Shadow Priest Frequently Asked Questions — Dragonflight 10.0.7

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.