Shadow Priest Frequently Asked Questions — Season 4

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 just to 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.

All races are close to one another regarding the DPS benefit they provide you, so the answer is generally just to pick what you like. Perhaps more importantly, look at the benefits each of the races gives you apart from DPS; for example, tools like Stoneform 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.

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.

Note that Maddening Touch and Auspicious Spirits do not have linear scaling as you add targets. You will still get more Insanity, just at a decayed rate.

Generally speaking, the gain is quite insignificant.

If you want to learn more about the rotation and when to DoT which targets, check out our rotation guide below.

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 recasting Mind Flay about halfway through the channel.

Mind Flay has a base channel time of 4.5 seconds, which Haste reduces. The global cooldown is imposed on most spells in the game, preventing you from casting multiple spells simultaneously; the base global cooldown lasts 1.5 seconds, which Haste reduces. As you may be able to tell, the duration of Mind Flay is triple that of the global cooldown. 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, 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 there is no loss to canceling 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 guide below.

Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain both benefit from something called 'Pandemic.' You can refresh both DoTs at 30% or less of their duration without getting penalized. What this essentially does is extend the window you have to refresh your DoTs. As an example, Shadow Word: Pain lasts for 16 seconds (without Misery), 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. Doing so at or below this threshold 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.

With Misery talented Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain both have a duration of 21 seconds, so their pandemic threshold is 6.3 seconds.

Devouring Plague is a unique DoT that benefits from specific 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, even though we spent the Insanity to cast the spell. This should not change your rotation much; just do not feel 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. It will add the time to the next tick to the new DoT so that you do not miss a tick.

If you want to learn more about the rotation, check out our guide below.

If you are struggling to see what has DoTs active on your targets, I highly suggest using the addon Plater. You can pair this with a few scripts to enhance the addon even more:

• Remove the small lasher nameplates in Brackenhide Hollow. Can be extended in other situations if you know the NPC ID.
• Nameplate color changer for Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch.
• Nameplate color changer for Devouring Plague.

When using Mind's Eye you should funnel all casts of Devouring Plague onto a main priority target to maximize AoE damage. While you can also play this way with Distorted Reality you will gain more overall damage if you spread the DoT around when using that talent.

With Distorted Reality, be sure only to swap targets as you get a Mind Devourer proc, or you have enough Insanity to cast the spell so that you are still focusing a target with that DoT active for the mastery bonus.

When talented into Mind Spike it replaces Mind Flay completely. When using Surge of Insanity you now get Mind Spike: Insanity instead.

The gap between these two choices is incredibly small and should be considered preference. In most cases the talents page gives you options for how to swap between the two. Sometimes Mind Flay will even slightly outperform Mind Spike versions.