Shadow Priest DPS Mythic+ Tips — Season 4

Shadow's playstyle in AoE is very similar to single target, relying on interactions from those single target abilities for cleave damage through Psychic Link. The trick will be managing DoTs with Shadow Crash or supplementing that with your manual casts of Vampiric Touch. Without this, you deal substantially less Aoe damage.

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

The dungeon pool for Dragonflight Season 4 includes the following dungeons:

• Algeth'ar Academy
• Brackenhide Hollow
• Halls of Infusion
• Neltharus
• Ruby Life Pools
• The Azure Vault
• The Nokhud Offensive
• Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr

To learn more about what talents to pick to counter specific parts of the dungeon, check out the sections below.

To help out in gearing this season, be sure to check out the gear guide.

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. We recommend importing these strings directly into your in-game talent tree for easy swapping! These builds will be the baseline for every scenario in Season 4. Check out the section below to go into detail on which builds make the most sense for you.

Below is rough guidance; use the details below to see the full picture.

• Standard Build: Triple Idol Build with Void Eruption
• Starter Build/Smaller Pulls: Idol of N'Zoth + Idol of C'Thun Build with Dark Ascension
• Max Boss Damage: Single Target + Shadow Crash Build

On Tyrannical weeks, I would suggest starting out with the Idol of N'Zoth + Idol of C'Thun build until you get into higher key levels, then transitioning to the Triple Idol setup.

If you find that you want to index more into a single target, then utilize the Single Target + Shadow Crash build. This setup will give you about 2-5% extra damage in single target (depending on other build) at the cost of AoE damage by dropping Idol of N'Zoth.

On Fortified weeks, either the Idol of N'Zoth + Idol of C'Thun build or the Triple Idol setup should both give good results. As the key level goes up, you will naturally see the Triple Idol setup perform better.

With our dungeon builds, you have a few filler points you can shift around in either of the base builds to tweak your build for what you are looking to specialize in. With any build, spend four of your talent points in any combination of the below options. Use this as a rough guide. Options at the top of the list will generally net you more DPS.

• Mind Devourer - Overall
• Maddening Touch - AoE (better with Mind's Eye)
• Dark Evangelism - AoE
• Mental Decay - Single Target
• Phantasmal Pathogen - Single Target (with Mind's Eye) or Overall (with Distorted Reality)
• Mental Fortitude - Defensive
• Silence - Utility (only in coordinated groups should you consider dropping this)

For flex points the big takeaway is that Distorted Reality does well with Phantasmal Pathogen since we are spreading Devouring Plague with that Talent. This season Mind Devourer in particular does well in all builds due to the extra modifier on Devouring Plague. In mass AoE, you might find Maddening Touch or even Dark Evangelism to give more damage when running Mind's Eye in particular, however, Phantasmal Pathogen is still massive damage for single target.

If you start pushing high-level keystones, I would highly suggest using Mental Fortitude for enhanced survivability. The damage loss to run this talent is typically worth the extra defensive power gain if you also need Silence.

Most builds listed on this page can be run with either Mind Flay or Mind Spike. Generally speaking Mind Spike is the preferred choice, but worst-case scenario, is only about 1% ahead of Mind Flay variants.

Due to this small difference you can more or less consider this choice preference, although I would personally default to Mind Spike with Dark Ascension and Mind Flay with Void Eruption.

Distorted Reality and Mind's Eye are both competitive options inside of Mythic+. Distorted Reality makes it worth to spread Devouring Plague in AoE for more overall damage, while Mind's Eye gives you more single-target priority damage during AoE encounters.

This means that both choices are viable for any Mythic+ key, regardless of affixes. You have to make the choice about where you want to optimize your damage and how you want to play. These options are close enough together to be considered a preference choice. Many players will find Distorted Reality easier to play with on pure single target, but could find spreading Devouring Plague more difficult than funneling those casts with Mind's Eye in AoE.

Something to note when using Distorted Reality is that you will also get increased value when running Mind Devourer and/or Phantasmal Pathogen, which can allow you to spread out more Devouring Plague based on procs. This is not a required pairing, but something to note when deciding where to put your flex point talents.

