Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation:
The rotation is more of a priority list that changes based on talents and target counts.
- Keep Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain up on your target(s)
- Cast Mindbender on cooldown
- Cast Dark Ascension or Void Eruption
- Pair your Power Infusion and Trinkets with either Dark Ascension or Void Eruption
- Cast Devouring Plague if you have 100 insanity
- Cast Shadow Word: Death if you have Inescapable Torment talented and your Mindbender is active
- Cast Mind Blast Death if you have Inescapable Torment talented and your Mindbender is active
- Cast Void Bolt if you have Void Eruption talented
- Cast Mind Blast if you have two charges.
- Cast Devouring Plague to maximize uptime for your Mastery
- Cast Shadow Word: Death if the target is below 20% health
- Cast Mind Blast
- Cast Mindgames if you have all DoTs on your target, you can delay for a few seconds if Dark Ascension is about to come off cooldown.
- Cast Shadow Crash even if you don't have to reapply DoTs
- Cast Void Torrent if you have all DoTs on your target
- Cast Mind Flay: Insanity if you have Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun talented
- Cast Mind Spike if you do NOT have Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun talented and you have a Surge of Darkness proc.
- Cast Mind Flay: Insanity if you do NOT have Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun talented
- Cast Mind Flay if you have Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun talented
- Cast Mind Spike if DO NOT you have Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun talented
- Cast Shadow Crash, Shadow Word: Death. Divine Star or Shadow Word: Pain if you are moving.
The filler part of the priority list can seem very confusing, and it is. Trying to put it into simpler words would be that Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun change the priority between Mind Spike and Mind Flay. So..
If you HAVE Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun the priority is
Mind Flay: Insanity > Mind Spike with Surge proc > Mind Flay > Mind Spike
And if you DO NOT have Screams of the Void and Idol of C’thun the priority is
Mind Spike with Surge proc > Mind Flay: Insanity > Mind Spike > Mind Flay.
Even though it might seem complicated, do not overthink it. They are just filler spells and should or will not take priority over other spells. If you have to clip a Mind Flay: Insanity or lose a Surge of Darkness proc because you are casting more important spells, that is fine.
Opener:
Opener for Dark Ascension on Single Target:
- Pre-Cast Shadow Crash if you are sure it will hit, otherwise Vampiric Touch
- Cast Mindbender
- Cast Shadow Word: Death if you have Inescapable Torment talented
- Cast 1x Mind Blast if you have Inescapable Torment talented
- Cast Dark Ascension
- Cast Power Infusion and any on-use Trinket you have
- Cast Devouring Plague to apply full Mastery
- Cast Mind Blast to not cap on charges
- Cast Mindgames
- Cast Void Torrent if talented
- Cast Devouring Plague to dump insanity
- Cast Mind Blast
- Follow priority.
Opener for Void Eruption (Voidform):
- Pre-Cast Shadow Crash if you are sure it will hit, otherwise Vampiric Touch
- Cast Void Torrent if you have it talented
- Cast Devouring Plague to dump Insanity and apply full Mastery
- Cast Bender
- Cast Shadow Word: Death if you have Inescapable Torment talented
- Cast 1x Mind Blast if you have Inescapable Torment talented
- Cast Void Eruption
- Cast Power Infusion and any on-use Trinket you have
- Cast Void Bolt
- Cast Mind Blast
- Cast Devouring Plague to dump Insanity
- Cast Mindgames
- Cast Void Bolt
- Follow Priority
2 Target
2 target priority is the same as Single Target priority. The only difference is that you keep Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain up on both targets, and you can use Divine Star or Halo.
Multi Target (3+ targets):
- Keep Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain active on your target(s). Shadow Crash will take care of 8 of those targets, and it is fine to manually dot 3-4 additional targets with Vampiric Touch if you have the time before the mobs are stacked.
- Cast Mindbender on cooldown.
- Cast Dark Ascension or Void Eruption
- Pair your Power Infusion and Trinkets with either Dark Ascension or Void Eruption
- Cast a Mind Sear for a full channel if you have a Mind Devourer proc
- Cast Mind Sear for ONE global if you have 100 Insanity
- Cast Shadow Word: Death if you have Inescapable Torment talented and your Mindbender is active
- Cast Mind Blast Death if you have Inescapable Torment talented and your Mindbender is active
- Cast Void Bolt if you have Void Eruption talented
- Cast Mind Blast if you have 2 charges
- Cast Void Torrent if you have Psychic Link talented (Make sure to dump your Insanity before pressing Void Torrent to not overcap on Insanity)
- Cast Mindgames if you Psychic Link talented
- Cast Mind Sear
- Cast Shadow Word: Death if the target is below 20% health and there are <=4 targets active
- Cast Mind Blast
- Cast Mind Spike if you have >= 1 Surge of Darkness Proc
- Cast Mindgames if there are < 5 targets
- Cast Shadow Crash even if you do not have to refresh your DoTs
- Cast Halo
- Cast Void Torrent if talented and you are <35 Insanity
- Cast Mind Flay
- Cast Shadow Crash, Shadow Word: Death. Divine Star or Shadow Word: Pain if you are moving.
