Shadow Priest Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Dragonflight 10.2.5

Please be aware that as of the Dragonflight Pre-Patch and Dragonflight expansion, all Covenant abilities, Soulbinds, and Conduits will only function while within the Shadowlands. This page will temporarily remain as a reference.

This page assumes that you are already familiar with Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits. If that is not the case, we have a number of pages that can help you get up to speed:

• Covenants Guide, which explains what Covenants are, what perks they bring, and how you can join one;
• Priest Covenant Abilities, which lists all the abilities that Priests gain by joining each Covenant;
• How To Change Covenant?, which tells you how you can switch Covenant (rejoining a former Covenant will require you to perform a number of tasks to regain their trusts);
• General Soulbind Guide, which explains what Soulbinds are and how you can pledge yourself to them to open up their Soulbind tree;
• Priest Conduits, which lists all of the Conduits available to Priests.

The below guide will not be fully optimal for the Dragonflight Pre-Patch, but I wanted to give a few notes for those of you looking to be optimal. With the pre-patch we will get access to Mindgames via the class talent tree; this means we will not get as much benefit out of being the Venthyr covenant. Because of this you want to pick any of the other three options. All of them will have their advantages and will be playable now in pre-patch.

• Necrolord has no clear synergy or changes going into pre-patch and will just be a nice additional bit of damage to the kit you do not need to play around.
• Night Fae will continue to be a strong choice, especially since the cooldown reduction will work with Void Eruption or Dark Ascension.
• Kyrian is also viable choice now that we have Mind Spike as an alternative filler spell so losing access to Mind Flay is not as bad to play with. It does mean taking certain talents like Mind Flay: Insanity might not be as good though.

Focus	Covenant	Soulbind	Advised Tree
Raiding	Necrolord	Plague Deviser Marileth	Shadow Priest Marileth Raiding tree
Mythic+	Necrolord	Bonesmith Heirmir	Shadow Priest Bonesmith Heirmir Mythic+ tree
Torghast	Necrolord	Bonesmith Heirmir	Shadow Priest Bonesmith Heirmir Torghast tree

For more information about Shadow Priest Covenants along with their various strengths and weaknesses, please see our Covenants and Soulbinds analysis section at the bottom of this page.

Conduits have three different types depending on the kind of effect they provide. The following lists will rank the best Conduits for each type based on the content you are doing. Please refer to our Priest Conduits list if you want to see all Priest Conduits.

• Best Potency Conduits: Haunting Apparitions, Mind Devourer if not already talented, and Dissonant Echoes if using Void Eruption. Otherwise use your covenant conduit or run a tree with less potency conduits in that path. Rabid Shadows no longer works in the Dragonflight Pre-Patch.
• Best Finesse Conduits: None of these are really anything more than preference. Mental Recovery can be nice in solo content, though.
• Best Endurance Conduits: Translucent Image is a great Conduit to use anytime you can get value out of using Fade as a damage reduction before a specific cast. In addition running Condensed Anima Sphere is a great 2nd choice if you have extra slots.

It is generally best to slot in Haunting Apparitions as your first Potency Conduit slot. Use the list below to determine what other conduits to run:

1. Haunting Apparitions
2. Mind Devourer if not talented into it
3. Dissonant Echoes if talented into Void Eruption (does not work with Dark Ascension)
4. Festering Transfusion or run a 2-potency soulbind tree instead

With current balancing, most Covenant-specific Conduits are not worth using. The Conduits that augment Covenant abilities are extremely underpowered compared to the Shadow-specific ones, and should only be used if you have no other options. The only exception to this rule would be with Courageous Ascension as a Kyrian Shadow Priest where you would use this as your 3rd Potency Conduit.

Note that as of Patch 9.1.5 you can now freely swap Conduits without any penalty via Conduit Energy, so make sure you are always using the optimal Conduits for the content you are doing.

The Conduits available to Shadow Priest are not very impactful, but do have some synergies with our talent choices that change this up slightly.

1. Haunting Apparitions is typically our best Conduit, especially when using Auspicious Spirits. Keep in mind your Shadowy Apparitions have to reach the target to get this increase in damage!
2. Mind Devourer whenever you are not using the talent version; the talent version is better and these do not stack.
3. Dissonant Echoes when using Void Eruption, this does not work with Dark Ascension.
4. Rabid Shadows does not work in the Dragonflight Pre-Patch. Do not use this conduit.

