Shadow Priest DPS Gems, Enchants, and Consumables — The War Within (Season 1)
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 — The War Within (Season 1).
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Shadow Priest gems and enchants.
Best Gems, Enchants, Food, and Flasks for Shadow Priest in The War Within
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.
Best The War Within Gems for Shadow Priest
For The War Within, you will have 2 categories of gems to choose from: Rare or Epic. The Rare gems are either just a single stat 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.
Gems can be applied to a Helm, Bracer, or Belt via the Nerubian Gemweaver item from the Great Vault. In addition, a Jewelcrafting item lets you apply up to 2 sockets to a Neck or Ring item with Magnificent Jeweler's Setting.
For your Epic Gem in Season 1, you should use Culminating Blasphemite (Damage) or Elusive Blasphemite (Utility). This gives you a small incentive to have one of each colored gem socketed.
The reason why two options are listed is because of the low amount of throughput gained from Culminating Blasphemite, particularly early on with low gear. Since this scales our Crit Damage, it will start out being very low value until you get more gear. In full Best-In-Slot, this is roughly a 0.3% DPS increase. On the other hand, you can use Elusive Blasphemite and get up to 10% movement speed, which is a massive increase in our mobility as a Shadow Priest. This is a personal choice, but I would suggest using Elusive early on and only swapping to Culminating when you have full Myth track gear and want the extra damage.
Another caveat with Elusive Blasphemite is that it counts as temporary movement speed. This means it does not stack with effects like Angelic Feather, Body and Soul, or Stampeding Roar.
In total, there are five distinct colors for Rare gems: Emerald (Haste), Ruby (Critical Strike), Onyx (Mastery), Sapphire (Versatility), and Amber (Stamina). As a Shadow Priest, you want to use each of these colors except Amber for fully optimized setups. This, however, is a minor increase as factoring in the Amber is only a 0.2% DPS loss (roughly half the total increase of a normal gem), so if you prefer the Stamina over that amount, go for it! This also gives you an extra 2% move speed if you choose to use Elusive Blasphemite.
Below is the list of optimal gems for each color. Once you are satisfied with your color requirements for your Epic gem, I would suggest stacking either Quick Onyx or Masterful Emerald.
- Emerald: Masterful Emerald
- Ruby: Masterful Ruby or Quick Ruby
- Onyx: Quick Onyx
- Sapphire: Masterful Sapphire or Quick Sapphire
- Amber: Masterful Amber or Quick Amber
Here is an example progression as you work your way towards all 9 sockets:
- Culminating Blasphemite or Elusive Blasphemite
- Masterful Emerald
- Quick Onyx
- Masterful Ruby
- Masterful Sapphire
- OPTION: Masterful Amber
- Masterful Emerald on remaining 3 or 4 sockets
For the final 4 sockets, you should pick either Masterful Emerald if you are lacking on Haste, or Quick Onyx if you have a decent amount. Usually, early on in the gearing process, you will lean towards Haste, and towards the end, you will stack more Mastery. On single target, you will typically notice Mastery being more valuable and on AoE Haste being more valuable.
Rare gems are roughly worth 4000 DPS (0.3%). 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. Simming different gem choices is extremely difficult because of how low of an increase this is, you should take gem sims with a large amount of caution as, typically, gains that are that small when comparing gems are within the margin of error.
Best The War Within Enchants for Shadow Priest
Slot | Enchantment |
---|---|
Chest | Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance |
Cloak (non-throughput) |
|
Wrists (non-throughput) |
|
Legs | Sunset Spellthread |
Ring |
|
Feet (non-throughput) |
|
Weapon |
|
Realistically the gain in single target is quite minor between these so if you only have one strong weapon and want to compete in Mythic+ and Raiding I would use Enchant Weapon - Authority of Radiant Power. You can also use Enchant Weapon - Stonebound Artistry which is typically pretty inexpensive and pretty close behind the preferred options.
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. Mythic+ environments should always prefer Avoidance, especially as you push up to higher keys.
For Ring enchants, you want to use Haste or Mastery, depending on the content you are trying to optimize for and your current gear set. Early on, you might lean towards Haste and then slowly move towards Mastery. In addition, raid builds will typically prefer more Mastery than Haste, and Mythic+ builds will prefer more Haste, so depending on what you are looking to specialize in, that can help make your choice.
Best The War Within Flasks for Shadow Priest
For Season 1, 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 with Potion |
---|---|---|
Flask of Alchemical Chaos | Default Choice. | 6.2% |
|
While not the best, Tempered Flasks can be a more consistent option. Haste and Mastery are the best for damage, but Versatility, in particular, is nice for defensive benefits. | 5.7% |
Due to the changes of value depending on potion, the increases include the value of using potions as well.
Best The War Within Potion for Shadow Priest
Our best combat potion in all content is Tempered Potion.
For Healing Potions, you will mainly use Algari Healing Potion but can also keep Grotesque Vial in case of emergencies.
Best Food for Shadow
For your food buff, you should use some version of the Feast for this season, such as Feast of the Midnight Masquerade. For personal food items, you can use Chippy Tea. You can also use Beledar's Bounty as a cheaper alternative that is easier to make.
Depending on the level of progression content, you can also choose to craft Hearty versions of most food, which gives the exact same effect (despite a few wrong tooltips), but the buff now persists through death. This costs 5 normal food to produce 1 hearty version.
Weapon Runes for Shadow
For your temporary weapon oil, you should use Algari Mana Oil.
Augment Runes for Shadow
You should aim to use Crystallized Augment Rune to get a boost of Intellect during any progression content. This is a gain of about 1% DPS.
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Add note about Hearty Food.
- 06 Sep. 2024: Adjust guidance on Epic Gem to include Elusive Blasphemite.
- 04 Sep. 2024: Add AoE Weapon enchant option.
- 01 Sep. 2024: Add note about Ring Enchants.
- 29 Aug. 2024: Add note about pre-season enchants.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Update enchants and consumables for the launch of The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within pre-patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Update leg enchant suggestion and review for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Extra clarification on gem choices.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Add alternative Boot enchant for more mobility.
- 13 Dec. 2023: Add section about Incandescent Essence.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Update all consumables for Season 3.
- 03 Oct. 2023: Use correct name for the socket item for Season 2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 13 Aug. 2023: Update video link.
- 23 Jul. 2023: Reviewed from the recent hotfixes.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 27 Jun. 2023: Adjust wording on Onyx Annulet do not use statement.
- 01 Jun. 2023: Add note about rough value of a socket.
- 15 May 2023: Rage Phial has been fixed so adjusting back suggestions and adding belt clasp.
- 03 May 2023: Change default Phial back to Vers with Rage being bugged.
- 02 May 2023: Add extra note on Sophic vs. Wafting.
- 01 May 2023: Change suggested Phials and review other enchants for 10.1.0.
- 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.
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This guide has been written by Publik, Shadow Priest theorycrafter and SimC dev at Warcraft Priests.
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