Shadow Priest DPS Mythic+ Tips — The War Within 11.0.0

This build specializes in maximizing damage with Shadowy Apparitions for more raw AoE and Priority-target damage by sacrificing some single-target damage. As you get higher in key level (10+), this build will continue to scale and perform better.

To know if the key level is high enough for your group, if you take Void Eruption and after a pack dies, you still have 10 or more seconds left on Voidform the key level is likely too low, and you should consider using Dark Ascension at that key level. This is very dependent on composition and item level, but for most people, this cutoff point happens around a +10.

Class talents were selected as a safe default for most keys, but usually you can move points around from Purify Disease, Mass Dispel, Manipulation, or Cauterizing Shadows.

• Best AoE potential build if you can line up cooldowns with big pulls.
• Great for top-end key pushing, especially when doing larger-than-normal pulls.
• Top Priority target damage inside of AoE packs.

• Single target is about 2-3% behind the N'Zoth C'Thun Dark Ascension build.
• Tyrannical weeks in general
• Requires more coordinated pulls around your cooldowns.

• By default, this build assumes you are in keys where you need survivability from Mental Fortitude and also do not want to drop Silence. Strictly speaking, this is a DPS loss; if you want to drop one of those points, you can add back a point in Mental Decay to the build.
• In mass AoE, you might find Maddening Touch to give more damage (+0.5%) when running Mind's Eye in particular, however, this is typically not a gain in overall (-0.5%) compared to Mind Devourer or Phantasmal Pathogen due to how strong those options are in lower target count pulls and single target.
  • Max Single Target Damage: Mind Devourer x2 + Phantasmal Pathogen x2 (+4% ST over max AoE version)
  • Max AoE Damage: Mind Devourer x2 + Maddening Touch x2 (+1% AoE over max ST version)
• Check out the section below to see the various flex points in these builds.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the build directly into your game!

General purpose build that will work for almost any key and affix combination. This build in particular shines when doing a single pack at a time, especially at lower key levels (10 or lower). If you are just starting out doing keys as a Shadow Priest, this is the starter build.

Class talents were selected as a safe default for most keys, but usually you can move points around from Purify Disease, Mass Dispel, Manipulation, or Cauterizing Shadows.

• Great single target.
• Gives you a mini-burst of damage every 1 minute between your casts of Power Infusion.
• Performs well in most key environments.
• Good middle-ground build that still has good AoE without dropping as much single target as Triple Idol.

• Less AoE/Burst potential when full cooldowns are up compared to Void Eruption builds.

• By default, this build assumes you are in keys where you need survivability from Mental Fortitude and also do not want to drop Silence. Strictly speaking, this is a DPS loss; if you want to drop one of those points, you can add back a point in Mind Devourer back to the build.
• If you prefer Mind Flay just drop Mind Spike and Mind Melt to pick up Voidtouched and another flex point. This choice is mostly preference, and both perform well.
• Check out the section below to see the various flex points in these builds.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the build directly into your game!

This build is aimed at maximizing single-target damage while still having Shadow Crash. It does particularly well in dungeons where it is hard to chain-pull packs with deadly bosses, especially on Tyrannical weeks.

Class talents were selected as a safe default for most keys, but usually you can move points around from Purify Disease, Mass Dispel, Manipulation, or Cauterizing Shadows.

• Top tier single target while still having Shadow Crash.
• Tyrannical weeks in general

• AoE options are more limited, but still decent with the base kit.

• By default, this build assumes you are in keys where you need survivability from Mental Fortitude and also do not want to drop Silence. Strictly speaking, this is a DPS loss; if you want to drop one of those points, you can add back a point in Mental Decay back to the build.

If you prefer to run Void Eruption here is the top build with Shadow Crash:

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Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the build directly into your game!

Silence is your interrupt ability as a Shadow Priest, that can also prevent a mob from casting for a few seconds after depending on the type of mob.

To make kicking a target easier it is highly suggested that you use a Focus Kick macro for Silence. This allows you to attack a particular high-priority mob, but keep your focus on the mob you might want to kick. This macro will prefer to cast on your Focus if it exists, then on your Mouseover target, and lastly your current target.

• #showtooltip
• /stopcasting
• /cast [@focus,exists,nodead][@mouseover,exists,nodead] [] Silence

To quickly set a focus target in hectic scenarios, we also recommend a Focus Mouseover macro. This will set your focus to whatever your current mouseover target is.

• /focus [@mouseover]

Make sure that your UI shows your Focus Target's casts clearly, so that you are always able to kick it on cooldown, or in coordination with the rest of your group.