Use the following chart to understand the difference when taking Distorted Reality over Mind's Eye. These numbers are taken with the Triple Idol Build with Void Eruption as the baseline.

Encounter	Overall Damage	Priority Damage
Single Target	2% decrease over Mind's Eye	N/A
Eight Target 40s	13% increase over Mind's Eye	12% decrease over Mind's Eye
Eight Target 90s	8% increase over Mind's Eye	16% decrease over Mind's Eye
DungeonRoute Overall Average	9% increase over Mind's Eye	2% decrease over Mind's Eye

The following lists a rough breakdown of single target damage with our various builds. I have included this to help you make your decisions on what build to play, specifically on Tyrannical, where you want single-target damage. All of these builds drop the extra damage point to get Mental Fortitude and Silence to make it more realistic.

Cooldown	Build	DR vs. ME	Difference
Void Eruption	Full Single Target	Mind's Eye	0.00%
Dark Ascension	Full Single Target	Distorted Reality	-0.5%
Dark Ascension	Single Target + Shadow Crash	Distorted Reality	-3.0%
Void Eruption	Single Target + Shadow Crash	Mind's Eye	-3.6%
Dark Ascension	Idol of N'Zoth + Idol of C'Thun	Distorted Reality	-5.3%
Dark Ascension	Idol of N'Zoth + Idol of C'Thun	Mind's Eye	-6.5%
Void Eruption	Triple Idol	Mind's Eye	-6.7%
Void Eruption	Triple Idol	Distorted Reality	-8.0%

You should make many choices in our tree depending on your group's needs, the type of damage that works best for that key, and the actual key level and affixes.

Note that the talents recommended above are specifically for Mythic+. Check our main page below for a general overview of Shadow talents.

Dungeons	Affixes
Algeth'ar Academy	Afflicted
Brackenhide Hollow	Incorporeal
Halls of Infusion	Entangling
Neltharus	Sanguine
Ruby Life Pools	Bursting
The Azure Vault	Spiteful
The Nokhud Offensive
Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr

Based on the selections above, you should run the following class talents:

• Purify Disease
• Mass Dispel
• Dominate Mind
• Shackle Undead
• Phantasm
• Psychic Voice
• Void Tendrils
• There are no specific suggestions for Neltharus.

During Afflicted week I generally suggest running Mass Dispel all the time to help cover if your healer's dispel is down for normal single dispel mechanics.

Check out the full list below to see more specific suggestions.

Our utility talents do not always need to be taken but have certain spots in dungeons where you will want them. The below should act as a list of utilities you should have for each dungeon.

