Cataclysm Classic Shadow Priest Rotation and Cooldowns

If you have not already, we recommend reading the Spells Summary page first. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page. Shadow Priest is one of the strongest DPS classes during Cataclysm thanks to their powerful damage-over-time spells and strong utility they bring to raid groups.

New to CataclysmShadow Priests, Shadow Orbs have an 18% chance to spawn every time you deal damage with either Shadow Word: Pain or Mind Flay. You will then consume the Shadow Orbs by casting Mind Blast, which will empower you with Shadow Orb Power, increasing your Shadow damage-over-time damage dealt by an amount determined by your Mastery stat. While the Shadow Orbs proc is random, any therefore out of your control, maintaining the Shadow Orb Power buff is a crucial part of the Shadow rotation. That being said, this buff should naturally have nearly full uptime by simply following the recommended rotation.

Another new mechanic in Cataclysm is a change to DoT clipping. In previous expansions, you wanted to wait until your damage-over-time debuff fully ran out before re-applying it to get the full damage from the spell. This is no longer the case in Cataclysm. Now you want to re-apply your DoTs when they have 1 tick left. This will cause your newly applied DoT to "absorb" the previous DoT and gain 1 extra tick. Always try to refresh your DoTs before they expire and have only 1 tick remaining as this will result in the highest DPS possible. The extra tick the new DoT gains will use your current stats for the damage.

It's worth noting that both Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague will snapshot your stats when they are cast, meaning if you do not have Shadow Orb Power when they are applied, they will not deal the increased damage provided by the buff. If this is the case, you will want to instantly re-cast both Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague when you do gain the Shadow Orb Power regardless of the new DoT clipping mechanics. Shadow Word: Pain however, does not follow these rules as it counts as being re-cast each time it is refreshed by the Pain and Suffering talent.

1. Shadowy Apparition — While this is a passive talent and not a spell you can cast, you are able to increase the chance of a Shadow by moving, increasing the chance from 12% to 60%. Because of this, you will want to move whenever you are in a global cooldown from casting any instant cast spell, such as Shadow Word: Pain or Shadow Word: Death; simply strafe back and forth in place to gain a little bit of extra DPS.
2. Archangel — Use on cooldown if you have 5 stacks of Dark Evangelism. Refresh any DoTs that are about to fall off before using.
3. Shadow Word: Pain — Apply to your target. This will automatically refresh when you use Mind Flay on the target.
4. Vampiric Touch — Apply and maintain on target.
5. Devouring Plague — Apply and maintain on target.
6. Mind Blast — Use on cooldown.
7. Shadow Word: Death — Only use if the target is below 25% health, or you are low on Mana.
8. Mind Flay — As a filler wherever your rotation has gaps. Cancel the channel if a higher priority spell becomes ready, or a DoT must be re-applied.

While the above rotation is what you will follow for the majority of the fight, you will want to use a slightly different opener to gain Shadow Orbs as quick as possible. This will result in slightly higher DPS as you won't need to re-apply your DoTs after getting the first Shadow Orbs proc if you did not follow this opener.

1. Mind Spike — Cast on pull.
2. Shadow Word: Pain — Apply to target.
3. Mind Flay — Channel until you get a Shadow Orbs proc.
4. Mind Blast — Cast to consume the Shadow Orbs.
5. Vampiric Touch — Apply to target.
6. Devouring Plague — Apply to target.
7. Follow regular rotation for the rest of the fight.

Shadow Priest has a varying rotation depending on the amount of targets you are facing. Below you can find the recommended AoE rotations depending on how many enemies you are facing.

When facing 2-4 targets that will live for at least 15 seconds, follow this rotation.

1. Shadow Word: Pain — Apply at the start of combat and keep refreshed with Mind Flay.
2. Vampiric Touch — Keep applied at all times.
3. Devouring Plague — Keep this applied to the target with the most health; remember that it can only be on one target at a time.
4. Mind Flay — Cycle using this on each individual target to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain on each target.

Things are much simpler when fighting larger groups of enemies, simply use Mind Sear on a target, ally or enemy, in the middle of the group of enemies to AoE them all down.

Shadow Priest has limited cooldowns available to them, mostly non-DPS cooldowns are typically used to help the raid through various means and should be used as required.

• Shadowfiend — 4-minute cooldown. Use this as a DPS cooldown since the cooldown will be reduced by 10 seconds every time your Mind Flay crits.
• Dispersion — 2-minute cooldown. You will typically need to use this to soak a raid mechanic, but if not you can use it to restore missing Mana.
• Hymn of Hope — 6-minute cooldown. Use during if your healers are running low on Mana.
• Divine Hymn — 8-minute cooldown. Use whenever the raid is taking massive damage and you need to help heal.