Shadow Priest PvP Talents and Builds — The War Within (11.1.5)

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:

• Void Tendrils summons tendrils and roots all enemies for 8 seconds or until they are killed. This is a perfect talent for increasing your survivability vs melee or to help you get a fear.
• Translucent Image and Improved Fade are crucial talents you should take to increase your survivability.
• Void Shift is one of the best defensive cooldowns in the game. This swaps your health percentage with an ally. This spell is not affected by dampening, so having it as a last resort in long games is crucial.
• 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.
• Vampiric Embrace is an often overlooked defensive spell, but can drastically help your team stay alive if it is used properly. This will heal an ally for 40% of any single-target Shadow spell damage you deal. Use this during your burst rotation to maximize its value.

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:

• Devouring Plague 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.
• Shadow Crash is an instant spell that deals damage to all players within 8 yards. Whispering Shadows makes it so any players hit by Shadow Crash get Vampiric Touch on them. These are important spells that give you instant damage.
• Unfurling Darkness makes it so you spend less time casting Vampiric Touch and more time casting harder-hitting spells.
• 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.

Catharsis stores 20% of the damage you take and increased the initial damage of your next Shadow Word: Pain. This is another strong PvP talent that increases your already strong damage output.

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.

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.