Psychic Scream is your primary AoE stop ability. The fear aspect is not that important in PvE, but it does act as a pseudo AoE interrupt (otherwise known as a stop) for all enemies within 8 yards.

Psychic Horror is a single target stun talent that can serve a similar purpose as Silence in our kit to lock down a single enemy from casting. We recommend using this in the same way as your Silence, with the same macro (with Psychic Horror swapped in for Silence, of course). Typically this talent is not worth the DPS or Defensive loss to take the talent, but can be useful in certain cases.

Shackle Undead allows you to crowd-control a single undead enemy at a time. This has rare use cases, notably, the Incorporeal mobs.

Dominate Mind can also be used as a single target stop to a certain degree. While this is a bit more involved, it can be used to lock down a mob for up to 30 seconds. You can always cancel this early with a /petdismiss macro. Several dungeons also have mobs that still cast useful abilities when Mind Controlled. Check out the full list for the current season below.

• #showtooltip
• /petdismiss
• /cast [known:Mind Control] Mind Control; Dominate Mind

The following is a list of useful mobs you could consider using Dominate Mind on to gain access to certain abilities. When this is useful can depend on the key, though, so be sure to coordinate with your group on these casts.

• 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

• Granyth - Nokhud Saboteur - You can Mind Control the last 3 adds that spawn in this encounter. After the Mind Control ends, the add will still go to its originally targetted ballista, and then disable it after you used it. This will not cause any issues until it comes all the way back around in the rotation, which is why you can get the last 3 adds with this method. Note that the cooldown of Dominate Mind is slightly longer than the interval the adds spawn at, so try and get the first one early to make the subsequent ones easier.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For a quick guide of which talents to use, check the dungeon and affixes in the table below and see the list of suggested utility talents you should make sure you work into your build.

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.

• Vexamus — Can use Mass Dispel to get rid of a set of Oversurge.

• Unruly Textbook — Can use Mass Dispel to get rid of Monotonous Lecture on a friendly target.

• Umbrelskul — Be sure to pay attention to the percent health of the boss since he phases at 75%, 50%, and 25%. At each phase point several crystals will spawn that you will want to have Shadow Crash available to DoT them quickly. In addition, if the healer is busy you can dispel off Dragon Strike from the tank with Mass Dispel.

• Arcane Tender — Can use Mass Dispel to get rid of Erratic Growth on an ally.
• Arcane Elemental — If an ally gets Waking Bane you can use Mass Dispel to get rid of it, particularly if it went on the healer.
• Conjured Lashers — Can use Mass Dispel to dispel stacks of Mystic Vapors from your party. This deals heavy damage if you get more than a few stacks.
• Crystal Fury — Can use Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic to dispel Arcane Fury.
• Vault Guard and Scalebane Lieutenant — Can use Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic to purge off Brilliant Scales.
• Rune Seal Keeper — Be sure to Silence casts of Icy Bindings. Should it go off, you can use Mass Dispel to get rid of the root on your party.

• Tricktotem — Can Dispel Magic off Greater Healing Rapids.
• Gashtooth — Can Mass Dispel off Decayed Senses from a friendly player.
• Decatriarch Wratheye — Consider running more burst talents or burst trinkets to handle the totem on the last boss encounter.

• Decay Speakers — Use Purify Disease to cleanse Withering and Withering Contagion.
• Decayed Elder — Cast Mass Dispel to get rid of Decaying Roots cast on friendly players.

• Watcher Irideus — Can use Mass Dispel to get rid of Power Overload, Spark Volley, or Purifying Blast.
• Khajin the Unyielding — Can use Mass Dispel to get rid of Frost Shock on an ally.

• Dazzling Dragonfly — Can Mass Dispel allies that got stunned by Dazzle.
• Flamecaller Aymi — Can Mass Dispel off Molten Subduction from an ally.
• Glacial Proto-Dragon — Can use Fade with Phantasm or Mass Dispel to get rid of Deep Chill.

• No specific tips.

• No specific tips.

• Granyth — Dominate Mind can be used on the incoming adds. The duration of the Mind Control will be long enough to where you can use the Ballista it was running to before it runs out. Then once the Mind Control breaks it will go and disable it. This strategy means you can Mind Control the last 3 adds of the fight without consequence.
• Raging Tempest — Can use Dispel Magic to dispel Energy Surge.
• Teera and Maruuk — Be sure to stay within range of both bosses at all times for Psychic Link damage.
• Balakar Khan — If the healer is busy you can dispel off Conductive Strike from the tank with Mass Dispel.