• Algeth'ar Academy
  • Mass Dispel
    • Oversurge from Vexamus
    • Monotonous Lecture from Unruly Textbook
  • Dominate Mind - See below section.
• Brackenhide Hollow
  • Consider running more burst talents or burst trinkets to handle the totem on the last boss encounter.
  • Purify Disease
    • Withering - DoT applied by Decay Speakers
    • Withering Contagion - Effect that spreads to other players as it is dispelled, be careful!
  • Mass Dispel
    • Greater Healing Rapids - from Tricktotem, can also be single dispelled.
    • Decayed Senses - from Gashtooth on a friendly player.
    • Decaying Roots - Decayed Elder spawns these roots on a player rooting, dealing damage, and reducing their haste.
• Halls of Infusion
  • Mass Dispel
    • Power Overload during Watcher Irideus encounter.
    • Spark Volley during Watcher Irideus encounter.
    • Purifying Blast during Watcher Irideus encounter.
    • Dazzle casts from Dazzling Dragonflies.
    • Molten Subduction root from Flamecaller Aymi.
    • Deep Chill movement speed + DoT debuff from Glacial Proto-Dragon.
    • Frost Shock movement speed reduction from Khajin the Unyielding.
• Neltharus
  • No specific suggestions.
• Ruby Life Pools
  • Mass Dispel
    • Ice Shield from Flashfrost Chillweavers. Puts a shield on a particular mob. Can be single-dispelled as well.
    • Blaze of Glory from Primalist Flamedancers. Can be single dispelled as well.
    • Tempest Barrier from Primal Thunderclouds. Getting these dispelled will cause the mob to eventually die, which is useful when killing the final mini-boss.
    • Stormslam cast on the tank during the final boss encounter. Usually handled by the healer but nice to have a backup.
• The Azure Vault
  • Mass Dispel
    • Mystic Vapors - DoT from Conjured Lashers that deals heavy ticking damage if it stacks.
    • Arcane Fury - from Crystal Fury. Increases damage done by 35% and can also be single dispelled.
    • Brilliant Scales - Reduces magic damage taken by 30% on the Vault Guards and Scalebane Lieutenant. Can also be single dispelled.
    • Icy Bindings - Roots each player cast from the Rune Seal Keeper.
    • Dragon Strike from Umbrelskul that is cast on the tank, dealing heavy ticking damage. Normally covered by the healer.
    • Erratic Growth - Cast by Arcane Tender that will eventually stun you if not dispelled.
    • Waking Bane - Puts a friendly target to sleep, useful if it happens to target a healer, or their dispel is on cooldown.
• The Nokhud Offensive
  • Mass Dispel
    • Tempest - DoT that ticks on friendlies cast by Primalist Stormspeakers.
    • Stormshield - Shield cast by Primal Stormshields.
    • Swirling Gusts - Needs to be dispelled before the enemy can be hit.
    • Rotting Wind - DoT that get applied to multiple group members.
    • Conductive Strike - Debuff from Balakar that is typically handled by the healer.
  • Dispel Magic - Energy Surge on The Raging Tempest encounter.
  • Purify Disease - Can dispel Rotting Wind for any casts that get off from the birds by the 3rd boss area.
  • Dominate Mind - Useful in the starting packs of the dungeon on the Nokhud Hornsounder.
• Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr
  • Mass Dispel
    • Burning Heat - DoT that goes on each player during Emberon.
    • Stolen Time - Debuff that goes on party members that reduces Haste and is a DoT effect. Can also be line-of-sighted by your group members.
    • Hasten - Buff on enemies that increases their Haste and movement speed. Can also be single dispelled.
    • Time Sink - DoT that goes on friendly players that also reduces movement speed during the final boss encounter. When it expires it will spawn a Time Eruption sand pool under their feet.
    • Spiked Carapace - Applied by Vicious Basilisks that acts as a Thorns to hitting them. Can also be single dispelled.
  • Purify Disease - Diseased Bite from Hulking Berserker

The following talents are suggested to run for every key that you run with the corresponding affix.

• Afflicted
  • Purify Disease
  • OPTION: Power Word: Life can do a large chunk of healing to help get rid of the mob, but typically not enough to fully break it.
• Incorporeal
  • Shackle Undead
  • Dominate Mind also works, but since it has a cooldown would suggest still taking Shackle Undead
  • OPTION: Psychic Horror
• Entangling
  • Phantasm
  • Improved Fade
• Sanguine
  • Psychic Voice
  • OPTION: Sheer Terror
• Bursting
  • Mass Dispel
• Spiteful
  • Psychic Voice
  • Void Tendrils
  • Dominate Mind
  • OPTION: Psychic Horror

For Afflicted and Incorporeal, it might be useful to use a mouseover macro to make dealing with these mobs faster.

• #showtooltip
• /cast [@mouseover,help,nodead][] Purify Disease

• #showtooltip
• /cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead][] Shackle Undead

For more information, check out the specific Affix section below.

The below list is not an extensive list but contains any notable mobs you could consider controlling.

• Spiteful Shades - You can control these to not deal with them as they naturally expire.
• Bolstering Mobs - You can control a mob before it gets bolstered if you are worried about it dying too fast or getting stacks.

• Ethereal Restorer - Celestial Shield - 30s buff, 60s debuff after it expires. Haste and Shield active while buff persists.
• Aggravated Skitterfly - Agitation - 25% Physical Damage done per stack, resets when leaving combat. Seems to stack infinitely, could be good on bosses.
• Do NOT mind control birds on Crawth's platform, it will prevent the spawn of the next pack or the boss.

