Shraug's Legion PvP Shadow Priest Guide 7.0.3

[Shraug]

Hey Shadow Priests! My name is Shraug and I have played Shadow over the past 3 expansions in 2k+ PvP, so I decided create a guide that covers more than just the basics of Shadow Priests in Legion. I don't find many PvP guides nowadays so I thought I'd help fix that!

This guide assumes that you already know the basics of PvP and only helps if you are wanting to become a better Shadow Priest or better player in general. I will be discussing both RBG and Arena differences for the class, so pay close attention!

Table of Contents
1. Talents
2. PvP Talents
3. Min/Maxing Damage Output
4. Spriest Races for Horde / Alliance
5. Addons
6. Macros
7. Last Words

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1. Talents (Not mentioned talents simply mean they definitely are not a good option for PvP)
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Tier 1

Twist of Fate: Our go-to talent last expansion as none of the other talents on that tier offered much benefit. After much testing, Twist of Fate is my favorite talent by far for RBGs because there's usually something dipping below 35% health. Putting VT and SW:P on a Hunter, Mage, or Warlock's pet will help grant you this buff rather quickly will help increase your damage at the start of teamfights. As for arena, you will rarely get this buff unless you are absolutely destroying the other team, but you can still make use of it if you are setting up every so often and trying to land kills.

Fortress of the Mind: Seems to have great synergy with Shadowy Insight and is recommended you pair the two in Arena, especially against melee teams as you wont be casting too much. In RBGs, Twist of Fate is much better.

Shadow Word: Void: Only perk of this talent is a getting a much faster Void Form. It may have 3 charges, but the 30 second recharge makes it hard seem worthy. Casting is a very important part of Shadow this expansion, and with the SW:V having a cast time, it makes it a hard talent to pick. If it were instant, maybe it would be considered.

Tier 2

Body and Soul: Honestly the clear choice here. With the removal of feathers, this is your ONLY mobility. Mania and masochism are awful and are not recommended in any situation.

Tier 3

Mind Bomb: With Psychic Horror being removed, we are left with only Psychic Scream and Silence for our cc. Mind Bomb being on a 30 second cooldown seems pretty good, except for the fact that it takes 2 seconds to take effect, and is dispellable. Against any competent players, you will likely never get a Mind Bomb off unless their dispel is on cooldown. You can get lucky in RBGs and a healer may not notice the debuff, but more than likely they will dispel the stun effect anyways. Possibly good for Shadowplay, but that's about it.

Psychic Voice: Overall a pretty solid choice, fear has a little bit harder time breaking this expansion, and with the original 1 minute cd on Psychic Scream, this talent seems nessecary. My personal favorite.

Tier 4

Reaper of Souls: Once again, the clear choice here. Both Void Lord and Void Ray don't compare to Reaper of Souls. The 35% execute is SO GOOD in any situation, and since SW: Death generally doesn't generate Insanity unless the target dies, this talent makes it even greater.

Tier 5

San'layn: My personal favorite for RBGs. Since you are already a juicy target for the enemy, healing is the best defensive you have. The damage increase and healing increase are both too good to give up in a spread pressure scenario like RBGs.

Auspicious Spirits: An Interesting choice. With your Vampiric Touch now having a chance to generate a Shadow Apparition because of your artifact, the talent seems alright. Pairing it with Initaiton makes it even better, but the raw damage output doesn't compare to San'layn. If you can't seem to get ANY casts off for whatever reason, be it not juking or just playing against good players, this may be the talent for you.

Shadowy Insight: This talent has been with us for a while now, and is finally seeing some light again now that our beloved Surge of Darkness is gone. Great to pair with Fortress of the Mind for arenas, but doesn't have much spread pressure for RBGs. Overall, an okay choice.

Tier 6

Power Infusion: With the removal of a lot of trash buffs, this cooldown has become a lot weaker than it originally was. However, in RBGs this cooldown can either help you melt the enemy teamfight, or get purged in an instant. Just depends how aware your enemies are. Same goes for arena, most likely will get purged as soon as the animation or buff is seen. Risky pick.

Shadow Crash: With the slow travel time, this talent is hard to make good use of. In RBGs, if you land it on multiple people, it can be a pretty good pick as it's only on a 30 second cd. However, if you're on a fast paced map like Arathi basin or Warsong Gulch, this is not recommended. In arena, this is a very bad pick-up.

Mindbender: The safest choice in this tier as it provides small burst on a short cd. Also helps you gain insanity so using it at the right time may help you pump out more damage. Recommended for arena.

Tier 7

Legacy of the Void: Your only option here. The other two are garbage, and in fact, one of them you can't even pick in PvP.

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2. PvP Talents (Not mentioned talents simply mean they are not a good option for PvP)
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Tier 1

Gladiator's Medallion: The safest choice for any class, my personal pick

Relentless: Since Priests can't be orcs, this talent will have a hard time finding it's way into my spellbook. Overall, seems pretty good when paired with orc stun reduction for other classes.

