Shadow Priest DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Shadow Priest in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.7. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Shadow Priest talents.
Talent Cheat Sheets for Shadow Priest
While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent builds listed below work great for specific purposes.
With Dragonflight you can now freely change talents anywhere without tomes so be sure to try out builds and have fun experimenting! These builds should act as a good starting point but there are likely micro-optimizations to make to further min-max your build to each situation.
The video version of this guide is also available if you would like to watch along as I talk about Shadow Priest.
If you want an overview and breakdown of every talent check out the Spell Summary first to help navigate your build choices.
Raid Encounters
The builds suggested below are generally good for most content, but if you want specific boss recommendations for the current tier check out the dedicated page below.
Single Target
Import the following string to directly apply these talent changes:
- BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIk0CBAAAAAAAAAAAAQikkSkmU0iEJlESEkGJJJSjgEESRahkAA
This is a standard talent build revolving mostly around getting as much
Insanity
as possible to fuel more spells into your Dark Ascension windows.
Idol of Y'Shaarj
and
Idol of C'Thun build paths buff this the most leading to a nice
passive combination.
These talents also fuel into a 1-minute cooldown cycle making it adaptable for
almost any
single target situation.
Mind Flay is your default filler with this build.
You can also swap out Screams of the Void and
Idol of C'Thun for
Mind Devourer and
Idol of Yogg-Saron if you prefer that playstyle.
When you drop Idol of C'Thun for Yogg-Saron you will instead use
Mind Spike
as your default filler over
Mind Flay.
Note that if you dislike playing with Mind Spike you can drop this
for a ~3.3% drop in DPS by swapping points out of Mind Spike and related talents.
- BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIk0QAAAAAAAAAAAAAkkkkSahU0SSkUgEBpRSSi0IIBh0kWIJAA
If using Dark Ascension is not something you are particularly
interested in you can opt into using
Void Eruption instead which
is roughly equivalent in damage. The main difference between these two builds
is having to weave in
Void Bolt and the damage pattern of changing
to be a full 2 minute spec.
- BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAISSLSAAAAAAAAAAAAAISiSkm00iEJlESEkGJJJSjgEESRahkAA
Composite Raid Encounters
Composite in this case refers to a general build to handle several situations like adds, additional targets, and movement scenarios.
Import the following string to directly apply these talent changes:
- BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAISSLSAAAAAAAAAAAAAISiSkm0ISSSJhEBpRSSi0IIBhUkWIJAA
If you are looking for a more generic Raid build that can handle a larger variety of encounters I would suggest starting here. You take a slight dip in single target to grab more cleave talents to handle more situations like regular add spawns.
Multi-Target Raid Builds
Throughout the raid you might find yourself wanting to optimize for 2-target or 4-target encounters. You can use the following builds as starting points for both of these situations:
2-Target
Import the following string to directly apply these talent changes:
- BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAISSLSAAAAAAAAAAAAAISiSkm0gkkUSiEBpRSSi0IIBhUkWIJAA
4-Target
Import the following string to directly apply these talent changes:
- BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAESiIBAAAAAAAAAAAAACKRaJNSSSSJJSEkGJJJSjgEESRahkAA
Mythic+/AoE/Cleave
This build is aimed at picking up the largest gains for Mythic+ damage
possible, all without giving up too much single target. The primary focus
here will be around Mind Sear and
Mind Devourer and picking
up things that easily work with our AoE spender. On top of this it also
maximizes
Psychic Link damage letting our big single target spells
cleave to other enemies. There is some flexibility here in choice where you
could tweak the build for the exact key you are doing, more detail on this
in the sections below and the Mythic+ page.
If you want specific advice for Mythic+, check out the dedicated page below.
Open World Content and General Use
This build is an excellent starting point for questing and general-purpose usage.
Import the following string to directly apply these talent changes:
- BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIINOQAAAAAAAAAAAAAkcgkkSahUIJJJFIRQaRSkk0kAQiUapFSAA
Several of our talents actively change your rotation, or specifically your priority in given situations. You can find out more in the rotation section below.
Priest Class Talent Pathing
This section is meant to give more context to choices in our talent tree. This section will not cover every single talent, but rather give you reasons and answers for how to approach making a build.
Top Section Overview (Rows 1-4)
In our class tree our goal is to first pick up all the damage in the tree, which is mostly concentrated on the right-hand side. Your standard build will start you out with:
Shadow Word: Death and
Shadowfiend for free.
- Start off with
Death and Madness and either version of
Mind Control or
Dominate Mind.
- Grab your movement ability by getting
Dispel Magic,
Improved Flash Heal, and
Angelic Feather.
From there you get your choice of where to spend your last few points. For
most content, I would suggest grabbing
Purify Disease and
From Darkness Comes Light for better off
healing. After this, you will certainly want to
get
Leap of Faith,
Shackle Undead, or
Void Tendrils so
that you can get
Power Infusion in the
next section. As soon as the next section unlocks you will want to spend points
in that first before considering circling back.
