World of Warcraft®

Since i no longer have the time to play, or the expansion, please remove the sticky and let someone make a new guide, thanks to all who helped out on here during cataclysm!

There are numerous things that effect a players DPS and it is important to get to grips with each area to maximise damage output. The main elements which will effect your damage are: Rotation, Gear, Talents and Glyphs. This guide has been written in my own words from what i have gathered over the past years, special thanks to the people at ElitistJerks and Shadowpriest.com who do alot of theory-crafting and debating which contriuted to this brief guide.

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Abbreviations:
VT: Vampiric Touch
SW:P: Shadow Word: Pain
DP: Devouring Plague
MF: Mind Flay
MB: Mind Blast
MS: Mind Spike
SW:D: Shadow Word: Death
SF: Shadow Fiend
VE: Vampiric Embrace
ES: Empowered Shadows (New Mastery Buff)
DE: Dark Evangelism (Disc Talent, 5 Stacks, DoT Buff)
AA: Arch Angel (Discipline Talent, DPS Cooldown)

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The Rotation::

Single Target Priority System:
1) Keep all DoTs up on the target (VT, SW:P, DP). Make sure you refresh your DoTs just before they fall off, you can no longer clip DoTs and they will continue to tick from where they left off unless you let them fall off the target.

2) Maintain ES Buff, This is our Mastery, the Buff will increase your DoT damage by a percentage dependant on how much Mastery you have. This effects VT, SW:P, DP and MF. Keep it active at all times by using up whatever shadoworbs you have using MB.

3) Use MB whenever it is off Cooldown, do not wait for Shadow Orbs it is too much of a DPS loss and you will generally get them often enough to maintain ES with enough Haste.

4) Use MF to deal damage, maintain DE buff from the Discipline Tree and gain more Shadow Orbs.

5) Use SW:D if the target is below 25% health, if glyphed you should be able to use two at the same time.

6) Use MS if the target has a low health pool to start of, such as the Vapours on the Ripsnarl encounter in Deadmines. DoTs will not have much time to tick in these cases, MSx3 MB.

7) Use your AA cooldown AFTER you have reapplied DoTs, so that you have maximum time to use MF and have time to get your DE buff back to 5 stacks before refreshing VT and DP.

8) Use SF on Cooldown, this maximizes damage as they do hit significantly when they are out. This give maximum damage and mana return.

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My Opening Rotation: (Start of Fights)
1) Vampiric Touch, SW:Pain, Devouring Plague
2) Mindblast (Even without an Orb)
3) Mindflay (Atleast 5 Ticks to get Evangelism)
4) Cast Shadowfiend now most spellpower procs are up (more attack power)
5) Refresh DoTs so they benefit from EmpShadows and Evangelism
6) Pop Archangel for First time, and continue with Rotation Above.
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General Tips:
1) DoT Damage is calculated by the players stats when they are cast, this includes buffs like DE, ES and Trinket Procs.

2) If you have a trinket proc about to run out, for example 1900 spellpower, it is worth refreshing VT and DP early so they benefit from the buff even when it has gone.

3) This also applies at the start of fights, refresh your DoTs as soon as you get your first ES buff from using MB with atleast one Shadow Orb, so they benefit from ES.

4) As always if there is a phase of a fight where the boss takes more damage, an example being on Magmaw where his head is exposed, try to save your CDs like SF and AA for these parts of the fight.

5) Any Fights where there are multiple Targets with High HP, such as the 'Omnotron Defence System' you should apply VT and SW:P to both Targets to maximise DMG Output.

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Your Gear:
Your gear will definately affect your damage, bad trinkets especially.
For Shadowpriests Intellect is your primary stat, it will increase the damage of all spells. As a Shadowpriest your best secondary stat is Haste, Haste will increase the amount of times your DoTs tick in the time they are on the target which increases our DPS significantly.

Your Stats Priority is as follows:
Intellect > Haste > Hitcap > Mastery > Crit
Haste gives more DPS on movement/target swapping fights than being hitcapped, see http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/article/theory/shadowpriest-weights

When deciding on new items look primarily at whether or not it has Haste, if not and your old items does it probably isnt worth swapping unless it has alot more intellect.

