Cataclysm Classic Shadow Priest Guide

Shadow focuses on dealing damage with numerous Shadow damage spells. Your main priority when playing Shadow is to maintain your several damage-over-time (DoT) debuffs on your target, wearing down their health gradually. This spec excels above most others when facing multiple, high health targets at once. Here you can apply these DoTS to multiple enemies at once, ramping your damage beyond what most other classes are capable of.

Shadow Priest is a very strong DPS class throughout the entirely of Cataclysm, with increasing performance as each new raid tier releases. In addition to great damage, Shadow has a wide variety of utility spells and buffs, making them a great addition to any raid, and you will often see multiple Shadow Priests in a single raid.

Strengths

• Strong base-line power and scales very well with gear, remaining great throughout
• the entire expansion.
• Mostly only shares gear with healer Priests, making it easy to gear up for the
• most part.
• Dispersion allows you to solo raid mechanics that usually require multiple players.

Weaknesses

• High ramp-up damage, doing poorly in shorter fights.
• Very low mobility compared to other DPS classes.
• A bit more reliant on gearing than other DPS classes to reach Haste breakpoints.

Alliance Shadow Priest's best option is Worgen as Viciousness offers the most total stats, and Darkflight gives you movement speed utility.

Horde Shadow Priest's best race choice is Goblin as they offer Time is Money, Rocket Jump and Rocket Barrage.

Cataclysm balances most professions to be an equal amount of bonus stats, with most professions giving an average of 80 stats increase. That being said, there are always certain advantages and disadvantages to each profession, making certain professions slightly stronger than others.

1. Engineering — Engineering remains the best in slot profession thanks to the new tinker Synapse Springs. Grounded Plasma Shield, another new tinker, is a decent on use defensive shield that can save your life. Nitro Boosts remain a solid option for movement speed bursts during fights.
2. Tailoring — is a great choice for the Lightweave Embroidery unique cloak enchant.
3. Blacksmithing — Allows you to add an additional socket to your gloves and bracers with Socket Gloves and Socket Bracer. While this is about the same stats gain as most other professions early on, once epic gems are introduced this profession becomes much stronger.

Addons and Macros can greatly improve your quality of life during Cataclysm. Listed below are some of our recommendations on Addons and Macros to help get the most out of your time playing the game.