Middle Section Overview (Rows 5-7)
Assuming you unlocked the section appropriately you want to straight away pick up the following to max out your damage:
Power Infusion and
Twins of the Sun Priestess
Twist of Fate
Throes of Pain (note you will need to pick something else to path here)
To fill out this section you will most likely pick up
Vampiric Embrace and
San'layn to get to
Throes of Pain, but you have options. Other good things to note are
grabbing more movement with
Body and Soul and a defensive talent with
Tithe Evasion. In this
section, you have quite a lot
of freedom of what to pick, and you can even circle back to the top section to
grab more off-healing if you
want that. You might also want to grab
Mass Dispel if you can get good
use out of this.
Note: you will want to spend 2 points in Unwavering Will if you plan
on getting anything
in the far bottom left section specifically.
Bottom Section Overview (Rows 8-10)
For the bottom section of our class tree we have some focused talents around
Mindgames you will want for damage,
but you still have lots of choices around that. Here is the base you will want
to
take in all content:
Mindgames,
Manipulation, and
Shattered Perceptions
Divine Star or
Halo. Generally speaking Halo will be your default, but using Divine Star in open world or dungeon content can be a good alternative.
- Consider adding
Crystalline Reflection if you find yourself casting
Power Word: Shield often and the fight has lots of raid-wide damage.
If you have followed the suggestions to this point you now have lots of points left over to fill out your tree. This is where you can build your Priest the way you need for what you want to do, here are some common paths to consider:
- Defensive:
Angel's Mercy,
Light's Inspiration, and
Translucent Image
- Off-Healing:
Binding Heals,
Surge of Light, and
Power Word: Life
- Utility:
Void Shift
Shadow Priest Spec Talent Pathing
Moving on to the Shadow Priest spec tree there are some interesting choices we can navigate through here, all framed with how you want to do your damage. The main considerations you will need to make for your build are around the encounter style and how many targets you will be facing.
Here are some of the main themes in the Shadow Priest Tree:
- Single Target
- Spread Cleave
- Cleave and AoE
Keep these themes in mind when building a tree to suit the situation you are trying to optimize for. The best builds will come from fine-tuning the suggestions below into workable trees for various situations. You will likely want to do micro changes to the build between dungeons and various raid bosses. Use this as a guideline to help you make those decisions.
Top Section Overview (Rows 1-4)
This is the utility section of the tree where picking up all the damage you need generally speaking is quite easy. Start your build off like so:
Devouring Plague for free.
Shadowy Apparitions,
Misery, and
Coalescing Shadows.
- Pick up
Dispersion and
Silence for your standard utility.
- Choose
Mind Sear for any cases where you are constantly fighting 3 or more stacked targets (sometimes even 2 depending on future talents) in addition to
Mind Spike for all cases.
- For your last point you get to choose between any one of the following:
Intangibility,
Mental Fortitude,
Last Word, or
Psychic Horror. In most cases I would default to Mental Fortitude. Note that if you pick up
Mind Sear and
Mind Spike you would skip this unless you drop a point elsewhere later on.
Misery Versus Dark Void
Right now with current tuning Misery is likely to be more useful
than
Dark Void. While Dark Void does make spreading
Shadow Word: Pain
easier you can only use this every 30 seconds. On top of that the value you get
with
Shadow Crash spreading
Vampiric Touch and
Shadow Word: Pain
with Misery it does not feel like you are missing out on much by not having Dark
Void.
Middle Section Overview (Rows 5-7)
In this section of the tree you will be filling out the base part of your kit with some amount of definition. Before going forward it is important to start considering where you want to end your tree to make sure you pick things that all work together well.
- First off you need to pick your cooldown, either
Void Eruption or
Dark Ascension. See the section below to help make this choice.
- Regardless of your choice of cooldown the following abilities make sense in
just about every single build and I would suggest starting with them:
Ancient Madness,
Shadowy Insight,
Shadow Crash, and
Auspicious Spirits.
- If you are taking
Mind Spike for whichever reasons you almost always want to also pick
Surge of Darkness and
Mind Melt. Depending on the build you can consider dropping Mind Melt for
Mental Decay if you are indexing more into
Mind Flay talents. Regardless of that choice having
Surge of Darkness will be valuable for an extra instant cast proc to use while moving.
- To finish out a single target build you typically want to get
Puppet Master and
Harnessed Shadows to get access to
Mindbender in the next section. After this depending on how much you intend on pressing
Mind Flay you will grab
Mental Decay and 1 point in
Dark Evangelism.
