Shadow Priest PvP Guide for Mists of Pandaria Classic

Shadow Priest is a strong damage dealer in PvP that offers great utility both offensively and defensively. Unlike other damage dealing classes, you will need to focus greatly on this utility in PvP situations to maximize the full potential of this class.

Strengths

• High sustained damage through damage-over-time and procs.
• Has powerful off-healing and utility outside of damage.
• Can split damage between several enemies very easily.
• Able to swap kill targets quickly, catching enemies off-guard.

Weaknesses

• Vulnerable to interrupts, can get locked out of most of your damage.
• Easy to focus, has limited defensive cooldowns.

Recommended option: Psyfiend.

This tier of talents offers some form of crowd control, making all three choices solid for PvP content.

• Void Tendrils — Summons Shadowy tendrils out of the ground, rooting up to 5 nearby enemies; the tendrils can be killed to break the root. Use this when facing melee-heavy teams.
• Psyfiend — Summons a Psyfiend that stands in place for 10 seconds and fears nearby enemies every 2 seconds. Has low health and can be killed.
• Dominate Mind — Charms an enemy, controlling their actions for a limited time. This is useful for 2v2 arenas, especially when teamed with a crowd controll focused class, such as Mage.

Recommended option: Angelic Feather.

This tier of talents offers movement speed utility buffs, allowing you to speed up yourself and your allies.

• Body and Soul — Players targeted by Power Word: Shield or Leap of Faith by 60% for 4 seconds.
• Angelic Feather — Place a feather at the targeted area; allies that touch the feather will gather it, gaining 80% increased movement speed for 6 seconds. Stores up to 3 charges. This talent is overpowered and should always be taken.
• Phantasm — When you use Fade, you remove all movement impairing effects from yourself, and your movement speed is unhindered for 5 seconds.

Recommended option: From Darkness, Comes Light.

This tier offers upgrades to existing abilities, replacing them with more powerful versions.

• From Darkness, Comes Light — Periodic damage from your Vampiric Touch has a 20% chance to cause your next Mind Spike to not consume your damage-over-time effects, become instant cast, cost no mana, and deal 50% additional damage; stores up to 2 charges max. Allows you to add Mind Spike to your rotation, greatly improving your damage output.
• Mindbender — Improves your Shadowfiend, increasing its damage output and mana return.
• Solace and Insanity — Improves Mind Flays damage against targets debuffed with Devouring Plague by 33% per Shadow Orb used.

Recommended option: Spectral Guise.

This tier of talents offers personal defensive options, improving your survivability greatly.

• Desperate Prayer — Instantly heals yourself for 30% of your max health.
• Spectral Guise — Temporarily enter stealth, leaving behind a copy of your charater at the location where you vanished. While stealthed, any action taken with end the stealth, or if the copy of your character is directly attacked 3 times. This is useful to escape certain casts, create a little distance, confuse your enemies where you are going, and get some sneaky Psychic Screams off by sneaking into the enemies backlines.
• Angelic Bulwark — Anytime a damaging attack brings you below 30% health, you gain an absorption shield equal to 20% of your max health; this can only occur once every 90 seconds. Use this instead if you are being focused often.

Recommended option: Divine Insight.

This tier of talents focuses on further improving your damage capabilities.

• Twist of Fate — After damaging or healing a target below 35% health, you deal 15% increased damage and healing for 10 seconds.
• Power Infusion — Infuses the Priest with power, increasing spell haste by 20%, all damage by 5%, and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%; lasts 20 seconds.
• Divine Insight — Periodic damage from your Shadow Word: Pain has a 5% chance to reset the cooldown on Mind Blast and cause your next Mind Blast within 12 seconds to be instant cast and cost no mana. Greatly improves your damage, this is a mandatory talent.

Recommended option: Divine Star.

This tier of talents will give you a new rotational ability, which can be used either defensively or offensively.

