Atherburst
Grandfathered
Updated for 6.1
1. Abilities
2. Race
3. Talents
4. Glyphs
5. Stats, Gear and Enchants
Data
Auto attacks from a level 85 mage.
No Shadow Form: 180, 219, 211, 179, 188, 184, 224, 214. 215, 224
Mean: 203.8
Shadow Form: 208, 147, 177, 143, 152, 148, 208, 149, 203, 211
Mean: 174.6
No Shadow Form No Bonus Armor: 199, 218, 178, 167, 225, 222, 180, 208, 203, 207
Mean 200.7
Shadow Form No Bonus Armor 167, 167, 172, 230, 173, 213, 228, 181, 221, 211
Mean 176.3
Results
I tested the theory - Looks like I was wrong Bonus armor doesn't work with Shadow Priests despite the tool tip.
Shadow Form vs. No Shadow Form with armor on scored .010 with a Ttest indicating significance.
Shadow Form vs. Shadow Form/No Armor scored a .943 indicating almost no significance.
6. Battle Grounds
7. Arena
- Abilities
- Race
- Talents
- Glyphs
- Stats, Gear and Enchants
- Battlegrounds
- Arenas
1. Abilities
- Shadow Word: Pain
Your bread and butter. Your only instant cast offensive spell usable on cooldown which conveniently does a whole lot of damage. Remember, the first tick of damage happens instantly. If you’re running around and don’t have time to stop and cast, this can be spammed for a slight damage increase if Power Word: Shield or Dispel aren’t available.
- Power Word: Shield
PW: S should be used on cool down. The ~1k shield increases survivability significantly. Don’t forget to bubble your teammates! Good Shadowpriests play dynamically. Tab dotting doesn’t win team fights, healing does.
- Flash Heal:
Don’t be afraid to pop out of Shadowform to heal. This should be on your shadow bar if it’s not already. This hits for around 800-900 crits/multistrikes for more making it incredibly strong. Sometimes your best option is to heal in team fights rather than DPS.
- Mind Flay
If your dots are rolling and Mind Blast is on cooldown this is your go to damage spell. The slow/speed boost (depending on glyph) gives you the ability to peel/escape. Don’t be afraid to bait kicks with this as you can immediately spam flash heals/bubbles if you do get kicked.
- Mind Blast
A strong hitting spell with a longer cooldown. Our goal in life is to cast our third Mind Blast to generate our shadow orbs and follow it up with a Devouring Plague.
- Spectral Guise
The 30 second cooldown on this is unfortunate but if used correctly you’ll be able to use it multiple times per fight. Juking is a must – strafe left, Guise, and go back right. Guise, then jump off a ledge or turn a corner. Maybe find the inside of a hut. Get creative.
- Devouring Plague
A huge instant cast that requires three shadow orbs to cast. This can be used immediately after your third cast of Mind Blast for an insane amount of burst. This can crit for upwards of 1.5k and heals you for as much. Sometimes it’s necessary to save your orb charges for a strong burst opportunity.
- Power Word: Fortitude
A huge buff to your team that provides everyone with 10% more stamina making stamina one of our favorite stats. Don’t forget to rebuff when you leave the graveyard or in between fights so your rezzers get the buff.
- Fade
Completely useless at 29. At level 30 Fade would remove all moving impairing effects. Too bad we don’t get that.
- Shadowform
Increases damage by 25% and armor by 100%. The second part of that is the most important component since survivability is our number one goal. It also synergizes nicely with the Arathi Basin Defiler Gear which has significant Bonus Armor. You need to have Shadowform keybound since you’ll be popping back in after casting flash heals.
- Dispel Magic
This Dispel is only offensive, but still useful for purging priest bubbles, AGMs, Riptide, Druid HoTs, and other group buffs. Against other priests it’s critical that you dispel their bubbles – trying to hack through 1-2k of absorb just isn’t worth it.
- Mind Sear
Not too useful in WSG, but great in arena for catching stealth classes. You can cast this on your mounted partner and have them run around for a nice moving AOE.
- Vampiric Touch
Slightly stronger in damage than SW: P but has a cast time. Should be prioritized when spreading dots. Also protects against dispels to some degree by fearing the dispeller upon dispel.
- Mind Quickening (Passive)
5% haste to your party – seems good to me.
2. Race
Recommendation:
Alliance: Human, Gnome, Pandaren
Horde: Goblin, Tauren, Pandaren
Alliance: Human, Gnome, Pandaren
Horde: Goblin, Tauren, Pandaren
- Human
Arguably the best class for Shadow Priest with the ability to equip two stat trinkets and the versatility bonus helping survivability.
