Shadow Priest DPS Ny'alotha Raid Guide — Dragonflight 10.2.5

In this section, you will find information and guidance for Shadow Priests on each boss individually in the Ny'alotha raid. These are not complete encounter guides, but rather provide specific tips for doing the bosses as a Shadow Priest.

All recommendations are progression based tips and will not necessarily be the best for an overall DPS ranking.

Our reworked toolkit should mean Shadow Priests should perform quite well in the Shadowlands pre-patch. We have a lot of answers to the way these fights ask questions.

We advise you to use the following essences against Wrathion, the Black Emperor.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

Wrathion is all about managing your movement and ensuring the most uptime possible on the boss. Make sure that you plan for your movement extremely early and get from Point A to Point B by moving small amounts when casting instant cast spells like Void Bolt. In addition, make sure you refresh all of your DoTs towards the end of the Gale Blast channel, as the boss will be out of range for a long period of time afterwards.

After two Burning Cataclysms, the boss becomes untargetable and drops several Scales of Wrathion. If you are assigned to run the debuff through the shards, save your Dispersion for this phase, as it will help your raid clear much more quickly.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Wrathion, the Black Emperor guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Maut.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

This encounter is fairly standard for Shadow Priests, the biggest thing to optimize your damage here is ensuring you are positioned to hit both the boss and the adds at all time with both Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch. Keeping 100% uptime is essential to full damage here. During the Stygian Annihilation cast use Dispersion before going into the Devoured Abyss void zone.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Maut guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against The Prophet Skitra.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

Skitra is a very straightforward fight for Shadow Priests, and is extremely similar to Maut in terms of DPS execution. Prioritize keeping your DoTs up on the add that spawns and you will do just fine.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our The Prophet Skitra guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Dark Inquisitor Xanesh.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

Xanesh takes the award for the simplest fight for ranged DPS this tier, as the best way to handle this is to move as little as possible. Try keeping yourself close to the center of the room (near Azshara) so you can move small amounts to dodge mechanics.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Dark Inquisitor Xanesh guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against The Hivemind.

• Major Slot
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Azerite Beam + Focused Energy
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Blood of the Enemy — Rank 3: Blood-Soaked
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

Using Purification Protocol is particularly nice for this encounter due to the increase to aberration damage. You can also use Blood-Soaked if you do not have Purification Protocol.

Feel free to use Misery for this encounter instead of Searing Nightmare, it just depends on how much pad damage you want to do.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our The Hivemind guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Shad'har the Insatiable.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

A single-target DPS race, do your best to remain spread to avoid having to move if you do not have to.

During Phase 2, you can use Dispersion to easily soak Entropic Buildups.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Shad'har the Insatiable guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Drest'agath.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

During this encounter, it is your sole responsibility to keep as many targets DoTed as possible, while not moving too much. If you get lucky with spawns you will be able to hit multiple adds AND the boss at the same time. Pick up orbs when adds die and then focus the boss with your main abilities while you have this active.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Drest'agath guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Vexiona.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

Vexiona is another dragon fight this raid, which has a few different options you can play with depending on your strategy. If your raid is controlling the adds and not burning them down you can use Twist of Fate, however most groups are opting to just nuke the adds which plays well to using Searing Nightmare. You can also use Focused Azerite Beam to destroy the adds quickly, but if too many people are running this essence in your raid it will not be worth it.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Vexiona guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Ra-den the Despoiled.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

Ra-den is very straightforward for Shadow Priests, as your primary objective is to keep everything DoTed at all times while reducing movement. If you can do that you will do just fine. Be sure to pre-move your character towards the orb that you are going to kill next to get maximum DoT uptime. You can bank up 100 insanity or so to get a double rolled Devouring Plague to nuke the orb as quick as possible here.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Ra-den the Despoiled guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Il'gynoth, Corruption Reborn.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

As a Shadow Priest, using Misery here will give you a large advantage to add damage, assuming you position yourself correctly. In the first few phases try to position yourself next to the door where the add spawns, and transition yourself between doors 1 and 2 after the second dies. If you do this correctly you will be able to DoT the adds as soon as they spawn, helping kill these as soon as possible.

On Mythic difficulty, we recommend you stick with Twist of Fate, since you will not have a great opportunity to move around the room to DoT adds all the time, but enough to keep up high uptime of Twist of Fate. If you are using the no-dispel strategy in Mythic, consider using Intangibility for standing still when/if the beam targets you.

For more information, please refer to our Il'gynoth, Corruption Reborn guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Carapace of N'Zoth.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

Using Purification Protocol is particularly nice for this encounter due to the increase to aberration damage. You can also use Blood-Soaked if you do not have Purification Protocol.

In the second phase, the raid splits into two groups and kills Mycelial Cysts to create a path to kill the Synthesis Growth, which will heal the boss while alive. To help your group with this, try to keep your DoTs up on as many cysts as possible, while still focusing the Synthesis Growth.

I would suggest all Shadow Priests talent into Psychic Horror, as this is very helpful when kiting an add that is focusing you, or stunning a team mate that is chasing you when Mind Controlled.

Focused Azerite Beam is a great pickup here to help clean up adds in all 3 phases, just make sure to save it if adds are coming soon.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our Carapace of N'Zoth guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against N'Zoth the Corruptor.

• Major Slot
  • Condensed Life-Force — Rank 3: Guardian of Azeroth + Condensed Life-Force
• Minor Slots
  • The Crucible of Flame — Rank 3: Ancient Flame
  • Essence of the Focusing Iris — Rank 3: Focused Energy
  • Breath of the Dying — Rank 3: Lethal Strikes

N'Zoth is a very heavy multi-target fight for Shadow, and gives you ample opportunity to keep your DoTs up on lots of targets. During the phases where you are killing Psychus you will be tempted to DoT all the tentacles you see, but do this with extreme discretion, as your primary objective is to focus a single tentacle rather than killing all of them. Using Last Word on this fight is extremely useful as keeping targets interrupted proves to be on the most important parts of the encounter.

We have no specific recommendations for this fight on Mythic Difficulty.

For more information, please refer to our N'Zoth the Corruptor guide.