World of Warcraft: Forever Shadow Priest Guide

Shadow Priests are a vampiric DPS specialization, healing allies based on how much shadow damage they deal. Shadow specializes in Damage-over-Time effects, or DoTs for short.

While Holy and Discipline Priests follow the way of the Light, Shadow Priests have forsaken the Light, using dark arts to assault their enemies' minds and distort their perceived reality.

In World of Warcraft: Forever, Shadow Priests received some changes, with the main one being Devouring Plague becoming a baseline spell. For talents, Shadowform now reduces the mana cost of Shadow Spells by 50%, Silence is now a proper kick and now requires one talent point, no longer being gated behind Improved Psychic Scream, and Shadow Word: Death can be a proper execute tool with Early Demise.

On this page, we will discuss Shadow Priest's strengths and weaknesses, as well as advice for leveling, gearing, talents, and more.

For leveling, there are a couple of routes you can go. We recommend going towards deep Shadow first, but if you have a deep hatred for running out of mana, you can opt to go into the Disc tree to grab Meditation first.

You can unlock 5 extra talent points by completing Legacy Challenges and unlocking 5 points into the Talented perk.

This is the standard leveling build for Shadow Priest. Let's look at it point-by-point!

1. First, you'll want to grab the two points in Wand Specialization for the big DPS boost.
2. After that, you'll proceed with Spirit Tap, which is your only source of extra mana regen early on.
3. Proceed to take Improved Shadow Word: Pain afterwards for the extra damage.
4. 3 Points into Improved Mind Blast
5. Mind Flay and Improved Mind Flay.
6. 2 points into Improved Mind Blast.
7. 1 point into Shadow Reach
8. Finally time for Vampiric Embrace.
9. 3 points into Dark Inspiration

If you've gotten extra talent points from the legacy system, follow the same path from the 21-point tree, but do the following additions afterwards:

1. +1 point into Dark Inspiration.
2. 2 points into Devouring Contagion.
3. +1 point into Dark Inspiration.
4. +1 point into Shadow Weaving.

The goal here is to rush 13 points into the Discipline tree to unlock Meditation. After that, pick 5 points in Shadow, followed by 3 points in Holy.

1. First, you'll want to grab the two points in Wand Specialization for the big DPS boost.
2. After that, you'll proceed with Spirit Tap, which is your only source of extra mana regen early on.
3. Continue on the Discipline tree until you get 3/3 on Meditation.
4. Then two points in Improved Shadow Word: Pain and 1 into Improved Mind Blast.

If you've gotten extra talent points from the legacy system, follow the same path from the 21-point tree, but do the following additions afterwards:

1. 2 points into Improved Mind Blast.
2. 1 point into Mind Flay.
3. 2 points into Improved Mind Flay.

For Alliance players, the best race is Night Elf, while the best Horde race is Undead.

Night Elf is currently the best race for Shadow Priests. This comes from their new racial Elune's Light which provides a nice burst window for Shadow Priests. Unlike original Classic, there is no direct snapshotting in Forever, meaning stats for DoTs dynamically update as your stats change.

• Priest Exclusive Racials
  • Elune's Grace - Reduces the chance you'll be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 50% for 15 sec or until you are missed 3 times.
  • Starshards - Rains starshards down on the enemy target's head, causing Arcane damage over 6 sec.
• Regular Racials
  • Elune's Light - Increases your critical strike chance with all spells and attacks by 10% for 15 sec.
  • Shadowmeld - Slip into the shadows until you move. Usable in combat, where enemies are discouraged from attacking you, but the cooldown becomes 2 min.
  • Quickness - Increases your Dodge chance by 1% and your movement speed by 2%.
  • Wisp Spirit - Increases your movement speed by 75% while dead.

Another contender for Alliance is Gnome thanks to Eureka!. The final verdict about which race is the best for Alliance players will depend on how gearing and rotation look at Level 60. Both will likely be very close to one another ultimately.

For Horde players, they'll find that the changes to Undead caused the race to become very strong for Shadow Priests. While leveling, the quick regen provided by Cannibalize every 2 minutes has great synergy with Shadow by helping it reduce its downtime. At max level, Touch of the Grave provides a small passive DPS increase.

• Priest Exclusive Racials
  • Dark Sacrifice - Cannibalize your own Health over time to regen Mana. 10 min cooldown.
  • Touch of Weakness - The next melee attack on you causes shadow damage and reduces the attacker's melee attack power for 2 minutes.
• Regular Racials Racials
  • Will of the Forsaken - Instantly removes all Charm, Fear, and Sleep effects. 2 min cooldown.
  • Cannibalize - When activated, regenerates health and mana over time. Must be standing on a Humanoid or Undead corpse. 2 min cooldown.
  • Underwater Breathing - Underwater breath lasts 300% longer than other races.
  • Touch of the Grave - Your spells and attacks have a chance to drain health from the target, up to 5% of your maximum health.

You can learn up to two Primary Professions and every Secondary Profession in WoW: Forever.

Priests traditionally pick Tailoring, which allows you to create your own Cloth Armor to wear, and Enchanting, which allows you to enchant your gear and disenchant leftover equipment from quests, dungeons, or created by Tailoring. This pairing happens because the materials used by Enchanting come mostly from regular mob drops and not from byproducts of other professions.

If you're looking for consumables, you can also pick Alchemy to create potions and elixirs, plus Herbalism to supply its materials.

Regardless of your choice, you can also learn Cooking, Fishing, and First Aid.

While leveling, Mana will be your main power limitation, as spamming spells will quickly drain it. You regenerate mana passively over time as long as you haven't finished a spell cast recently. This is called the 5-Second Rule. Whenever you finish a spell cast in WoW: Forever, your mana regen is paused for 5 seconds.