• Dazzling Dragonfly - Dazzle - 3s cone disorient
• Primalist Earthshaker - Rumbling Earth - 1s AoE Stun (does not work on dragons)
• Primalist Icecaller - Refreshing Tides - 30s cooldown single target heal

• Nokhud Hornsounder - Rally the Clan

Both the single-target and multi-target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content. For more information about the Shadow Priest DPS rotation, refer back to the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

The below video should also be helpful going over examples with some common talent setups in AoE. This was made during Season 3, but many of the tips are still relevant today in Season 4.

If you are looking for a mere detailed setup with different talents, please check out the rotation page.

Occasionally, in dungeons, it can be worth breaking from the standard rotation in order to facilitate bursting down a priority target. In this section, I will go over the options you have for these cases as a Shadow Priest.

In the standard talent build, your best spell for burst damage is Void Torrent. If there is ever a high-priority target, you want to make sure you have Void Torrent for every one. Typically, you will combo this together with something like this:

1. Pool up max Insanity before the target spawns you need to burst.
2. Cast Vampiric Touch as it spawns, or time Shadow Crash to land as it spawns, if possible.
3. Dump all Insanity into Devouring Plague.
4. Cast Void Torrent.
5. Cast Mindgames.

Your burst will be even better if you are just performing your normal rotation inside of cooldowns (especially at the start of them with Ancient Madness), but the above sequence can be done outside of cooldowns if you prepare enough.

Additionally, you can consider selecting the Voidtouched talent in place of a Flex Point (see below). This allows you to bank up an extra 50 Insanity for more Devouring Plague casts. While this is usually not the talent to take if you want overall max damage, it can provide more burst if that is more important to you.

Finally, you can consider using on-use damage trinkets to get even more burst. Since Shadow Priest scales so well with secondaries, we typically do not like on-use damage trinkets, but there are a few to consider that might be worth it if you are looking for burst, specifically at the cost of overall damage.

• Belor'relos, the Suncaller (AoE)
• Beacon to the Beyond (AoE)
• Iceblood Deathsnare
• Conjured Chillglobe (Single Target)
• Desperate Invoker's Codex (Single Target)
• Nymue's Unraveling Spindle (Single Target)

Shadow Priest supports the party by providing extra healing, an AoE fear, offensive and defensive dispels, and a potential single-target stun if you pick it as a talent. Additionally, Shadow has a unique form of crowd control in the form of Mind Control. We also have access to Mind Soothe and the only stamina group buff in the game with Power Word: Fortitude.

Due to the sheer amount of options the spec has in terms of utility, it is critical that you adjust class talents before every key you start to make sure you are optimizing utility when needed or taking more defensive options if you do not need the utility.

• Power Word: Fortitude gives everyone in your party an extra 5% Stamina, which provides a unique boost to help survive some of those hard-hitting abilities.
• Mind Soothe provides an interesting alternative to Shroud of Concealment that might help your group skip past a more deadly Mythic+ pack, depending on the available space. This is changed to be an AoE cast ability that works on all mobs within the 10-yard radius on a short cooldown. Creative uses of this can make routing a key much easier.
• Fade has a few good pieces of utility to call out, the most important being the aggro drop mechanic. If you find yourself getting aggro over the tank on the pull, you can use Fade to bypass this drop easily and continue with the key. With the Translucent Image class talent, this also turns Fade into a small defensive. With Phantasm this becomes an easy tool to break Entangling.
• Psychic Scream fears all enemies close to you for 8 seconds, but damage can break this early. Psychic Scream is primarily used as an AoE interrupt in dungeons. Cooldown reduced by 15 seconds when talented into Psychic Voice.