AoE priority is all about Mind Sear, and maximizing how many casts you can get off it. It might look complicated in a big list, but the short version is to:
- Keep your dots active on the majority of your targets for Mastery, damage and Insanity Generation.
- Cast Mind Blast to generate Insanity and for a chance to get a Mind Devourer proc.
- Cast Void Bolt if you are not about to cap on Insanity
- Cast Void Torrent if you have Psychic Link talented
- Cast Mindgames if you have Psychic Link talented
- Use Mind Sear whenever possible, and focus it above all else at 100 insanity or if you have a Mind Devourer proc.
- Drop Shadow Word: Death at <=4 targets
- Drop Mindgames at <=5 targets
- Drop the high-priority on Inescapable Torment (Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death) at <=7 targets
Playstyle
The Shadow Priest playstyle has since Shadowlands turned into your typical builder/spender playstyle. The very simple explanation of Shadow is that you keep your DoTs active on your target(s), use your builder spells (Mind Blast, Void Bolt, Mind Spike, Mind Flay etc.) to generate Insanity and spend your Insanity on Devouring Plague or Mind Sear.
The complexity of Shadow has evolved into knowing what spell to press in what situations. Since we have a lot more spells than your typical spec, it often causes the feeling that you have too many things available at the same time, and you want to use them all. This all comes with experience, and after a while you notice that it all kinda has a flow to it.
Some small tips or rules that might help are.
Global Cooldowns
Every spell's cooldown can be turned into global cooldowns instead.
Every hard-cast spell (Mind Blast, Vampiric Touch, Mind Spike etc.) is 1 global long.
Every channel can be cut into global cooldowns where 2 ticks is always 1 global long.
And when you think about that you can start to see that things always line up correctly. Things like that you can always fit 3 globals in between your Void Bolt casts, or that the cooldown of Mind Blast is X globals long.
Damage Over Time (DoTs)
Another thing a lot of people seem to struggle with is when and how to apply DoTs in multi-target situations, and there are a few rules that can be followed to make this easier.
Rule 1: Try to always apply your DoTs BEFORE going into your cooldown windows. Having everything ready and applied before you cast your Void Eruption will not only stop you from wasting globals inside your cooldowns reapplying dots, it will always keep getting extended by Void Bolt.
The same applies to your Dark Ascension window since the duration of your DoTs is longer than the duration of Dark Ascension, so you do not have to spend time inside your cooldowns reapplying DoTs.
Rule 2: Outside of cooldown windows, try to treat the reapplying of DoTs as your filler instead of Mind Flay / Mind Spike. Weaving in a cast or two of Vampiric Touch in between your Mind Blast casts will not only stop you from losing casts of more important spells. It will also stop you from getting into the situation where you need to reapply every single DoT at the same time. Spreading them out slightly is fine, and will remove the overwhelming feeling of everything just crashing down at the same time.
Also always try to reapply your DoTs inside the pandemic window as much as you can, this reduces the amount of times you have to reapply them during an encounter.
The Pandemic window is <30% of the total duration, which is <6.3s for Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain (if talented into Misery).
Movement
As someone who helps with going over logs a lot, a very normal issue is movement.
And it's not really an easy issue to fix either because it has so much to do with pre-planning and fight knowledge, but a few tips to think about while learning are.
Stutter-stepping is a thing mentioned in a lot of games, and when mentioned in WoW it probably has a very different meaning than when it is used in League of Legends for example.
But the base idea is to use your instant cast spells to move a short distance ahead of time rather than moving all of the distance the second something happens.
As an example, let's say the boss has a mechanic in 30 seconds that requires you to be in a position that is 40y away from where you are. Instead of standing still until the 30 seconds have passed and then just running the 40y, you would start to move slightly every instant cast spell so that when the time comes, you are already there and haven't lost a single cast doing it.
Practice this by just moving slightly every time you cast an instant cast spell, even when you do not have to, and it will become muscle memory after a while.
Spell casts you can use to move during: Devouring Plague, Void Bolt, Shadow Word: Death, Shadow Word: Pain, Divine Star, Shadow Crash, Power Word: Shield etc.
Survivability / Defensives
Shadow is very strong when it comes to surviving constant damage. You have very good self-healing from Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague, Mental Fortitude, the occasional Power Word: Shield, Flash Heal, Vampiric Embrace etc.
For anything else it’s all about using your on-demand damage reductions accordingly. Use your Fade and Desperate Prayer for the smaller instant damage intakes. Fade has a very short cooldown if you talent into it, so use it often.
And then you use your Dispersion for the very very hard hitting mechanics, or if you are close to dying.