Shadow Priest playstyle and rotation guide

General Rotation:

Outside Voidform priority:

1. Maintain both Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain on the target.
2. Try to maintain a high uptime of Devouring Plague on the target to make use of your Mastery, but make sure to dump your insanity in time so that you don’t over-cap it. Subsequent Devouring Plague will cause its damage over time effect to add into the existing DoT, so it is fine to overlap Devouring Plague DoT’s if you are about to over-cap insanity.
3. Void Torrent / Mindbender
4. Mind Blast on cooldown.

Inside Voidform priority:

1. Void Bolt on cooldown (there will be 2 global cooldowns between void bolts)
2. Mind Blast (If you have a Dark Thought proc, and 4-piece Tier Set equipped)
3. Devouring Plague to dump insanity
4. Mind Blast 
5. Mind Flay

*If you are using the Shadowflame Prism legendary and your Mindbender is up, Shadow Word: Death is priority number 1. 

Opener:

Assumed talents 1111122 and night fae

1. Pre-cast Vampiric Touch
2. Shadow Word: Pain
3. Night Fae Covenant Ability
4. Mindbender
5. Shadow Word: Death
6. Mind Blast
7. Void Eruption
8. Power Infusion (off GCD)
9. Void Bolt
10. Mind Blast
11. Devouring Plague
12. Void Bolt
13. Continue regular rotation

Assumed talents 1111132 and Necrolord

1. Pre-cast Vampiric Touch
2. Shadow Word: Pain
3. Void Torrent
4. Shadowfiend
5. Devouring Plague
6. Mind Blast
7. Void Eruption
8. Power Infusion (off GCD)
9. Void Bolt
10. Unholy Nova
11. Devouring Plague
12. Continue normal Rotation

Assumed talents 1111122 and Necrolord (SFP)

1. Pre-cast Vampiric Touch
2. Shadow Word: Pain
3. Mindbender
4. Shadow Word: Death
5. Mind Blast
6. Unholy Nova
7. Void Eruption
8. Power Infusion (off GCD)
9. Void Bolt
10. Mind Blast
11. Devouring Plague
12. Continue normal Rotation

Multi Target:

With the Misery talent:

• Maintain Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain on all targets that you expect to live longer than 7 seconds.
• Replace Mind Flay for Mind Sear if 3 or more targets are stacked up.
• Continue single target rotation.

With the Searing Nightmare talent: (This is not a priority list, just a list of rules)

• Devouring Plague when there are 1-2 targets. (or 3 targets inside Voidform)
• Cast Shadow Crash on cooldown.
• Try to maintain Vampiric Touch on up to 4-5 targets assuming they live long enough.
  Stop casting Vampiric Touch if there are 7 or more targets.
• Always cast Mind Blast if you have a Dark Thought proc
• Stop hard casting Mind Blast WITHOUT a Dark Thought proc, when there are 4 or more targets.Cast Void Bolt on cd if you need the insanity until 4-5 targets without the Hungering Void talent, or until 6 targets with the Hungering Void talent. It is fine to drop Void Bolt slightly earlier if you feel like you already have enough insanity to chain spam Mind Sear and Searing Nightmare.
• Cast Mind Sear as your filler spell.

With the Searing Nightmare talent and Shadowflame Prism:

• Devouring Plague when there are 1-2 targets. (or 3 targets inside Voidform)
• Searing Nightmare when there are 2 or more targets outside Voidform, or 4 or more targets inside Voidform.
• Cast Shadow Crash on cooldown.
• Try to maintain Vampiric Touch on up to 4-5 targets assuming they live long enough.
  Stop casting Vampiric Touch if there are 7 or more targets.
• Stop hard casting Shadow Word: Death when there are 6 or more targets, assuming Mindbender is active.
• Always cast Mind Blast if you have a Dark Thought proc
• Stop hard casting Mind Blast when there are 6 or more targets, assuming Mindbender is active.
• Cast Void Bolt on cd if you need the insanity until 4-5 targets without the Hungering Void talent, or until 6 targets with the Hungering Void talent. It is fine to drop Void Bolt slightly earlier if you feel like you already have enough insanity to chain spam Mind Sear and Searing Nightmare.
• Cast Mind Sear as your filler spell.

Playstyle

You generally don’t want to delay any of your cooldowns, unless doing so will not cause you to lose a cooldown.

Shadow’s cooldown timings always come down to the fight length, or the length of a phase during the fight.

If you are ever unsure on how long a fight is, or how many uses of your cooldowns you will get, the second best option is to use everything together on pull, on cooldown in between and line up everything again on the last use of the fight.

A couple examples to show where you would not just cast things on cooldown.

5 Minute ST:

• 2 Seconds: Fae Guardians
• 3 Seconds: Mindbender
• 6 Seconds: Voidform/Power Infusion
• 1 min 22 Seconds: Mindbender
• 1 min 25 Seconds: Voidform
• 1 min 32 Seconds: Fae Guardians
• 2 min 32 Seconds: Mindbender
• 2 min 35 Seconds: Voidform/Power Infusion
• 3 min 2 Seconds: Fae Guardians
• 3 min 33 Seconds: Mindbender
• 4 min 32 Seconds Fae Guardians
• 4 min 33 Seconds: Mindbender
• 4min 35 Seconds: Voidform/Power Infusion

As you can see on for example Mindbender, casting it on cooldown 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and delaying slightly for other CDs both gives 5 total casts.

6 Minute ST:

• 2 Seconds: Fae Guardians
• 3 Seconds: Mindbender
• 6 Seconds: Voidform/Power Infusion
• 1 min 16 Seconds: Mindbender
• 1 min 20 Seconds: Voidform
• 2 min 20 Seconds: Fae Guardians
• 2 min 31 Seconds: Mindbender
• 2 min 35 Seconds: Voidform/Power Infusion
• 3 min 31 Seconds: Mindbender
• 4 min 0 Seconds: Fae Guardians
• 4 min 1 Seconds: Voidform
• 4 min 31 Seconds: Mindbender
• 5 min 30 Seconds: Fae Guardians
• 5 min 31 Seconds: Mindbender
• 5 min 35 Seconds: Voidform/Power Infusion

As you can see Fae Guardians has a fairly long delay between 1st and second, even if you would’ve casted it on CD. 0, 1.5m, 3, 4.5min. You would still only get 4 total casts, so delaying it for the Bender/VF combo at 2:30ish, to make use of the Mastery bonus from Niya is better.