Forever Shadow Priest Ranged DPS 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.

With Beta being limited to Level 20, we'll focus this section on this level bracket.

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

Gnome is the new option for Priest in WoW Forever, and it is already the strongest choice. Gnome provides Priests with two exclusive racials, and two generic racials.

• Exclusive Racials
  • Confounding Flash is an excellent panic button, disorienting up to 5 enemies.
  • Contingency Plan acts like a tiny Guardian Spirit, which priests have in other WoW versions.
• Exclusive Racials
  • Escape Artist
  • Eureka
  • Expansive Mind
  • Engineering Specialization

As higher levels unlock, Night Elf might become the best option due to Elune's Light.

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

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

If you decide to pick Gnome as your race, Engineering has a good synergy with their Engineering Specialization racial passive. Mining then becomes a good second choice, as it generates a lot of the resources used by Engineering.

If you're not rolling Gnome, 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 Tailoring 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.

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. For the final two points, there aren't a lot of good options:
   • You can pick Twilight Focus if you find yourself playing mostly solo.
   • Take Blackout if you're playing in a PvP environment.
   • Shadow Reach can be taken for some extra range.

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

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.

There isn't much information present yet on what will be available at Level 20 due to all the changes happening with itemization. As Beta progresses, this section will be updated to better reflect the current trends and discoveries.

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

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.

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.

Hit Chance is somewhat the opposite of crit. While a higher crit might make your life easier, lower hit might make 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 pieces.

Intellect increases your mana pool and slightly increases your Crit Chance. Usually not a stat we will go after, but it will be present in most of our pieces.

Similar to Intellect, Stamina is not really a stat we seek, but it will be present in most pieces. Stamina increases our health. The more you have, the longer it takes for you to die.

While the value of Mana per 5 drops as your level increases and you gain access to mana recovery tools, early on it can be nice to have the extra regen, but don't prioritize it over other stats 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. You'll still want desirable stats on the items being considered. That is, you won't equip an Agility item just because it is a higher item level.

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
• Mana Potion
• Food
• Health 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

Discipline Priest Healer GuideHoly Priest Healer Guide

More WoW Forever Guides from Other Classes

Destruction Warlock Ranged DPS GuideFeral Druid Melee DPS and Tank GuideProtection Warrior Tank GuideCombat Rogue Melee DPS GuideFrost Mage Ranged DPS GuideRetribution Paladin Melee DPS Guide