For a BiS list try shadowpriest.com

Shadowpriests do rely on gear alot more than other classes, without Haste our DPS is terrible even with the correct rotation. Once we have higher levels of gear and therefore more Haste and Intellect on items our DPS will increase significantly.

Stat Values/Gemming Guide:

Intellect is our number one stat, so the values for other stats have been calculated in terms of intellect. Below is the value of each stat in terms of ''intellect points'', (from ElitistJerks)

Int: 1.0000
SP: 0.7841
Haste: 0.5844
Crit: 0.4480
Mastery: 0.4366

When gemming your gear you should calculate what the value of each gem is and whether or not it is better to get the socket bonus or gem pure Int.

As Intellect is better than any secondary stat a Reckless Ember Topaz is better than a Quick Amberjewel for a yellow socket. The Reckless Ember Topaz gem would give 31.6 points, whereas a Quick Amberjewel would give 23.4 points. (Worked out by multiplying each by their value).
For Blue sockets gem Purified Demonseye if you want the socket bonus.

For example, if you have a yellow socket then putting a Reckless Ember Topaz in the socket would give (20x1)+(20x0.5844) = 31.6 points. Whereas putting in a red Brilliant Inferno Ruby would give you 40 points, so it would be better to use a the red gem. However if the socket bonus was to be worth 8.4 points or more (8.4 intellect or 14.3 haste) then it would be better to use a Reckless Ember Topaz as you would then also benefit from the socket bonus.

Alot of socket bonuses are not worth gemming for because Brilliant Inferno Ruby works out to be better, the maths is quite simple and this section of the post should have helped with gemming issues.

For your Meta Gem, Burning Shadowspirit Diamond is unquestionably the best.

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Talents::

With the current talent tree it is clear which talents will give a DPS increase and which are for PvP/CC. After taking all of the DPS talents you will be left with 2 extra talent points to spend. In my talent build i spent these 2 extra points in Phantasm. This is because it allows me to remove movement impairing effects on boss fights that allows me to move back into range faster, or avoid something that would otherwise kill my character.

An example of where this helps sustain dps would be the Commander Ulthok encounter in Throne of Tides. The boss casts a curse of exhaustion on players which slows movement speed and casting speed (lowering dps), by using the Phantasm talent to remove this debuff you get rid of both effect and are no longer effected by the slow cast times.

Other options of talents to go for would be:
Psychic Horror, Mental Agility, Power Word Shield.

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Glyphs:

Prime:
For Shadow there are 4 Prime Glyphs to take into consideration:
Glyph of Dispel Magic
Glyph of Holy Fire
Glyph of Mind Blast
Glyph of Dispersion

For Maximum DPS you should clearly use the first 3, however make sure you have Glyph of Dispersion learnt and have some dust ready to switch it over in case you need it for a certain encounter. If you do need it swap it with Glyph of Mind Blast.

Major:
Glyph of Fade
Glyph of Psychic Scream
Glyph of Dark Binding

These are the three that I personally use, if you are frequently asked to dispel it may be worth changing Glyph of Dark Binding with Glyph of Purify.

Minor:
Glyph of Shadow Ravens
Glyph of Levitate
Glyph of Dark Archangel
Glyph of Borrowed Time

This comes down to personal opinion, I would take the top 3. It is rare that you have to buff mid-fight, and the mana cost was reduced this patch anyway. Note that no Minor glyphs have a great impact on your DPS.

Hi Vaelir, i was wondering what meta gem i should use in my head slot. Been thinking about Chaotic and Ember Shadowspirit Diamond. Personally i would vouch for the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond cause of the intellect for the extra spell power and of course extra mana is always nice :)

Looking forward to your answer.

I am new to spriest, i played 6 years with holy and disc as my second spec.

I've been messing around with rotation and at the moment at the start of a boss fight my rotation is

ms, ms, ms reason for 3x ms is to build up a crit on mb which can be huge dps sometimes), mb, all 3 dots, mind flay until the three orbs and refresh dp and vt, then cycle. Is this terrible play?

i usually used my fiend at about 75% mana, should i use it earlier?

Also some more questions, if you do not mind....

