Shadow Priest Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Shadowlands 9.0.5

After completing enough Torghast runs you will be able to craft Legendary-level gear via through the new Runecarving system. Each power is unique, although several of them harken back to previous Legendary or tier set effects from past World of Warcraft expansions. In this guide we will go over each Legendary for Shadow Priest with full explanations and a final ranking.

For a video walkthrough of our options, check out my overview video where I go over each Legendary.

Any slots that are bolded are, generally speaking, the better version of the item you should craft. Depending on the slot the amount of primary and secondary stats can shift. This typically is not a large difference, but it makes sense to min-max around based on the gear drops that come from the raid since we can control the stats on these items.

Focus	Legendary	Slots	Source
Raiding Single-Target - Non-Night Fae	Talbadar's Stratagem	Legs or Waist	Torghast (The Upper Reaches, Layer 3+)
Raiding Single-Target - Night Fae	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Raiding Multi-Target	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Mythic+	Call to the Void	Hands or Wrists	Castle Nathria (Blood Council)
Torghast and Open World	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side

For Call to the Void, the Wrists can also be smart to craft if you get lucky with a good pair of Gloves early. Unfortunately, there are no Haste/Crit or Haste/Mastery Wrists in dungeons or raiding, so you are relying on getting a high level pair with not the most ideal stats. Crafting either will be pretty equal, but I would lean towards the Wrists as a better short-term upgrade that also is cheaper to craft.

Between Talbadar's Stratagem and Shadowflame Prism, you will be well-setup to handle most situations from Castle Nathria. The question will be what kind of damage pattern you are looking for. Talbadar's is the consistent single-target choice (sometimes spread cleave with Psychic Link), while anything in the 2-5 stacked target range will prefer Shadowflame Prism. Shadowflame Prism can even beat out Talbadar's for certain single-target fights, but this will depend a bit on your Covenant choice — with Shadowflame Prism preferring Night Fae — and fight timings (i.e. does the fight end right before you cast Mindbender). On certain fights that have lots of forced movement the RPPM nature of Call to the Void could make it worthwhile, but that is more of a personal preference.

We do want to give an honorable mention to the Twins of the Sun Priestess Legendary, as it can provide a good amount of benefit for a fellow party member that could end up surpassing the value of other Legendaries for yourself, but that will depend on your confidence with them. This will of course not be a DPS increase for you, and if you end up shifting your timings of using Power Infusion to suit the person you are giving it to it could very well end up being a DPS loss, so be careful.

Since Soul Ash is a non-infinite resource it is important to think about the order you should craft your Legendaries in. This will vary based on the content you do, so use the below lists as a guide.

1. Shadowflame Prism at Rank 1
2. Talbadar's Stratagem at Rank 1
3. Twins of the Sun Priestess at Rank 1 (primarily for Mythic raiding and coordinated Mythic+ groups)
4. Call to the Void at Rank 1
5. Keep each of these three Legendaries upgraded within a rank of each other, following this order.

1. Shadowflame Prism at Rank 1
2. Talbadar's Stratagem at Rank 1; you could craft this before Shadowflame Prism if you are not Night Fae for its better single-target damage.
3. Twins of the Sun Priestess at Rank 1 (primarily for Mythic raiding)
4. Call to the Void at Rank 1
5. Keep each of these three Legendaries upgraded within a rank of each other, following this order.

1. Twins of the Sun Priestess at Rank 1 (primarily for coordinated groups)
2. Call to the Void at Rank 1
3. Shadowflame Prism at Rank 1*
4. Talbadar's Stratagem at Rank 1*
5. Keep each of these three Legendaries upgraded within a rank of each other, following this order.

*Both Shadowflame Prism and Talbadar's Stratagem have some use in dungeons where you opt to use Misery over Searing Nightmare. This is typically just in Theater of Pain or Spires of Ascension.

Due to current tuning and overall usefulness of Legendaries, you should craft Shadowflame Prism first for the best overall performance in raids and mythic+. If you want to optimize purely for raiding, crafting Talbadar's Stratagem is the best play.

If you care about Raiding and Mythic+ you should try and keep Talbadar's Stratagem and Call to the Void within similar ranks of each other, with maybe a slight lean towards Talbadar's Stratagem. Keeping Shadowflame Prism at high ranks is also situationally useful for specific bosses or dungeons. Your fourth Legendary should be Twins of the Sun Priestess in case you ever find a good use for this power with your raid team.

Raiding content as a DPS will constantly throw different situations at you, so when picking an overall raiding Legendary you want something that will be able to handle as many scenarios well as possible.

