Season of Discovery Shadow Priest DPS Talents and Runes

Your talent build as a Shadow Priest is fairly set in stone. Most of your talent points will be required in the Shadow tree in order to unlock Shadowform which is an absolutely massive DPS increase compared to options outside of the tree. There are also only a few useful options we are able to reach outside of the Shadow tree with the points available, but they are quite flexible. The build listed above opts to spend them in Improved Power Word: Fortitude, but can easily be shifted into Improved Fade or Improved Power Word: Shield if you find yourself consistently grouping with another Priest with the talent.

Gloves — Shadow Word: Death

Pants — Homunculi

Chest — Void Plague

Waist — Mind Spike

Feet — Dispersion

Helm — Eye of the Void

Wrist — Despair

Shadow Word: Death is our default in the glove slot due to the considerable amount of damage it deals. While Penance is quite strong it unfortunately will remove you from Shadowform which is too much of a loss to be practical in a rotation. Mind Sear should be considered when clearing trash and especially on bosses that require a lot of AoE.

Homunculi deal a considerable amount of damage on their own, but more importantly apply Armor reduction, Attack Speed slow and reduce Attack Power of any target they hit. While Shared Pain has very niche uses, it will almost always be better to default to Homunculi. Power Word: Barrier is a strong utility option to consider in a situation where your group is taking a massive burst of damage, but losing out on Homunculi is not only a personal damage loss, but their powerful debuffs can be difficult to replace on the target. Only consider swapping in a situation where you will otherwise not survive.

Void Plague is another incredibly powerful damage over time effect. With Mind Spike becoming the primary filler for Shadow Priest this lessens the value even more of Twisted Faith. With the other options being geared towards healing we will almost always default to Void Plague.

Mind Spike takes a massive role as the primary filler ability in the Shadow Priest rotation and the other two Runes in the waist slot are geared more towards healing than damage.

Dispersion is an absolutely incredible cooldown, not only for mitigating incoming damage, but also regenerating Mana. This ability can also be used while Stunned, Feared and Silenced and removes Snaring effects. Mana is still something you must consider as a Shadow Priest, so this will help greatly with that. The addition of Shadowfiend does make Pain Suppression another viable choice for this slot if you find yourself in a situation where you need to reduce incoming damage on an ally instead of yourself.

Eye of the Void is a great tool both for group utility and soloing. Much like Homunculi it applies a range of useful curses to its target that will limit its ability to deal damage and make it more vulnerable to incoming sources of damage. While Pain and Suffering may end up being a strong option, the utility added by Eye of the Void currently outweighs the slight damage increase in a group setting.

Despair is a great DPS increase that makes your Intellect and Spell Crit stats even more valuable. Giving your damage-over-time effects the ability to crit is an all but entirely passive way to increase the damage you would already be doing by maintaining your Void Plague and Shadow Word: Pain debuffs. Void Zone can prove to be quite useful in fights against large numbers of enemies or sustained AoE, but it is a rather niche choice at this point.

More engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Priest.

The Shadow Priest talent tree is filled with passive effects that bolster not only your Shadow damage dealt, but abilities to reduce your threat and otherwise make you more elusive.

Shadow Weaving is a stacking effect that increases the amount of Shadow Damage a target takes, this is an incredibly strong debuff not only for the Priest but any other Shadow Damage dealer as well, while this is a great increase in personal DPS it really shines in large format content with other Shadow Damage dealers.

Vampiric Embrace apples a debuff to your target causing party members to be healed for 20% of Shadow damage you deal for 1 minute. This debuff has become even more valuable in Season of Discovery with the removal of the debuff cap, allowing Shadow Priests to offer a considerable amount of passive healing to their parties just by applying this debuff and continuing to do their DPS rotation.

Shadow Reach increases the range of your Shadow damaging abilities by 6% per rank this added ranged allows Shadow Priest to avoid dangerous situations while still managing to do their full DPS rotation. Abilities such as Mind Flay are notorious for their incredibly short range.

Shadowform is one of the most iconic abilities in the game. Shadowform causes you to deal 15% additional Shadow damage, reduces incoming Physical damage by 15% and reduces the Mana cost of your Shadow spells by 50%.