Shadow Priest DPS Gems, Enchants, and Consumables — The War Within (11.1.0)

This section covers your character's optimal gems, enchants, food, and flasks. To get a more detailed rundown of the different stats for Shadow Priest, please visit our dedicated Stats page.

For The War Within, you will have 2 categories of gems to choose from: Rare or Epic. The Rare gems are either just a single stat or a combination of 2 secondary stats on one gem. The Epic gems are significantly stronger, but you can only use one at a time for your entire character.

Gems can be applied to a Helm, Bracer, or Belt via the S.A.D. item from the Great Vault. In addition, a Jewelcrafting item lets you apply up to 2 sockets to a Neck or Ring item with Magnificent Jeweler's Setting.

For your Epic Gem in Season 2 I would strongly suggest using Elusive Blasphemite for more utility. Technically Culminating Blasphemite is more damage but it is so minor (0.2% DPS) that it is not worth the significant loss in movement speed compared to the Elusive Gem. Using these gems gives you an incentive to have one of each colored gem socketed.

Elusive Blasphemite with full colored sockets gets you up to 10% movement speed, which is a massive increase in our mobility as a Shadow Priest.

Another caveat with Elusive Blasphemite is that it counts as temporary movement speed. This means it does not stack with effects like Angelic Feather, Body and Soul, or Stampeding Roar.

In total, there are five distinct colors for Rare gems: Emerald (Haste), Ruby (Critical Strike), Onyx (Mastery), Sapphire (Versatility), and Amber (Stamina). As a Shadow Priest, you want to use each of these colors except Amber for fully optimized setups. This, however, is a minor increase as factoring in the Amber is only a 0.2% DPS loss (roughly half the total increase of a normal gem), so if you prefer the Stamina over that amount, go for it! This also gives you an extra 2% move speed if you choose to use Elusive Blasphemite.

Below is the list of optimal gems for each color. Once you are satisfied with your color requirements for your Epic gem, I would suggest stacking either Quick Onyx or Masterful Emerald.

• Emerald: Masterful Emerald
• Ruby: Masterful Ruby or Quick Ruby
• Onyx: Quick Onyx
• Sapphire: Masterful Sapphire or Quick Sapphire
• Amber: Masterful Amber or Quick Amber

Here is an example progression as you work your way towards all 9 sockets:

1. Elusive Blasphemite
2. Masterful Emerald
3. Quick Onyx
4. Masterful Ruby
5. Masterful Sapphire
6. OPTION: Masterful Amber
7. Masterful Emerald on remaining 3 or 4 sockets

For the final 4 sockets, you should pick either Masterful Emerald if you are lacking on Haste, or Quick Onyx if you have a decent amount. Usually, early on in the gearing process, you will lean towards Haste, and towards the end, you will stack more Mastery. On single target, you will typically notice Mastery being more valuable and on AoE Haste being more valuable.

Rare gems are roughly worth 5500 DPS (0.2%). If you are considering replacing an item with a socket, keep this in mind. As you get more gear, this could be even higher, but this is a rough number you can use. Simming different gem choices is extremely difficult because of how low of an increase this is, you should take gem sims with a large amount of caution as, typically, gains that are that small when comparing gems are within the margin of error.

Slot	Enchantment
Chest	Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance
Cloak (non-throughput)	Enchant Cloak - Chant of Winged Grace Enchant Cloak - Chant of Leeching Fangs
Wrists (non-throughput)	Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Avoidance Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Leech
Legs	Sunset Spellthread
Ring	Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste (see note below) Enchant Ring - Radiant Mastery (see note below)
Feet (non-throughput)	Enchant Boots - Scout's March (Mobility) Enchant Boots - Defender's March (Small Defensive)
Weapon	Enchant Weapon - Authority of the Depths

When picking Cloak and Wrist enchants, I would suggest defaulting to Avoidance versions, but keep in mind that not every fight will have mechanics that can be avoided. For those difficult progression fights, consider swapping to Leech. Mythic+ environments should always prefer Avoidance, especially as you push up to higher keys.

For Ring enchants, you want to use Haste or Mastery, depending on the content you are trying to optimize for and your current gear set. Early on, you might lean towards Haste and then slowly move towards Mastery.

For Season 2, several flasks or phials could make sense depending on the content you are doing. Use the following table as your guide; the higher in the table, the more DPS. While each phial has a different top-end DPS, I think there are scenarios where you may want to have at least a few of each around at a time, depending on the encounter.

Phial Name	When to Use	DPS Increase at Rank 3 with Potion
Flask of Alchemical Chaos	Default Choice.	3.6%
Flask of Tempered Swiftness	Can lead to more consistent DPS, particularly at low haste levels.	3.4%
Flask of Tempered Versatility	More defensive option.	2.9%

Flask of Alchemical Chaos is our default choice of flask primarily due to the interaction with Tempered Potion and the other Tempered Flasks. When using a single stat Tempered Flask you are effectively reducing the value of your potion uses enough to make them slightly less desirable. For Season 2 we have quite a lot of haste scaling effects so if you are looking for something more consistent Flask of Tempered Swiftness is a very close second choice, particularly for Archon builds.

Our best combat potion in all content is Tempered Potion.

For Healing Potions, you will mainly use Algari Healing Potion but can also keep Grotesque Vial in case of emergencies.

For your food buff, you should use some version of the Feast for this season, such as Feast of the Midnight Masquerade. For personal food items, you can use Chippy Tea. You can also use Beledar's Bounty as a cheaper alternative that is easier to make.

Depending on the level of progression content, you can also choose to craft Hearty versions of most food, which gives the exact same effect (despite a few wrong tooltips), but the buff now persists through death. This costs 5 normal food to produce 1 hearty version.

For your temporary weapon oil, you should use Algari Mana Oil.

You should aim to use Crystallized Augment Rune to get a boost of Intellect during any progression content. This is a gain of about 1% DPS.