1. Courageous Ascension makes Ascended Blast hit even harder than normal, which can provide some great benefit depending on your usage of Boon of the Ascended. With the increased ranks available in Patch 9.1 this makes your Boon of the Ascended deal up to 50% more damage, making it a great choice for your third Potency Conduit slot.
2. Shattered Perceptions should only be used if you have no other Conduits available.
3. Festering Transfusion could be used as a 3rd Conduit option in AoE only, but typically is not worth dropping some of the extra Soulbind traits you get as a Necrolord that work well in AoE. In addition Unholy Nova is already hard to squeeze in the full 15-second duration before targets die; this just makes that even harder.
4. Fae Fermata should only be used if you have no other Conduits available.

For the most part this tier will be personal preference, or very encounter specific. For newer players Light's Inspiration is the easiest thing to slot in here, but for more experienced players getting good usage out of high ranks of Translucent Image can be a great boon to your healers and your survivability if you get it right.

1. Translucent Image turns our aggro drop spell into a small defensive, up to 10.8% at the highest current rank. It can be extremely strong if used properly.
2. Condensed Anima Sphere is a newer Conduit for Patch 9.1 that can be some nice passive healing over the course of an encounter, especially if you are taking damage every 10s.
3. Light's Inspiration is a good default choice for an Endurance Conduit, as using Desperate Prayer will be pretty common in PvE scenarios, so the passive healing increase is nice. The healing is generally inferior to Condensed Anima Sphere.
4. Charitable Soul generally speaking has no use in PvE, but maybe there is a very specific case you would like to have this.

This slot really will not impact your gameplay much, so take whatever makes sense for your playstyle. If you find yourself never casting Dispel then taking Clear Mind will not matter, but for those that do then that slot can be a good benefit.

1. Clear Mind is great whenever you find yourself dispelling often, especially in Mythic+ environments.
2. Mental Recovery can be a neat thing to have in Open World or Torghast environments, but that is the only time we have ever noticed the benefit of this Conduit.
3. Move with Grace could have some extremely niche value with a specific strategy, but for now we do not think this has any practical use.
4. Power Unto Others has some synergy when using the Twins of the Sun Priestess Legendary, but generally not worth desyncing the cooldowns of the person you are giving Power Infusion to.

The following section is dedicated to going over the Covenant abilities for Shadow, and more importantly the Soulbinds behind each of these abilities that encompass your entire Covenant Choice. The discussion and information is going to assume you are at max Renown levels, as you need the full Renown to unlock all Soulbinds and all Soulbind paths. The ranking of which Soulbind will change based on your current Renown levels. We have a specific simulation that will be updated weekly if you wish to see what is currently the best path for the current level of Renown possible. Otherwise the below paths will be best at max Renown levels once you get there, or once you unlock the full tree.

• Kyrian gives you Boon of the Ascended.
• Venthyr is a single-target priority-nuke with Mindgames.
• Night Fae is a very unique ability with Fae Guardians that provides some Insanity generation and cooldown reduction on Void Eruption.
• Necrolord combines an AoE heal with an AoE DoT application that scales based on how many targets you hit with Unholy Nova.

Boon of the Ascended is an extremely odd and weird ability to use as a Shadow Priest. This basically requires you to either stop pressing your Shadow spells altogether for 10 seconds, or try to weave in spells as possible. Every 3 minutes, you can morph into the Kyrian form, giving you access to Ascended Nova and replacing Mind Flay with Ascended Blast. Each time you cast these new spells you gain stacks, which, based on how many you got, will explode for more damage at the end of the 10-second buff with Ascended Eruption.

On single-target, you actually only use Ascended Blast and weave this into your rotation as much as possible. Only as you start to add targets is it worth to cast Ascended Nova (upwards of 2+). Because of this you typically only use this inside of Voidform since using it outside would mean replacing your filler while you do not have as many buttons to press.

This ability will feel awkward and weird to press as Shadow; it is just strangely designed.

• None

• Awkward rotation to learn.
• Lackluster AoE potential.
• Certain Soulbind traits require a bit more movement to get full potential out of and are less passive.
• Requires 2-3 Legendaries to cover all the bases of content ( Shadowflame Prism, Talbadar's Stratagem, and Spheres' Harmony).
• Terrible covenant legendary makes the performance fall off a cliff compared to Necrolord.

