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Shadow Priest Guide for WoW Forever

Play Shadow Priest in WoW Forever: the Spirit Tap leveling build to level 30, the Shadowform raid build at 60, and the rotation, races and gear for both.

PriestShadowLevelingPvERaidsDungeonsDPSPvPSolo

By stillsixty staffUpdated

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Variants

Overview

Shadow is the Priest's damage spec and the one you level with in WoW Forever. You stack damage over time on a target, blast it with Mind Blast, drain the rest with Mind Flay, and heal yourself through the whole fight with Devouring Plague and Vampiric Embrace. Every kill refills your mana through Spirit Tap, so you chain pulls where other casters sit and drink.

Forever makes Shadow a real raid spec. Shadowform now halves the mana cost of every Shadow spell and makes your Shadow crits deal double damage, Shadow Weaving is a personal damage buff you build yourself, and a new execute, Shadow Word: Death, arrives at 32 for every Priest. Devouring Plague is no longer an Undead spell: every Priest trains it at 20.

At level 30 you run a Spirit Tap build with a Discipline dip for wand damage. At 60 you take Shadowform, Darkness and the execute talents, and spend the rest in Discipline for mana.

Strengths

  • Self-sustain built into the rotation: Devouring Plague heals you, Vampiric Embrace heals you and your party, and Spirit Tap refills your mana after every kill.
  • Very little downtime while leveling. You rarely stop to drink once Spirit Tap is 5/5.
  • Damage that ramps: Shadow Weaving adds 10%, Darkness adds 10% and Shadowform adds another 10% plus double-damage crits.
  • Instant damage on the move: Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Death all cast while you run.
  • Group utility on top of damage: Power Word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Shadow Protection, Fear Ward, dispels, Silence and a party heal in Vampiric Embrace.
  • Real crowd control: Psychic Scream, Mind Control and Shackle Undead.

Weaknesses

  • Cloth armor. Shadowform cuts Physical damage taken by 15%, but you still fold to melee.
  • No healing spells in Shadowform. Leave the form to heal, and pay to come back in.
  • High threat. Mind Blast generates a lot of it, so dungeon groups need a tank who holds aggro.
  • Mind Flay's range is only 20 yards until Improved Mind Flay adds 10.
  • Slow to start a fight. Your damage over time needs a few seconds to pay off, and Shadow Weaving needs five spells to reach full stacks.

What's new in Forever

New in Forever
  • Shadowform now reduces the mana cost of all Shadow spells by 50% and adds 100% to the critical strike damage bonus of your Shadow spells, on top of 10% Shadow damage and 15% less Physical damage taken. You can't cast healing spells while in it.
  • Shadow Weaving is a buff on you now: each Shadow damage spell adds 2% Shadow damage for 15 seconds, up to 5 stacks. At 3/3 every spell adds a stack.
  • Improved Mind Flay (new, 2 ranks) adds 20% damage and 10 yards of range, but lowers Mind Flay's slow from 50% to 20%.
  • Devouring Contagion (new, 2 ranks) halves Devouring Plague's cost, and a target that dies with your Plague on it passes it to an enemy within 10 yards.
  • Early Demise (new, 2 ranks) adds 30% critical strike chance to Shadow Word: Death against targets at or below 20% health.
  • Shadow Word: Death is a new trained spell at 32: an instant hit on a 15-second cooldown. If the target survives, you take backlash damage equal to 10% of your maximum health.
  • Devouring Plague is trained by every Priest at 20: 24 seconds of Shadow damage that heals you, on a 1-minute cooldown.
  • Spirit Tap works on any non-trivial kill, and Vampiric Embrace also lets it trigger when an enemy under your Embrace dies.
  • Shadow Focus is now +1% hit per rank, and Shadow Reach adds 20% range at 2/2.
  • Wand Specialization is 2 ranks for +25% wand damage. Wands no longer scale with your spell damage, so this is pure wand damage.
  • Fear Ward and Divine Spirit are baseline for every Priest.

Talents

The leveling build. Wand Specialization makes your wand hit a quarter harder while it does most of your damage, Spirit Tap removes your drinking, and Mind Flay with Improved Mind Flay gives you a 30-yard channel to finish every mob. Shadow Weaving arrives at 27 and Vampiric Embrace at 30.

