Shadow Priest DPS Gems, Enchants, and Consumables — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, we list the best gems, enchants, flasks, potions, and food you can get for your Shadow Priest, based on your stat priority. We also give budget alternatives. This page is updated for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.7.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Shadow Priest gems and enchants.
Enchants, Gems and Consumables for Shadow Priest
This section specifically 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.
The video version of this guide is also available if you would like to watch along as I talk about Shadow Priest.
With the change to professions in Dragonflight, most items now have 3 ranks that increase the value of the item at a higher cost with each rank. The guide below will suggest using rank 3 enchants where possible, but I will always list the difference in power should you want to use a lower rank, and if you are curious about how much total DPS percent you would lose. If you just got a piece of gear but know it is not BiS, or you might get something better soon, I suggest using a lower rank if you are on a budget.
Profession Consumable Ranks
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.
Best Gems for 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.
Right now, Gems can be applied to a Helm, Neck, Bracer, Belt, or Ring via the
Storm-Charged Manipulator item from the Great Vault. In addition, there
is a
Jewelcrafting item that 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. Between Haste heavy or the
Mastery heavy one, I would more often lean towards the Haste heavy
Keen Ysemerald. As your character obtains gear, you will get closer to
hitting secondary stat diminishing returns. Hitting these points can easily
mean using alternative gems to get the full value out of the socket.
Onyx Annulet - Primordial Stone Gems
With Patch 10.0.7 there is a new ring, Onyx Annulet. This ring comes with
special sockets that take unique gems. These gems range from various defensive and
offensive effects, but the ring comes with no secondary stats as a downside.
In addition to having no secondary stats, you cannot socket this ring with a regular gem slot.
For most gem combinations the ring is a considerable DPS loss, although with a specific combination
is competitive in single target when fully upgraded.
Speaking on performance, this ring with fully upgraded gems (424) is roughly a 0.3% DPS gain in single target. Anything more than just single target the ring is a considerable DPS loss compared to a 405 crafted ring. Part of this is due to the raw secondaries on the rings, but also considering that the crafted rings come socketed already, adding even more secondary stats.
To state it very clearly, you should only use this ring with the specific gem combinations listed below in SINGLE TARGET. Outside of that you are better off using a 405 or higher crafted ring with Haste/Mastery. In Mythic+ the gain you get from pure single target is typically not worth the loss you would sustain in AoE and is not suggested.
Single Target
Note that this combination of gems is only good when using all three at once,
especially Prophetic Twilight Stone and
Desirous Blood Stone.
AoE:
Generally speaking this is a DPS loss over crafted rings starting at 405, and the single target
setup generally performs the best even as you add targets compared to other gems. If you would like
to use this for Mythic+ I would suggest Freezing Ice Stone or
Storm Infused Stone
for your third stone.
For more information regarding the Onyx Annulet, the Primordial Gemstones, and how to obtain them, check out our dedicated guide for it below.
Best Enchants for Shadow Priest
Slot | Enchantment |
---|---|
Chest | ![]() |
Cloak (non-throughput) | ![]() |
Wrists (non-throughput) | ![]() |
Legs | ![]() |
Ring |
|
Feet (non-throughput) | ![]() |
Weapon |
|
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.
Consumables for Shadow Priest
The following section should cover all the consumables you will 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.
Best Potions for Shadow
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.
Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power (0.20% DPS loss per rank lower)
Elemental Potion of Power (0.15% DPS loss per rank lower)
Residual Neural Channeling Agent - can be used while dead
For Healing Potions, use Refreshing Healing Potion alongside a
Healthstone if you have one at hand. Healthstones and Healing
Potions can be used alongside each other without putting the other
on cooldown.
Best Phials for Shadow
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 will potentially want to have at least a few of each around at a time, depending on the encounter.
Phial Name | When to Use | Loss per Rank Lower | DPS Increase at Rank 3 |
---|---|---|---|
![]() |
If you can stay away from allies. | -0.7% | 6.0% |
![]() |
If you can stay still or would benefit significantly from the speed when you have to move. | -0.7% | 5.9% |
![]() |
Only use if not taking enough damage to break the phial. | -0.5% | 5.4% |
![]() |
While not the best, it can be a nice mix of offensive and defensive power. | -0.3% | 3.5% |
For most parts of PvE content, it will not be easy to use Phial of Charged Isolation
or
Phial of Static Empowerment. If you can get 70%+ proper value out of these in a fight
I recommend using it; otherwise, using @ @ @ WoWPhialofTepidVersatility3 @ @ @ is better. Because
of the amount of movement and stacking in both Raids and Mythic+ for Season 1, you will mostly
be using Phial of Tepid Versatility.
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. You might find
that Glacial Fury sims decent in multi-target, but in practice I think the other
options make more sense.
Best Food for Shadow
For all cases where you want to food buff, you should always use the
Fated Fortune Cookie or the equivalent
Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak.
If you do not have fortune cookies, you can use the stat food instead
with
Sizzling Seafood Medley.
Weapon Runes for Shadow
For your temporary weapon rune, you should always use
Howling Rune on your weapon at all times. Lower ranks of this are
roughly
0.2% worse per rank.
Augment Runes for Shadow
You should aim to use Draconic Augment Rune to get a boost of
Intellect during any progression content.
Changelog
- 23 Mar. 2023: Update Onyx Annulet suggestions from recent hotfixes.
- 22 Mar. 2023: Update Onyx Annulet suggestions from recent info on Prophetic Twilight Stone interactions.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7 and add info about the Onyx Annulet ring.
- 15 Feb. 2023: Clarify gem usage.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Added mention of Haste/Mastery combo gem.
- 21 Dec. 2022: Add extra clarification on when to use Vers phial.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Add note about more Phials that I would not suggest using.
- 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.
- New Potential Evoker Spells Added in Patch 10.1 Build 48661
- Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 Hotfixes: March 23rd
- Primordial Stone Hotfix Changes: March 23rd
- Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 DPS Log Rankings for Vault of the Incarnates: Day 1
- Mythic+ Tier List in Dragonflight Season 1 (Week 15)
- Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 Hotfixes: March 22nd
- Class Set Updates and Clarifications in Patch 10.1: March 22nd
- Dragonflight Patch 10.1 PTR Dev Notes: March 22nd