Shadow Priest Dragonflight Leveling Guide From 1 to 60 (Dragonflight 10.1)

When it comes to gearing out your Shadow Priest, you should always take the piece with a higher Intellect value, typically referenced by the item level of that piece. Intellect is far and away our better stat and will make everything you do hit harder and kill mobs quicker.

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Your first talent point unlocks at Level 10.

I suggest using the following talent build for leveling your Shadow Priest:

Starting at Level 1, you only have Smite, so just spam this for now.

1. At level 6 you learn Power Word: Fortitude; make sure you always keep this buff up on yourself and your allies.
2. Shadowform is the most iconic Shadow Priest ability thematically; ensure this is always active for that free damage increase.
3. Keep up Shadow Word: Pain on as many targets as possible.
4. Keep up Vampiric Touch on as many targets as possible.
5. Use Shadow Crash to do some AoE damage.
6. Use Shadow Crash to quickly apply DoTs to targets and do some AoE damage.
7. With Misery talented use Vampiric Touch to refresh and apply both DoTs on as many targets as possible.
8. Use Shadowfiend as a cooldown when fighting harder enemies.
9. Use Mindbender as a cooldown when fighting harder enemies.
10. Use Dark Ascension (or Void Eruption if you prefer) as your main cooldown when fighting harder enemies.
11. Use Power Infusion as a cooldown when fighting harder enemies.
12. Use Devouring Plague to spend Insanity for damaging a single target.
13. Use Void Torrent on cooldown.
14. Use Shadow Word: Death on any target below 20% health.
15. Use Mind Blast on cooldown.
16. Use Mindgames on cooldown.
17. Use Divine Star or Halo on cooldown.
18. Use Mind Spike as your filler spell.
19. Use Mind Flay as your filler spell.
20. Use Smite as a filler spell.

In addition to these active abilities, you will also gain some passive abilities that will impact how you play as you level up:

• At level 10, you also gain our baseline Mastery ability, Mastery: Shadow Weaving. This does not change your playstyle much; just know that you will deal more damage to targets if they have your DoTs are active on them.
• Shadowy Apparitions spawns out a ghostly version of yourself every time you cast Mind Blast, Devouring Plague, or Void Bolt if that target has Vampiric Touch active. This drastically increases the value of Vampiric Touch, so make sure you DoT up most mobs with it unless they will only live a few short seconds. Mind Sear ticks also have a chance to spawn these ghosts, as well as Shadow Word: Pain if you decide to talent into Tormented Spirits.
• Shadowy Insight causes your main DoT spell to occasionally give you a free cast of Mind Blast.

In this section, we will go over each of the War Mode/PvP talents you should consider using while leveling up.

1. Psyfiend will do a sizable chunk of damage on a relatively low cooldown.
2. For the first few levels, you can also use Mind Trauma and Strength of Soul, although I would suggest swapping these at Level 23.
3. Driven to Madness is a great option for open-world.
4. Catharsis is a great option for solo leveling.

Congratulations on reaching Level 70! Now that you have hit Level 70, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level.