Shadow Priest DPS Castle Nathria Raid Guide — Shadowlands 9.0.5

In this section, you will find information and guidance for Shadow Priests on each boss individually in the Castle Nathria raid. These are not complete encounter guides, but rather provide specific tips for doing the bosses as a Shadow Priest.

All recommendations are progression based tips and will not necessarily be the best for an overall DPS ranking.

For a video walkthrough of Castle Nathria, check out my overview video where I go over each boss with specific talent choices and tips.

Going into Castle Nathria, I expect Shadow to be performing exceptionally well. Not only is our damage on the high end of the spectrum if played correctly, we also offer unique utilities and have a great toolkit to handle several different types of raid encounters.

The Legendary Power recommendations below are going to suggest using Talbadar's Stratagem, Shadowflame Prism, or Call to the Void for basically everything. As an optional replacement, you can use Twins of the Sun Priestess and cast Power Infusion on a top-performing DPS to squeeze out maximum raid performance. Just know that this is inherently more risky as you are relying on that person to perform as well as yourself to get full value, which could be tricky if that person gets targeted by a mechanic or two. Also keep in mind some classes scale better than others with Power Infusion and Haste, so stay tuned for an update on this page that showcases who could potentially benefit most from this choice. If you can pull this off effectively, Twins could easily be used on almost every fight for the biggest raid DPS increase.

Between Talbadar's Stratagem, Shadowflame Prism, or Call to the Void, the choice will come down to a few different things. The biggest difference will be the item level of that specific piece, typically favoring the higher item level Legendary. At equal item level, you will see more consistent results with Talbadar's Stratagem, but Eternal Call to the Void can be more versatile and offer "RNG protection" if you get targeted by mechanics or get lucky with procs. Shadowflame Prism will be a great choice for bosses with more than one target you care about damaging, specifically 2-5 targets. Note that any time you use this Legendary you should absolutely use Mindbender. In addition, as a member of the Night Fae, using Shadowflame Prism for single-target fights could beat out Talbadar's Stratagem. As a Night Fae any time I suggest Talbadar's below feel free to substitute with Shadowflame Prism. Non-Night Fae Priests could also do this, just note that it is slightly weaker.

Anytime we show a recommendation for BOTH Auspicious Spirits and Shadow Crash that will typically mean that using one vs. the other will come down to your Conduits. Generally speaking if you have a Haunting Apparitions Conduit, Auspicious Spirits is the better talent to take. That being said, if you take Shadow Crash and miss even a single cast, it would have probably been better for you to take Auspicious Spirits in that case.

Generally speaking we will show Twist of Fate for most encounters, especially the single-target heavy ones. If you are struggling to re-dot effectively, Misery could make sense as you learn the fight, but generally will perform worse.

We advise you to use the following talents against Shriekwing.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Twist of Fate
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits
• Level 45: Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Shriekwing: Talbadar's Stratagem.

You can use Door of Shadows or Soulshape to easily line of sight quickly to keep DPSing for as long as possible.

During intermission phases or when you are line of sighting the boss, be sure to cast Power Word: Shield on yourself and allies to gain Insanity via Hallucinations.

On Mythic difficulty, I would realistically not change a thing for this boss, since everything remains relatively the same.

For more information, please refer to our Shriekwing guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Huntsman Altimor.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Twist of Fate (or Misery, situationally)
• Level 35: Psychic Horror (or Mind Bomb, situationally)
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits or Psychic Link
• Level 45: Mindbender or Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Huntsman Altimor: Shadowflame Prism.

Between Misery and Twist of Fate, this will primarily come down to your ability to re-DoT effectively. Because of the shared health pool between the boss and the add there is no effective padding, so we can get very large benefit out of Twist of Fate uptime throughout the encounter. However, if taking this talent means you personally struggle to maintain DoTs on these two targets, you should use Misery until you feel more comfortable.

Auspicious Spirits will be a solid default here for overall damage, but if you have Talbadar's Stratagem, you can use Psychic Link instead. Psychic Link does not provide any increase when there is only one target out in the last phase, but is great for the other parts of the fight with this Legendary.

