Season of Discovery Shadow Priest DPS Talents and Runes

Your talent build as a Shadow Priest is fairly set in stone. Most of your talent points will be required in the Shadow tree in order to unlock Shadowform which is an absolutely massive DPS increase compared to options outside of the tree. There are also only a few useful options we are able to reach outside of the Shadow tree with the points available, but they are quite flexible. The build listed above opts to spend them in Improved Power Word: Fortitude, but can easily be shifted into Improved Fade or Improved Power Word: Shield if you find yourself consistently grouping with another Priest with the talent.

Gloves — Shadow Word: Death

Pants — Homunculi

Chest — Twisted Faith

Waist — Mind Spike

Feet — Void Plague

Helm — Pain and Suffering

Wrist — Despair

Back — Vampiric Touch

Ring — Holy Specialization

Ring — Shadow Specialization

Shadow Word: Death is our default in the glove slot due to the considerable amount of damage it deals. While Penance is quite strong it unfortunately will remove you from Shadowform which is too much of a loss to be practical in a rotation. Mind Sear should be considered when clearing trash and especially on bosses that require a lot of AoE.

Homunculi deal a considerable amount of damage on their own, but more importantly apply Armor reduction, Attack Speed slow and reduce Attack Power of any target they hit. While Shared Pain has very niche uses, it will almost always be better to default to Homunculi. Power Word: Barrier is a strong utility option to consider in a situation where your group is taking a massive burst of damage, but losing out on Homunculi is not only a personal damage loss, but their powerful debuffs can be difficult to replace on the target. Only consider swapping in a situation where you will otherwise not survive.

Twisted Faith has become the default for our Chest slot as Void Plague has been moved to the Feet slot. Twisted Faith greatly increases the damage dealt by our Mind Spike ability which acts as our primary filler when we have our damage-over-time debuffs already active on the target as well as bolstering the Critical Strike chance of Mind Blast.

Mind Spike takes a massive role as the primary filler ability in the Shadow Priest rotation and the other two Runes in the waist slot are geared more towards healing than damage.

Void Plague is our default choice in the Foot slot. Void Plague deals a massive amount of Shadow damage and is one of our most efficient sources of damage per cast and scales incredibly with the massive amount of Shadow damage multipliers found in the Shadow tree like Darkness. Dispersion is something to consider if you find yourself having mana problems on longer encounters or if there is a mechanic that can be avoided by mitigating a large amount of damage but typically we will focus on dealing as much damage as possible which is why we default to Void Plague.

Pain and Suffering is one of the single largest DPS increases you can get out of your Runes as a Shadow Priest. With your Mind Spike, Mind Blast, and Mind Flay abilities all refreshing one of your damaging over time effects you will rarely, if ever have to actually refresh them after their initial application as we will constantly be casting Mind Spikes and Mind Blasts. Eye of the Void is another strong choice in situations where your group is lacking the debuffs provided, but it is rare you will find yourself without a Warlock in any large format content like raids.

Despair is a great DPS increase that makes your Intellect and Spell Crit stats even more valuable. Giving your damage-over-time effects the ability to crit is an all but entirely passive way to increase the damage you would already be doing by maintaining your Void Plague and Shadow Word: Pain debuffs. Void Zone can prove to be quite useful in fights against large numbers of enemies or sustained AoE, but it is a rather niche choice at this point.

Vampiric Touch is another great source of Shadow damage-over-time and also applies Vampiric Embrace to the target allowing us to get into our DPS rotation a global cooldown faster. It also returns 2% of the Shadow damage you deal to the target as mana to all party members so the more damage you deal the more mana you return to your allies.

Shadow Specialization increases your Shadow hit chance by 6% making it an easy choice to help mitigate any misses or resists. We also opt for Holy Specialization for our second Ring while we will not be casting many Holy damaging abilities this is our default just incase you find yourself finding an enemy that is immune to Shadow damage.

More engravings are likely to come out as we reach later phases so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Priest.

The Shadow Priest talent tree is filled with passive effects that bolster not only your Shadow damage dealt, but abilities to reduce your threat and otherwise make you more elusive.

Shadow Weaving is a stacking effect that increases the amount of Shadow Damage a target takes, this is an incredibly strong debuff not only for the Priest but any other Shadow Damage dealer as well, while this is a great increase in personal DPS it really shines in large format content with other Shadow Damage dealers.

Vampiric Embrace apples a debuff to your target causing party members to be healed for 20% of Shadow damage you deal for 1 minute. This debuff has become even more valuable in Season of Discovery with the removal of the debuff cap, allowing Shadow Priests to offer a considerable amount of passive healing to their parties just by applying this debuff and continuing to do their DPS rotation.

Shadow Reach increases the range of your Shadow damaging abilities by 6% per rank this added ranged allows Shadow Priest to avoid dangerous situations while still managing to do their full DPS rotation. Abilities such as Mind Flay are notorious for their incredibly short range.

Shadowform is one of the most iconic abilities in the game. Shadowform causes you to deal 15% additional Shadow damage, reduces incoming Physical damage by 15% and reduces the Mana cost of your Shadow spells by 50%.

Inner Focus while this ability is not as strong as its original Classic iteration due to changes for Shadow Priest mana consumption and the added Critical Strike from Mind Spike this is still a great tool to minimize mana spent and maximize damage dealt by increasing by pairing this with a Mind Spike.