Split 2/0/19 · 21 points at level 30 · Open in calculator

Discipline

2 points

Holy

0 points

Shadow

19 points

Talent order

  1. Levels 10–11: 2/2 Wand Specialization. +25% wand damage. From 10 to 20 your wand kills more mobs than your spells do, and every wand shot costs no mana.
  2. Levels 12–16: 5/5 Spirit Tap. Every kill gives you double Spirit for 15 seconds, and 50% of your mana regeneration keeps running while you cast. Pull the next mob inside that window.
  3. Levels 17–18: 2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain. Shadow Word: Pain lasts 24 seconds instead of 18, so one cast covers the whole fight.
  4. Levels 19–21: 3/5 Shadow Focus. +3% hit with Shadow spells. Fewer resisted Pains and Mind Blasts, and it opens tier 3.
  5. Level 22: 1/1 Mind Flay. A 3-second channel that damages and slows. It replaces much of your wanding.
  6. Levels 23–24: 2/2 Improved Mind Flay. +20% Mind Flay damage and 10 more yards of range. You flay from 30 yards instead of 20. The slow drops to 20%, which is a fair trade while leveling.
  7. Levels 25–26: 2/5 Improved Mind Blast. Mind Blast comes back every 7 seconds instead of 8.
  8. Levels 27–29: 3/3 Shadow Weaving. Every Shadow damage spell adds 2% Shadow damage, up to 10%. Pain, Blast and two Flays get you most of the way on every pull.
  9. Level 30: 1/1 Vampiric Embrace. 20% of your Shadow damage heals you for 30 seconds, on a 1-minute cooldown. The spell requires level 30, so it is your level-30 point. Use it on every tough mob.

Flexible points

  • Leveling in a group more than solo? Take 3/3 Shadow Affinity at 19–21 instead of Shadow Focus for 30% less Shadow threat.
  • Hate running after mobs? Skip Improved Mind Flay until 60 and put those two points into Shadow Reach. Mind Flay keeps its 50% slow and your other Shadow spells reach 36 yards.

Races

Best races

Shadow wants crit and burst for Shadowform, and sustain while leveling. That is why the Shadow picks differ from the healer picks in the Discipline and Holy guides.

Alliance: Night Elf. Elune's Light adds 10% critical strike chance to all spells for 15 seconds every 3 minutes, and Shadowform doubles the damage bonus of every crit. Night Elf Priests also learn Starshards, a 6-second Arcane channel on a 30-second cooldown that deals 1800 damage at its top rank, nearly twice what it did in Classic. For leveling, that is a second nuke. Elune's Grace halves the chance that melee and ranged attacks hit you for 15 seconds, or until you're missed 3 times.

Alliance, runner-up: Gnome. Gnome Priests are new in Forever. Eureka! makes your next three damaging or healing spells cost 10% less and deal 10% more, every 2 minutes, and Expansive Mind gives you 5% more maximum mana. Confounding Flash confuses up to five enemies around you for 3 seconds, a second Psychic Scream for a bad pull.

Horde: Undead. Touch of the Grave gives your spells a 10% chance to drain health from the target, which adds up over hundreds of Mind Flay ticks. Will of the Forsaken removes Fear, Charm and Sleep, Cannibalize restores 7% of your health and mana every 2 seconds for 10 seconds between pulls, and Dark Sacrifice trades health for mana every 10 minutes.

Horde raiding: Troll. Berserking gives 10% casting speed for 10 seconds every 3 minutes, Beast Slaying adds 5% damage against Beasts, and Rapid Regeneration restores half your health over 6 seconds if nothing interrupts it. Troll Priests also learn Hex of Weakness, which lowers a target's melee attack power and cuts the healing it receives by 20%.

All playable races

Skyborne can't be Priests.

Rotation

Single pull

  1. Buff up before you pull: Power Word: Fortitude and Inner Fire on yourself at all times.
  2. Open with Mind Blast from 30 yards. It is a 1.5-second cast and the biggest hit you have.
  3. Cast Shadow Word: Pain right after, while the mob is still running at you.
  4. Cast Power Word: Shield on yourself before it arrives. While the shield holds, damage doesn't push back your casts.
  5. Channel Mind Flay. With Improved Mind Flay you start from 30 yards.
  6. Mind Blast again the moment it is off cooldown, then Mind Flay.
  7. Finish a mob under about 20% health with your wand instead of another spell.

Tough mobs and elites

  • Open with Devouring Plague before anything else, and from 30 with Vampiric Embrace first. Both heal you for as long as they tick.
  • Psychic Scream sends up to two enemies fleeing for 8 seconds at 14, and more at later ranks. Damage can break the fear, so don't put Pain or Plague on a mob you plan to scare. Kill the one that stays while the other runs.
  • Keep Renew ticking on yourself before a long fight. Renew can crit in Forever.

Mana and downtime

  • Spirit Tap is your drink. Pull the next mob within 15 seconds of a kill and cast into the buff.
  • Wand while Mind Blast is on cooldown if your mana is under half. Wand Specialization makes it hit 25% harder.
  • Drink only when you drop under a third of your mana with no Spirit Tap up. Buy water at every inn.

Stat priority

Leveling

  1. Spirit
  2. Intellect
  3. Spell Power
  4. Stamina

Spirit is Shadow's leveling stat. Spirit Tap doubles it after every kill, so each point of Spirit counts twice while you chain pulls. Intellect gives you the mana pool to start each pull full. Spell Power adds damage to every tick, and healing gear counts too, since it grants spell damage at a third of its healing value. Wands don't scale with Spell Power, so buy wands on damage per second alone.