Some effects like Meditation and Spirit Tap allow you to bypass this restriction partially. However, you'll likely not have Meditation available at low levels, and Spirit Tap is inconsistent in groups, so learning how to manage your mana is important.

The biggest benefit you can have is to try to group as many casts as possible together. For instance, if you're fighting three enemies and want to Shadow Word: Pain all three, DoT all three and then proceed to wand them. This will allow the 5-Second rule to kick in faster than if you were to wait or weave casts on and off.

Note that the 5-Second Rule works based on casts. This means that cancelling a cast or getting interrupted doesn't count towards resetting its timer.

As you familiarize yourself more with Shadow, you'll become more comfortable with the spec's flow, allowing you to know your limits, knowing how many mobs you can or cannot pull, and so on. Shadow is a very methodical spec due to its mana limitation.

1. Buff yourself with Power Word: Fortitude and Inner Fire if missing.
2. Cast Power Word: Shield to prevent damage.
3. Cast Mind Blast to pull the enemy.
4. Cast Devouring Plague.
5. Cast Shadow Word: Pain.
6. Cast Mind Flay - Be mindful with your mana!
7. Use your Wand auto-attack to finish your enemy.

Before learning Mind Flay, you can use Smite in the rotation instead. Start combat by casting Smite, followed by Mind Blast and continue from there. The goal is the same; cast each spell once, then wand to preserve mana.

If you find yourself spending too much mana, consider dropping Devouring Plague or only using it against strong enemies.

If you're feeling adventurous or in a party, you can deal damage to multiple enemies by applying Shadow Word: Pain to multiple targets. Note that this can be extremely mana-intensive, especially if you miss last hits to proc Spirit Tap.

When finishing an enemy, it is always recommended to keep using your wand, unless an emergency is about to happen, like an enemy fleeing into a different enemy. The main reason you'll die while playing as a Priest is running out of mana while still fighting against a healthy foe.

Forever brings a lot of changes for caster gearing in general. Most caster specs, Shadow included, have received nerfs to the baseline damage of their spells. These nerfs have been compensated by increasing the spell coefficient of said spells.

What this means is that spells need more spell power to deal similar damage to their Classic counterparts. However, Blizzard has also increased the amount of spell power found on gear, even very early into the leveling journey. Overall, these changes balance out quite nicely, with little to no impact on your leveling speed, as long as you're getting those upgrades with spell power whenever you can.

Seek pieces of gear with the stats listed below, mainly Spell Power! We will have a more complete list once we learn more about the gear available at Level 30.

In general, our stat priority will follow this base rule while leveling.

1. Spell Power
   • Your main companion while leveling as Shadow will be Spell Power. The higher your spell power, the faster enemies die, the less mana you spend, and the less risk of death.
2. Critical Strike Chance
   • Critical Strike Chance comes next. While not a reliable stat due to its RNG element, a well-timed crit can save your skin or just make the leveling experience faster.
3. Hit Chance
   • Hit Chance is somewhat the opposite of crit. While a higher crit might make your life easier, lower hit might makes your life harder. While fighting enemies at your level, you'll need very little hit chance. If you end up doing more dungeon content that has higher-level enemies, you might want some hit chance pieces though.
4. Intellect
   • Intellect increases your mana pool and slightly increases your Crit Chance. Usually not a stat we will go after, but it will be present on most of our pieces.
5. Stamina
   • Similarly to Intellect, Stamina is not really a stat we seek, but it will be present on most pieces. Stamina increases our health; the more you have, the longer it takes for you to die.
6. Mana Per 5
   • While the value of MP5 drops as your level increases and you gain access to more mana recovery tools, early on it can be nice to have the extra regen. Don't prioritize it over other stats though, as the gain is minimal.

Item Level is always nice to have, but you'll rarely pick an item purely because of its item level. You'll seek items with better stats, which will generally mean items with higher item level, but you'll still want desirable stats on the items you're considering. That is, you won't equip an Agility item just because it has a higher item level.

It is important to highlight that this is based purely on the leveling experience. Our stat priority will change come release when the guides receive updates for Level 60. Hit will take center stage when talking about endgame content, but that isn't an issue during beta unless you're attempting higher-level dungeons while level capped.

As a Shadow Priest, you'll become acquainted with many different flavors of water in your leveling journey. Having the ability to drink to increase your mana regeneration is incredibly powerful. Especially if you're able to use the new Cooking food that grants 5% increased experience for 15 minutes when consumed.

Overall, these are the consumables you'll want to have.

• Water - Sweet Nectar
• Mana Potion - Mana Potion
• DPS Potion - Spellblasting Potion
• Weapon Oil - Lesser Wizard Oil
• Elixir - Lesser Arcane Elixir
• Food - Briny Seafood Stew
• Health Potion - Greater Healing Potion

Potions are always nice-to-have emergency items, allowing you to recover when in a pinch. Mana Potions are useful when you see the situation is starting to look bad, and Health Potions are useful when you're about to die.

More WoW Forever Priest Guides

Holy Priest Healer Stats Shadow Priest Ranged DPS Talents Holy Priest Healer Guide Discipline Priest Healer Leveling Holy Priest Healer Leveling Discipline Priest Healer Talents

More WoW Forever Guides from Other Classes

Enhancement Shaman Melee DPS Guide Fire Mage Ranged DPS Leveling Arms Warrior Melee DPS Stats Combat Rogue Melee DPS Guide Feral Druid Melee DPS and Tank Talents Demonology Warlock Ranged DPS Leveling