Shadow Priest Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (11.0.5)

The main role of a Shadow Priest in battleground blitz is to use relentless spread damage on enemies to rot down teams and use crowd control, like Psychic Scream, to force kills. To keep your team offensive, you will use Power Infusion on one of your teammates to increase their damage. If teams try to setup kills on you use Dispersion to ensure you stay alive.

Here is the talent build you will be using to maximize your damage output:

• Psyfiend
• Catharsis
• Phase Shift

These are the 3 PvP talents you should be using in battleground blitz. Psyfiend deals damage, slows the enemy and reduces healing received on the target by 50%. This is a crucial spell to use to help secure kills on enemy players. Because you will be the primary target for most teams, Catharsis is a great talent choice. This will store 15% of all damage taken. It takes that damage and increases the damage of your next Shadow Word: Pain for the amount stored. Phase Shift will help you move around the map easier. Shadow Priests have very little mobility when they are slowed, and this helps with that issue.

For an in-depth guide to Shadow Priest talents, read here:

In Battleground Blitz, without the Arena Dampening effect, healers, when left alone, are able to sustain against many players with relative ease. The way to counter the high throughput of healers in Battleground Blitz is with the effective use of crowd control.

Shadow Priest has many tools in its kit to aid with this:

• Psychic Scream
• Void Tendrils
• Mind Control
• Leap of Faith - Not a defensive, but can be used to help teammates move around the map a bit easier.

You have several defensive abilities you can use to help keep you and your team alive.

Dispersion is the main defensive cooldown for Shadow Priests. This reduces all damage done to you by 60%, but you cannot use any abilities while it is active. You also cannot be slowed during this ability, so this can be used in situations where you need to leave a base and an enemy is trying to slow you.

Void Shift is another great defensive cooldown. With a 5-minute cooldown, it is likely to only be used once a game, but it can help stabilize your team instantly. This cooldown needs to be coordinated with your healers so there is no overlap with other cooldowns. Use this when being focused and swap your health with a teammate at higher health. Alternatively, you can use it on a teammate that is at low health.

Vampiric Embrace is a defensive ability that, when used properly, can stabilize your team quickly. When you or your teammate is taking heavy damage, and you have time to free cast, use this ability. Abilities like Vampiric Touch and Mind Flay can help heal your team.

Power Word: Shield is a versatile spell that helps your team. You can also use it to generate Insanity if you get interrupted on Shadow abilities.

Desperate Prayer increases your health by 25% for 10 seconds and instantly heals you for that amount.

Fade/ Mind Soothe. In PvP, these abilities do the same thing: they reduce the range at which attacks can be made to you. This is great versus teams with ranged classes on them. This will either force them to wait or make them overextend to deal damage/crowd control you.

1. Intellect;
2. Versatility;
3. Haste;
4. Critical Strike;
5. Mastery.

The stat priority for Shadow Priest is the same in Battleground Blitz and Arena. If you want an explanation and suggestions on gear, read our gearing section here:

Due to Shadow Priest having incredibly high spread damage, your primary goal in capture the flag maps is to play offense and output as much damage as possible. This means that when an enemy player picks up your flag, you should be trying to kill that flag carrier. Quickly leave the team fight when this happens and setup kills on the enemy team's defense. Utilize tools like Void Torrent and Mind Flay to slow the flag carrier and Psychic Scream on the enemy healers. If you start to dip low on health, be sure to trade cooldowns, such as Dispersion and Fade. For an in-depth guide to Shadow Priest damage rotations, read here:

Before a Resource Race battleground starts, you should decide with your team which base you should focus on first.

• If there is an enemy healer at the base you are assigned to, then you should crowd control them as soon as possible and use your burst cooldowns to kill their teammates
• If there is no healer but there is more than one DPS enemy, you should use your crowd control on the one who your team is less likely to attack (as they would break your crowd control)

Your primary goal on resource race maps is to deal damage and help your team win the team fights. There are not many ways to make plays or sit a base as a Shadow Priest. Always pay attention to who is at which base. You will also want to slow any enemies who may be trying to help their teammates at a base. Utilize your multiple slows and Psychic Scream to prevent any enemies from providing backup to their team.

Similar to resource race maps, your goal is to maximize your damage output and slow enemies who might be trying to help if they are falling behind. The goal on this map, unlike normal Rated Battlegrounds, is to team fight at one node and try to cap both bases. This results in long 7v7 team fights, and the winner will more than likely pull ahead quickly. Trade your defensives when you get low ( Fade, Dispersion, etc.) and get value out of Psychic Scream on enemy players.

Note: Capping the flag will make the inactive bases active, and both teams will have to recap the nodes. Use this tactic if your team is falling behind on points or lost the team fight.

Ranged DPS specializations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu, so you should be one of the first players to get an Orb if there is one available. The most important part about this map is to win the initial team fight and quickly gain momentum by grabbing 3 orbs and standing in the middle of the map. When the enemy team starts to resurrect, leave middle and kite around the center. Here are some tips for this map:

• Players take more damage the longer they hold the orb. This means that, eventually, the Orb carriers will die. Ideally, your team will only hold 2-3 orbs at a time so that you do not easily wipe when you have high stacks.
• Make sure you die on the correct side of the map! You and your team will resurrect depending on where you died. If you die on purple side, you will resurrect on blue side and vise versa. Ensuring you and your team resurrect together is crucial, this will allow you to regroup faster and quickly wipe the enemy team that will be weak.