Shadow Priest Frequently Asked Questions — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, we go over several of the most frequently asked questions regarding Shadow Priest in World of Warcraft — Battle for Azeroth Dragonflight 10.0.7. This will be updated as more common repeated questions surface over the course of the expansion.
Is There a Haste Cap for Shadow Priest?
No, there is not a set amount of Haste that you need to get as Shadow for the spec to function, or after which the stat becomes incredibly devalued. The same goes for Critical Strike, Mastery and Versatility. You will generally want to aim to just get as much Haste rating as possible, however, past 30% Haste, Critical Strike, or Versatility these stats do start to take on Diminishing Return values. This starts at 19% for Mastery.
You can learn more about the stat priority on our dedicated stats page.
Which Race is Best for Shadow Priest?
All races are close to one another in terms of the DPS benefit they
provide you, so the answer to this is generally to just pick what you like.
Perhaps more importantly, look at the benefits each of the races give you apart
from DPS; for example, tools like Rocket Jump or
Shadowmeld do
not directly increase your DPS, but the utility they provide you can be way
more useful to the group than any tiny DPS that another race could offer.
For more detail about racials as a Shadow Priest, check out my video guide.
Does Applying DoTs to Secondary Targets Increase Single-Target DPS?
This is highly dependent on talents and generally only something to consider
when you want to get more funnel damage with things like
Idol of Yogg-Saron,
Idol of N'Zoth if they are stacked, or Insanity gained from
Auspicious Spirits
or
Maddening Touch. DoTing extra targets does not get you more procs of
Shadowy Insight.
If you want to learn more about the rotation and when to DoT which targets check out our rotation guide below.
Should I Always Finish a Mind Flay Cast?
No, you should not. Mind Flay is regarded as a filler spell, which
means it is only used when nothing else more important can be cast. You
typically want to start thinking about re-casting Mind Flay about
halfway through the channel to make sure that if you get a
Dark Thoughts proc you have enough of a cast left to fit in that
global cooldown.
Mind Flay has a base channel time of 4.5 seconds, which is reduced
by Haste. The global cooldown is imposed on most spells in the game and it
prevents you from casting multiple spells at the same time; the base global
cooldown lasts 1.5 seconds, which is reduced by Haste. As you may be able to
tell, the duration of Mind Flay is triple that of the global cooldown, and so
as a rule of thumb, you can say that Mind Flay has a duration equal to 3 global
cooldowns, or 3 globals as they are popularly referred to. They both scale with
Haste in the same way as well, so no matter your Haste, Mind Flay will always
last exactly 3 global cooldowns worth of time.
The above is relevant because Mind Flay deals its damage over 6
ticks, throughout its duration. Since we have established that Mind
Flay does its damage over 3 globals, we can state that Mind Flay does 2 ticks
of damage per global. This means that there is no loss to cancelling Mind Flay
early, as long as you do it after every global and not during a
global.
Note that when channeling Mind Flay: Insanity you should aim to fully
channel this as you would
Void Torrent.
If you want to learn more about the rotation check out our rotation guide below.
When Should I Refresh My DoTs?
Vampiric Touch and
Shadow Word: Pain both benefit from
something called 'Pandemic'. This means that you can refresh both DoTs
when they are at 30% or less of their duration without getting penalized for
this. What this essentially does is extend the window you have to refresh your
DoTs. As an example, Shadow Word: Pain lasts for 16 seconds, so its Pandemic is
4.8 seconds. In other words, the best time to refresh Shadow Word: Pain is when
it has 4.8 or fewer seconds left and if you do so at or below this threshold, it
will add the remaining time to the original duration. If you were to refresh
Shadow Word: Pain when it has 3 seconds left, that would leave the new duration
at 19 seconds as an example.
Devouring Plague is a very unique DoT but does benefit from certain
refresh mechanics.
Devouring Plague rolls over damage when refreshed,
meaning that whatever damage the DoT has left when you refresh the DoT gets
carried over and added as a multiplier to the new DoT's ticks. As such
refreshing has no "cost" associated with it, even though we spent the insanity
to cast the spell. This should not change your rotation much, just do
not feel like you have to wait for the current DoT to finish before recasting
it.
You still want to try and refresh around 1s remaining to get maximum
DoT uptime for our
Mastery: Shadow Weaving.
If you want to learn more about the rotation check out our rotation guide below.
Should I use Mind Sear for Mythic+?
While you might see some high key pushers run builds without
Mind Sear note that this is not suggested for maximizing
overall damage. These players are making a choice to drop overall
damage to pickup other points that do not change your pattern
drastically. Mind Sear is better than
Devouring Plague
starting at 3 targets, and drastically outperforms starting at 4 targets.
If you want to learn more about the rotation check out our rotation guide below.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Add new question for 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Priest Guides
Guides from Other Classes
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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