Void Eruption Versus Dark Ascension
The major choice you need to make in this section is which cooldown to
select. Unfortunately these cooldowns
do not have a clear definition and generally will come down to numbers rather
than
a specific playstyle that one
is better at compared to the other. That being said Void Eruption does
have some amount of identity,
specifically being great for generating more
Shadowy Apparitions and
having better AoE burst with the
Mastery activation component of
Voidform. With this understanding you
effectively end up taking
Dark Ascension whenever Voidform does not make sense, rather than
wanting to take it for a specific
reason. For most content, you will find Dark Ascension to be more useful and
better damage in single target.
This means for anything more than 2 targets you will typically choose Void
Eruption.
Auspicious Spirits Versus Tormented Spirits
Similar to the above section, this choice mostly comes down to numbers and
damage tuning. On paper,
it makes sense to take Auspicious Spirits in single target and in any
cases where you want more
insanity from your spirits. This makes it a great default choice and something
you will take most of the time.
Tormented Spirits is the contrast here where it is primarily there to
give you more apparitions.
However, even in AoE, we struggle to get a lot of insanity as often as we would
like, which makes Auspicious Spirits
still better than Tormented, even with
Idol of Yogg-Saron talented.
Bottom Section Overview (Rows 8-10)
For the final section of talents you need to decide what your end goals are. At level 70 you can comfortably get two Idol spells to make up your build. Generally speaking, builds utilizing two Idol talents are better than those with zero or one. While there are many different combinations of Idols I will only be going over the ones that will be more common.
Idol of Y'Shaarj +
Idol of Yogg-Saron
Mindbender,
Inescapable Torment,
Idol of Y'Shaarj,
Encroaching Shadows,
Mind Devourer, and
Idol of Yogg-Saron.
- Options:
Mind Flay: Insanity for single target or finishing up
Psychic Link or
Dark Evangelism depending on the build.
- Strengths: Great Single Target
- One of our most versatile build options that double as being great at
stacked 2 targets. Can be paired with
Dark Ascension for single target or
Void Eruption for AoE.
Idol of Y'Shaarj +
Idol of C'Thun
Mindbender,
Inescapable Torment,
Idol of Y'Shaarj,
Mind Flay: Insanity,
Screams of the Void, and
Idol of C'Thun.
- Options: Finish with
Encroaching Shadows + 1 point in
Mind Devourer or
Insidious Ire.
- Strengths: Best Single Target
- Currently the best performing single target build when paired up with
Dark Ascension.
Idol of C'Thun +
Idol of Yogg-Saron
Mindbender,
Screams of the Void,
Idol of C'Thun,
Encroaching Shadows,
Mind Devourer, and
Idol of Yogg-Saron.
- Strengths: Great All-Around performance and Best AoE
- Similar to the Yshaarj Yogg build this is equally strong in all around
performance, making it another contender for Mythic+ builds. Almost always
paired with
Void Eruption.
There are plenty of other combinations of builds, especially when we get more talent points but these should be a good starting point for pre-patch.
Noteworthy Shadow Priest Talents
While Shadow Priests might have a somewhat unique tree and layout there are options and decisions that can give talents different points of viability depending on the content you are doing. Use the tables below to get a deeper understanding of when to prioritize certain talents and how to tweak the starting templates above to the exact situation you want to optimize for. If you would like to see a list of every talent's effect, check out our spell summary section.
Desirable Priest Class Tree Talents
Before talking about Shadow Priest builds we first need to cover your base class tree. The Priest class tree has lots of interesting choices with minimal amounts of throughput choices. This means you can pick up all the damage talents easily while having plenty of points leftover for more off-healing, defensive capabilities, or utility.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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AF | Provides you with 3 charges of a movement ability for a small amount of move
speed.
Does not stack with ![]() |
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DaM | Reworked version of a previous talent that gives you an extra cast of the spell in execute in addition to Insanity if the target dies shortly after. Note that the cooldown reset is limited to every 20s. |
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PI | Gives the target 25% haste for 20 seconds. Can be cast on the player or on
an ally with
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VE | Causes a percentage of your single target Shadow abilities to be given to an ally as healing. |
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BaS | Gives the target of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Twins | Causes you to also gain ![]() |
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ToF | Causes any damage or healing event on a target below 35% health to give you a damage increase buff. Acts as an execute talent giving us more damage as a fight goes on. |
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- | Buffs your ![]() |
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- | Choice node between two damage cooldowns. Halo is generally preferred and easier to use, however you will notice Divine Star doing more damage than Halo as you increase targets. Halo is not strictly a DPS increase on single target, so typically only used with adds or for off-healing. Divine Star is only a DPS increase starting at 2 targets and you need to be within 24 yards of all targets to get it to hit twice. |
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- | Transforms ![]() |
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- | Deals single target damage to a target and causes some damage or healing to be reversed that it would have otherwise dealt. This means if the target is hitting you it will instead heal you up to the cap, and if it casts any type of healing it would also reverse that to damage itself. |
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- | Buffs the amount of health gained when activating ![]() |
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- | Causes casts of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | This talent buffs your ![]() |
Niche Priest Class Tree Talents
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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PD | Gives the Priest a friendly disease dispel. Situationally useful but only when there are frequent diseases in the encounter or dungeon. Especially useful if your group does not have a disease dispel already. |
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LoF | This can be quite a situational talent to help save an ally that gets into a rough spot. The trick is by the time you realize you need this talent, it would have been too late to talent into it. For this reason any player that feels confident enough in their movement will likely pick this talent to help their allies. |
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Shackle | Hard crowd control ability that locks down any Undead enemy for 50 seconds. Due to the target requirement you only need to take this when the CC is required and you are fighting undead enemies. |
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- | Somewhat of a niche CC ability that roots enemies around you for a short
period. Effectively similar
to parts of ![]() |
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MC | Alternative to ![]() |
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MD | A casted ability that dispels certain magic effects on enemies and allies. Situationally very useful utility to have, especially when any buff goes out to multiple allies or enemies at once that are worth dispelling. |
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CR | Causes a portion of damage absorbed to be reflected to the attacker.
