Shadow Priest DPS Guide — Midnight Season 1

With the launch of Midnight Season 1 there are a lot of new activities and content to experience. We get access to our new Tier Set, three new Raids, and the start of the Mythic+ and PvP seasons. Check out the sections below to learn more.

With the week of March 31st Shadow Priest has gotten more tuning to address our execute and spread damage profiles.

Once you start leveling in Midnight you will start getting access to the new Apex Talents in the spec tree. These points exist separately on the Spec Tree and you can commit up to 4 points into them.

You must put these points in sequentially and the biggest value node is the final point.

• Void Apparitions
• Void Apparitions (2-points)
• Void Apparitions

These talents do more than simply cap the tree with extra power, they actively reshape how we approach the rest of our build. While their baseline functionality may be straightforward, their downstream impact is where the real gameplay shift occurs.

One of the most noticeable effects is how strongly they incentivize investing in talents that enhance Shadowy Apparitions. Due to this synergy we are strongly encouraged to build around maximizing our Shadowy Apparitions generation and damage, which in turn encourages us to take more talents that support this playstyle.

With the full power of all Apex talents you are also introduced to the new gameplay loop with encouraging Idol spawns to proc more Shadowy Apparitions. This becomes one of the core gameplay loops of the spec in Midnight, where you want to generate as many Idol procs as possible to spawn more Shadowy Apparitions.

Due to the size of the changes I have broken it up into sections to make it easier to digest how Shadow Priest is different this patch. Note that in addition to these changes there were also many changes to overall tuning of spells in our kit.

• We had several changes to our core Shadow Priest spells.
  
  • Dark Ascension has been removed and Voidform is now our main cooldown spell. Instead of granting access to Void Bolt it now gives you access to Void Volley with a 15 second cooldown reduced by Haste. This does not refresh our DoTs.
  • Shadowfiend, Mindbender, and Voidwraith are all passive spells.
  • Haunting Shadows is a new talent that gives us sustained DoT extension in AoE.
  • Devouring Plague has been renamed to Shadow Word: Madness.
  • Shadow Crash has been reworked into Tentacle Slam.
  • Invoked Nightmare is a new choice-node against Misery that brings back DoT management gameplay for a large payoff in low target count situations.
  • Shadowy Insight now grants a temporary charge of Mind Blast instead of just resetting a charge.
  • Shadowy Apparitions are no longer triggered by Mind Blast.
• Our Hero Talents have had several baseline updates.
  
  2.6.

  Archon

  • Halo is now exclusive to Archon.
  • Mind Flay: Insanity procs are now exclusive to Archon and only proc from Halo.
  • Concentrated Infusion has been removed.
  • New Talent: Spiritwell - Increases the damage of Shadowy Apparitions.
  • New Talent: Energy Conservation - Power Surge lasts an additional 5 seconds (effectively grants one extra Halo).
  • New Talent: Realized Potential - Shadow Word: Death damage increased its cooldown is reduced.
  • New Talent: Focused Outburst - Void Volley damage increased and its cooldown is reduced.
  • Perfected Form now increases damage during Voidform by 5% (was 20%).

  
  

  2.7.

  Voidweaver

  • Void Torrent is now exclusive to Voidweaver.
  • New Talent: Overwhelming Shadows - Void Torrent deals increased damage.
  • New Talent: Quickened Pulse - Shadow Word: Pain and Entropic Rift deal damage more often.
  • New Talent: Touch of the Void - Voidheart now persists for a short duration after Entropic Rift ends.
  • Depth of Shadows is now Shadowfiend as a spec tree talent. This means we always get Voidwraith in its new passive version.
  • Void Empowerment now grants a charge of Shadowy Insight instead of Mind Devourer.
• Mostly unchanged, we had some small updates to our Utility Spells.
  
  • Silence, Dispersion, and Vampiric Embrace are all baseline spells for Shadow Priests.
  • Void Tendrils - Instead of being its own active ability it now roots enemies when Psychic Scream debuff ends.
  • Shackle Undead is now Shackle Horror and can additionally be used against Aberrations.
• Here are a few other changes that are notable for Shadow Priest.
  
  • Mind Blast is now in the class tree and Shadow Word: Death is no longer granted by default. Shadowfiend was also removed by default and instead added to the spec tree as a proc.
  • Psychic Scream, Desperate Prayer, and Fade have been moved into the Class Tree (were baseline).
  • Void Shift has been removed.
  • Death and Madness is now a choice node in the spec tree against Deathspeaker.
  • Psychic Horror has been removed.