Pelagos is a great Soulbind to use for Raiding or other long form content and has a great starting trait that you get access to pretty early. If you venture into Mythic+, Forgelite Prime Mikanikos Hammer of Genesis trait feels fun to play with and is very strong. Depending on if you can game Kleia Pointed Courage effect it can also be strong in dungeons, but that takes a decent amount of setup to perfect.

For both Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path:

For both Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path:

For Raiding, use the following path

If in Mythic+, use this path instead:

Unholy Nova is one of the most versatile Covenant abilities you can choose as a Shadow Priest, offering competitive single-target and good AoE DPS — as long as all the targets you cast it on will live for 15 seconds or longer. The spell is effectively an AoE DoT that explodes at your current target also dealing a quick burst of healing to those in range. The DoT itself actually scales depending on how many enemies you initially inflict with the DoT, scaling based on the square root of the number of targets you are fighting. Basically this means that if the spell ticks for 500 damage on single target, it would tick for ~353 per target if you hit 2 targets. So the damage is not always the same, and if a target dies, it does not recalculate this effect. So when you use it make sure all targets you cast it on will live the full 15 seconds if possible. One of the main reasons this ability can be so strong is that it actively scales with your current Haste. So coupling this with effects like Power Infusion or Bloodlust can be very powerful.

• Top-of-the-line single-target damage with Pallid Command paired with Shadowflame Prism.
• Versatile damage profile that also provides healing for allies.
• Consistent playstyle that is easier to execute effectively with more passive Soulbind traits.
• Access to the "cheat-death" Soulbind trait Forgeborne Reveries.

• Square root scaling can make the DoT effect harder to maximize.

As a Necrolord you have access to three relatively useful Soulbinds, but they do vary depending on what you are doing specifically. Bonesmith Heirmir and Plague Deviser Marileth are some of the best soulbinds in Patch 9.2, offering the most damage traits without sacrificing Conduits. At low levels of renown using Bonesmith Heirmir or Emeni will typically give you the best results, but as soon as you get Kevin's Oozeling Marileth becomes extremely powerful. In addition to Kevin, Marileth also gives you out a Mastery buff every time you use Volatile Solvent making this soulbind even more competitive across covenants. Emeni gets an honorable mention with her Lead by Example trait, due to the boost to group DPS. Unfortunately the new trait Enemi received in Patch 9.1 is typically not going to give you any damage as a ranged DPS, so this Soulbind significantly lags behind this patch.

Note, for Mythic+ you will typically drop the 3rd potency Conduit in favor of Plaguey's Preemptive Strike, Gnashing Chompers, or Heirmir's Arsenal: Marrowed Gemstone.

For Raiding, use the following path:

For Mythic+, use the following path:

For Raiding, use the following path:

For Mythic+, use the following path:

For Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path

Fae Guardians is extremely unique in what it does, and has several different aspects to it that also offer support benefits to your allies if you want to sacrifice your damage. Specifically, when you cast this ability you get access to 3 Faerie's: Wrathful, Guardian, and Benevolent.

• The Wrathful Faerie is automatically applied to your current target — or nearest target if you cast Fae Guardians on an ally — and causes direct attacks against that target to restore 3 Insanity. You can move what target has the Wrathful Faerie active by casting Shadow Word: Pain on that enemy.
• The Guardian Faerie gives you or whoever you cast Power Word: Shield on a 20% damage taken reduction.
• Finally, the most important Faerie is the Benevolent Faerie. This Faerie causes your Void Eruption cooldown to recover twice as fast for the duration of the buff (20 seconds baseline), effectively giving you a 20-second reduction. This makes it a 70-second cooldown, down from 90 seconds. By casting Fae Guardians on an ally, you will instead give them the cooldown reduction to start with. This can be moved later by casting Shadow Mend.

In practice, the only part of this spell that has noticeable DPS gains for the Shadow Priest is the Benevolent Faerie's cooldown recovery rate. With this, you still use Void Eruption on cooldown and carry on as normal, getting slightly more Voidform's out than you would otherwise. Make sure and line up Power Infusion the best you can with this, as it will be slightly desynced.