On this boss you have two builds that can perform relatively well, mainly the choice between Talbadar's Stratagem or Shadowflame Prism. Shadowflame will thrive any time you have stacked/cleave targets as it will do massive damage up to 5 targets on an effectively 1-minute cooldown when taking Mindbender. Alternatively you can opt for better priority target and boss damage by using Talbadar's Stratagem which can also give you the option of using Psychic Link for spread target damage. Either build will be competitive; it just depends on the damage pattern you prefer.

Surrender to Madness could be very strong if you can use it on the adds in the fight, but generally speaking I found that the timings of this were not worth this choice. Hungering Void gives great priority damage, and since the add and the boss share health this is actually duplicated to both mobs effectively making it my clear favorite.

To maximize damage, you should make sure you have a few seconds heads up before a Shadow of Barghast add is gripped in for killing. With this heads up, you can bank up Insanity or save cooldowns to nuke down the add ASAP.

In terms of CC for the Destabilize mechanic, here are the following spells you can use as a priest to keep them locked down:

• Psychic Scream;
• Psychic Horror;
• Mind Bomb.

As a Necrolord, make sure you get effective casts of Unholy Nova by hitting the boss with the add for max damage.

There are no specific changes to this fight for Mythic difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Huntsman Altimor guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Hungering Destroyer.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Twist of Fate
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits
• Level 45: Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Hungering Destroyer: Talbadar's Stratagem.

This fight is fairly straightforward as a Shadow Priest, and will mostly come down to executing your single-target rotation and using your instant cast abilities to move effectively without losing active uptime.

Keep in mind when Consume cast is coming, since you will be running away from this you want to make sure to save cooldowns till after this so your burst does not get interrupted. Depending on incoming damage you can cast some spells, but typically this is not a good time to use cooldowns.

Interestingly enough this boss heavily favors Mindgames usage since this boss has some self-healing throughout the fight that is converted into extra damage. Specifically the boss leeches health from the tanks on each melee swing, which counts towards Mindgames reversal. So while you have Mindgames up on the boss it will continue to deal damage to it up to the shield amount as the boss tries to heal itself but instead damages itself.

For more information, please refer to our Hungering Destroyer guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Artificer Xy'Mox.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Twist of Fate
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits
• Level 45: Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Artificer Xy'Mox: Talbadar's Stratagem.

Do not be deceived by the adds here, this is a single-target encounter if your raid does the mechanics correctly, so you should build for that specifically. If your raiders get trapped too often that will just snowball the fight anyways.

You can use Door of Shadows to easily "blink" out of the Edge of Annihilation at the last second as a Venthyr.

Mythic specific tips will be out with the release of the Mythic raid encounters.

For more information, please refer to our Artificer Xy'Mox guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Sun King's Salvation.

• Level 15: Death and Madness (or Fortress of the Mind, situationally)
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Misery (or Searing Nightmare, situationally)
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Shadow Crash (or Auspicious Spirits, situationally)
• Level 45: Mindbender or Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void or Surrender to Madness

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Sun King's Salvation: Shadowflame Prism.

The Kael'thas encounter is the biggest AoE fight we have in the raid, however the boss does come out during intermission phases, which are mostly single-target. I would cautiously swap to AoE/cleave talents as needed; keeping some single-target choices might be the better balance needed to kill the boss. If your raid is struggling with adds Death and Madness, Searing Nightmare, Shadow Crash, and Surrender to Madness will make quick work of each wave of adds. That being said for progression as a Shadow Priest, you probably want to go for more priority target damage rather than massive stacked burst AoE, which is why I prefer using Misery and Void Torrent.

From my testing, Searing Nightmare will be very strategy dependent, and likely not worth it for most progression kills. The adds typically are not clumped for very long, and you will lose considerable single-target and spread-target damage. Only use this talent if your strategy needs more stacked burst AoE.

If you want to be more AoE-focused or have specific burst windows for Kael'thas shields you can opt to use Shadowflame Prism with Mindbender. Alternatively, if this playstyle is not what you need you can stay more single target and instead opt to use Twins of the Sun Priestess to help with raid damage.

Utilizing Unholy Nova will be challenging on this boss. Since the ability does snapshot square root scaling, you need each add it hits to live for the full duration to get maximum damage. If you use this ability and a mob dies right away you will have lost considerable damage on the remaining adds.

Mythic specific tips will be out with the release of the Mythic raid encounters.

