comes back. This makes it fundamentally different from abilities such as a rogue’s Feint. Feint lops off a portion of the rogue’s threat by the amount dictated on the tooltip and will remove more every time it is used – spamming Feint on CD will dramatically reduce the rogue’s threat level, whereas a priest spamming Fade whenever possible will simply be wasting mana. This makes Fade into a situational spell: that is, one you cast when you know your next few spells will cause a large amount of threat that the tank would not be able to hold but that they could deal with if the threat gain was delayed or when you are about to pull aggro as it will give the tank time to regain their position at the top of the threat list before the mob comes after you.

Like all aspects of shadowpriesting, threat management will become easier the more you play and pulling aggro frequently when you first get into group play shouldn’t be instantly taken as a sign that you’ll never make a good shadowpriest. Early on, after all, is when you’re most likely to be getting sudden huge improvements in spellpower from gear when you upgrade green items to blue or even tailored epics.

GEAR

A shadowpriest’s gear requirements are quite unique amongst casters in that intellect does not feature heavily in building up the priest’s effective mana pool. Pure spellpower takes up this role instead thanks to vampiric touch and is in fact the shadowpriest’s most important stat, outclassing spell critical strike rating due to mindflay, vampiric touch and shadow word: pain’s inability to crit. While mind blast and shadow word: death are affected by spell crit I would not advocate taking spell crit over spell damage.

Other noteworthy stats are spell hit, which you need to have capped to raid effectively, stamina, which will help you absorb the recoil from SW:Death and improve your general survivability, and mp5, which should never be aimed for but is a slightly useful bonus on some heavy spell damage gear. Note that the shadowpriest’s spell hit requirements depend on spec: full points in Shadow Focus will allow the priest to be hit capped with only 75 spell hit rating from gear. This is so important because when fighting a boss your spells have a 17% chance to be resisted – being hit capped will bring it right down to 1%.

As such, your stat priority order when choosing loot is as follows:

Spell hit until hit-capped
Spellpower
Spell crit

Stamina is of course useful in that a dead spriest is no use whatsoever; spirit is presently worthless save for an additional set to equip when grinding; intellect provides further spell crit but the extra mana it provides is of little use; and Mp5 (mana per second) is a handy bonus if present on gear strong in spellpower but should not be sought out.

GEMS

The most important gem for a shadowpriest is, of course, the pure spellpower gem: Runed Living Ruby. Runed Crimson Spinel is the epic upgrade to this, and there are other variations too, such as the honour reward Runed Ornate Ruby. It is generally an acceptable belief that very few socket bonuses are worth co-ordinating your gem colour for, so most shadowpriests will socket straight through all their gear with these red gems. Nevertheless, on the occasion where a socket bonus gives a sizeable bit of spellpower Glowing Nightseye is best for a blue socket and Potent Noble Topaz or Veiled Noble Topaz should go in a yellow socket, depending on whether or not your priest is hit-capped. As the shadowpriest’s preferred meta gem is the Mystical Skyfire Diamond one red gem swapped for a purple gem will usually activate it.

ENCHANTS

As per usual, spellpower is the focus.

Head: Glyph of Power
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Orb or Greater Inscription of Discipline depending on your alignment in Shattrath. Note that the Zandalar Signet of Mojo is a stronger alternative to the Scryer inscription and should be used if you are a Scryer and have access to it.
Cloak: Subtlety
Chest: Restore Mana Prime or Exceptional Stats
Bracers: Spellpower
Gloves: Spellpower
Leggings: Runic Spellthread
Feet: Vitality or Boar’s Speed
Rings: Spellpower (only available to enchanters)
Weapon: Spellpower or Soulfrost