Cataclysm Classic Shadow Priest Leveling

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Your first talent unlocks at Level 10.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done. Twisted Faith will convert any Spirit you get on gear into Hit Rating.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done. Twisted Faith will convert any Spirit you get on gear into Hit Rating. Improved Mind Blast reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1.5 seconds, which is your main damage ability.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done. Twisted Faith will convert any Spirit you get on gear into Hit Rating. Improved Mind Blast reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1.5 seconds, which is your main damage ability. Shadowform greatly boosting your Shadow damage done and reduces your Physical damage taken.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done. Twisted Faith will convert any Spirit you get on gear into Hit Rating. Improved Mind Blast reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1.5 seconds, which is your main damage ability. Shadowform greatly boosting your Shadow damage done and reduces your Physical damage taken. Improved Devouring Plague causes your Devouring Plague to instantly deal 30% of its total DoT instantly on application, increasing its damage and allowing you to use it while moving for burst damage.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done. Twisted Faith will convert any Spirit you get on gear into Hit Rating. Improved Mind Blast reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1.5 seconds, which is your main damage ability. Shadowform greatly boosting your Shadow damage done and reduces your Physical damage taken. Improved Devouring Plague causes your Devouring Plague to instantly deal 30% of its total DoT instantly on application, increasing its damage and allowing you to use it while moving for burst damage. Vampiric Embrace causes your damaging spells to heal you for 6% of the damage they deal.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done. Twisted Faith will convert any Spirit you get on gear into Hit Rating. Improved Mind Blast reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1.5 seconds, which is your main damage ability. Shadowform greatly boosting your Shadow damage done and reduces your Physical damage taken. Improved Devouring Plague causes your Devouring Plague to instantly deal 30% of its total DoT instantly on application, increasing its damage and allowing you to use it while moving for burst damage. Vampiric Embrace causes your damaging spells to heal you for 6% of the damage they deal. Mind Melt makes your Shadow Word: Death deal 30% more damage to targets below 25% health.

Improved Shadow Word: Pain increases the damage of your main DoT Shadow Word: Pain by 6%. Darkness gives you a 3% total Haste increase, boosting all of your damage done. Twisted Faith will convert any Spirit you get on gear into Hit Rating. Improved Mind Blast reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1.5 seconds, which is your main damage ability. Shadowform greatly boosting your Shadow damage done and reduces your Physical damage taken. Improved Devouring Plague causes your Devouring Plague to instantly deal 30% of its total DoT instantly on application, increasing its damage and allowing you to use it while moving for burst damage. Vampiric Embrace causes your damaging spells to heal you for 6% of the damage they deal. Mind Melt and Masochism make your Shadow Word: Death deal 30% more damage to targets below 25% health and restore 10% of your Mana.

Vampiric Touch is your strongest DoT and restores Mana to you when you use Mind Blast on the debuffed target.

Vampiric Touch is your strongest DoT and restores Mana to you when you use Mind Blast on the debuffed target. Pain and Suffering further improves your Shadow Word: Death by reducing the backlash damage it deals to you by 40%, as well as causing your Mind Flay to refresh your Shadow Word: Pain on the target.

Vampiric Touch is your strongest DoT and restores Mana to you when you use Mind Blast on the debuffed target. Pain and Suffering further improves your Shadow Word: Death by reducing the backlash damage it deals to you by 40%, as well as causing your Mind Flay to refresh your Shadow Word: Pain on the target. Shadowy Apparition gives your Shadow Word: Pain ticks a 12% to summon a shadow that moves to the target and deals Shadow damage.

Vampiric Touch is your strongest DoT and restores Mana to you when you use Mind Blast on the debuffed target. Pain and Suffering further improves your Shadow Word: Death by reducing the backlash damage it deals to you by 40%, as well as causing your Mind Flay to refresh your Shadow Word: Pain on the target. Shadowy Apparition gives your Shadow Word: Pain ticks a 12% to summon a shadow that moves to the target and deals Shadow damage. Psychic Horror can be used to disarm enemies for 10 seconds.