• Cascade — Launches a Holy bolt at the targeted ally or enemy which grows in power as it travels, dealing more damage or healing the further that it traveled. It will then split, forking out to hit additional allies and enemies.
• Divine Star — Fires a Divine Star in front of you, causing damage to all enemies and healing to all allies within its path. After reaching its destination it will return to you, also dealing damage and healing to all targets in its path. Gives you a solid instant cast spell to add to your toolkit.
• Halo — Creates a ring of Holy energy around you that quickly expands and grows in power, dealing damage to enemies and healing allies in the area.

Glyphs were changed in a major way during Mists of Pandaria. Primal Glyphs have been removed, whilst minor glyphs have been changed to be entirely cosmentic changes, offering no combat improvements. For this reason, we will only be recommending Major Glyphs, as they still offer in-combat power; you are free to use any Minor Glyphs that you desire with this build!

• Glyph of Dispersion — While this only reduces Dispersions cooldown by 15 seconds, it still remains one of your best glyph choices for PvP.
• Glyph of Prayer of Mending — Improves Prayer of Mending healing, greatly improving your ability to off-heal.
• Glyph of Inner Fire — Increases armor bonus of Inner Fire. This is a great defensive glyph choice when facing melee DPS.
• Glyph of Inner Sanctum — Reduces Spell damage taken by 6% while Inner Fire is active; use this if facing casters.
• Glyph of Fade — Adds a 10% damage reduction to Fade, turning it into a strong defensive cooldown. You will want to use this glyph over Glyph of Prayer of Mending in combination with either Glyph of Inner Fire or Glyph of Inner Sanctum for extra defensiveness.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Death — This gets an honorable mention as it can be used when going against heavy crowd-control compositions to break out of certain crowd-controll spells, such as Polymorph.

If you have not already, we recommend reading the Spells Summary page first. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this section. In PvP you will need to react and adapt to different situations, meaning you will not always follow the recommended rotation below.

1. Shadow Word: Pain — Apply and maintain this on all targets right away, including pets. This will give you as many procs of Divine Insight as possible.
2. Vampiric Touch — Apply and maintain this on all targets, including pets. This will give you you as many procs of From Darkness, Comes Light as possible.
3. Devouring Plague — Apply to your main kill target if you have 3 Shadow Orbs.
4. Mind Blast — Use whenever you have a Divine Insight proc. If you already have 3 Shadow Orbs, look to use a spender before using Mind Blast.
5. Mind Spike — Use whenever you have a From Darkness, Comes Light proc.
6. Mind Flay — Use as a filler on your main kill target that has Devouring Plague, as this will increase Mind Flays damage.

While healing is not your main objective as Shadow, it will be required from time-to-time. Knowing when you need to heal and help prevent deaths is one of the main benefits of having a Shadow Priest as not many classes offer strong healing spells in emergencies.

• Prayer of Mending Whenever the person with this buff takes damage, Prayer of Mending will heal them for a moderate amount and then bounce to another nearby ally. This spell is great when there is constant damage happening to multiple allies.
• Flash Heal A quick, single-target heal useful for healing individual targets that are not missing much health, or need a quick heal.
• Greater Heal A slow cast, single-target heal. The long cast time is made up by a very large heal, great for healing players missing high amounts of health if you will not be interrupted.
• Binding Heal Heals you and a friendly ally for a small amount after a quick cast. Useful if you and an ally are both low health and require a quick heal.
• Renew Place a heal-over-time on an ally, healing them every few seconds while the buff is active. Great to keep up on players that will constantly be taking damage.
• Power Word: Shield Buffs an ally with a shield which absorbs damage and prevents spell push-back while it lasts. Also places Weakened Soul on the target, preventing them from being shielded again for a short duration.

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. Great for when you are being focused down.
• 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.

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 When paired with Glyph of Fade, this will give you a 10% damage reduction while active.

If you are looking to maximize the potential of your Shadow Priest in Mists of Pandaria PvP, these are the recommended professions:

1. Tailoring — is a great choice for the Lightweave Embroidery unique cloak enchant.
2. Jewelcrafting — Gives you a large stat boost with two unique gems, Brilliant Serpent's Eye.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for a Shadow Priest in PvP.

When it comes to evaluating Shadow Priest's place within the Arena, we have created a number of guides devoted to listing a variety of popular team compositions which you can find below.