• Twins of the Sun Priestess is by far the biggest piece of utility in the class tree, effectively giving your group an extra Power Infusion when used on an ally. While there is contentious debate on who the best specs are for this, I would generally prefer giving this out to Unholy Death Knights, Mages, Warlocks, Devastation Evoker, Enhancement Shamans or anyone else that is on a 2-minute cooldown timer.
• Dispel Magic allows you to dispel beneficial buffs from enemies. This is extremely useful in dungeons, as many mob packs in many of the dungeons tend to have some buff that they cast on themselves. While this is more important in some dungeons than others, it is still precious to be able to do it.
• Purify Disease dispels all Disease effects from friendly targets. This is fairly niche but still situationally extremely useful.
• Mass Dispel remains a beneficial ability to have in our arsenal. Dispelling is very important, and Mass Dispel allows for both offensive and defensive dispels. The fact that you can dispel multiple enemies or friendly targets with just one global is situationally powerful. However, Mass Dispel does have a fairly lengthy 2-minute cooldown. You can also Mass Dispel Bursting as well.
• Vampiric Embrace heals allies based on the single-target damage you do on a 2-minute cooldown (reduced by San'layn). It can be potent depending on the situation, especially when combined with San'layn. Note that the damage of our DoTs also gets converted to healing. Similarly, we also have access to Essence Devourer, which can be nice for any builds that use Mindbender for similar style healing.
• Leap of Faith pulls a friendly party member towards you. It could be more useful generally, but it can sometimes save someone.
• Mind Control is good to deal with Bolstering if you want to avoid a mob in the pack getting Bolstering stacks. While mobs are Mind Controlled, they can not get affected by Bolstering. You can also pick up Dominate Mind if you want passive damage or to take the pet with you throughout the dungeon. See the section above for specific examples.
• Shackle Undead allows you to crowd-control undead enemies in a dungeon. This has rare use cases, notably, the Incorporeal mobs.
• The class tree also offers several healing spells that you can combine to give off healing capability for the priest. The main ones are Renew, Prayer of Mending, and Power Word: Life.
• Flash Heal becomes a small defensive with Protective Light.
• Void Tendrils offers an aoe root if you can afford to jump into melee to cast this.
• Void Shift can be used to save your life or an ally's life if used at a good time. Generally speaking, this is not very useful.
• If you are in a dungeon where you do not need much utility else where I would strongly suggest taking Holy Nova to path into Spell Warding for the reduced magic damage taken.

• Psychic Horror stuns a single target for 4 seconds at a 45-second cooldown. It is handy for some dungeons to lock down dangerous targets.
• Silence serves as both a silence effect as well as an interrupt. Though its baseline cooldown is longer than most interrupts in the game at 45 seconds, we do get the ability to reduce that cooldown by 15 seconds if we take Last Word as a talent.
• Mental Fortitude is an extra absorb shield that can be invaluable when pushing up in higher keys. This also has an extra benefit of giving more uptime of things like the Blue Silken Lining embellished effect if you are using that.

As you get into higher keys or particularly challenging bosses, it can be hard to survive through mechanics if you are not properly prepared or if you do not react appropriately. In this section, I will list out all the tools we have in our kit to survive keys as a Shadow Priest.

Before starting a key, you should evaluate your talent choices to prepare for how intense that key will be. For any incoming mechanic, you should know if you need to use a Defensive to mitigate the hit to survive using the lists below.

Before you start a key, you should evaluate how difficult the dungeon is for your group. If you are in a push key where it is relatively high for your group, you should strongly consider adding more defensive talents, even if they cost you some damage. This will need to be on a key-by-key basis, but here are your options.

If you find yourself wanting more defensive points but have run out of points, you can choose to sacrifice as many as 3 of the last few points in the Mindgames talents. Shattered Perceptions and Manipulation make up less than 1% of your overall damage even when factoring in the Psychic Link value. If having more defensive options is more valuable than that 1% damage, consider dropping those points but still leave the base Mindgames point.

• Spell Warding (path through Holy Nova to get this)
• Protective Light
• Translucent Image
• Angel's Mercy
• Light's Inspiration
• Angelic Bulwark
• Power Word: Life
• Essence Devourer/ Void Shift

• Dispersion
• Mental Fortitude

Shadow Priest has several defensives that you should plan to use and rotate throughout mechanics. You should opt to use the smaller cooldown spells often as needed with incoming mechanics and save bigger cooldowns like Dispersion for large incoming damage.

• Flash Heal with Protective Light talented.
• Power Word: Shield for a small absorb.
• Fade with Translucent Image talented.
• Desperate Prayer
• Dispersion
• Void Shift

To properly use this, I suggest getting a set of WeakAuras or Addons to help you know when an incoming mechanic is coming so that you can use the proper defensive to handle that incoming damage. Below is a short list of a few I would suggest.

