Shadow Priest Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Dragonflight 10.2.5

With the launch of the Dragonflight Pre-Patch the below guide will not be perfectly accurate. That being said if you are looking to be optimal you will still want to run the current Unity legendary plus Talbadar's Stratagem or Shadowflame Prism legendary depending on your talent choices. If the talent build you are using suggests using Inescapable Torment you pair that with Talbadar's Stratagem. Otherwise it is suggested to use Shadowflame Prism legendary.

After completing enough Torghast runs you will be able to craft Legendary-level gear via through the new Runecarving system. Each power is unique, although several of them harken back to previous Legendary or tier set effects from past World of Warcraft expansions. In this guide we will go over each Legendary for Shadow Priest with full explanations and a final ranking.

As a Shadow Priest you should always use Missive of Haste and Missive of Mastery for your stats. These are always our top two stats. Check out the stats page for more details.

For a video walkthrough of our options, check out my survival guide where we go over what you need to know for Legendaries in Patch 9.2.

Any slots that are bolded are, generally speaking, the better version of the item you should craft. Depending on the slot the amount of primary and secondary stats can shift. This typically is not a large difference, but it makes sense to min-max around based on the gear drops that come from the raid since we can control the stats on these items. Starting with Patch 9.2 the slots you pick are greatly dependent on which items come with a socket since there is no way to retroactively add a socket to an item if it does not drop with one.

After you progress through the Patch 9.2 campaign you will get access to the Memory of Unity legendary power. This gives you the ability to equip a second legendary power with your Covenant specific legendary power. For every Covenant as a Shadow Priest your covenant legendary is not better than running Shadowflame Prism, so you will not equip these effects until you get the Unity power. The first chart below is for your primary legendary, the second chart is for your Memory of Unity legendary slot.

Focus	Legendary	Slots	Source
Raiding Single-Target — Necrolord, Night Fae, or Venthyr	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Raiding Single-Target — Kyrian	Talbadar's Stratagem	Legs or Waist	Torghast (The Upper Reaches, Layer 3+)
Raiding Multi-Target (Stacked)	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Mythic+	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side
Torghast and Open World	Shadowflame Prism	Head or Gloves	Mueh'zala in De Other Side

The following slots are more or less even in BiS gear scenarios, choose the one that will give you the biggest upgrade at the time.

Kyrian	Spheres' Harmony	Waist, Feet, or Finger	Renown Level 48
Necrolord	Pallid Command	Waist, Feet, or Finger	Renown Level 48
Night Fae	Bwonsamdi's Pact	Waist, Feet, or Finger	Renown Level 48
Venthyr	Shadow Word: Manipulation	Waist, Feet, or Finger	Renown Level 48

While Head and Hands slots also sim very well the BiS setup using Shadowflame Prism does not allow us to wear either of these slots for Unity AND T28 4-set.

Going into Patch 9.2 Pallid Command was nerfed by 40%. This paired with Shadowflame Prism getting more value from the tier set bonus and more conduit ranks of Rabid Shadows has shifted your priority when running a single legendary. Any Necrolords that were using Pallid Command in the previous patch should swap to using Shadowflame Prism as your primary legendary until you get access to the Memory of Unity power to re-equip Pallid Command.

NOTE: as Kyrian on single-target with Talbadar's Stratagem you should use Courageous Ascension as your third Potency Conduit, not Mind Devourer.

We do want to give an honorable mention to the Twins of the Sun Priestess Legendary, as it can provide a good amount of benefit for a fellow party member that could end up surpassing the value of other Legendaries for yourself, but that will depend on your confidence with them. This will of course not be a DPS increase for you, and if you end up shifting your timings of using Power Infusion to suit the person you are giving it to it could very well end up being a DPS loss, so be careful.

The following legendary powers are available to you and will be your 2nd legendary you equip once you get access to the Memory of Unity after getting far enough in the Patch 9.2 campaign and getting enough reputation.

• Spheres' Harmony — essentially makes Kyrian Shadow Priests sync their cooldowns with Power Infusion naturally. Can be good for single-target but will generally speaking still be behind Shadowflame Prism. Where this Legendary can shine is for specific situations with cooldown timing that are only possible with this reduction. It is not great generically but cooldown reduction can be very powerful for short encounters especially.
• Pallid Command — For the most part this is a set-and-forget Legendary that will spawn a pet to deal damage for you. This is an extremely powerful single-target Legendary. Going Necrolord for this Legendary can be advantageous considering this benefit, but there are lots of other factors to keep in mind such as Soulbinds and Covenant spells like Soulshape vs. Fleshcraft. See the Covenant section for more detail.
• Bwonsamdi's Pact — This Legendary can be weird to read, but essentially this just duplicates the power of a specific Faerie from Fae Guardians. You can change which one is duplicated throughout the duration, but if using this you are likely going to want to duplicate the Benevolent Faerie for the extra CDR. Unfortunately this does not give much power, as it only affects Voidform's cooldown and not Power Infusion as well. De-syncing these cooldowns too much just stops being beneficial. This will likely not see any common uses in Raid scenarios.
• Shadow Word: Manipulation — This Legendary is also quite strange, and will likely not see use in PvE. In a nutshell this gives you a burst of Critical Strike after one of the Mindgames "shields" expire, meaning that if the damage or healing absorb shields are consumed you will get a percentage of Critical Strike based on how long the debuff had left on that target. While this certainly could give you more burst, it is entirely out of your control if and when this breaks leading to inconsistent damage and a potentially wasted Legendary effect. In optimal scenarios this can surpass Shadowflame Prism on single-target, but not by a significant amount.