• Primalist Stormspeakers — Can use Mass Dispel to get rid of Tempest.
• Primal Stormshields — Can use Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic to get rid of Stormshield.
• Primal Gust — Casts of Swirling Gusts should be removed from enemies with Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic.
• Desecrated Ohuna — Periodically will cast Rotting Wind which can be dispelled from allies with Purify Disease.

• Erkhart Stormvein — If the healer cannot get the dispel you can use Mass Dispel to dispel Stormslam from the tank.

• Flashfrost Chillweavers — Can use Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic to get rid of Ice Shield on enemies.
• Primalist Flamedancers — Can use Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic to get rid of Blaze of Glory on enemies.
• Primal Thunderclouds — Can use Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic to get rid of Tempest Barrier which will cause them to jump to the further player and despawn.

• Emberon — Use Mass Dispel to get rid of a set of Burning Heat debuffs on your party.
• Chrono-Lord Deios — Can remove your Time Sink debuff with casts of Fade with Phantasm or with Mass Dispel.

• Vicious Basilisks — Can use Mass Dispel or Dispel Magic to get rid of Spiked Carapace.
• Hulking Berserker — Can remove Diseased Bite with Purify Disease.
• Infinite Timereaver — Periodically will give out stacks of Stolen Time. You can line of sight this to get rid of your stacks or use Mass Dispel to get rid of a set.

You can use Purify Disease to counter Afflicted. In a pinch Power Word: Life can also help heal one up if needed, but this is not enough by itself.

To make dispelling the affix easier you can use this macro to mouseover dispel:

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

For Incorporeal you can use both Shackle Undead and Dominate Mind and handle all spawns of the affix. Dominate Mind has the added benefit of turning the mob friendly and casting its ability on your enemies so that they deal 5% less damage (stacks twice). This in particular can be extremely powerful on Tyrannical weeks when you get spawns on a boss.

To make casting these spells easier, you can use this macro to mouseover cast. You can swap out Shackle Undead for Dominate Mind if you want one for each spell.

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

In addition you can use add an extra line to ping the mob to indicate to your group that you have started your cast on the mob.

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

To counter Entangling you can talent into Phantasm and use Fade to break the root. Usually taking Improved Fade is also nice so that you can also use Fade for other uses as well and not be worried about not having it for Entangling.

No specific tips to counter Storming.

To handle Spiteful you have several options. Your core spells will be using Psychic Scream (more often with Psychic Voice) or Dominate Mind. If you need more help you can also use Void Tendrils or even Psychic Horror.

While it will be tempting to DoT Spiteful, particularly with Shadow Crash be careful of padding on this too much as it could mean DoTing the next pack will be more difficult. However, they can be useful to build up resources between packs.

I would also suggest using this WeakAura to clearly see if the mobs are targeting you.

While technically we can dispel 1 enrage effect with Mindbender and Idol of Y'Shaarj this effect is incredibly niche and not worth talenting these abilities and saving this cooldown for this effect. Other than this effect, Priests have no way to counter this affix.

Due to the way Shadow Priests deal damage via Psychic Link we can help control which mobs die first in a pack. This becomes extremely valuable when countering Bolstering since we can put a significant portion of our damage on the highest health target. Be sure to target the correct mob to take advantage of this playstyle.

If you can predict a bad Bolstering moment you can cast Dominate Mind on a mob to make sure it either does not get Bolstered or does not trigger Bolstering on other mobs. This is only possible if the mob is currently not affected by any Bolstering stacks. If done correctly the Mind Controlled mob will not get Bolstered and will not die to trigger Bolstering on other mobs, but you will have to release it later to kill it.

To counter Bursting you can use Mass Dispel to get rid of all stacks on your entire party. Use this wisely though as the cooldown means you cannot do this for every pack.

The other important thing with this affix is learning to manage stacks of Bursting. This is something that you should be tracking to know if the group is currently in danger, and if so you should consider stopping DPS or slowing before it becomes a problem. You can also coordinate with your healer to sync up stacks to all trigger at once to reduce to many last-second refreshes.

As a Priest you do not have access to much to help with Sanguine but sometimes you can get good casts of Psychic Scream off that can help position mobs. Due to this strength taking Psychic Voice can be a good choice.

With clever casts you can also use Dominate Mind or Mind Control to get a mob out of Sanguine and then dismiss shortly after.

No specific tips to counter Volcanic.