How did you conclude that Haste is the most important stat?
How are you coping with mana regen in bosses, are you ever going oom? Any tips?
How do I know when my Hit rating is capped, looking at your gear you've used gems to increase your hit but you said it's not as important as Haste. Why have you done this?

My exact rotation, this one works really well as the OP said. DPS is really nice. I've gone upto 12.4k on certain bosses, last one was the first boss in throne of the tides.

mind spike is now purely used for pvp or low mob health, otherwise I forget its there.

3 dots - fiend - flay until 3 - mb - redo dots - archangel - MF MF on the third MF break it when MB is ready. Refresh dots as needed in between.

No self respecting shadow priest should run out of mana on a boss. Especially with SW:D and its awesome 10% mana effect + fiend + archangel + BF racial (in my case) + dispersion + trinkets you might have.

On the second boss in vortex pinnacle, I hit 18k dps when in the right wind areas.

Sorry i'm kinda new to taking this game seriously, how do i measure my dps?

atm i am using the Bracing Meta with +Int 2% Reduced Threat

However i have been told that the Chaotic Meta (+Crit +Crit DMG) is going to be fixed to not require more blue than red gems, once this is done i will be using Chaotic again

22/12/2010 7:22 PMPosted by Paris

Sorry i'm kinda new to taking this game seriously, how do i measure my dps?

An addon, like Recount or Skada.

Hit Rating is most import until capped, then Haste

For Regen, i use Shadowfiend/Archangel on CD and SW:D gives 10% mana when it hits yourself

What do you mean by "fixed to not require more blue than red gems". They gonna change is or just fix the bug that it has now?

theyre going to change it back to requiring 1 red and 2 blue gems from what i have heard, if not i'll use the threat reduction because i need it atm

I used to read up on all kinds of theorycrafting but I've become a slacking casual these days and haven't paid too much attention to the new stuff. So that's why I'm wondering if it's really worth it to recast dots when you get a proc?
It hasn't been the case in the past at least. The slight boost you get on 1 set of dots used to be offset by the loss of the gcd's that could be filled with mf ticks etc. Besides, you'll in most cases be able to cast new dots while still having your proc up anyways a few seconds later. Procs are a bonus, not something to change your rotation after.
On use effects are different of course :)

Also, you might wanna add intellect as our prio stat before haste, but that's up to you ;)

Otherwise, good guide!

For refreshing DoTs i dont do it for my SP procs from trinkets but only for Empowered shadows as it increases their damage as a % which is higher with mastery :) I agree the loss of a GCD isnt worth it depending on the buff.

also i will include intellect ;) thanks!

lolcat is me ::P

22/12/2010 5:54 PMPosted by Vaelir

3) Use Mindblast if you get 3 shadow orbs regardless of time left on Empowered Shadows.

Pretty sure this is wrong.

I am nearly lvl 84, are there any rep rewards that I should have or would it be a waste until I ding 85 ?
Awesome post, thanks

shadow priest dps doesn't have a set rotation any more.

my dps typically goes as following:

VT, SWP, DP, mind flay till 5 evangalism. By that point I've almost certainly got at least 1 orb, so I hit archaengel and my trinket, then mind blast, mind flay back up to 5 evangalism, then refresh VT and DP.

Rinse and repeat

Dots should be reapplied so they land just before they run out.

I've got to the point now where I don't even use SW:D for mana gains, which has a big effect on my dps (it's a dps loss to use it above 25%), and when boss is <25% SW:D is the priority.

I typically am hitting about 15k dps on Argaloth with a warlock (Dark intent). That is in mostly heroic gear (1 epic rep belt, epic arena offhand).

My DPS is similar on Argalos (with Dark intent).

Just keep your Dot's up and time them with your active cooldowns/shadow orb-MB's... But don't over do it... Not redotting because some buff isn't up is often worse than just redotting...

You wait a few secs to redot? Bam you have to run and your Dot isn't up for 10 seconds...

Just a dumb question:
Since they fixed the reaplying of dots so you don't have to time it superduper-accurate. Is the benefitts from empower Shadows and such really not applying to the dots that is up, do you really need to reaply them to make benefitts of it? Any1 tested this to 100?
Since I allmost never play shadow i havent tested it myself, it makes sence and it don't at the same time.