For more information, please refer to our Sun King's Salvation guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Lady Inerva Darkvein.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Twist of Fate (or Misery, situationally)
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits (or Shadow Crash, situationally)
• Level 45: Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void or Surrender to Madness

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Lady Inerva Darkvein: Talbadar's Stratagem.

Depending on fight timings here, Surrender to Madness is going to be very competitive. You can ideally get Voidform for the opener and then each wave of adds with this talent if timed correctly, which will be a great boost in damage. This is typically only good for the higher difficulty encounters since they spawn more adds.

Depending on how good your group is at stacking adds, you could see some poor results with Shadow Crash since you need them to be perfectly stacked. For this reason it might be better to use Auspicious Spirits as your raid gets used to the fight.

Mythic specific tips will be out with the release of the Mythic raid encounters.

For more information, please refer to our Lady Inerva Darkvein guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against The Council of Blood.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind or Death and Madness
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Twist of Fate or Misery
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits
• Level 45: Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void

We advise you to use the following Legendary against The Council of Blood: Call to the Void.

You will probably see better usage out of Misery compared to Twist of Fate, but this will largely depend on your uptime of Twist outside of typical execute and how important it is to DoT incoming adds. In addition, Shadow Crash is going to mostly be pad damage, and with Auspicious Spirits you will gain better priority target damage generally speaking on this boss. Regardless of your talent choice here, it IS worth it to cast Vampiric Touch on the off-target bosses for a priority target increase, but not Shadow Word: Pain.

Talbadar's Stratagem can also be a good choice for this boss if you find yourself getting unlucky with Call to the Void procs. Due to the heavy amount of DoTing we are doing, you might find yourself missing your Devouring Plague windows to get the bonus from Talbadar's, which is why we suggest trying Eternal Call to the Void.

Depending on where your raid team is struggling with this boss, you can choose to build more single-target than multi-target since the last phase will just be a single boss.

Unholy Nova will be extremely hard to time in this boss. Since the bosses reset their health when one of them dies, you only want your Unholy Nova to hit exactly 1 boss each cast, otherwise you are padding damage that will be healed AND dealing less priority target damage due to the square root scaling.

On Mythic, I would suggest trying out Death and Madness, as the amount of adds that are out really starts to favor this talent over Fortress of the Mind.

For more information, please refer to our The Council of Blood guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Sludgefist.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Twist of Fate
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits or Shadow Crash
• Level 45: Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Sludgefist: Talbadar's Stratagem.

Be mindful of the Destructive Impact vulnerability phase and hold as many cooldowns as possible for this part of the encounter. It only lasts for 12s, so ideally you are using Void Eruption just before the phase and you already have all your setup DoTs active when he phases.

If your group is struggling to finish the boss off, I would suggest trying out using Twins of the Sun Priestess. This can be a big push of damage for your group depending on who you cast it on. On Mythic difficulty this Legendary is my first choice for progression. Alternatively, you can experiment with using Shadowflame Prism and Mindbender to get an extra bit of burst for each and every pillar if timed correctly.

Due to the vulnerability phase, you might get more mileage out of Shadow Crash here, since you can easily save the cooldown to line up for this phase to get a small boost over Auspicious Spirits.

Below are rough guidelines you can use to time your cooldowns with each Destructive Impact vulnerability phase. If you are using Empyreal Ordnance, you should follow the Kyrian timing chart below to line up with the trinket's buff.

• 0:00 — Use all cooldowns on pull. This includes Void Eruption, Power Infusion, and Shadowfiend. Because the first vulnerability happens quickly and sometimes a bit sooner than 1 minute you should use Unholy Nova earlier than you would otherwise, just before your first Voidform.
• 0:30 — Towards the end of your Voidform you will need to use Void Torrent as it ends almost exactly when the cooldown comes up to be able to fit this extra cast in but still have Void Torrent for the first vulnerability window. If you are getting chained into the boss you should skip this.
• 1:00 — Use Void Torrent/ Shadow Crash, should happen naturally on CD. Save your 2nd cast of Mindgames/ Unholy Nova for this first vulnerability window.
• 2:10 — Use your 2nd Void Eruption cast of the fight along with Power Infusion, Void Torrent, Shadow Crash, and Mindgames/ Unholy Nova.
• 3:20 — This is the second small window, where you will just use Void Torrent/ Shadow Crash and Mindgames/ Unholy Nova.
• 4:30 — This is the big push as the boss will be enraged by this point. If your group chooses to Bloodlust here you should use your potion. The rest of your cooldowns should all be up, including Void Eruption, Power Infusion, Shadowfiend, and Mindgames/ Unholy Nova. This is basically a re-hashed opener, and you should have everything ready to blast the boss.

