In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Shadow Priest (WoW MoP 5.3). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other articles of our Shadow Priest guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Artzie (@Artzieh), a Shadow Priest who raids in Method, and by Twintop, one of the main Shadow Priest theorycrafters, who runs Shadow Orbs and Mind Spikes and works on How To Priest.

1. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents offer you a choice between 3 crowd-control abilities.

• Void Tendrils roots up to 5 enemies in place for up to 20 seconds. Killing the tendrils cancels the effects. The targets must be in the 8-yard proximity of the main target of the spell.
• Psyfiend spawns a friendly NPC that casts fears on nearby enemies.
• Dominate Mind takes control of an enemy player or NPC.

These talents have, at best, situational uses. They may be useful in some encounters, but most likely will only be used during trash and questing. Your choice will be largely irrelevant.

These talents do not influence your performance in any way, their uses being entirely situational. We advise that you choose the talent you prefer the most, or that one which applies best to the conditions of the encounter.

That said, Void Tendrils may prove more useful than other choices, since it allows you to root enemy adds.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents offer you a choice between 3 means of improving your mobility.

• Body and Soul increases the movement speed of the target of your Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith by 60% for 4 seconds.
• Angelic Feather allows you to place up to 3 feathers on the ground. Collecting a feather (running through it) increases the player's movement speed by 60% for 6 seconds. Placing feathers has no cooldown, but you only gain a new feather every 10 seconds.
• Phantasm causes your Fade to remove all movement-impairing effects from you. It also makes you unslowable for 5 seconds.

We highly recommend choosing Body and Soul, because it offers an immediate movement-speed increase whenever someone needs it, as opposed to Angelic Feather, which takes more time since you need to spawn the feathers. The added time to set up Angelic Feathers will also result in a loss of DPS. Be wary, however, that the Power Word: Shields you cast to provide this buff will apply the Weakened Soul debuff on the target, so make sure not to inconvenience any Discipline Priests who are trying to do their job. Conversely, note that you cannot provide the boost if the player is already affected by Weakened Soul, so be on the look-out for that.

It is important to note that using Power Word: Shield will not take you out of Shadowform, but using Leap of Faith will. However, you can use Glyph of Dark Binding (presented at the bottom of this page) to allow you to cast Leap of Faith without breaking Shadowform.

Phantasm is more of a PvP talent, with situational uses at best.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents offer you a choice between 3 performance-enhancing abilities.

• From Darkness, Comes Light passively grants you a 15% chance, whenever your Vampiric Touch ticks, to cause your next Mind Spike to not consume your DoTs, to be instant-cast, to cost no mana, and to deal 50% additional damage. You can have a maximum of 2 charges of this buff at one time.
• Mindbender is an improved version of Shadowfiend, which it replaces. The Mindbender has a lower cooldown, and provides you with more damage and mana regeneration.
• Solace and Insanity causes Mind Flay to deal 33% more damage on targets affected by Devouring Plague, for each Shadow Orb with which Devouring Plague was cast.

Currently, Solace and Insanity provides the highest DPS gain, provided that you can afford to stand and channel Mind Flay following the applications of Devouring Plague. In case the encounter requires very heavy movement, it may not be the best choice.

From Darkness, Comes Light is also a good choice. The Mind Spikes you can get off thanks to this talent are a nice DPS boost, and they do not negatively affect your rotation. If you are multi-dotting targets with your Vampiric Touch, then you will get more procs of this talent. Even so, it is not normally better than Solace and Insanity.

Mindbender provides a nice amount of mana return, as well as a DPS boost, but it does not out-rank the other two choices.

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 talents offer you a choice between 3 abilities that improve your survivability.

• Desperate Prayer is an instant-cast self-heal that heals you for 30% of your maximum health, with a 2-minute cooldown.
• Spectral Guise allows you to enter a pseudo-stealth state (you remain in combat), leaving behind an illusion of yourself. The effect lasts for 6 seconds, or until you receive 3 attacks.
• Angelic Bulwark is a passive ability that grants you a damage absorption shield, for 20% of your maximum health, each time you drop below 30% health. The effect has an internal cooldown of 90 seconds.

Here, the choice comes down to either Desperate Prayer or Angelic Bulwark. We prefer Desperate Prayer, because it can be used on-demand. Angelic Bulwark can be great when it procs, so it is useful for fights where you often drop below 30% health (progression content, most likely).

Spectral Guise does not have any meaningful PvE applications.

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents offer you a choice between 3 performance-enhancing abilities.

• Twist of Fate passively increases your damage and healing by 15% for 10 seconds, each time you damage or heal a target that is below 20% health.
• Power Infusion is a 2-minute cooldown that increases your spell casting speed by 20%, reduces the mana cost of all your spells by 20%, and increases all damage done by 5%, for 20 seconds.
• Divine Insight grants you 5% chance, each time Shadow Word: Pain deals periodic damage, to reset the cooldown of Mind Blast and cause your next Mind Blast (cast within 12 seconds) to be instant cast and cost no mana.