Tier 2

Mind Quickness: Safe choice and my personal pick. More overall damage output.

Initiation: This talent can be paired with Auspicious Spirits in RBGs for alright damage output, but isn't very good in arena.

Tier 3

Void Shield: A solid pick if you're looking for some consistent passive healing, or burst healing if you line it up with Vampiric Embrace and Void Torrent.

Pure Shadow: Arguably the best pick out of the three in this tier as it makes disperse a much stronger cooldown, as well as making it a very underrated offensive tool. My personal pick.

Fleeting Embrace: Not a bad pick for arena, but it's still a 1.5 minute cd, and relies on your burst to be effective.

Tier 4

Void Origins: With Driven Madness being nerfed into the ground, this talent is a clear choice. Instant Void Eruption is extremely strong in every scenario and is the clear pick.

Tier 5

Shadow Mania: The strongest of the three talents currently as it provides a significant boost to your healing as well as passive insanity gain.

Psychic Link: Mind Blast does not do enough damage right now to warrant taking this. If Mind Blast hit as hard as it did in WoD then maybe this would be an alright pick, but Shadow Mania outweighs Psychic Link in every aspect.

Tier 6

Psyfiend: This is a very nice 45 second cd. The damage is pretty good, the slow is EXTREMELY helpful when you're chasing someone down or peeling someone off of you. However, it only has 10 hp and can be cleaved down by any aoe, making it extremely hard to use correctly. Credit to Woop Woop: A good way to help prevent your Psyfiend from being cleaved down is to PW:S it so it doesn't die to Starfall or another light cleave.

Last Word: This talent makes our execute even stronger than it was previously, especially when focusing a healer. It DR's your Silence spell itself, but in RBGs it isn't a bad pickup. Just toss your Silence on the off healer and train the current one into the ground. Can also be used to blanket silence the healer's trinket after your first execute silence, making this pretty strong.

Void Shift: Ahhh yes, the once loved life swap is back, but with a 5 minute cd. For good reason too as it is essentially a Nature's Swiftness for a Shadow Priest. Your healers will love you when you take this, and can open yourself up to making some pretty clutch plays. Probably the strongest choice of the 3 in arena or Flag Carry RBG maps.

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3. Min/Maxing Damage Output
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Mastery: Increases the damage of your Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Void Bolt by X%. So basically just a raw damage increase.

The new Shadow Priest has been hyped up A LOT due to the rework of the spec. Currently, the spec has an extremely high skill cap due to needing to have a high DoT uptime as well as managing cooldowns well.

First I will speak about RBGs, and then arenas.

Generally your opener in a teamfight is casting a Mind Blast to build Insanity. Mind Blast off CD, Vampiric Touch into SW:P on as many targets as you can while keeping Mind Blast on CD. Once you hit 70+ Insanity, make sure you've got some sort of dot on as many people as possible so when you use Void Eruption, you damage each of them. Once you talent into Mass Hysteria on your artifact weapon, your main goal will be to keep VT and SW:P up on as many targets as you can while staying in VF for as long as possible. Rotating your Voidbolt on your targets that have SW:P and VT on them is also what can help you push the skill ceiling of the spec. If you can do that often enough, you'll end up using less globals to reapply the dots, and being able to spend those globals elsewhere.

Every 1 stack of Voidform you have, your SW:P and VT damage increases by 2%. So if you're still in Voidform with 32 stacks, that means your dots will be doing 64% additional damage, which is A LOT. I like to do this by using Void Torrent when Insanity starts to drain pretty fast. Make sure to use Void Torrent AFTER you use Void Bolt, to maximize as much damage as possible. After coming out of Void Torrent channel, Void Bolt in between, then Disperse for as long as you can or want, as insanity won't drain while you're in Dispersion, and for 6 seconds after you come out when you take Pure Shadow.

Ideally, the best way to min max is to make sure your Void Bolt and SW: D are always on cooldown. If you see a pet in execute range, don't hesitate to SW: D the pet for the ToF buff as well as the huge Insanity jump to keep you in Void Form. As long as you have dots up and you're still increasing your VF stacks, you're pumping out massive spread pressure.

As for arenas, you'll most likely be playing Fireplay, WPS, RPS, or some other variation of those. Since you'll be running FotM and SI, SW:P should be up on all of your targets. That means if you queue into BM Hunter, Mage, Lock, anything with a pet, stick your SW:P up on the pets to garner more SI procs.

Legion Spriest is very different from WoD Spriest. WoD Spriest used to be based around setups and burst in Shatter or God Comp, and Legion Spriest is more spread pressure similar to a UA Lock in WLS or FLS. You still have some burst with Void Torrent & Void Form, but for the most part you're spreading your pressure on all 3 targets.