- Night Elf
Quickness and Touch of Elune provide some good stat boosts, but still don’t outweigh Escape Artist and the Human Versatility/Trinket bonuses. Shadowmeld can be useful but, again, just isn’t as strong as other racials.
- Gnome
On par with Human simply due to Escape Artist. Slows are your biggest fear as a Shadow Priest since you have no way to peel for yourself. 1% Haste is strong too.
- Dwarf
Stoneform is arguably the best racial at level cap, but is underwhelming at 29. It mostly just gets used as a 10% damage cloak or to wipe dots since the bracket is mostly ferals and monks. It can provide a decent escape mechanism against rogues through wiping Crippling Poison, but escape Artist is still just better.
- Draenei
Gift of the Naaru is pretty bad as are most HoTs at 29 due to the burst in the bracket. Heroic Presence is nice, but doesn't help with survivability at all which is our biggest concern.
- Worgen
Worgen isn’t a terrible choice with Darkflight giving a strong kite option if you haven’t already been slowed. In general Escape Artist is still better and 1% crit from Viciousness doesn’t do as well as 1% Haste.
- Tauren
A close second to Goblin, Tauren offers more Stamina (Yay survivability!) which scales well with our Power Word: Fortitude raid buff. Warstomp is a strong peel, especially in Warsong Gulch.
- Troll
The Haste on-use isn’t bad, but we don’t really need offensive abilities. Da Voodoo Shuffle reduces slow durations by 15%, but that’s not as good as it seems since most slows will get reapplied fairly quickly.
- Undead
Pretty useless except for looking awesome. Touch of the Grave has some synergy with the class with the damage/healing output, but Will of the forsaken is utterly useless with warlocks being relatively unpopular.
- Blood Elf
Silence is useful for arena situations against a healer/DPS comp, but that’s about as far as it goes. You don’t want to be in melee range ever. 1% crit is alright.
- Goblin
Goblin would be my first pick if I went horde. Rocket Jump is great for escaping melee, finding LOS, and just positioning in general. Rocket Barrage provides some extra burst with our Mind Blast/Devouring Plague combo. On top of this we get another 1% haste with Time is Money.
3. Talents
Recommendation:
Spectral Guise
Spectral Guise
- Desperate Prayer
Desperate Prayer seems reasonable until you realize how fast melee classes can blow through 22% of your health pool.
- Spectral Guise
Spectral Guise is the obvious choice here. Taking no damage for a few seconds is far better than any heal. You can artificially prolong the effect with clever jukes.
- Angelic Bulwark
Angelic Bulwark is even worse than Desperate Prayer only yielding 15% of your health pool every 90 seconds. It won’t save you.
4. Glyphs
Recommendation:
Glyph of Mind Harvest, Glyph of Mind Flay, Glyph of Weakened Soul
Glyph of Mind Harvest, Glyph of Mind Flay, Glyph of Weakened Soul
- Glyph of Mind Harvest
Causes your first Mind Blast against a target to generate two additional shadow orbs, but increases the cooldown. This is probably the best glyph available to Shadow Priests since it allows you to use your burst on command of Mind Blast + Devouring Plague. A neat trick: Mind Blast your off target, wait for Mindblast to come off cooldown, then Devouring Plague --> Mind Blast --> Devouring plague your primary target for huge burst.
- Glyph of Mind Blast
Critical hit Mind Blasts will snare your target for four seconds. You can only cast Mind Blast once every 6-9 seconds (depending on haste) and your crit chance will be between 15% and 20%. This is just too unreliable.
- Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Read the wording carefully here. You’re CONVERTING 20% of your shield to healing meaning the net value is 0. If you bubble at full health you're actually losing 20% of the value. Versus dispelling classes this is useful since they’ll only be dispelling 80% of the value.
- Glyph of Weakened Soul
Reduces the Weakened Soul debuff your PW:S gives from 15 seconds to 13 seconds. This is a viable glyph since getting an extra bubble off can save a life.
- Glyph of Dispel Magic
Dispel now does a bit of damage when you successfully dispel a target – pretty subpar overall. Possibly viable against other priests.
- Glyph of Mind Flay
A strong glyph choice which can add to your kiting ability. The slow is nice for peeling or catching flag carriers, but let’s be honest you’re going to get trained into the ground most of the time so any escape option is good.
- Glyph of Reflective Shield
The damage output on this isn’t worth it. It offers no additional survivability and you can only shield once every 15 seconds.
