Shadow priest guide dota 2

Shadow Priest DPS Guide — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.2.5

Welcome to our Shadow Priest guide for World of Warcraft — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.2.5. Here, you will learn how to play as a Shadow Priest in both raids and Mythic+ dungeons: from the very beginning to maximizing your DPS.

If you were looking for WoW Classic content, please refer to our Classic Shadow Priest DPS guide.

Shadow Priest Overview

Shadow is currently on the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to single-target damage, but what it lacks in single-target it compensates for with its high multi-target damage due to its DoTs and talents that increase its burst AoE. While the spell priority system may seem simple at first glance, the true mastery of your Shadow Priest comes from how well you can perform your rotation whilst also respecting mechanics. Optimizing Insanity generation is key and it is this Voidform and Insanity management that allow for a fun and fairly fast-paced playstyle, when done correctly.

Patch 8.2.5 Changes for Shadow Priest

Shadow Priests underwent the following changes in Patch 8.2.5.

• Hallucinations now only grants Insanity during combat.

This change is not extremely large DPS wise, but does mean you can no longer generate insanity out of combat to start the fight with 25 insanity with Power Word: Shield . That being sa > Shadow Crash if talented.

Patch 8.2 Changes for Shadow Priest

Shadow Priests underwent the following changes in Patch 8.2.

• Auspicious Spirits now deal 50% increased damage and generate 2 Insanity, down from 100% increased damage. Note that this does not affect the strength of Spiteful Apparitions, as that increase is multiplicative and similar in strength to all talents.
• Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch damage was reduced by 9%.

In addition, Shadow Priests gained access to the following:

Shadow Priest Strengths

• Good sustained multiple target damage
• Option to prov >Vampiric Touch , scaling well with additional targets
• Situationally good group utility in the form of Vampiric Embrace
• Fairly strong burst AoE if you take the talents for it

Shadow Priest Weaknesses

• DoT management requires a lot of focus and can take away a lot of globals when facing a couple of targets
• Lack of good DPS cooldowns means that Shadow has low burst potential
• Weak single target damage
• Voidform is prone to mistakes and can punish the player quite harshly when you mess up

Shadow Priest Viability in the Current Patch

With Patch 8.2, Shadow received some expected nerfs to our DoTs and spread cleave ability. While this is definitely our largest strength, Shadow was incredibly far ahead compared to others in this regard (especially for fights found in Crucible of Storms), and similar fights are coming with Eternal Palace. Shadow will still perform strong throughout the raid and it will be a good addition to any raid roster, but stacking 5 Shadow Priests will probably not be desirable.