Shadow Priest Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Shadowlands 9.1

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 survival guide where I go over what you need to know for Legendaries in Patch 9.1. A full walkthrough will be released soon.

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. Starting with Patch 9.1 the slots you pick are greatly dependent on the Domination Socket items that you will naturally want to use for the extra power. Since this pieces are specifically on the Head, Shoulder, Chest, Wrist, and Waist slots for Cloth users you want to always craft your Legendary in slots that do not have corresponding Domination slot pieces.

Focus	Legendary	Slots	Source
Raiding Single-Target — Kyrian	Talbadar's Stratagem	Legs or Waist	Torghast (The Upper Reaches, Layer 3+)
Raiding Single-Target — Night Fae or Venthyr	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Raiding Single-Target — Necrolord	Pallid Command	Feet or Finger	Renown Level 48
Raiding Multi-Target	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Mythic+	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Torghast and Open World	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side

In Patch 9.1 when you get access to three Potency Conduit slots you will then use Shadowflame Prism for almost everything. The third slot allows you to slot in Rabid Shadows which significantly improves Shadowflame Prism over the would-be alternative of Talbadar's Stratagem and the less-powerful Mind Devourer Conduit. The only times where Shadowflame Prism starts to lag behind is specifically as a Kyrian or Necrolord player on single-target. As Kyrian you simply do not have enough spare globals to make the best use out of Shadowflame Prism in this scenario and Necrolords get a strong single-target Legendary with Pallid Command.

NOTE: as Kyrian on single-target with Talbadar's Stratagem you should use Courageous Ascension as your third Potency Conduit, not Mind Devourer.

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.

Aside from other balancing changes for Patch 9.1 we also received 4 brand new Legendaries to craft, one specific for each Covenant ability. This means while there are 4 new ones, you will only ever be able to use one of these based on your current Covenant choice. This section will go over each one and their viability to keep you up to date.

• Spheres' Harmony — essentially makes Kyrian Shadow Priests sync their cooldowns with Power Infusion naturally. Can be good for single-target but will generally speaking still be behind Shadowflame Prism. Where this Legendary can shine is for specific situations with cooldown timing that are only possible with this reduction. It is not great generically but cooldown reduction can be very powerful for short encounters especially.
• Pallid Command — For the most part this is a set-and-forget Legendary that will spawn a pet to deal damage for you. This is an extremely powerful single-target Legendary and even surpasses damage other Covenants can do on single-target. Going Necrolord for this Legendary might be advantageous considering this benefit, but there are lots of other factors to keep in mind such as Soulbinds and Covenant spells like Soulshape vs. Fleshcraft. See the Covenant section for more detail.
• Bwonsamdi's Pact — This Legendary can be weird to read, but essentially this just duplicates the power of a specific Faerie from Fae Guardians. You can change which one is duplicated throughout the duration, but if using this you are likely going to want to duplicate the Benevolent Faerie for the extra CDR. Unfortunately this does not give much power, as it only affects Voidform's cooldown and not Power Infusion as well. De-syncing these cooldowns too much just stops being beneficial. This will likely not see any common uses in PvE scenarios.
• Shadow Word: Manipulation — This Legendary is also quite strange, and will likely not see use in PvE. In a nutshell this gives you a burst of Critical Strike after one of the Mindgames "shields" expire, meaning that if the damage or healing absorb shields are consumed you will get a percentage of Critical Strike based on how long the debuff had left on that target. While this certainly could give you more burst, it is entirely out of your control if and when this breaks leading to inconsistent damage and a potentially wasted Legendary effect.

Since Soul Ash and Soul Cinders are non-infinite resources 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 lists below as a guide.

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

1. Pallid Command at Rank 1 (Necrolord only)
2. Talbadar's Stratagem at Rank 1 (Kyrian only)
3. Shadowflame Prism at Rank 1
4. Twins of the Sun Priestess at Rank 1 (primarily for Mythic raiding)
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. Shadowflame Prism at Rank 1*
3. Talbadar's Stratagem at Rank 1*
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.

*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+. Outside of this, for coordinated players I highly suggest keeping Twins of the Sun Priestess at a high enough rank for progression encounters that can make good use of it.

To fully optimize for various damage patterns for specific situations you can also keep Talbadar's Stratagem and Call to the Void ranked up as well in case you want these patterns of damage. These will rarely compete with Shadowflame Prism in overall damage, but sometimes you will want something where losing overall damage is okay depending on the trade-offs.

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. Shadowflame Prism becomes the de facto Legendary for multi-target raiding encounters, and even single-target if you are a Night Fae or Venthyr. 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.
2. Pallid Command has monstrous single-target damage potential, especially on single-target when using Heirmir's Arsenal: Marrowed Gemstone with the Bonesmith Heirmir soulbind. It is definitely something you should have and use as a Necrolord for single-target encounters.
3. 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.
4. 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 is 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. With the extra Conduit slot this Legendary is no longer better than Shadowflame Prism in overall single-target, unless you are Kyrian. That being said, if you are looking for more consistent single-target damage rather than the 1-minute cycles of Shadowflame Prism this could be a good Legendary to have in your back pocket.

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. 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.
2. Shadowflame Prism is a 5-target cleave Legendary that can do great damage on up to 5 stacked targets, but in doing so you are missing out on Mind Sear and Searing Nightmare casts. Because of this you will need to think carefully if this Legendary is the correct choice on a dungeon-by-dungeon basis, particularly based on your talent choice ( Misery vs Searing Nightmare). 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.
3. Call to the Void is a decent passive Legendary option that will simply respond to what you are currently doing. It procs Mind Flay tentacles in single-target and Mind Sear tentacles in AoE, naturally granting you more passive Insanity depending on the situation. Where this Legendary falls short is particularly in high-target-count situations where you are generating Insanity faster than you can spend it. That being said, it can still produce good results when paired with Searing Nightmare if you cannot make the most out of Shadowflame Prism.
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.