The below optimizes total cooldowns, and de-syncs Power Infusion. You can choose to move this around based on your lust timings, these are done so that you get maximum casts of the ability while still having it for the last pillar. Many folks will choose to use Twins of the Sun Priestess for this encounter in Mythic, so this will offer the most raid DPS for most characters.

• 0:00 — Cast Power Infusion on pull, this is done to maximize uses but still get it for the last pillar.
• 0:38 — Use Empyreal Ordnance if using for this encounter to have up for 1st pillar.
• 0:50 — Cast Shadowfiend into Void Eruption so that it is running while the pillar is active.
• 0:55 — Cast your first Fae Guardians right before the first pillar.
• ~2:00 — Cast your second Void Eruption before the second pillar.
• ~2:00 — Use your second Power Infusion. As long as you use this before ~2:20 things should sync.
• 2:25 — Cast your second Fae Guardians right after the second pillar (on cooldown basically).
• ~3:10 — Cast your third Void Eruption before the third pillar.
• 3:55 — Cast your third Fae Guardians when it comes back off cooldown.
• 4:05 — Use your second cast of Empyreal Ordnance.
• 4:25 — Cast your second Shadowfiend into your fourth Void Eruption for the last pillar of the fight. Depending on Fae Guardians timings this might vary a bit, but you should get this before the last pillar. You will also use your third Power Infusion cast for this pillar.

If you are using Empyreal Ordnance make sure you use it about 15 seconds before the boss will phase to make sure you account for travel time of the trinket so that you have the Intellect buff for the entire vulnerability phase.

• 0:00 — Save opening cooldowns, you are going to blast for the first expose. Only use things that will be up around 0:50 or so.
• ~0:50-0:52 — Start your Void Eruption cooldown to ramp into the first vulnerability phase. Ideally this starts 8 seconds before he phases.
• 1:00 — Use your Boon of the Ascended toward the end of the Voidform but still synced with the first vulnerability.
• 2:10 — 2nd Vulnerability phase will just have smaller cooldowns, with Void Eruption coming up towards the end of this burn. Make sure you use Void Eruption as soon as it comes up, so you have it for the last vulnerability phase.
• 3:20 — This is the second small window, where you will just use Void Torrent/ Shadow Crash as available.
• 4:30 — This is the big push as the boss will be enraged by this point. If your group chooses to Bloodlust here you should use your potion. The rest of your cooldowns should all be up, including Void Eruption, Power Infusion, Shadowfiend, and Boon of the Ascended. This is basically a re-hashed opener, and you should have everything ready to blast the boss.

These cooldown timings are following the suggested Sludgefist strategy that suggests using Bloodlust on pull or for the last Vulnerability phase where he gains his enrage. If you use different timings you might want to shake things up slightly or move your potion to correspond with Bloodlust, since you will only get one potion.

Since the vulnerability window lasts just 12 seconds, it is very important that you are already setup by the time the boss has started his charge. This means you should pre-cast your cooldowns so that they are already up and ticking by the time he has gone vulnerable. Save on hit abilities like Mindgames or Void Torrent to use during this window. This is basically the only time where banking up 100 Insanity and double casting Devouring Plague can net you positive results. Also feel free to use Void Torrent inside of Voidform, to get even more burst damage during this window.

For more information, please refer to our Sludgefist guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Stone Legion Generals.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind or Death and Madness
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Misery (or Twist of Fate, situationally)
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits or Shadow Crash (or Psychic Link, situationally)
• Level 45: Mindbender or Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void or Surrender to Madness

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Stone Legion Generals: Shadowflame Prism.

