WotLK Classic Shadow Priest Spell Summary

Shadow Priest has a wide arsenal of spells available to them. Knowing your important spells and when they are best suited to be used is a key part of performing well in any environment. The sections below aim to show you your most important spells by each category and give you a brief example of what each spell does.

As a Shadow Priest, you will be focusing on dealing damage. These are all of your main damaging spells that you will want to focus on using.

• Devouring Plague — In WotLK, all Priests have this spell, not only the Undead. Deals great damage and heals you for 15% of the damage it deals.
• Mind Blast — Deals high damage to the target after a short cast. This has a low cooldown and deals great damage.
• Mind Sear — Channel into a target, dealing damage to all enemies around them. Does not deal damage to the enemy being targeted.
• Shadow Word: Death — Instantly deals moderate damage to the target, but also deals the same damage back to you. If this damage kills the target, you will not take this damage. Be careful when using this ability as it can easily kill you if you are not healthy enough.
• Shadow Word: Pain — Deals high damage-over-time. Sweet and simple.
• Vampiric Touch — Deals moderate damage-over-time and grants up to 10 party or raid members Replenishment whenever you deal damage with Mind Blast while Vampiric Touch is applied to the target.

For a better understanding of what your damage rotation should be, be sure to check out our rotation page for a full explanation of both your single-target and AoE DPS rotations.

Shadow Priest does not have many great cooldowns available to them, and most of the time you will not even be using the ones you have. For the most part, your cooldowns impact the raid and not yourself, so you will most likely only be using your cooldowns when your raid asks for them.

• Fade — 24-second cooldown with Veiled Shadows. Fade is worth mentioning here as you have the talent Improved Shadowform, which makes your Fade remove any movement-impairing debuffs on you. This is great for getting out of annoying slows when trying to move.
• Dispersion — 2-minute cooldown, 1.25-minute cooldown when using Glyph of Dispersion. Greatly reduces your damage taken and restores a large amount of your Mana back to you. Typically you will use this to negate a raid mechanic, but the Mana restoration can also be utilized to keep your Mana high.
• Inner Focus — 3-minute cooldown. Typically you do not have Mana issues as a Shadow Priest, so feel free to use this with Mind Blast for increased damage.
• Shadowfiend — 3-minute cooldown with the Veiled Shadows talent. This one is a very simple Mana-restoration cooldown, use this whenever you are running low on Mana. If possible, you will want to pair this together with Hymn of Hope for the temporary 20% increase to maximum Mana since Shadowfiend now restores 5% of your maximum Mana per attack.
• Divine Hymn — 8-minute cooldown. One of the new spells you get in Wrath of the Lich King. This is a major AoE healing cooldown. Ideally you will want to just DPS and not worry about this, but there are times where you will need to use this to help stabilize the raid's health. In that case you will want to pair it with Inner Focus if available as Divine Hymn has a high Mana cost.
• Hymn of Hope — 6-minute cooldown. The other new spell you get in Wrath of the Lich King. This restores Mana to nearby allies with the lowest Mana overall and increases their maximum Mana by 20% temporarily. The only downside of this spell is the randomness of the targeting; it is possible that you will not be targeted by any of the ticks. You will want to use this cooldown in conjunction with other Mana-restoring cooldowns, such as Mana Tide Totem or even other Hymn of Hopes, as the temporary 20% increase to maximum Mana amplifies the effectiveness of abilities that restore a percentage of your Mana pool. Try to coordinate this with your other raid members.

In addition to your main spells and cooldowns, you also have many utility spells that can be game changing when used in the proper scenario. Make sure you understand each of the spells listed below to fully take advantage of your entire spellbook.

• Dispel Magic — Great for both removing enemies' magical buffs and removing magical debuffs afflicting allies.
• Fear Ward — Makes a friendly target immune to the first fear used against them. Use this whenever you are facing enemies that will use a fear.
• Levitate — Allows your target to float above the ground, walk above water, and greatly reduce their falling speed. Glyph of Levitate removes the reagent cost of Levitate, making it only cost Mana.
• Mass Dispel — An AoE version of Dispel Magic that removes 1 magical debuff from up to 10 friendly targets, and 1 magical buff from up to 10 enemy targets. Can also remove stronger magical buffs that cannot be dispelled in other ways, such as Ice Block and Divine Shield.
• Shackle Undead — Shackles an Undead enemy in place, preventing them from moving, attacking, and casting, but will break if they take any damage. Use this if you ever need to crowd control an Undead enemy.
• Abolish Disease — Removes 1 Disease from an ally every 3 seconds for 12 seconds total. Allows you to remove Diseases from allies, which many PvE encounters will have.
• Mind Soothe — Reduces the aggro range of a Humanoid mob, allowing you to more easily avoid aggroing them. This is mostly used for skipping certain trash groups in PvE content and preventing patrolling mobs from randomly walking into you and aggroing.

Buffs are an important part of any party or raid group as they greatly increase your abilities to tank, heal and deal damage as a whole. Make sure you keep your buffs up at all times to ensure the highest chance of success in whatever content you are in.

• Inner Fire — Buffs the Priest only, increasing your Armor and Spell Power as long as this buff remains active. Has 20 charges; each time you are hit by a melee or ranged attack one charge will be removed. This buff can be improved with the Improved Inner Fire talent.
• Prayer of Fortitude — Buffs all nearby party and raid members, increasing their Stamina for one hour. If you only need to buff a single person, you can use Power Word: Fortitude instead, saving you some Mana. This buff can be improved with the Improved Power Word: Fortitude talent, as well as have its Mana cost reduced by using Glyph of Fortitude.
• Prayer of Spirit — Buffs all nearby party and raid members, increasing their Spirit for one hour. If you only need to buff a single person, you can use Divine Spirit instead, saving you some Mana.
• Prayer of Shadow Protection — Buffs all nearby party and raid members, increasing their Shadow Resistance for one hour. If you only need to buff a single person, you can use Shadow Protection instead, saving you some Mana. This buff can have its duration increased by using Glyph of Shadow Protection.
• Vampiric Embrace — Buffs the Shadow Priest only, causing your single-target Shadow damage to heal you for 15% of the damage dealt, and heal nearby party members for 3% of the damage dealt.

• Mana Burn — Burns a portion of the target's Mana based on your maximum Mana. Mostly only useful in PvP, but may have some uses in specific PvE situations.
• Resurrection — Simple res spell; brings an ally back to life outside of combat.
• Mind Control — Does not really have many uses in PvE content anymore. Can be useful when soloing content like quests.
• Mind Vision — Allows you to see through the point of view of your target. Mostly just a fun ability to let you scout and see things from a different perspective.
• Psychic Scream — Mostly just a panic button if you are being attacked in melee range. Typically you will not want to use this in raids as it will send mobs in all different directions. Can also be used to stop spell casts if the mob can be feared.