Shadow Priest Leveling Guide From 1 to 70 for TBC Classic

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

Shadow is the recommended leveling spec for Priests. Shadow Priest has a hard time leveling early on, as you have a very limited selection of spells. This spec involves plenty of wanding and waiting for DoTs to kill mobs.

Your first talent unlocks at Level 10.

1. Levels 10 - 14: 5 points in Wand Specialization.
2. Levels 15 - 19: 5 points in Spirit Tap.

Wanding is a major part of your damage early on, so Wand Specialization is worth getting for a while. Spirit Tap is great for additional Mana regeneration, reducing how often you need to drink.

1. Levels 20 - 22: 3 points in Shadow Focus.
2. Levels 23 - 24: 2 points in Improved Shadow Word: Pain.
3. Level 25: 1 point in Mind Flay.
4. Levels 26 - 29: 4 points in Improved Mind Blast.

Shadow Focus gives us some much needed spell hit rating, reducing the amount of resists we get. Improved Shadow Word: Pain is a huge increase to our Shadow Word: Pain damage. Mind Flay greatly increases our kill speed and even slows mobs down.

1. Levels 30 - 31: 2 points in Shadow Reach.
2. Levels 32 - 34: 3 points in Shadow Weaving.
3. Levels 35 - 37: 3 points in Focused Mind.
4. Level 38: 1 point in Shadow Weaving.
5. Level 39: 1 point in Vampiric Embrace.
6. Level 39:Respec out of Wand Specialization and put 5 points into Darkness.

Shadow Reach is a great utility talent that increases the range of your Shadow spells greatly. Focused Mind helps a bit with your Mana problems. Shadow Weaving increases your damage dealt to a target the longer that you are attacking it and Vampiric Embrace can be used on high health targets that will live for awhile.

It is recommended at Level 39 to respec out of Wand Specialization and put those 5 points into Darkness instead.

1. Level 40: 1 point in Shadowform.
2. Level 41: 1 point in Shadow Weaving.
3. Level 42: 1 point in Improved Mind Blast.
4. Levels 43 - 44: 2 points in Shadow Power.
5. Levels 45 - 49: 5 points in Misery.

Shadowform greatly increases your leveling speed as it increases all Shadow damage dealt and reduces physical damage taken. Misery gives you another 5% increase damage done. With the rest of our talent selections, we finish off some earlier choices and select a couple filler talents.

1. Level 50: 1 point in Vampiric Touch.
2. Levels 51 - 55: 5 points in Wand Specialization.
3. Levels 56 - 58: 3 points in Improved Power Word: Shield.
4. Level 59: 1 point in Martyrdom.

Vampiric Touch is another very strong DoT ability in your arsenal. This returns 5% of your Shadow damage dealt back as Mana to you and your party. We grab Wand Specialization again, as it gives us a nice damage boost when wanding. Improved Power Word: Shield helps reduce our damage taken when shielding.

1. Level 60: 1 point in Martyrdom.
2. Levels 61 - 63: 3 points in Meditation.
3. Level 64: 1 point in Inner Focus.
4. Levels 65 - 69: 5 points in Blackout.
5. Level 70: 1 point in Shadow Power.

Meditation and Inner Focus help immensely with your Mana issues. Blackout is mostly a filler talent, but offers very nice utility by stunning mobs and reducing the amount of damage you take overall.

1. Wand low health mobs down to conserve and regenerate Mana.
2. Power Word: Shield yourself if you will be hit a lot by the mob you are about to pull.
3. Vampiric Touch on high health mobs.
4. Smite to kill things.
5. Shadow Word: Pain on high health mobs.
6. Mind Blast on targets that will not die from wanding.
7. Smite a few times until you can kill with wanding.
8. Mind Flay once or twice to lower the mobs health to "wanding range".
9. Shadow Word: Death high health targets if you are not low HP.

Early Shadow Priest levels are very lacking in damage. You will be spending most of your time using Smite, Shadow Word: Pain, and wanding to kill mobs.

Mind Blast helps speed things up a little with its high base damage.

Mind Flay becomes your filler/spammable spell. It has a very low Mana cost, helping you kill things much more easily. Power Word: Shield will prevent you from getting your channel spell casting pushed back when damaged.

Shadowform greatly increases our damage output and even reduces our damage taken. By this point, we should have good kill speed and sustain.

Vampiric Touch gives us another massive damage increase, doubling the number of DoT spells we have. This also returns 5% of your Shadow damage dealt back to you as Mana, helping further increase your sustain.

Training spells can be rather expensive, especially if you try to learn every spell available to you. Here we will give you a list of your top priority spells that you will want to train, so you know which ones you can avoid and save some money.

• Shadow Word: Pain
• Mind Blast
• Resurrection - you only need the first rank of this.
• Power Word: Shield
• Renew
• Flash Heal
• Greater Heal
• Inner Fire
• Psychic Scream - each time you level this up you can fear an additional enemy.
• Vampiric Touch
• Mind Flay
• Shadow Word: Death
• Shadowfiend - great for restoring Mana.