Gear

Wands

Your wand does a big share of your damage until Mind Flay, and Wand Specialization adds 25%. Wands don't scale with Spell Power, so buy on damage per second. Enchanters craft the ones you want:

Armor

Take cloth with Spirit and Intellect first, then Spell Power. Quest rewards beat vendor gear at every level. For a weapon, take a staff or a one-hand mace or dagger with an off-hand, whichever has more Spirit and Spell Power.

Professions

Tailoring and Enchanting is the Priest pair. Tailoring makes your cloth from 1 to 60, bags for the whole road, and the Priest-only Truefaith Vestments at the end: Stamina, Spirit and healing power, with 2 seconds off Fade's cooldown. Enchanting disenchants every cloth piece you outgrow and makes all four leveling wands, from the Lesser Magic Wand at 5 to the Greater Mystic Wand at 30.

For gold, level with Herbalism and Skinning or Herbalism and Mining, then switch at 60 once your farming has paid for the materials.

Group play and dungeons

Your job in a group is damage first, then utility, and a Shadow Priest brings a lot of both.

  • Let the tank build threat. Open with Shadow Word: Pain, not Mind Blast, and wait for the tank's second global. Mind Blast causes a high amount of threat.
  • Vampiric Embrace heals the whole party. Keep it up on pulls where everyone takes damage, and your healer drinks less.
  • Interrupt with Silence if you took it: a 5-second silence that also interrupts spellcasts for 3 seconds.
  • Crowd control. Shackle Undead holds one Undead, Mind Control takes a Humanoid off the pull, and Psychic Scream scatters a pack when the tank loses it. Damage breaks Shackle, so keep your damage over time spells off the shackled mob.
  • Buffs and cleansing. Fortitude, Divine Spirit and Shadow Protection on everyone. Dispel Magic removes Magic from friends, Cure Disease removes diseases, and Fear Ward protects one player from the next Fear.
  • Back up the healer. Out of Shadowform you're a Priest with every heal you trained. When the healer dies, drop form and keep the tank alive.

PvP

Shadow is the Priest's PvP spec. Shadowform's 15% Physical damage reduction and instant damage while moving carry you in battlegrounds, including the new 15-player Darkspear Islands.

  • Open with Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague, then Mind Blast. Both damage over time spells keep working while you run.
  • Psychic Scream on a 30-second cooldown and Silence on casters are your control. Improved Psychic Scream (2 points, needs 5/5 Blackout) cuts the cooldown to 26 seconds.
  • Mind Flay's 50% slow is a PvP tool. Skip Improved Mind Flay in a PvP build to keep the full 50% slow.
  • Shadow Word: Death finishes a fleeing target, but a cast that doesn't kill costs you 10% of your health.
  • Dwarves shrug off Bleeds and Poisons with Stoneform, and Undead break Fear with Will of the Forsaken.

Tips

Shadowform blocks heals

In Shadowform you can't cast healing spells, including Renew and Flash Heal on yourself. Leaving the form and coming back costs mana, so decide before the pull which role you play.

Spread the Plague

With Devouring Contagion, put Devouring Plague on the mob that dies first. When it dies, the Plague jumps to a neighbor within 10 yards for the rest of its duration, so one cast hits two targets. The jump picks any enemy in range, including a sheeped, sapped or shackled mob, and its damage breaks that crowd control. Don't use Plague next to a crowd-controlled target.

Shadow Word: Death is an execute, not a filler. Every cast that doesn't kill costs 10% of your maximum health. Use it below 20% health, on a mob about to die, or as instant damage while you run.

Keep Spirit Tap rolling. The buff lasts 15 seconds. Pull the next mob inside that window and you barely drink from 12 to 60.

Vampiric Embrace feeds Spirit Tap. An enemy that dies under your Embrace gives Spirit Tap a chance to trigger.

Fear Ward is yours now. Every Priest trains it at 20. It lasts 3 minutes on a 3-minute cooldown, so cast it on the tank right before a boss that fears.

Train Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Blast at every rank. They are your damage. Devouring Plague at 20 and Shadow Word: Death at 32 are the two biggest spikes on the way up.

Macros

Wand macro: starts wanding and doesn't cancel it when you press it twice.

Wand
#showtooltip Shoot
/cast !Shoot

Silence your focus target, or your current target if you have no focus, and stop your current cast first.

Focus Silence
#showtooltip Silence
/stopcasting
/cast [@focus,harm,nodead][] Silence

Inner Focus into Mind Blast in one press.

Inner Focus Blast
#showtooltip Mind Blast
/cast Inner Focus
/cast Mind Blast

Shield yourself without losing your target.

Self Shield
#showtooltip Power Word: Shield
/cast [@player] Power Word: Shield

Shackle your focus target, so you can re-shackle it without clicking away from the mob you're killing.

Focus Shackle
#showtooltip Shackle Undead
/cast [@focus,harm,nodead][] Shackle Undead

Changelog

  • Guide published with Level 30 Leveling and Level 60 Raid builds.

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