5. Stats, Gear and Enchants
Overview:
Overview: Gearing at 29 is fairly dynamic now which is nice. There is no one BIS piece, although there are, in my opinion, certain stats you should prioritize. Shadow Priests excel when they stay alive for a long time; their value increases exponentially the longer they stay alive. DoTs take time to reach full capacity, getting to three shadow orbs with Mind Blasts takes a while, although haste helps this, and getting multiple bubbles off on team mates and yourself during fights is huge. I don’t care if you can crit for 2k with devouring plague if you’re dying before you ever get to three shadow orbs. You WILL get tunnel-visioned by melee, there’s no way around it. I've listed all relevant stats below in order of priority.
Overview: Gearing at 29 is fairly dynamic now which is nice. There is no one BIS piece, although there are, in my opinion, certain stats you should prioritize. Shadow Priests excel when they stay alive for a long time; their value increases exponentially the longer they stay alive. DoTs take time to reach full capacity, getting to three shadow orbs with Mind Blasts takes a while, although haste helps this, and getting multiple bubbles off on team mates and yourself during fights is huge. I don’t care if you can crit for 2k with devouring plague if you’re dying before you ever get to three shadow orbs. You WILL get tunnel-visioned by melee, there’s no way around it. I've listed all relevant stats below in order of priority.
- Movement Speed
Kiting, positioning, and getting to that team fight a few seconds faster. These are what win games, not damage. Your cape enchant, the Defiler boots, and Tuskarr's Vitality can get you to 130% movement speed.
- Bonus Armor
I think this stat doesn’t get much consideration in 29, especially as a cloth wearer. That being said, bonus armor doubles with Shadowform brining your armor damage reduction from ~12% to ~32% with both defiler pieces at the cost of a tiny bit of haste/crit/int.
Edit: Bonus armor actually does nothing for Shadow Priests - the tool tip is wrong. That being said the AB Cloth boots are still BIS for the MS. There's probably a better belt than the AB Belt, such as Ghoom-ra's.
Edit: Bonus armor actually does nothing for Shadow Priests - the tool tip is wrong. That being said the AB Cloth boots are still BIS for the MS. There's probably a better belt than the AB Belt, such as Ghoom-ra's.
Data
Auto attacks from a level 85 mage.
No Shadow Form: 180, 219, 211, 179, 188, 184, 224, 214. 215, 224
Mean: 203.8
Shadow Form: 208, 147, 177, 143, 152, 148, 208, 149, 203, 211
Mean: 174.6
No Shadow Form No Bonus Armor: 199, 218, 178, 167, 225, 222, 180, 208, 203, 207
Mean 200.7
Shadow Form No Bonus Armor 167, 167, 172, 230, 173, 213, 228, 181, 221, 211
Mean 176.3
Results
I tested the theory - Looks like I was wrong Bonus armor doesn't work with Shadow Priests despite the tool tip.
Shadow Form vs. No Shadow Form with armor on scored .010 with a Ttest indicating significance.
Shadow Form vs. Shadow Form/No Armor scored a .943 indicating almost no significance.
- Stamina
Stamina scales well in PVP and with our PW:F spell it scales even better. I have about 5k health buffed at the moment. I found somewhere around 4.5k is where I stopped getting killed in less than three seconds by an ambitious feral or over-eager monk.
- Versatility
This is a good choice for your cape, neck and ring enchants and synergizes well with the human racial. You’ll get another ~6% damage reduction and 12% damage and healing which is just gravy. Haste would be my next choice for these enchants but it’s not nearly as good IMO.
- Intellect
Intellect gives spell power and spell power is usually the best offensive stat. Pretty straight forward
- Haste
Haste over crit. Crit isn’t a bad stat, but we want shorter cool downs on Mind Blast to stack orbs and we need to be able to cast spells faster so we can stay on the move and kite those pesky melee classes.
- Crit
Critical Strike
Still a strong stat just not as good as everything else on this list. DoTs CAN crit.
Still a strong stat just not as good as everything else on this list. DoTs CAN crit.
Recommended Gear and Enchants:
- Helm: Tattered Dreadmist Mask
- Neck: Eternal Horizon Choker (Gift of Versatility)
- Shoulders: Exquisite Sunderseer Mantle (Greater inscription of Charged Lodestone, Greater Crane Wing Inscription, or Greater Inscription of the Gladiator)
- Back: Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak (Gift of Versatility)
- Chest: Robers of Koegler/Tattered Dreadmist Robe (Peerless Stats or HP)
- Bracers: Glowing Magical Bracelets (Major Stamina or Spell Power)
- Gloves: Enumerated Handwraps of the Sorcerer (Spell Power)
- Belt: Ghamoo-ra's Bind/Highlander's Cloth Belt
- Legs: Tattered Dreadmist Legs (Master’s Spellthread)
- Feet: Scarlet Sandals (Minor Speed)
- Ring 1: Beastbinder Ring (Gift of Versitility)
- Ring 2: Dread Pirate Ring/Maywiki’s Favorite Ring/Chabal’s Favorite Ring (Gift of Versility)
- Trinket 1: Inherited Mark of Tyranny
- Trinket 2: PVP Trinket (For non-humans)/Rune of Perfection/ Discerning Eye of the Beast/ Goblin Mortar
- Weapon: The Blessed Hammer of Grace (Elemental Force, Mark of Warsong, or Hurricane)
- Offhand: Musty Tome of the Lost/Tome of the Dawn (Major Intellect)
6. Battle Grounds
Overview:
Shadow priests provide strong synergy to almost any battleground team. Your DoTs provide solid pressure against enemy healers, your off-healing is incredible, and your burst is reasonable with three orbs. You pretty much do it all. There are two facets of Shadow Priests that require practice to master: Kiting/Positioning and Spell Priority.