1. Talbadar's Stratagem gives you a boost to your Mind Blasts on any target if you currently have Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Devouring Plague ticking on a single target at the same time. You will get a buff if all 3 DoTs are active and this will buff your Mind Blast on any target, not just the one with all 3 DoTs. This is typically not something you will find useful, since you would still want to cast into the target with 3 DoTs for full Mastery benefit, but a nice to have in Voidform. In addition to the cool visual, this Legendary is very strong in single-target, but, as you add targets, your uptime on Devouring Plague naturally falls off making this harder to gain maximum benefit. Still, the large increase to your single-target and priority damage is great for most raid encounters, especially for progression.
2. Shadowflame Prism becomes the de facto Legendary for multi-target raiding encounters, and even single-target if you are a Night Fae. The synergy with Mindbender requires you to use this talent when using this Legendary strictly because it is much weaker when used with Shadowfiend. Keep in mind that this Legendary does grant you some passive priority target damage due to the increased Insanity from more Mindbender melees, but typically this is not the strong suit of the Legendary. In addition, whenever fighting mobs that are not stacked you could see weird results with the Legendary, as it does prefer stacked targets as much as possible. It cleaves in a 10-yard range around the target of your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death.
3. Call to the Void provides you with passive Insanity generation that procs based on your current channeled Mind Flay or Mind Sear. So, if you are channeling Mind Flay and get a proc, you will spawn a Void Tendril that will cast Mind Flay on your current target for passive damage and 3 Insanity gain per tick. Alternatively, getting a proc while channeling Mind Sear will cause a Void Lasher to channel Mind Sear at your current target that will do passive damage and generate 1 Insanity per tick per target. Since this proc reacts based on your spell, it becomes extremely versatile in almost every raid fight, assuming you are casting your channeled spells. It is not anything super impressive, but it will provide nice passive gains.
4. Twins of the Sun Priestess is a bit of a wild-card pickup, but if you find yourself not getting great benefit from the previous Legendaries, you could use this to augment another player's cooldowns. This really is not a DPS increase to you, but could be a net gain for the party. With a Power Unto Others Conduit, you do get a bit of a cooldown reduction, but that is only a gain if the person you are casting it on does not mind getting the cast de-synced after subsequent uses.
5. Lastly, as a purely last resort option, you can use Norgannon's Sagacity to help with heavy movement points in the fight. Technically, if you play perfectly, you should never need this, and use your instant cast spells to move to where you need to be ahead of time, but this could be good if you are learning a fight for the first time and want to keep casting.

Mythic+ typically leans towards wanting more AoE damage, but since you will still spend about half of your time on bosses and Prideful mobs, having single-target is still quite valuable in terms of overall dungeon damage.

1. Call to the Void is equally suited for Mythic+ as it is for raids, being a fine passive addition for trash packs as well as still being good on bosses. The main reason you will see this used is due to it pairing so strongly with Searing Nightmare, making its constant Mind Sear casting grant you enough Insanity to spam Searing Nightmare at lower target counts.
2. Twins of the Sun Priestess will be the default Legendary for non-pug groups. The power of coordinated Power Infusion cannot be overstated enough inside of Mythic+. The level of coordination required for this is typically not worth it in pug groups, but that will be your call to make.
3. Shadowflame Prism is a 5-target cleave Legendary that can do okay damage on up to 5 stacked targets, but even then to get full value out of this Legendary you are missing out on Mind Sear and Searing Nightmare casts. Because of this, you typically will not use this Legendary for any dungeons where you run Searing Nightmare, but it can be great when you choose to use Misery. Being able to weave this into your Searing Nightmare rotation could still produce good results if done well though, especially on lower target counts. In addition, for Explosive weeks this Legendary is optimal as you will be getting massive Shadow Word: Death resets from the Explosives.
4. Talbadar's Stratagem is the last Legendary to consider for Mythic+ as it does have good synergy on certain Fortified keys with Psychic Link. You typically will not opt to use this build on Tyrannical weeks since losing out on boss damage is generally not a good idea. This build is even better as a Night Fae, and can be very competitive for dungeons like Theater of Pain or Spires of Ascension where you typically do not run Searing Nightmare.

If you plan on running Torghast with a group of people, consider referring to the Mythic+ recommendations if your group is large enough that you have to heal for most of the time.

Torghast Legendaries are in a similar boat as Mythic+ for us; depending on how you pull, the value will swing quite widely and there really is not a "best" Legendary for this reason.

1. Stable Phantasma Lure is a unique Legendary that augments your Torghast run by increasing the Torghast-only currency you get inside each run. The amount will vary, but could potentially add up to be enough to let you buy an additional Anima Power making it extremely powerful compared to our other options for Legendaries.
2. Shadowflame Prism is a decent enough Legendary to run in Torghast if you are looking for a cooldown-based Legendary that has good uptime for the run.
3. Talbadar's Stratagem can be a great Legendary to swap to on Broker floors if you get a few Mind Blast powers to augment the build.