Shadow Priest DPS Stat Priority — The War Within (11.0.5)

As a Shadow Priest your choice of Hero Talent and the encounter type plays a big role in your desired secondary stats. Largely speaking we prefer Haste and Mastery as our top stats, with Critical Strike and Versatility falling into a lesser category. Whether you prefer Haste or Mastery as your top stat, and by how much, will depend on several factors.

The general stat priority for a Shadow Priest is:

1. Intellect;
2. Mastery (ST) or Haste (AoE);
3. Other choice depending on ST or AoE
4. Critical Strike;
5. Versatility;

Intellect is our best stat, beating everything quite handily. This means gaining item level will typically be better than always having the most optimal secondary stats, as long as that piece is an Intellect increase. After Intellect, you ideally want Haste and/or Mastery on just about every piece of gear you can access. Haste has huge scaling potential with almost every spell in our toolkit, making it incredibly valuable. Mastery generally rewards playing well and directly buffs every spell in our kit. Critical Strike is typically right behind both of these stats and slightly better than Versatility for offensive power.

Largely speaking, you should prioritize Mastery over Haste for Single Target and Haste over Mastery for AoE environments.

To see fully specialized stat priorities in full detail for both Archon and Voidweaver use the tool below to toggle recommendations based on your desired Hero Talent Tree. Note that whichever you pick will affect the entire page and information will be tailored to that selection.

These suggestions are intended for when you are reaching the end-game of gearing for Season 1. If you are just starting out on your Priest or are not quite looking to min/max your gear you can follow the priority list above until you get more gear.

3.

War Within Shadow Priest Stat Priorities

Due to Hero Talents playing a major role, use the tool below to display stats for each tree

Hero Talents
Archon	Voidweaver

Use the boxes below to navigate builds

Archon Voidweaver
Single-Target Archon Voidweaver
AoE

4.

Archon Voidweaver Single Target Stats

Below is the stat priority for Archon Voidweaver Shadow Priests in Single Target. Besides each stat a range is listed approximating healthy amounts to target for each stat (un-buffed). These are not minimums or maximums but are simply guidance of rough goals for each stat in a Raid environment.

1. Intellect;
2. Mastery; (15% - 18%)
3. Haste; (15% - 20%)
4. Critical Strike; (12% - 18%)
5. Versatility; (1% - 3%)

Archon Priest builds will prefer to run a minimal amount of Haste so that they can stack more Mastery. The question becomes how little haste can the build run without it being too punishing to play. If you are specifically only looking at Patchwerk sims Haste can easily drop below 15% while being optimal. However, in a more realistic environment with movement you want practically speaking do not want to drop below 15% (～10000) Haste.

1. Intellect;
2. Mastery; (15% - 17%)
3. Haste; (19% - 23%)
4. Critical Strike; (9% - 15%)
5. Versatility; (1% - 3%)

Voidweaver Priest builds tend to favor Haste and Mastery more equally, although slightly leaning towards Mastery. Getting a comfortable amount of haste will make it easier to consistently get your Void Blast casts off without the need to pool Mind Blast hardly at all.

4.

Archon Voidweaver AoE Stats

Below is the stat priority for Archon Voidweaver Shadow Priests in AoE. Besides each stat a range is listed approximating healthy amounts to target for each stat (un-buffed). These are not minimums or maximums but are simply guidance of rough goals for each stat in a Mythic+ environment.

1. Intellect;
2. Haste; (21% - 28%)
3. Mastery; (14% - 17%)
4. Critical Strike; (9% - 14%)
5. Versatility; (1% - 3%)

Archon Priest builds can get more wild with Haste in AoE. Getting more Haste can rapidly speed up the rotation and allow you to get more spells off before mobs die. Mastery is still a very strong stat, oftentimes still being preferred for specifically optimizing for Boss Damage or Burst Damage. Haste is typically preferred in these cases to help your overall damage in a key and increase your damage even if you do not have full cooldowns running. My suggestion is to loosely try to keep your Mastery and Haste rating equal for the best all around setups.

Depending on the build you are using in Mythic+ you might adjust your stats to compensate. Specifically builds with Idol of Yogg-Saron will lean more towards the upper bound of Critical Strike guidelines above. To get to this range you would take away budget from Haste and Mastery equally.

1. Intellect;
2. Haste; (20% - 28%)
3. Mastery; (13% - 17%)
4. Critical Strike; (9% - 15%)
5. Versatility; (1% - 3%)

Voidweaver Priest builds will strongly favor Haste to fit in a consistent amount of Void Blast casts as well as scaling up Entropic Rift windows to get more ticks out.

Early on in the season, you will not have as much wiggle room with stats, and it will be more difficult to reach optimal setups.

There are several ways to move stats around; choose whichever makes sense for you:

• Swapping out Gems
• Swapping out Enchants
• Finding other pieces of gear, likely in slots like Waist or Cloak

There are many, many different "Best-in-Slot" setups with this, and you should not blindly copy what another player is doing. The important thing is to get your character setup to follow the goals outlined above, recognizing there are several paths to doing that with different items.

Keep in mind that secondary stats diminish in value. This point starts to diminish for Haste, Critical Strike, and Versatility at 30%, meaning it takes more rating starting at this point and rising from there to get a percentage point. For Mastery, this starts at 19% for Shadow Priests since our Mastery point conversion value is at 0.5, bringing the cap to 15%. We have 4% base Mastery, giving us a start to the diminishing return value at 19%. These are not points to aim for; just keep in mind once you hit these points, you will see the value of that stat diminish slightly.

The following is the list where the first Diminishing Return threshold starts for each stat at level 80. Note that it will continue scaling into further reduced amounts as you continue to stack.

• 21000 Critical Strike, or 35% (includes 5% baseline)
• 19800 Haste, or 30%
• 23400 Versatility, or 30%
• 21000 Mastery Rating, or 19%

What this typically means is that as you approach the first or second thresholds, it might make sense to start allocating enchants or gems in another stat to continue to get maximum benefit.

When looking for upgrades using Raidbots to sim your character is a great tool to use. Oftentimes, the minute changes between stats can be hard to figure out on your own, and this website will help you make these decisions.

Simming your character takes into account your specific build and setup and personalizes gear choices based on these settings to give you more personalized results, which factor in all the procs and variables within the spec.

When you sim your character, be cautious about any crazy changes with gems/enchants when the amount gained is lower than 0.5%. This is typically the threshold for the margin of error and something you should take with a heavy grain of salt. Furthermore, just doing single-target no-movement sims (Patchwerk) is not always realistic when it comes to the value of stats like Haste. These are all tools, not something that should ever be followed blindly.

The gems, enchants, and consumables you will use are directly derived from your stat priority, and you can find our advice on this topic on our dedicated page.

Intellect is your primary stat. You should look for this stat in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Spell Power, which increases the damage of your spells.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities. Crits deal double damage by default, but several effects can increase your crit damage, and make crits even stronger.

Haste increases your spell-casting speed and the tick rate of your periodic effects.

Mastery ( Mastery: Shadow Weaving) increases the damage of your spells for each damage over time effect you have active on that target. This only works with Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Devouring Plague. While Voidform is active, you get the benefit on every target as if they had all three dots active.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.