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4. Races
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Horde:
1) Troll
2) Tauren
3) Undead
4) Blood Elf

If you REALLY want to min/max, Troll's Berserk gives you a solid haste buff. There is a small margin between these races as they are all pretty good, but Blood Elf is probably the worst for Shadow as the racial DR's with your own silence.

Alliance
1) Human
2) Dwarf
3) Night Elf
4) Worgen

Human's Every Man for Himself is still very strong even though it only works for stuns. There are a lot of stuns still in the game, so it isn't hard to find a good time to use it.

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5. Addons
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I don't use many addons, but these are the ones I use and are extremely helpful:

Battleground Targets - Essential RBG target frames

Omnibar - Tracks cooldowns of your enemy. Extremely useful for juking kicks and tracking important cooldowns that are cusomizable in the options menu.

Supt - Confirms interrupts or Silences you land on the enemy that stops them from casting a spell.

Gladius or sArena - Customizable Arena frames.

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6. Macros
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#showtooltip
/cast dispersion
/cancelaura dispersion

Allows you to cancel Dispersion with the same button that activates it.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus] Silence

Focus Silence Macro

#showtooltip
/target [harm, exists] Ebon Gargoyle
/cast Shackle Undead

If there is a Gargoyle on the map near you, it will shackle it.

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7. Last Words
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Shadow can be one of the strongest if not the strongest caster in this patch when played well correctly. I created this guide in hopes it would help at least a few people. It's not perfect, but should give you a pretty good idea of how to play shadow pretty well. I will be updating this guide throughout patches, so check back in if you have any questions on a change! Thanks for reading and I hope you stay true to the Void ^_^

If you have any personal questions feel free to message me in game or through twitter!

twitter.com/shraaug

[Woop Woop]

Great guide. I have been running bgs with these talents and its pretty good, i only change between mindbender/PI and mindbomb/scream. One thing i think you should add to your guide is to shield the Psyfiend since it has only 10 hp.

[Shraug]

Great guide. I have been running bgs with these talents and its pretty good, i only change between mindbender/PI and mindbomb/scream. One thing i think you should add to your guide is to shield the Psyfiend since it has only 10 hp.

Yeah, that's a good one.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the great guide. I have been waiting for this. I enjoy pvp but don't have much time for it. This will help alot. I hope we see some discussion here and get this thread stickied.

[Deleted]

Had a read, seen you picked Twist of Fate as the worst talent, stopped reading. Went back to have another read then seen you recommend Reaper of Souls, while not recommending Twist of Fate. Scimming through you then advise against not picking Void Shield and didn't include Goblin in the races (Which give a passive haste bonus?).

Yeah, good effort, I appreciate what you tried to do, but in some circumstances its better to give no info than give bad info.

[Woop Woop]

Had a read, seen you picked Twist of Fate as the worst talent, stopped reading. Went back to have another read then seen you recommend Reaper of Souls, while not recommending Twist of Fate. Scimming through you then advise against not picking Void Shield and didn't include Goblin in the races (Which give a passive haste bonus?).

Yeah, good effort, I appreciate what you tried to do, but in some circumstances its better to give no info than give bad info.

Dont think you read it at all.

"Void Shield: A solid pick if you're looking for some consistent passive healing, or burst healing if you line it up with Vampiric Embrace and Void Torrent."
- Is this advicing against it?

"Twist of Fate: Our go-to talent last expansion as none of the other talents on that tier offered much benefit. After much testing, Twist of Fate is my favorite talent by far for RBGs because there's usually something dipping below 35% health. Putting VT and SW:P on a Hunter, Mage, or Warlock's pet will help grant you this buff rather quickly will help increase your damage at the start of teamfights. As for arena, you will rarely get this buff unless you are absolutely destroying the other team, so SW: Void or FotM is usually a better option."
- Says it's good for RBG, but others might be better for arena.

Only thing in your post that is accurate is the part about goblins.

[Shraug]

Had a read, seen you picked Twist of Fate as the worst talent, stopped reading. Went back to have another read then seen you recommend Reaper of Souls, while not recommending Twist of Fate. Scimming through you then advise against not picking Void Shield and didn't include Goblin in the races (Which give a passive haste bonus?).

Yeah, good effort, I appreciate what you tried to do, but in some circumstances its better to give no info than give bad info.

Looking back, ToF could still be good for arena in some cases. Without it, SW: D doesn't really hit that hard either, but FotM gets a lot more consistent use against melee train teams, i.e turbo or tsg. If you seem to be getting a lot of casts off, for whatever reason they decide not to train you, then ToF would be better.

[Reposed]

Macro for casting Psyfiend then casting PWS on it without dropping current target?

[Woop Woop]

Macro for casting Psyfiend then casting PWS on it without dropping current target?

Im no macro expert, so i dont know exactly how it would go;
#showtooltip
/cast Psyfiend
/cast [@Psyfiend] Power Word: Shield
Not online atm, tell me if it works or not.