Shadow Priest DPS Gems, Enchants, and Consumables — The War Within (11.0.5)

This section covers your character's optimal gems, enchants, food, and flasks. To get a more detailed rundown of the different stats for Shadow Priest, please visit our dedicated Stats page.

For The War Within, you will have 2 categories of gems to choose from: Rare or Epic. The Rare gems are either just a single stat or a combination of 2 secondary stats on one gem. The Epic gems are significantly stronger, but you can only use one at a time for your entire character.

Gems can be applied to a Helm, Bracer, or Belt via the Nerubian Gemweaver item from the Great Vault. In addition, a Jewelcrafting item lets you apply up to 2 sockets to a Neck or Ring item with Magnificent Jeweler's Setting.

For your Epic Gem in Season 1, you should use Culminating Blasphemite (Damage) or Elusive Blasphemite (Utility). This gives you a small incentive to have one of each colored gem socketed.

The reason why two options are listed is because of the low amount of throughput gained from Culminating Blasphemite, particularly early on with low gear. Since this scales our Crit Damage, it will start out being very low value until you get more gear. In full Best-In-Slot, this is roughly a 0.3% DPS increase. On the other hand, you can use Elusive Blasphemite and get up to 10% movement speed, which is a massive increase in our mobility as a Shadow Priest. This is a personal choice, but I would suggest using Elusive early on and only swapping to Culminating when you have full Myth track gear and want the extra damage.

Another caveat with Elusive Blasphemite is that it counts as temporary movement speed. This means it does not stack with effects like Angelic Feather, Body and Soul, or Stampeding Roar.

In total, there are five distinct colors for Rare gems: Emerald (Haste), Ruby (Critical Strike), Onyx (Mastery), Sapphire (Versatility), and Amber (Stamina). As a Shadow Priest, you want to use each of these colors except Amber for fully optimized setups. This, however, is a minor increase as factoring in the Amber is only a 0.2% DPS loss (roughly half the total increase of a normal gem), so if you prefer the Stamina over that amount, go for it! This also gives you an extra 2% move speed if you choose to use Elusive Blasphemite.

Below is the list of optimal gems for each color. Once you are satisfied with your color requirements for your Epic gem, I would suggest stacking either Quick Onyx or Masterful Emerald.

• Emerald: Masterful Emerald
• Ruby: Masterful Ruby or Quick Ruby
• Onyx: Quick Onyx
• Sapphire: Masterful Sapphire or Quick Sapphire
• Amber: Masterful Amber or Quick Amber

Here is an example progression as you work your way towards all 9 sockets:

1. Culminating Blasphemite or Elusive Blasphemite
2. Masterful Emerald
3. Quick Onyx
4. Masterful Ruby
5. Masterful Sapphire
6. OPTION: Masterful Amber
7. Masterful Emerald on remaining 3 or 4 sockets

For the final 4 sockets, you should pick either Masterful Emerald if you are lacking on Haste, or Quick Onyx if you have a decent amount. Usually, early on in the gearing process, you will lean towards Haste, and towards the end, you will stack more Mastery. On single target, you will typically notice Mastery being more valuable and on AoE Haste being more valuable.

Rare gems are roughly worth 4000 DPS (0.3%). If you are considering replacing an item with a socket, keep this in mind. As you get more gear, this could be even higher, but this is a rough number you can use. Simming different gem choices is extremely difficult because of how low of an increase this is, you should take gem sims with a large amount of caution as, typically, gains that are that small when comparing gems are within the margin of error.

Slot	Enchantment
Chest	Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance
Cloak (non-throughput)	Enchant Cloak - Chant of Winged Grace Enchant Cloak - Chant of Leeching Fangs
Wrists (non-throughput)	Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Avoidance Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Leech
Legs	Sunset Spellthread
Ring	Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste (see note below) Enchant Ring - Radiant Mastery (see note below)
Feet (non-throughput)	Enchant Boots - Scout's March (Mobility) Enchant Boots - Defender's March (Small Defensive)
Weapon	Enchant Weapon - Authority of the Depths (Single Target) Enchant Weapon - Authority of Radiant Power (AoE)

Realistically the gain in single target is quite minor between these so if you only have one strong weapon and want to compete in Mythic+ and Raiding I would use Enchant Weapon - Authority of Radiant Power. You can also use Enchant Weapon - Stonebound Artistry which is typically pretty inexpensive and pretty close behind the preferred options and can typically be more affordable.

When picking Cloak and Wrist enchants, I would suggest defaulting to Avoidance versions, but keep in mind that not every fight will have mechanics that can be avoided. For those difficult progression fights, consider swapping to Leech. Mythic+ environments should always prefer Avoidance, especially as you push up to higher keys.

For Ring enchants, you want to use Haste or Mastery, depending on the content you are trying to optimize for and your current gear set. Early on, you might lean towards Haste and then slowly move towards Mastery. In addition, raid builds will typically prefer more Mastery than Haste, and Mythic+ builds will prefer more Haste, so depending on what you are looking to specialize in, that can help make your choice.

For Season 1, several flasks or phials could make sense depending on the content you are doing. Use the following table as your guide; the higher in the table, the more DPS. While each phial has a different top-end DPS, I think there are scenarios where you may want to have at least a few of each around at a time, depending on the encounter.

Phial Name	When to Use	DPS Increase at Rank 3 with Potion
Flask of Alchemical Chaos	Default Choice.	6.2%
Flask of Tempered Mastery Flask of Tempered Swiftness Flask of Tempered Versatility	While not the best, Tempered Flasks can be a more consistent option. Haste and Mastery are the best for damage, but Versatility, in particular, is nice for defensive benefits.	5.7%

Flask of Alchemical Chaos is our default choice of flask primarily due to the interaction with Tempered Potion and the other Tempered Flasks. When using a single stat Tempered Flask you are effectively reducing the value of your potion uses enough to make them slightly less desirable.

Our best combat potion in all content is Tempered Potion.

For Healing Potions, you will mainly use Algari Healing Potion but can also keep Grotesque Vial in case of emergencies.

For your food buff, you should use some version of the Feast for this season, such as Feast of the Midnight Masquerade. For personal food items, you can use Chippy Tea. You can also use Beledar's Bounty as a cheaper alternative that is easier to make.

Depending on the level of progression content, you can also choose to craft Hearty versions of most food, which gives the exact same effect (despite a few wrong tooltips), but the buff now persists through death. This costs 5 normal food to produce 1 hearty version.

For your temporary weapon oil, you should use Algari Mana Oil.

You should aim to use Crystallized Augment Rune to get a boost of Intellect during any progression content. This is a gain of about 1% DPS.