Introduction
Welcome to the Shadow Priest Guide from Method written by twitch.tv/jaervenxd.
I am Jaerv, a Shadow Priest main for Method that also dabbles in theorycrafting and SimulationCraft 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.
If you are coming from Dragonflight, then you can expect Shadow Priest to be very similar in War Within. We have received almost no changes to the core spec, and are still a builder-spender spec that specializes in spread cleave and big, sustained, AoE damage.
And if you are coming from an older version of Shadow Priest, such as Legion or Battle for Azeroth, then you can expect Shadow Priest to have moved away from it’s unique playstyle and minigame of fighting the insanity drain to a more cookiecutter builder-spender playstyle with two different cooldowns (Void Eruption and Dark Ascension) that are used for different scenarios.
What has changed
In War Within there are generally two different types of changes for all classes and specs, the generic changes to the core class and spec, and the introduction of Hero Talents. We will discuss Hero Talents further down in the guide.
Priest changes:
- Mindgames and all its associated talents have been removed from the class tree and Mindgames have been moved to a PvP talent.
- Void Tendrils now lasts for 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).
- Halo is now a 1 minute cooldown.
- New Talent: Cauterizing Shadows: When your Shadow Word: Pain expires, is refreshed with less than 5 seconds remaining, or the target dies, a nearby ally within 40 yards is healed.
- New talent: Manipulation: Now causes you to take 1%/2% less damage from targets affected by Shadow Word: Pain.
- New talent: Phantom Reach: Increases the range of most spells by 15% (40 yards to 46 yards).
Shadow Priest changes:
- Mind Flay: Insanity now deals damage every 0.375 seconds for 1.5 seconds (was every 0.75 seconds for 3 seconds). It also generates 12 Insanity over the duration (was 16).
- New talent: Shadow Crash: Choice node with Shadow Crash that is instead targeted at a specific enemy.