Shadow Priest Dragonflight 10.2.6 Guide

This is the Shadow Priest guide for Dragonflight written by twitch.tv/jaervenxd.

Hello, I’m Jaerv. A Shadow Priest main and enjoyer for Method that also dabbles in theorycrafting over at Warcraft Priests where I help out with everything from APL work, general theory testing and just coming up with all the not so smart ideas to try and implement.

Shadow Priest has historically been all about damage over time effects with a big value in spread cleave and cleave. Ever since Shadowlands however, Blizzard have decided to tune down on the strength of DoTs and because of that Shadow has been moving into more of a Single Target niche with some occasional strengths in stacked cleave/AoE. In Shadowlands it was in the way of Shadowflame Prism and Searing Nightmare whereas in early Dragonflight it was mostly from Inescapable Torment and Mind Sear.

In Dragonflight 10.1 however, we are moving back a little bit to the spread cleave niche that we once had. Not necessarily from an increase in damage from DoTs, but from an increased value in Psychic Link. They removed Mind Sear and added all our Single Target spells into Psychic Link, including Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Death. So while our DoTs might not do the damage they once did, they are at an all time high in importance to your AoE rotation.

Shadow has also been given an extra layer of “raid value/utility” in the form of Twins of the Sun Priestess which allows you to always bring a Power Infusion to the group/raid without losing it yourself.

Season 4 (Patch 10.2.6) Changes

Priest:

• Leap of Faith no longer interrupts spell casts from the ally it was used on.

Shadow:

• Aberrus, the Shadows Crucible (2) Set Bonus: Increase the damage of Mind Blast by 40% when Shadowy Insight triggers (was 30%).
• Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible (4) Set Bonus: Increases Devouring Plague damage by 18% (was 15%).
• Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible (4) Set Bonus: Causes every 4 casts of Devouring Plague to increase Shadowy Apparition damage by 100% for 10 seconds (was 80%).

Generally very small changes to Shadow going into Season 4, some small buffs to the new tier set (Season 2).With these buffs it puts the Tier Set value to roughly:

Single Target (DPS Gain):

• 2 set: ~3-4%
• 2+4 set: ~11%

Dungeon Average (DPS Gain):

• 2 set: ~2-3%
• 2+4 set: ~7%

Patch 10.2.5 Changes

Starting the week of January 23rd the following hotfixes were applied:

• Mind Blast damage increased by 10%
• Devouring Plague damage increased by 10%
• Shadowy Apparitions damage increased by 20%
• Psychic Link now causes direct damage spells to inflict 30% of their damage on all other targets afflicted by your Vampiric Touch (was 25%)

Patch 10.2 Shadow Priest Changes

Priest:

• Power Infusion Haste reduced to 20% (was 25%) and duration reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).
• Shadow Word: Death now deals 8% of the Priest’s maximum health in damage when it fails to kill a target instead of the backlash damage being based on damage dealt.
• Tithe Evasion now reduces Shadow Word: Death damage dealt to the Priest by 50% (was 75%).
• Mass Dispel cooldown is now 2 minutes (was 45 seconds).

Shadow:

• Surge of Insanity now triggers from every 2 casts of Devouring Plague instead of every cast of Devouring Plague
• Shadow Crash damage is now reduced beyond 5 targets
• Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 17%. Not applied to PvP combat.
• Shadow Apparition damage increased by 17%. Not applied to PvP combat.
• Vampiric Touch damage increased by 25%. Not applied to PvP combat.
• And more…

First Impressions for Season 4

Shadow looks to be in a decent spot going into Season 4, with most of the value still being in dungeons and AoE. The Single Target damage is still fairly mid, but as soon as you add targets we kinda just go through the roof.

We will still have the issues of not shining in low/mid keys where mobs tend to die very fast, but it should be better than it was in Season 3 in that regard, since VF builds come online a lot sooner.