Shadow Priest PvP Talents and Builds — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

The build below is the best talent build for maximizing your spread and single-target damage.

While the above table provides a generally accurate overview of the viability of talents, some finer points are discussed in the sections that follow, and we recommend you read those for a deeper understanding.

Some important spells to note in the Priest talent tree:

• Fade and Improved Fade are crucial talents you should take to increase your survivability.
• As mentioned in the introduction of this guide, Mass Dispel and Dispel Magic are crucial tools to have on your team. Mass Dispel can remove important spells like Ice Block from Mages and Divine Shield from Paladins.
• Twin Disciplines and Dark Enlightenment give small increases to your important stats.
• Power Infusion/ Twins of the Sun Priestess are crucial offensive cooldowns you give yourself and your team. Power Infusion infuses your target for 15 seconds, increasing haste by 20%, and with Twins of the Sun Priestess it will grant you its affect when used on an ally. Using this spell at the correct time with burst cooldowns are crucial for landing kills.

To learn more about Shadow Priest single-target damage and rotations, use the dedicated rotations page in this guide:

Some important spells to note in the Shadow Priest Talent tree:

• Shadow Word: Madness is one of your primary DoTs that deals damage and heals you for 30% of the damage dealt.
• Dispersion reduces damage you take and heals you. This can be used while stunned and is your primary defensive when you are being focused.
• Intangibility makes Dispersion even better by increasing how much it heals you for and reducing the cooldown by 30 seconds.
• Tentacle Slam is an instant spell that deals damage to all players within 8 yards and applies Vampiric Touch to them. This is important for dealing damage against teams that are focusing you.
• Void Torrent is a channeled spell that deals damage and gives you insanity.

You can choose three of the following PvP talents. Each of them has their uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. The top three choices are the most useful but can be replaced with other PvP talents depending on your team's goal.

Phase Shift should primarily be used when you will be the focus for the enemy team. This causes you to avoid all attacks and spells for 1 sec after using Fade.

Psyfiend is a crucial spell that channels Psyflay on the target. This deals damage and reduces the healing received by the target by 50%. A well-timed Psyfiend can quickly end games.

Cascading Horrors is a situational talent that offers you more damage and crowd control. When you enter Voidform, you send out a bolt that deals damage and fears enemies hit by it. Because melee that target you will be stacked close to you, this is a great talent versus teams with 2 melee on it.

Driven to Madness makes it so while Voidform is not active, being attacked will grant you 9 Insanity over 3 seconds. It is important to note that these attacks need to be melee, and this is a powerful PvP talent against teams with a melee DPS on it.

Mind Trauma steals Haste from enemy players. Mind Spike and fully channeled Mind Flays grant 1 stack of this, fully channeled Void Torrent grants 3 stacks. This is a useful PvP talent against all matchups.