This fight has a lot of add management, so depending on your raid's group AoE it might be better to build for more priority target damage so that the correct adds are dying at the right time, rather then all of them phasing at once. This fight becomes very straightforward so play it like you do normally and you will do just fine. Make sure to keep good track of when your group will be phasing; the last thing you want to do is pop cooldowns as you are about to phase into the intermission, since the bosses take almost 100% reduced damage during this phase. For this reason, it is typically better to hold cooldowns during intermission for when the boss(es) become active again.

Shadowflame Prism and Mindbender will do wonders for this boss, especially on Mythic where you are somewhat regularly fighting around 5 targets. With this Legendary I would suggest using Shadow Crash or Auspicious Spirits. The other build for this fight typically uses Talbadar's Stratagem and sometimes Psychic Link and/or Fortress of the Mind for big Mind Blast cleave. Both of these builds are specifically great in Mythic and may produce slightly wonky results for Heroic. There, I would lean towards using the Shadowflame build.

Your use of Mind Flay vs. Mind Sear will mostly come down to if you need the priority damage or not, so keep this in mind as the adds come out.

On Mythic difficulty regardless of which build you choose to go you will need to actively tweak your build based on what your group needs. If every raider follows what the top logs do for that fight you will struggle to kill the boss. Feel free to experiment with the talent options given above to tune for the damage your group needs from you. This fight is about dealing damage at the right times, not dealing the most overall damage.

For more information, please refer to our Stone Legion Generals guide.

We advise you to use the following talents against Sire Denathrius.

• Level 15: Fortress of the Mind
• Level 25: No specific recommendation
• Level 30: Misery (situational options: Twist of Fate or Searing Nightmare)
• Level 35: No specific recommendation
• Level 40: Auspicious Spirits or Shadow Crash
• Level 45: Mindbender or Void Torrent
• Level 50: Hungering Void

We advise you to use the following Legendary against Sire Denathrius: Talbadar's Stratagem.

This is a multi-phase fight with just about every different kind of mechanic available. The first phase has lots of stacked low health mobs that will benefit from Shadow Crash or Searing Nightmare, but the rest of the fight is single-target or spread multi-target where Misery and Auspicious Spirits will shine better. Pick the build that makes the most sense for your raid or the part you are currently progressing.

Similar to Stone Legion Generals you have some options on how you want to build for this encounter. You can opt to stick to the 2-5 target optimized Shadowflame Prism and Mindbender build for great add damage in phase 1/2, or you can stick with Talbadar's Stratagem for maximum boss damage in phase 3. Alternatively you can also use Call to the Void as a progression choice to be somewhat viable and decent in every phase and great for handling forced movement mechanics. In Mythic, you will likely be optimizing strictly for boss damage in phase 3, since that is our strong suit as a Shadow Priest — especially when talented into Twist of Fate.

As a Venthyr you will want to try and save Mindgames in phase one for each Insatiable Hunger add cast. This is the red line that people soak, so typically safe to cast this as the lines go out so the debuff is up before the adds complete the charge/cast. This hit does significantly more damage than the initial hit of Mindgames, and is well worth optimizing around. Since this does not happen outside of phase 1 unfortunately this only works in that phase.

For Phase One, your primary objective will likely be clean add damage as phasing him too quickly will cause problems. This is where Shadow Crash can come in handy for the add waves (or even Searing Nightmare if you want to pad), but it is generally not worth it for the rest of the fight. For those of you that are Venthyr you can save Mindgames until just after the adds spawn, to get extra damage from the healing reversal part of that spell.

Between Void Torrent and Mindbender, this choice will mostly come down to if you are able to pull off using Void Torrent effectively. With the heavy amount of movement and targets in phases one and two this can be challenging to use efficiently. For this reason, if you find yourself struggling, you can go with Mindbender for the passive Insanity gain every minute. Just be careful that you do not target swap too often with Mindbender; it is very slow to adjust to new targets and could lose lots of melee uptime in phase two as you shift in and out of the portals. This target swapping problem is mostly solved by using Shadowflame Prism, which is a great Legendary choice for this encounter.

For Phase Two, you immediately see why Shadow Crash starts to look bad, as it makes damaging all enemies slightly more difficult, especially with Remoria and the boss teleporting throughout the phase. In terms of progression, you probably should use Auspicious Spirits for this very reason. This also plays into why Misery can be strong here to save you several globals per set of adds so that you can focus on other things going on in the fight.

For more information, please refer to our Sire Denathrius guide.