This can produce a
reasonable amount of damage on any encounter you find yourself moving often with
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PWL | This acts as a small ![]() |
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VS | Similar to ![]() |
Desirable Shadow Specialization Tree Talents
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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DP | Deals an extremely large amount of damage and is
our single target insanity spender. The entire spec basically
revolves around building up insanity and then spending it on
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- | This is your main defensive spell as Shadow, reducing all damage taken by 75% but also preventing you from casting any spells for its so increases your movement speed by 50% and makes you immune to movement-impairing effects. |
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SA | Works directly with casts of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Allows you to prevent a target from casting for 4 seconds on a 45-second cooldown. If the target is immune to silence effects, it also works as a standard interrupt if you use it on a target while it is casting. |
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MF | Lets your overhealing done by ![]() ![]() |
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- | Causes your ![]() ![]() |
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CS or Shadow Orbs | Adds a new proc to the kit. It gives your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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MS | Channeled insanity spender that deals Shadow damage to
your target and all other targets within 10 yards. You must have 50 insanity to
begin a channel and each tick consumes 25 insanity. Generally speaking, this is
used over ![]() |
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Spike | Filler spell that effectively replaces
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- | Causes ticks of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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DA | Alternative cooldown option that is on a brief 1-minute cooldown. Activating this gives you 30 insanity while also buffing the damage of non-periodic spells by 25%. |
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VF | Causes you to enter ![]() ![]() |
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SoD | Gives your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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SI | Passively gives you 1 extra charge of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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AM | Gives either ![]() ![]() |
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SC | Fixed 30-second cooldown uncapped AoE spell that
applies ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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DE | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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AS | Causes your ![]() |
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PL | Causes your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Bender | Replaces ![]() |
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MFI | Causes ![]() ![]() |
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ES | Buffs the initial damage of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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IT or SFP | This causes your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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SotV | Causes ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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MD (shares abbreviation with ![]() |
Causes your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Yshaarj | Causes you to gain an extra effect when you summon your
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Cthun | Gives your ![]() ![]() |
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Yogg | spawns a Thing From Beyond after conjuring 25 Shadowy Apparitions. When the pet spawns it continually casts Void Spike to deal a large amount of single-target damage at your current target and small amounts of cleave to nearby ones. |
Niche Shadow Specialization Tree Talents
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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LW | Reduces the cooldown of ![]() |
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PH | 4-second single target stun on a 45-second cooldown. |
PvP Talents (War Mode) for Shadow Priest
In the open world, you get the option to go into "War Mode". Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:
- PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
- 10%+ increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
- 10%+ more experience gained while leveling.
- Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.
With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended enabling the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility to be "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.
Shadow Priest War Mode Talents
In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of Shadow Priest-specific PvE talents.
Shadow Priest PvP Talents
Void Origins makes your
Void Eruption or
Dark Ascension an instant cast which is a tremendous quality of life improvement.
Catharsis is a great boost to damage in the open world if you find yourself in solo content or 1v1s.
- For your last option you can choose between
Driven to Madness for higher
Voidform uptime or
Void Volley if you want to have some fun!
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 04 Feb. 2023: Update 2-target build and add a note about VF on single target.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Update talent builds for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Jan. 2023: Update Mythic+ talent builds from the recent changes.
- 23 Dec. 2022: Update talent builds to account for Screams of the Void bug.
- 13 Dec. 2022: Add alternate ST build that offers more burst.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 31 Oct. 2022: Updatedd talent builds to no longer suggest Psychic Link and changed default Mythic+ build to Yogg-Saron.
- 26 Oct. 2022: Updated talent builds from recent bug finding for Screams of the Void.
- 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