If you are getting into Pushing Keys as a Shadow Priest, check this video out for help doing that. It was originally made during Season 3 but many of the points can still be applied to Season 4.

• Causese's Dungeon Pack
• Affix Tracking
• Interrupt Tracker
• Spell Cooldowns on Nameplates
• Reroll Key Notification
• FD/Invis/Vanish/Shadowmeld
• Automarker
• M+ Timer
• Targeted Spells Tracking

• Deadly Boss Mods - Dungeons or LittleWigs

• Fortified increases the Health pool of all non-boss enemies by 20% and damage dealt by 30%.
• Tyrannical increases the Health pool of boss enemies by 40% and their damage dealt by 15%.

Fortified and Tyrannical are the two affixes every player will see. Depending on the week, these affixes shift the focus of dungeons from boss to trash. Shadow Priests will excel during Fortified weeks as our multi-target damage has a short ramp-up time. Then, they will sustain at decent numbers without the use of cooldowns. During Tyrannical weeks, Shadow has plenty of talent options to shake up its damage allocation depending on where your group needs damage.

• Volcanic spawns volcanic plumes underneath and around players when in combat with any enemy. When damaged by Volcanic, players suffer 50% of their maximum Health pool in damage and are knocked into the air. The more enemies you encounter, the more Volcanic that will spawn.
• Storming essentially is the tornado version of Volcanic. While in combat, you will see grey swirls on the ground, indicating a tornado is about to spawn in that location. Do your best to dodge these, as they are active for 10 seconds after spawning and will knock you back if you get hit.
• Afflicted will periodically spawn enemies that must be healed to full or dispelled. Purify Disease will be a precious resource when this is active.
• Incorporeal spawns an enemy that needs to be single target CC'd for 20 seconds. As a Shadow Priest, we can use Shackle Undead, Dominate Mind, or Psychic Horror.
• Entangling will occasionally spawn roots under your character. You can either break this by running out or by pressing Fade if talented into Phantasm.

• Raging makes enemies immune to crowd control except for interrupts for 20 seconds after reaching 30% health.
• Sanguine places a pool of blood on the ground when a mob is slain. This pool will heal remaining enemies who stay inside the zone and damage players. You can use Psychic Scream or Mind Control or Dominate Mind (and dismiss right after) to try and get mobs out of the Sanguine faster if something goes wrong.
• Bolstering buffs remaining enemies' Health pools and damage dealt by 20% when an enemy dies nearby. To counter this affix, DPS all mobs down evenly and focus your casts into high-health mobs if there are any. As Shadow, you can also Mind Control mobs that you do not want to get any Bolstering stacks on at all costs. Note that once a mob gets a stack of Bolstering it CANNOT be Mind Controlled.
• Bursting forces enemy mobs to detonate when slain, afflicting the group with a stacking debuff that causes players to suffer damage every four seconds. When handling the Bursting affix, ask how many stacks your healer can handle. Try to avoid mindlessly DPS'ing and exceeding your healer's stack limit. Mass Dispel can easily get rid of your group's stacks and allow you to plan to kill many mobs at the same time.
• Spiteful brings back another effect from Battle for Azeroth, this time in the form of a Corruption effect where a mob would target and chase you down. These mobs spawn whenever any mob dies. You can either CC this mob and wait for the Health to tick passively or try to kill it. This mob is not affected by Shackle Undead, so you will have to run away; otherwise, you get hit by very hard-hitting melee swings. I would also suggest using this WeakAura to clearly see if the mobs are targeting you. Talenting into Void Tendrils can be a great tool for controlling these mobs easier during this affix.

With the number of trinkets to choose from in the game, you should try simming your character on Raidbots using Patchwerk and Light Movement to optimize for raids and single-target encounters and DungeonSlice for Mythic+ fight styles.

Check out the simulations page for more details on simming for a Mythic+ environment.

Check out the BiS and Gear page to learn more about good trinkets to use on your Shadow Priest.