Shadow Priest PvP Talents and Builds (Shadowlands / Patch 9.2.5)

Level	Choices
15	✘ Fortress of the Mind	✘ Death and Madness	✔ Unfurling Darkness
25	✘ Body and Soul	✘ San'layn	✔ Intangibility
30	✘ Twist of Fate	✔ Misery	✘ Searing Nightmare
35	✘ Last Word	✘ Mind Bomb	✔ Psychic Horror
40	✔ Auspicious Spirits	✘ Psychic Link	✔ Shadow Crash
45	✔ Damnation	✘ Mindbender	✘ Void Torrent
50	✘ Ancient Madness	✔ Hungering Void	✘ Surrender to Madness

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.

Unfurling Darkness is the best choice in this tier. This talent will make it so you spend less time casting Vampiric Touch and more time casting harder hitting spells.

Intangibility is the best choice in this tier. This talent heals you while Dispersion is active and reduces its overall cooldown. This is crucial to increase your survivability.

Misery is the best choice in this tier. This talent is crucial when your DoTs are constantly being dispelled. This will help with overall spread pressure on the enemy team and you can use the extra time you gain by helping your teammates or kiting enemies.

Psychic Horror is the best choice in this tier. This gives your team additional crowd control for healers or kill targets. The cooldown of Psychic Horror pairs well with the cooldown of Silence.

Auspicious Spirits is the best choice in this tier. This talent helps increase your sustained and spread damage output. It also helps with generating Insanity much faster. You can also play Shadow Crash if you are playing against a team where you cannot cast often and want more instant damage.

Damnation is the best choice in this tier. This will instantly place all of your important DoTs on your target. This should be used after the enemy healer dispels and also works with talents like Unfurling Darkness.

Hungering Void is the best talent in this tier. This makes it so you deal increased damage after using Void Bolt on your target. This is great for increasing your burst damage.

You can choose 3 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.

Greater Fade increases your movement speed and makes you immune to most damage and spells. This is a mandatory talent that should be taken every arena match. You can use Greater Fade for multiple different things. For example, you can use it defensively when a team is focusing you to avoid being killed. You can also use it aggressively when you are close to getting a kill and an enemy is trying to use crowd control on you.

Void Volley 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. This could be a great way to follow up other crowd control with yours.

Void Shift swaps the health between you and your current target. It also increases the lower health percentage of the two to 25% if below that amount. This is a mandatory defensive to use in every arena game.

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.

Thoughtsteal is a very interesting talent that steals an ability from an enemy. This gives you access to the ability and the enemy cannot use it for 20 seconds! This will primarily be taken versus teams with Warlocks, Mages or Restoration Druids on it. Here is a list of the abilities you can steal from other classes/specs:

• All Druid specs: Rejuvenation
• All Mage specs: Polymorph
• Mistweaver Monk: Renewing Mist
• All Paladin Specs: Blessing of Freedom
• Shadow Priest: Vampiric Touch
• Holy Priest: Renew
• Discipline Priest: Penance
• All Shaman Specs: Frost Shock
• All Warlock Specs: Fear

Mind Trauma will give you a large amount of Haste, which will greatly increase your damage output. This should be chosen versus teams with casters where you will be able to fully channel Mind Flays.