Sometimes playing a Shadow Priest means playing a defensive game. If a Feral or Monk decides to sit on you you’re probably not going to live long or do much damage. That means you need to enter the fight late, surrounding yourself with healers and other ranged classes that can peel, and making sure your bruisers are in between you and their melee. If a strong melee class does end up on you, do your best to kite them with Guise and Mind Flay, focus on bubbling and healing yourself, and keep your DoTs rolling if possible. Stacking MS helps here.
Spell Priority also plays a large roll in accurate Shadow Priest play. Knowing when to bubble/heal instead of deal damage is fairly critical. Setting up burst and not wasting your shadow orbs also plays a huge role in your success. It’s obviously much more fun to spam dots and huge Devouring Plague crits, and you sure as shit didn’t roll a shadow priest to be a healer, but the best shadow priests heal aggressively. Tossing bubbles on cooldown and the occasional flash heal will win you team fights. The majority of your damage output is DoTs anyway. I’ve had a few games where I’ve topped both the damage and healing charts.
Shadow priests provide strong synergy to almost any battleground team. Your DoTs provide solid pressure against enemy healers, your off-healing is incredible, and your burst is reasonable with three orbs. You pretty much do it all. There are two facets of Shadow Priests that require practice to master: Kiting/Positioning and Spell Priority.
Sometimes playing a Shadow Priest means playing a defensive game. If a Feral or Monk decides to sit on you you’re probably not going to live long or do much damage. That means you need to enter the fight late, surrounding yourself with healers and other ranged classes that can peel, and making sure your bruisers are in between you and their melee. If a strong melee class does end up on you, do your best to kite them with Guise and Mind Flay, focus on bubbling and healing yourself, and keep your DoTs rolling if possible. Stacking MS helps here.
Spell Priority also plays a large roll in accurate Shadow Priest play. Knowing when to bubble/heal instead of deal damage is fairly critical. Setting up burst and not wasting your shadow orbs also plays a huge role in your success. It’s obviously much more fun to spam dots and huge Devouring Plague crits, and you sure as shit didn’t roll a shadow priest to be a healer, but the best shadow priests heal aggressively. Tossing bubbles on cooldown and the occasional flash heal will win you team fights. The majority of your damage output is DoTs anyway. I’ve had a few games where I’ve topped both the damage and healing charts.
7. Arena
Overview:
Shadow Priests struggle in 2s without a class that can peel or heal. You’ll probably end up kiting 90% of the match and using pillars to LOS while your DoTs tick. Sometimes you’ll get a game where you get to free cast damage spells – you’ll almost always win these games since you can freely heal you partner and do amazing damage. Survivability stats are more important than ever in Arena since Shadow Priests are almost always the primary target.
Partner Classes:
Make sure you have macros set up to cast bubble/flash heal on your partner without having to select their nameplate.
Shadow Priests struggle in 2s without a class that can peel or heal. You’ll probably end up kiting 90% of the match and using pillars to LOS while your DoTs tick. Sometimes you’ll get a game where you get to free cast damage spells – you’ll almost always win these games since you can freely heal you partner and do amazing damage. Survivability stats are more important than ever in Arena since Shadow Priests are almost always the primary target.
Partner Classes:
- Rogues are a decent choice since sap gives you an opportunity to get your DoTs rolling with little pressure.
- Ferals are a solid choice due to offheals and insane burst.
- Shadow Priest/Disc Priest is viable despite the Weakened Soul issue since Discs do pretty big damage and the combine healing output should be enough to keep you alive.
- If you can find a Frost Mage you’ll have an amazing comp with the sheeps/slows of the mage combine with the burst potential of both classes.
- Resto Shaman can work with well-placed earthbind totems but you may not have enough damage to kill other Healer/DPS teams.
- BM Monk + Anything is obviously good.
Make sure you have macros set up to cast bubble/flash heal on your partner without having to select their nameplate.
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