Shadow Priest Guide (Updated for 4.0.3)  

Introduction

Welcome to ZAM's "How to Melt Faces: Shadowpriesting 101", written by the witty and devilishly handsome IDrownFish. So you decided to make a Shadow Priest, eh? Get tired lobbing fireballs, hiding behind pets, or swinging a sword? Do you want to bend the minds of your foes to your own ends, until they outlive their usefulness and are obliterated with the magical equivalent of a sledgehammer to the brain? Or do you just think that Shadowform looks really freaking cool?

All valid reasons to play a Shadow Priest!

Now, this guide isn't going to focus on leveling. It will assume you are already 85. Even if you aren't, much of the information here is still relevant. For example, spell priorities in a 75 dungeon will likely be the exact same as in an 85 heroic. So while this will be geared towards end-game, feel free to adapt any of this for your own uses.

Now, are you ready to delve into the finer points of Spriesting? Good. Let's get started.

History of the Class

This isn't something you "need to know", but I'm putting it here for posterity's sake.

The Shadow tree of the Priest class has always been a tree that was never as popular as its big brother Holy, or the awkward middle child Discipline. In Classic WoW, Shadow was a spec generally regarded as "for leveling". Very few guilds had a Priest whose goal in raids was to dps as Shadow. And for good reason. Back then, Shadow's damage was fairly low. The only reason someone would take them would be for the healing from Vampiric Embrace.

Then came BC, and with it, the ability that turned Shadow Priests from that kid everyone picked last on the playground for baseball into an absolute requirement for the cutting edge of content. That spell? Vampiric Touch. Back then, VT worked differently than it does today. It was still a DoT, but as long as it was active, 5% of any Shadow damage dealt was refunded as mana to not just you, but everyone in your group. So if you cast a Mind Blast and it crit for 800, everyone in your party would gain 40 mana. It might not sound like a lot, but consider that you had DoTs out the wazzoo, Mind Flays going, Shadow Word: Deaths, and Mind Blasts, and it all added up quickly. As you can imagine, we became best friends with other spellcasters like the healers and nuke-happy mages.

When WotLK rolled around, Blizzard made a design change that went along with their "Bring the player, not the class" philosophy. Up until then, Shadow Priests' damage was limited in order to keep the mana gained limited. If they did competitive dps, and restored mana, then nobody would ever run out. So by keeping the dps under control, and thus sub-par to other casters, they were able to ensure that mana was always an issue.

But with WotLK, they brought Replenishment. Basically, instead of a percentage of damage gained as mana, when Mind Blast was cast on a target with Vampiric Touch active on it, up to 10 mana users in your party/raid would gain a buff called "Replenishment" which restored mana based on how much total mana they had, not how much damage you did. This allows Shadow Priest damage to be finally competitive, now that Damage =/= Mana.

As of now, Cataclysm brings a few changes, but nothing major like the past expansions have. So far, it looks like more of the same (which is, really, a good thing).

Change Log

11/26/10 - Page created by IDrownFish. And so it begins...