If can you have 40% or more uptime on Twist of Fate, then this talent is the best choice. Note that you can increase the uptime of the buff by making sure to damage low health adds regularly, if the encounter provides such an opportunity.

If the encounter you are in does not have many adds that allow you to maintain the desired uptime on Twist of Fate, then Power Infusion is the best choice.

If you have a fight where you can make use of multi-dotting, then Divine Insight is the best choice. In any case though, Twist of Fate is better than Divine Insight, if you can maintain over 40% uptime on it.

A more particular distinction between Power Infusion and Divine Insight is that at high gear levels (when you have a lot of Haste), Divine Insight becomes more valuable.

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

Tier 6 talents offer you a choice between 3 abilities that deal damage to and heal multiple targets.

• Cascade is a sort of "chain heal" or "chain lightning", depending on how you wish to use the spell. The initial bolt heals or deals damage to its first target, after which it splits in two, each bolt jumping to targets that are far away, until it eventually stops.
• Divine Star resembles a yo-yo, in the sense that the ball of energy travels in a path away from you (in front of you), and after reaching a certain point (24 yards away), it returns. Both on the first, as well as on the second trip, it heals allies in its path, and damages enemies.
• Halo causes an effect around you, which expands up to a 30-yard radius. Allies who are inside it are healed, while enemies are damaged. The highest amounts of healing/damage are received by the targets who are around the 25-yard mark.

Quite simply, you should choose the tier 6 talent based on the positioning of the targets you are attacking.

If the targets are spread out, then you will want Cascade.

If the targets are stacked loosely (ideally in a line, although we cannot quite see this happening very often), then Divine Star can shine. Note that Divine Star also provides a very high amount of healing, making it quite useful during heroic progression. Divine Star is also good if you need to fight in a small space, which does not allow you to fulfill the positioning requirement of Halo (see below).

Finally, Halo will work well if the targets are close to each other, and if you can position yourself in such a way as to be 25 yards away from them.

If you are using these talents exclusively against a single target (in which case they will all hit their target), then Halo provides the highest DPS, again, provided that you can stand 25 yards away from the target.

8. Major Glyphs↑top

There are a few Major Glyphs you should consider, though none of them provide a DPS increase. Below, we group them together by category.

8.1. Healing

• Glyph of Dark Binding allows you to cast Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Leap of Faith without canceling Shadowform. This glyph is extremely useful in allowing you to self-heal, and just generally be useful to your raid without sacrificing DPS.
• Glyph of Vampiric Embrace increases the amount of healing provided by Vampiric Embrace by 25%, and reduces the duration over which this heal happens. This makes the heal from Vampiric Embrace more bursty.
• Glyph of Prayer of Mending increases the initial heal of Prayer of Mending, at the cost of one charge. This glyph is useful particularly for the times when you use Prayer of Mending as a self-healing ability.

8.2. Damage Reduction

• Glyph of Inner Sanctum provides you with a 6% spell damage taken reduction while Inner Fire is active. This is particularly useful during progression content.
• Glyph of Fade reduces all damage taken by 10% while Fade is active. This can turn Fade into a useful minor survival cooldown in times of raid damage.
• Glyph of Inner Fire increases the armor you gain from Inner Fire by 50%. This is useful if you expect to take considerable Physical damage during the encounter.

8.3. Utility

• Glyph of Mass Dispel causes Mass Dispel to dispel magic effects that are normally undispellable. This glyph is practically mandatory for any encounters you need to use Mass Dispel to get rid of certain mechanics.
• Glyph of Mind Flay causes your Mind Flay ticks to stack a movement-speed increasing buff on you.
• Glyph of Dispersion reduces the cooldown of Dispersion by 15 seconds.

9. Minor Glyphs↑top

All Minor Glyphs are of purely cosmetic value, and they do not influence your gameplay at all.

10. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated the Glyph of Mass Dispel description.
• 07 May 2013: Added Glyph of Inner Fire, Glyph of Prayer of Mending, and Glyph of Mass Dispel. Grouped the Major Glyphs by category. Added additional details in the discussions of Tier 3, 5, and 6 talents.
• 26 Apr. 2013: Added Glyph of Vampiric Embrace and Glyph of Fade.
• 10 Apr. 2013: Re-worded a few talent discussions, particularly clarifying when each of the Tier 5 talents is best chosen. Removed the mention of Glyph of Mind Spike (since it is more or less worthless now), and added a mention for Glyph of Inner Sanctum.
• 26 Mar. 2013: Re-worded and clarified the explanations of the value of various performance-enhancing talents.
• 13 Mar. 2013: Updated the relative values of Tier 3 and Tier 5 talents, to account for the most recent simulation results.
• 04 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated mention of the duration of the movement speed buff from Angelic Feather from 4 to 6 seconds.
  • Added mention of the 5% damage increase from Power Infusion.
  • Added explanations of the new Solace and Insanity.