The strength of this Covenant is highly variable on the content you are doing. Sometimes the fight timings do not benefit the Covenant much, but on other fights you can get massive gains with this ability. A good example from Castle Nathria is that on Shriekwing you are able to get 2 Voidform casts in before she phases, and typically still have it up after the intermission as well. This is a great benefit, but highly dependent on fights like this to get full benefit out of. For similar reasons this ability is very strong in Mythic+ environments.

• Having a cooldown-reduction-based ability makes this a great ability for progression bosses to fit in more cooldowns compared to what you could do otherwise.
• Access to Soulshape to help fill the gap in our movement kit.
• All three Soulbinds are useful in their own way, giving you lots of options for your damage patterns.

• Terrible covenant legendary makes the performance fall off a cliff compared to Necrolord.
• Can be more difficult to play optimally compared to other covenants.
• Can require meticulous planning of cooldowns to line things up perfectly rather than simply firing all abilities on cooldown.

Each Night Fae Soulbind has a distinct use-case, following different types of damage patterns you will encounter. Generally speaking you want to use Niya or Dreamweaver as your Raid Soulbind and Korayn for your Mythic+ Soulbind due to the strength of First Strike. That being said, if you cannot effectively play around First Strike, using Niya for Mythic+ is still a great choice. The choice between Dreamweaver and Niya will come down to specifically how consistently you will be able to play around Field of Blossoms or if you prefer the easier set-it-and-forget-it playstyle of Grove Invigoration. Keep in mind that Podtender can also be a great trait to have on progression which might lean you towards using Dreamweaver.

You can use this Weak Aura to help track Field of Blossoms as a Priest. It tracks the duration even if you have to step out of it to handle a mechanic.

For both Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path:

For both Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path:

For both Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path

Mindgames is quite possibly the best ability we have in PvP environments, but unfortunately this strength does not translate into PvE quite as well. At its core, this is simply a hard hitting single-target ability that can give us Insanity if the target you cast it on does healing and/or damage over a short period after using the spell. You can think of this as essentially putting two absorb shield debuffs on your target, one for healing and another for damage. If that target does enough of either to break its respective shield, you gain 10 Insanity each. This can be fairly inconsistent, but in a Raiding environment you can generally expect a boss to break the damage shield quite easily. That being said, this ability does not actually have any target scaling whatsoever as it just does single-target damage; unfortunately that damage is actually less than even Unholy Nova on single-target. On the bright side, the damage of this ability does scale with our Mastery: Shadow Weaving, so make sure to only cast this when you have all three of your damage over time effects active or you are in Voidform for maximum benefit.

• Good priority-target damage on a lower cooldown with Mindgames.
• Situational usefulness with the healing reversal from Mindgames.
• Access to the Party Favors Soulbind trait which is incredibly powerful.
• Door of Shadows is still nice to have, although generally considered weaker than Soulshape.

• Lackluster AoE potential when compared to the other Covenants.
• Without Party Favors this Covenant would be significantly behind the other options, leaving a bigger hole for potential nerfs to that trait causing a ripple effect.
• The covenant legendary is incredibly inconsistent and makes the damage potential less ideal compared to Necrolord.

Theotar the Mad Duke is generally speaking your best Raid Soulbind, although depending on the fight timings Nadjia the Mistblade will also be competitive or better. In addition, Theotar's Soothing Shade trait can be somewhat cumbersome to manage on certain fights; in those instances I will consider using Nadjia instead. That being said, due to Theotar's Party Favors trait, if you get the Haste buff it is just about breakeven to Nadjia if you do not stand in any Soothing Shade procs. This means that standing in just one Soothing Shade will tip the scales into Theotar's favor assuming you have the Haste buff from The Mad Duke's Tea. For dungeons Nadjia is almost always the better choice due to extra stacks of Thrill Seeker from getting killing blows. That being said, these two Soulbinds are very close together in simulations so if you like to off-spec or multi-spec this is a great Covenant for you. Unfortunately, General Draven is significantly behind both of the other two options for damage output, so if you plan on off-spec healing he would be the optimal choice for that use-case. He is otherwise not used much for Shadow specifically unless you are looking for more utility.

For both Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path:

When it comes to Party Favors, your preference is for the following buffs:

1. Haste;
2. Intellect;
3. Crit = Versatility.

For both Raiding and Mythic+, use the following path:

For Raiding, use the following path

If in Mythic+, use this path instead: