Shadow Priest DPS Gems, Enchants, and Consumables — Dragonflight 10.2

This section covers your character's optimal gems, enchants, food, and flasks. To get a more detailed rundown of the different stats for Shadow Priest, please visit our dedicated Stats page.

As part of Dragonflight's overhaul of Professions, many crafted items and consumables may have multiple ranks of quality that impact their effects. For consumables, there are potentially three ranks of an item that may be used, with Rank 3 items (shown as item level 415 in-game and with three gold stars) providing the most powerful bonuses. However, higher quality consumables will generally be more expensive and not always necessary depending on the content you are doing. You should be willing to use whatever rank of an item is most within your budget, and save higher-quality consumables for content where you will really need the extra boost!

If you would like to learn more about quality ranks on profession items, or the overhaul to professions as a whole, please see our overview below.

The video version of this guide is also available if you would like to watch along as I talk about Shadow Priest.

In Dragonflight, you will have 2 categories of gems to choose from: Rare or Epic. The Rare gems are either just a single stat like in previous expansions or a combination of 2 secondary stats on one gem. The Epic gems are significantly stronger, but you can only use one at a time for your entire character.

In Season 3, Gems can be applied to a Helm, Neck, Bracer, Belt, or Ring via the Nature's Cradle item from the Great Vault. In addition, a Jewelcrafting item lets you apply up to 3 sockets to a neck item with Tiered Medallion Setting.

• Epic Gem: Fierce Illimited Diamond or Skillful Illimited Diamond
• Rare Combination Gem: Keen Ysemerald or Keen Neltharite

For your rare gem, I strongly encourage simming your character to see which of the 2 makes the most sense. You always want to use the double-stat gems over single-stat ones since they give more secondaries in total.

With the increased item level added in Season 3, we also get more secondary stats. This means it will be easier to hit the diminishing return thresholds, particularly for Haste and Mastery. What this will mean is as you get closer to optimal gear setups, you will naturally start moving gems out of Haste and Mastery and into more Critical Strike and Versatility. Which gem to use will depend on your exact stat setup; use the following list as the top ones I would consider.

Note that Haste DR starts at 30%, and Mastery DR starts at 19%.

• Below both DR thresholds: Keen Ysemerald or Keen Neltharite
• Above Haste DR threshold only: Sensei's Neltharite or Zen Neltharite
• Above Mastery DR threshold only: Crafty Ysemerald or Energized Ysemerald
• Above both DR thresholds: Radiant Alexstraszite or Radiant Malygite

Make sure to check out the stats page to understand these thresholds in more detail.

Rare gems are roughly worth 800 DPS. If you are considering replacing an item with a socket, keep this in mind. As you get more gear, this could be even higher, but this is a rough number you can use. I would suggest simming the differences on Raidbots to know if something is worth adding or dropping a socket for.

Slot	Enchantment
Helm	Incandescent Essence
Chest	Enchant Chest - Waking Stats
Cloak (non-throughput)	Enchant Cloak - Graceful Avoidance Enchant Cloak - Regenerative Leech
Wrists (non-throughput)	Enchant Bracer - Devotion of Avoidance Enchant Bracer - Devotion of Leech
Waist (non-throughput)	Shadowed Belt Clasp
Legs	Frozen Spellthread
Ring	Enchant Ring - Devotion of Haste (see note below) Enchant Ring - Devotion of Mastery (see note below)
Feet (non-throughput)	Enchant Boots - Watcher's Loam
Weapon	Enchant Weapon - Sophic Devotion Enchant Weapon - Wafting Devotion

For weapon enchants, you will start to see Enchant Weapon - Wafting Devotion perform quite well in Season 3. Shadow Priests just love stacking haste and depending on your gear, you might see this outperform Enchant Weapon - Sophic Devotion.

When picking Cloak and Wrist enchants I would suggest defaulting to Avoidance versions but keep in mind that not every fight will have mechanics that can be avoided. For those difficult progression fights consider swapping to Leech.

Similarly to gems, make sure that as you hit diminishing return thresholds for Haste and/or Mastery, you consider changing your ring enchants to compensate. Use the chart below for a rough guide, but always sim this to know for sure what to run:

1. Below 30-35% haste? Use Haste Enchants.
2. Below 19-20% mastery? Use Mastery Enchants.
3. At or above both thresholds? Consider using Critical Strike or Versatility Enchants.

Enchants and gems will change based on your current gear; make sure you sim yourself regularly to know what to use for the various situations.

The following section should cover all the consumables you want to purchase before doing content on your Shadow Priest. Note that something new with the Dragonflight is that you no longer need to have Tomes to change your talents. With the talent rework, you can freely change your talents anywhere without these consumables.

In Dragonflight, several potions could make sense depending on the content you are doing. Use the following list as your guide; the higher, the better.

1. Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power
2. Elemental Potion of Power
3. Residual Neural Channeling Agent - can be used while dead

For Healing Potions, you have a few options starting with Season 3. As an Alchemist, I strongly suggest using Potion of Withering Dreams since you can spec into reducing the negative component to make this considerably stronger. If you are not an Alchemist or not specced to reduce the Toxic damage, you should default to the Dreamwalker's Healing Potion. Healthstones and Healing Potions can be used alongside each other without putting the other on cooldown.

1. Potion of Withering Dreams - Alchemist Only
2. Dreamwalker's Healing Potion - General Use

In Dragonflight, several flasks or phials could make sense depending on the content you are doing. Use the following table as your guide; the higher in the table, the more DPS. While each phial has a different top-end DPS, I think there are scenarios where you may want to have at least a few of each around at a time, depending on the encounter.

Phial Name	When to Use	DPS Increase at Rank 3
Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage	Only use if you get at least 70% uptime.	3.8% (70% uptime) 5.2% (95% uptime)
Phial of Tepid Versatility	While not the best, it can be a nice mix of offensive and defensive power without any downside.	3.5%

If you can maintain 70%+ uptime of Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage, this Phial will generally outperform Phial of Tepid Versatility offensively. Uptime is not the best metric to gauge this, but it is generally okay to look at the value. We mostly care about uptime during cooldowns; as long as you have it there, it is probably worth using. I would suggest keeping a supply of both in case you want the extra defensive value from the Vers flask, or you can push for more damage.

For most parts of PvE content, it will not be easy to use Phial of Charged Isolation or Phial of Static Empowerment. For this reason, they are not suggested.

Note that Phial of Elemental Chaos and Phial of Glacial Fury are both worse than the options above, and I would not consider using them as a Shadow Priest unless they are considerably cheaper and you are on a budget.

Starting in Season 3, you should consider using alternative food choices instead of relying on Fated Fortune Cookie or the equivalent Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak.

As we have gotten more gear, we are generally seeing the secondary stat food scaling better than the Intellect versions. There are many good options here similar to gems; use this as a rough guide, but be sure to sim the differences if you are looking to min/max.

• Below both DR thresholds: Sizzling Seafood Medley
• Above Haste DR threshold only: Thousandbone Tongueslicer or Great Cerulean Sea
• Above Mastery DR threshold only: Feisty Fish Sticks or Aromatic Seafood Platter
• Above both DR thresholds: Revenge, Served Cold

These options are roughly 0.2% better than the Intellect options. Certainly, not a lot of damage if you prefer to save money and just use your group's feast.

For your temporary weapon rune, you should use Howling Rune, Buzzing Rune, or Hissing Rune, depending on your stats. I would suggest simming both options at your current gear to see which is better, but for most people you can use this rough guide.

• Below both DR thresholds: Howling Rune
• Above Haste DR threshold only: Hissing Rune
• Above Mastery DR threshold only: Howling Rune
• Above both DR thresholds: Buzzing Rune

You should aim to use Draconic Augment Rune to get a boost of Intellect during any progression content. You can also purchase a permanent version Dreambound Augment Rune via the Dream Wardens Rank 18 Renown in the Emerald Dream. In terms of value, they give the exact same amount of Intellect (87 for 1 hour).