Season of Discovery Shadow Priest DPS Stat Priority

Shadow Priest is one of the most gear reliant specializations in the game due to their incredibly high mana costs but learning how to best optimize your Priest's gear will help you be able to fully enjoy one of the most unique specs in Season of Discovery.

1. Spell Hit Rating (to 16%)
2. Spell Damage / Shadow Damage
3. Mana per 5 seconds (Mp5)
4. Intellect
5. Spell Crit
6. Spirit
7. Stamina

Spell Hit rating is the single most valuable stat for Shadow Priest. Most of the cap can be gained from our Shadow Focus talent and the Shadow Specialization Rune but any additional hit rating found on gear allows you to allocate talent points elsewhere, making this stat incredibly valuable. Priest spells are incredibly costly even with the changes to Shadowform and the addition of Shadowfiend the best way to maximize your DPS is ensuring as many of your abilities as possible are hitting.

Spell Damage increases damage dealt by your abilities, Shadow Priest damage is entirely done using Shadow Spells so items that offer either Spell Damage or Shadow Damage both provide the same result in increasing the damage your spells will deal.

Mana per 5 or MP5 is a crucial stat for Shadow Priest due to their issues with mana this stat allows you to continue regenerating mana while in combat allowing you to cast more abilities over the duration of an encounter.

1 Intellect gives 15 Mana and slightly increases your critical strike rating. While the critical strike is a great benefit most of the value from Intellect for Shadow Priest comes from the additional mana as it will allow you to cast more of your spells which can be quite costly.

Spell Crit increases the chance of your spells to deal a critical strike, with the new addition of the Despair rune spell crit becomes much more valuable though it is still not quite a priority due to how Mind Blast functions with Mind Spike but once you find yourself at spell-hit cap this is a great secondary stat to focus on.

Spirit increases your out of combat health and mana regeneration, while Shadow priest does struggle with mana issues this stat does not offer the same value as MP5 as it only applies to out of combat regeneration which can only occur either out of combat or after 5 seconds without casting an ability, As a Shadow Priest you will be almost constantly casting and the only time you will be able to really take advantage of the 5 second rule is when you are completely out of mana.

1 Stamina will give you 10 hit points, while you will very rarely be tanking anything as a Shadow priest there are many situations especially in dungeons and raids where there is unavoidable damage, the more health you have the easier this will be to manage.