Shadow Priest DPS Castle Nathria Raid Guide — Shadowlands 9.0.5
On this page, you will find tips, tricks, and strategies tailored to your Shadow Priest for each boss of the following raid: Castle Nathria. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.0.5.
Introduction
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.
Shadow Priests in Castle Nathria
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.
Talent and Legendary Cheatsheet
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Shriekwing: Talbadar's Stratagem.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Huntsman Altimor: Shadowflame Prism.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Hungering Destroyer: Talbadar's Stratagem.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Artificer Xy'Mox: Talbadar's Stratagem.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Sun King's Salvation: Shadowflame Prism.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Lady Inerva Darkvein: Talbadar's Stratagem.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on The Council of Blood: Call to the Void.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Sludgefist: Talbadar's Stratagem.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Stone Legion Generals: Shadowflame Prism.
We advise to use the following talents on 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 on Sire Denathrius: Talbadar's Stratagem.
Shriekwing
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.
Tips
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.
Huntsman Altimor
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.
Tips
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:
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.
Hungering Destroyer
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.
Tips
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.
Artificer Xy'Mox
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.
Tips
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.
Sun King's Salvation
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.
Tips
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.
Lady Inerva Darkvein
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.
Tips
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.
The Council of Blood
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.
Tips
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.
Sludgefist
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.
Tips
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.
Timings for Necrolord/Venthyr
- 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.
Timings for Night Fae
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.
Timings for Kyrian
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.
Stone Legion Generals
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.
Tips
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.
Sire Denathrius
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.
Tips
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.
Changelog
- 11 Mar. 2021: Add Mindgames tip for Sire Denathrius.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Updated page for 9.0.5 Priest changes.
- 13 Feb. 2021: Added Mythic Generals talent/legendary suggestions.
- 24 Jan. 2021: Updated Night Fae CDs for Sludgefist.
- 15 Jan. 2021: Made more specific talent recommendations on boss fights.
- 11 Jan. 2021: Updated legendary and talent recommendations for several bosses.
- 03 Jan. 2021: Added embedded video link and added quick tip for Shriekwing.
- 28 Dec. 2020: Updated talent suggestions on Sun King and Council of Blood. Added more tips for Generals, Denathrius, and a few Mythic notes.
- 16 Dec. 2020: Reigned in talent options even more, and added more tips for most of the bosses. Changed legendary for Sun King.
- 10 Dec. 2020: Removed Huntsman Psychic Link bug and added cooldown timings for Sludgefist.
- 09 Dec. 2020: Updated Huntsman and Hungering Destroyer suggestions and notes.
- 07 Dec. 2020: Added note about Searing Nightmare usage on Kael'thas; adjusted talent choices.
- 03 Dec. 2020: Updated page for Normal/Heroic launch.
- 01 Dec. 2020: Added placeholder Castle Nathria page.
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This guide has been written by Publik, Shadow Priest theorycrafter and SimC dev at Warcraft Priests. He currently raids in The Exiled on Arthas-US.
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