1. Shadowflame Prism at Rank 1 (non Kyrian
2. Talbadar's Stratagem at Rank 1 (Kyrian only)
3. Covenant Legendary Power at Rank 1
4. Keep each of these three Legendaries upgraded within a rank of each other, following this order.

*Both Shadowflame Prism and Talbadar's Stratagem have some use in dungeons where you opt to use Misery over Searing Nightmare. This is typically just in Theater of Pain or Spires of Ascension.

The overall best Legendary is Shadowflame Prism for all Covenants except Kyrian, which prefers Talbadar's Stratagem.

Raiding content as a DPS will constantly throw different situations at you, so when picking an overall raiding Legendary you want something that will be able to handle as many scenarios well as possible.

1. Shadowflame Prism becomes the de facto Legendary for all raiding encounters. The synergy with Mindbender requires you to use this talent when using this Legendary strictly because it is much weaker when used with Shadowfiend. Keep in mind that this Legendary does grant you some passive priority target damage due to the increased Insanity from more Mindbender melees, but typically this is not the strong suit of the Legendary. In addition, whenever fighting mobs that are not stacked you could see weird results with the Legendary, as it does prefer stacked targets as much as possible. It cleaves in a 10-yard range around the target of your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death.
2. Talbadar's Stratagem gives you a boost to your Mind Blasts on any target if you currently have Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Devouring Plague ticking on a single target at the same time. You will get a buff if all 3 DoTs are active and this will buff your Mind Blast on any target, not just the one with all 3 DoTs. This is typically not something you will find useful, since you would still want to cast into the target with 3 DoTs for full Mastery benefit, but is nice to have in Voidform. In addition to the cool visual, this Legendary is very strong in single-target, but, as you add targets, your uptime on Devouring Plague naturally falls off making this harder to gain maximum benefit. With the extra Conduit slot this Legendary is no longer better than Shadowflame Prism in overall single-target, unless you are Kyrian. That being said, if you are looking for more consistent single-target damage rather than the 1-minute cycles of Shadowflame Prism this could be a good Legendary to have in your back pocket.
3. Twins of the Sun Priestess is a bit of a wild-card pickup, but if you find yourself not getting great benefit from the previous Legendaries, you could use this to augment another player's cooldowns. This really is not a DPS increase to you, but could be a net gain for the party. With a Power Unto Others Conduit, you do get a bit of a cooldown reduction, but that is only a gain if the person you are casting it on does not mind getting the cast de-synced after subsequent uses.

Mythic+ typically leans towards wanting more AoE damage, but since you will still spend about half of your time on bosses and large mobs, having single-target is still quite valuable in terms of overall dungeon damage.

1. Shadowflame Prism is a 5-target cleave Legendary that can do great damage on up to 5 stacked targets, but in doing so you are missing out on Mind Sear and Searing Nightmare casts. Because of this you will need to think carefully if this Legendary is the correct choice on a dungeon-by-dungeon basis, particularly based on your talent choice ( Misery vs Searing Nightmare). Being able to weave this into your Searing Nightmare rotation could still produce good results if done well though, especially on lower target counts. In addition, for Explosive weeks this Legendary is optimal as you will be getting massive Shadow Word: Death resets from the Explosives.
2. Talbadar's Stratagem is the last Legendary to consider for Mythic+ as it does have good synergy on certain Fortified keys with Psychic Link. You typically will not opt to use this build on Tyrannical weeks since losing out on boss damage is generally not a good idea. This build is even better as a Night Fae, and can be very competitive for dungeons like Theater of Pain or Spires of Ascension where you typically do not run Searing Nightmare.
3. Twins of the Sun Priestess will be the default Legendary for non-pug groups. The power of coordinated Power Infusion cannot be overstated enough inside of Mythic+. The level of coordination required for this is typically not worth it in pug groups, but that will be your call to make.

If you plan on running Torghast with a group of people, consider referring to the Mythic+ recommendations if your group is large enough that you have to heal for most of the time.

Torghast Legendaries are in a similar boat as Mythic+ for us; depending on how you pull, the value will swing quite widely and there really is not a "best" Legendary for this reason.

1. Stable Phantasma Lure is a unique Legendary that augments your Torghast run by increasing the Torghast-only currency you get inside each run. The amount will vary, but could potentially add up to be enough to let you buy an additional Anima Power making it extremely powerful compared to our other options for Legendaries.
2. Shadowflame Prism is a decent enough Legendary to run in Torghast if you are looking for a cooldown-based Legendary that has good uptime for the run.
3. Talbadar's Stratagem can be a great Legendary to swap to on Broker floors if you get a few Mind Blast powers to augment the build.