Vampiric Touch is your strongest DoT and restores Mana to you when you use Mind Blast on the debuffed target. Pain and Suffering further improves your Shadow Word: Death by reducing the backlash damage it deals to you by 40%, as well as causing your Mind Flay to refresh your Shadow Word: Pain on the target. Shadowy Apparition gives your Shadow Word: Pain ticks a 12% to summon a shadow that moves to the target and deals Shadow damage. Psychic Horror can be used to disarm enemies for 10 seconds. Silence helps when you are facing any casting enemies to.

Vampiric Touch is your strongest DoT and restores Mana to you when you use Mind Blast on the debuffed target. Pain and Suffering further improves your Shadow Word: Death by reducing the backlash damage it deals to you by 40%, as well as causing your Mind Flay to refresh your Shadow Word: Pain on the target. Shadowy Apparition gives your Shadow Word: Pain ticks a 12% to summon a shadow that moves to the target and deals Shadow damage. Psychic Horror can be used to disarm enemies for 10 seconds. Silence helps when you are facing any casting enemies to. Dispersion is a great tool for Mana regeneration, simply use this between pulls whenever your Mana is getting low.

With the Shadow tree being completed, you can now grab powerful talents from the Discipline tree. Twin Disciplines gives 6% increased damage and healing dealt.

With the Shadow tree being completed, you can now grab powerful talents from the Discipline tree. Twin Disciplines gives 6% increased damage and healing dealt. Improved Power Word: Shield increases the absorb of your Power Word: Shield by 20%, which is great for keeping your health full, especially when paired with Glyph of Power Word: Shield.

With the Shadow tree being completed, you can now grab powerful talents from the Discipline tree. Twin Disciplines gives 6% increased damage and healing dealt. Improved Power Word: Shield increases the absorb of your Power Word: Shield by 20%, which is great for keeping your health full, especially when paired with Glyph of Power Word: Shield. Evangelism increases the damage done by your Shadow DoTs by up to 10%.

With the Shadow tree being completed, you can now grab powerful talents from the Discipline tree. Twin Disciplines gives 6% increased damage and healing dealt. Improved Power Word: Shield increases the absorb of your Power Word: Shield by 20%, which is great for keeping your health full, especially when paired with Glyph of Power Word: Shield. Evangelism increases the damage done by your Shadow DoTs by up to 10%. When you have 5 stacks of Dark Evangelism, you can activate Archangel to regenerate 25% Mana and increase the damage done by your Mind Flay, Mind Blast, and Shadow Word: Death by 20%.

Your leveling glyphs will differ from your endgame glyphs. Glyphs can be a huge boost to your leveling speed as some greatly improve the baseline power of your key abilities. Be sure to check the price of these glyphs on your server to vastly improve your leveling experience.

1. Glyph of Mind Flay — Mind Flay is the main spell of the spec, making this a mandatory glyph.
2. Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain — Mind Flay is another main spell of this spec, making this another mandatory glyph.
3. Glyph of Power Word: Shield — This gives you some very easy health sustain that you can use while in Shadowform without slowing down your killing speed.

1. Glyph of Spirit Tap — Use this with Shadow Word: Death to get the killing blow on low health mobs and restore 12% of your Mana.
2. Glyph of Inner Fire — There are no other major glyphs that have a strong benefit for leveling as Shadow. This one will have the most impact out of all of the other choices, but can easily be skipped.
3. Glyph of Psychic Scream — Changes your Psychic Scream to make the enemies stand in place, rather than run away in random directions. This helps you escape dangerous situations as the mobs won't run into other mobs. This is also a very minor glyph and can be easily skipped.

1. Glyph of Fortitude — Saves a little bit of Mana each time you rebuff Power Word: Fortitude.
2. Glyph of Levitate — Removes the resource requirement from Levitate. This is useful when jumping from a tall location to avoid taking fall damage.
3. Glyph of Shadowfiend — Restores 5% of your maximum Mana if your Shadowfiend happens to die before its timer runs out.

1. Power Word: Fortitude keep this buff up before entering combat.
2. Inner Fire keep this buff up before entering combat.
3. Vampiric Embrace keep this buff up before entering combat.
4. Shadowform keep this buff up before entering combat.
5. Archangel between pulls when you have 5 stacks of Evangelism to restore Mana and increase your damage done.
6. Shadow Word: Death only when the mob is low health, as this is an execute spell. You want Shadow Word: Death to deal the killing blow, as that will proc your Glyph of Spirit Tap, giving you a high amount of Mana sustain between pulls.
7. Smite your target until it is dead.
8. Smite your target from max range.
9. Mind Blast your target from max range.
10. Holy Fire your target from max range.
11. Mind Blast your target from max range.
12. Vampiric Touch your target from max range.
13. Shadow Word: Pain your target after you enter combat. Run away from the target while doing this to keep your distance.
14. Devouring Plague your target, running away while doing this to keep your distance.
15. Mind Blast on cooldown.
16. Mind Blast on cooldown.
17. Mind Flay as a filler until target is below 20% health.
18. Power Word: Shield yourself whenever you are low health. This is great health sustain when combined with Glyph of Power Word: Shield.

You have very few spells early on. At the start of a pull you will want to be at max range. This helps you get off more damage before the mob reaches you. Running away from the mob while casting instant cast spells like Shadow Word: Pain help keep that distance from the mob, reducing your damage taken. Overall, this helps reduce how often you need to drink as you will need to heal yourself less.

Now your rotation starts to form itself as you get multiple new spells. Holy Fire will be the ideal spell to use on pull as it has a long cast time and deals high damage. Next you will want to cast Shadow Word: Pain on the target while running away from it if possible, allowing you to keep some distance on it. Mind Blast on cooldown and use Mind Flay as a filler spell until the target is low enough to die to DoTs and Shoot. Be sure to use either Renew or Power Word: Shield whenever you are taking high damage.

With Shadowform you can no longer cast Holy spells, changing your rotation a bit. Start with Mind Blast from max range. Next you will want to cast Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague on the target while running away from it if possible, allowing you to keep some distance on it. Then use a couple Mind Flays until the target is low enough to die to Shadow Word: Death. Pay attention to exactly how much damage your Shadow Word: Death deals and try to only use it if it will deal the killing blow as you want it to proc your Glyph of Spirit Tap. This is your main source of Mana regeneration.

Start with Vampiric Touch from max range. Next you will want to cast Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague on the target while running away from it if possible, allowing you to keep some distance on it. Use Mind Blast, then cast a couple Mind Flays until the target is low enough to die to Shadow Word: Death. Pay attention to exactly how much damage your Shadow Word: Death deals and try to only use it if it will deal the killing blow as you want it to proc your Glyph of Spirit Tap. This is your main source of Mana regeneration.

Hymn of Hope is a nice bit of Mana restoration you can use between pulls every 6 minutes.

Shadowfiend can be used in combat to restore Mana, or for the extra damage if figthing a strong enemy. Hymn of Hope is a nice bit of Mana restoration you can use between pulls every 6 minutes.

Use Dispersion whenever you need a burst of Mana, or are taking high amounts of damage. Shadowfiend can be used in combat to restore Mana, or for the extra damage if figthing a strong enemy. Hymn of Hope is a nice bit of Mana restoration you can use between pulls every 6 minutes.

While leveling, you will not need to use all of your spells. Many can be skipped to save gold and trained at a later date, when you have more gold available to you. We recommend to not train these spells below, and save your gold for gear, glyphs and mounts instead.

• Shackle Undead
• Mind Vision
• Mind Control
• Shadow Protection
• Mind Soothe
• Mana Burn
• Mind Spike
• Inner Will

Congratulations on hitting Level 85 in Cataclysm! Now that your leveling process is over, you can learn more about Level-85 Shadow Priests gameplay by reading our fully detailed guide below.