Mists of Pandaria Classic Shadow Priest Spell Summary

Shadow Priest has a wide arsenal of spells available to them. Knowing your important spells and when they are best suited to be used is a key part of performing well in any environment. The sections below aim to show you your most important spells by each category and give you a brief example of what each spell does.

Buffs are an important part of any party or raid group as they greatly increase your abilities to tank, heal, and deal damage as a whole. Make sure you keep your buffs up at all times to ensure the highest chance of success in whatever content you are in. Unfortunately we have very limited buffs and don't bring any debuffs.

• Power Word: Fortitude Buffs all nearby party and raid members, increasing their Stamina for one hour.
• Shadowform Increasing all allies spell haste by 5%.

Shadow Orbs remains a passive, and are still a staple part of the Shadow gameplay. Now you will generate 1 Shadow Orbs passively every 6 seconds, and an additional orb each time you use either Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death. These Shadow Orbs are consumed to increase the damage of Devouring Plague greatly, giving you a builder-and-spender style of game play to enhance your damage.

These are your core damaging abilities that you will use frequently, either while leveling or at max level.

• Shadow Word: Pain Deals high damage-over-time. No longer gets automatically refreshed, so you will need to manually re-apply this when it falls off. The staple damage-over-time ability of Shadow.
• Vampiric Touch Deals moderate damage-over-time and restores 2% Mana to the Priest with each tick. The second staple damage-over-time ability of Shadow.
• Devouring Plague Consumes all Shadow Orbs to deal damage to the target and apply a damage-over-time debuff. The damage of Devouring Plague increases per Shadow Orbs consumed. With the Solace and Insanity talent, while Devouring Plague is active, damage from your Mind Flay is increased by 33% per orb consumed. Try to always consume 3 Shadow Orbs with this.
• Mind Flay Channels your target, dealing damage every second for three seconds. Slows the targets movement speed by 50%. With the Solace and Insanity talent, while Devouring Plague is active, damage from your Mind Flay is increased by 33% per orb consumed.
• Mind Blast Deals high damage to the target and generates 1 Shadow Orb. This has a low cooldown and deals great damage.
• Shadow Word: Death Can only be used on enemies at or below 20% health; generates 1 Shadow Orbs. If the target does not die from this, the cooldown of Shadow Word: Death will be reset, but the additional use does not grant a Shadow Orbs.
• Mind Spike 1.5 second cast spell that deals split Shadowfrost damage to the target, but removes all of your damage-over-time debuffs from them. This spell is not part of your regular rotation as it removes your DoTs from the target and should only be used on adds with very low health, or on the pull.
• Mind Sear Channel into a target, dealing damage to all enemies around them. This can be cast on either a friendly target or an enemy, just not on yourself. Try to always use this on a friendly melee player, like the tank.

Shadow Priest has limited cooldowns available to them, but luckily Priest has many to offer for the raid. You will use most of your cooldowns for yourself when needed, either to increase damage dealt or reduce your damage taken, but Mists of Pandaria add a couple of new tools to your kit.

• Void Shift 5-minute cooldown. New to Mists of Pandara, this swaps your health with the target. After swapping, if either player is below 25% of their maximum health, they will be healed to that amount. This is great for saving someone who is about to die, as long as you are safe too!
• Vampiric Embrace 3-minute cooldown. Causes you to heal yourself and nearby injured allies for 50% of all single-target Shadow damage dealt. The healing is evenly split between all injured allies and lasts for 15 seconds. Great for helping to top the raid up after major raid-wide damage.
• Dispersion 2-minute cooldown. Reduces your damage taken by 90% and restores 36% of your Mana back to you. Typically you will use this to negate a raid mechanic, but the Mana restoration can also be utilized to keep your Mana high.
• Power Infusion Tier 5 Talent Choice; Can only be used on yourself now; 2-minute cooldown. Grants you a self-haste and mana-reduction buff that also increases your damage dealt.
• Shadowfiend 3-minute cooldown. Deals decent damage and restores 3% of your maximum Mana every time it attacks. You will want to use this on cooldown for the increased damage, as you do not need the Mana it gives.
• Hymn of Hope 6-minute cooldown. This restores 2% Mana to 3 nearby allies with the lowest Mana overall and increases their maximum Mana by 15% temporarily. Ideally you will want to use this cooldown in conjunction with other Mana-restoring cooldowns, such as Shadowfiend, as the temporary 15% increase to maximum Mana amplifies the effectiveness of abilities that restore a percentage of your Mana pool. Try to coordinate this with your other raid members.

In addition to your main spells and cooldowns, you also have many utility spells that can be game-changing when used in the proper scenario. Make sure you understand each of the spells listed below to fully take advantage of your entire spellbook.

• Leap of Faith Pull the target ally towards your location. A great cooldown to save a group member who is in a bad position or help someone catch up if they are falling behind.
• Silence silences the target for 5 seconds and interrupts non-players for 3 seconds. This has very limited uses on bosses, but is great for trash mobs, dungeons, and PvP.
• Psychic Horror consumes all Shadow Orbs, stunning the target for 1 second, increased by an additional 1 second per Shadow Orbs consumed; disarms the target for 8 seconds. Use this on trash with 1 Shadow Orbs to get the 8 second disarm on hard hitting mobs.
• Dispel Magic Removes 1 magical buff from the enemy. Can be useful on trash and certain bosses.
• Mass Dispel An AoE version of Dispel Magic that removes 1 magical debuff from up to 10 friendly targets, and 1 magical buff from up to 10 enemy targets. Can also remove stronger magical buffs that cannot be dispelled in other ways, such as Ice Block and Divine Shield when paired with Glyph of Mass Dispel.
• Fear Ward Makes a friendly target immune to the first fear used against them. Use this whenever you are facing enemies that will use a fear, ideally on the tank or yourself.
• Levitate Allows your target to float above the ground, walk above water, and greatly reduce their falling speed.
• Shackle Undead Shackles an Undead enemy in place, preventing them from moving, attacking, and casting; this crowd control will break if the target takes any damage. Use this if you ever need to crowd control an Undead enemy.
• Fade Temporarily reduces your threat to 0. This is mostly useful when new adds have spawned as they might not have been picked up yet by the tank. Remember that this is temporary and you will regain the threat back after the effect ends.