PvE Shadow Priest DPS Guide

Shadow Priest DPS Guide

Stat Priority

Talents & Builds

Gear & Best In Slot (BiS)

Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

Welcome to Warcraft Tavern’s guide to playing a Shadow Priest in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic. In this guide, we’ll go over talents, rotation tips, best professions and more! Shadow Priests have become casters and Protection Paladins’ best friend in TBC Classic with our newest, and quite possibly, best new ability added: Vampiric Touch.

Best Races

Alliance

• Human: Human Priests have access to the Human Spirit, increasing their total spirit by 10%
• Dwarf: Dwarf Priests have little in the way of beneficial racials outside of Stoneform
• Night Elf: Night Elf Priests have the traditional racials like Shadowmeld and Quickness, but they also have a unique spell to use called Starshards
• Draenei: Draenei Priests have an increased chance to have their spells hit their target with Inspiring Presence

Horde

• Troll: Troll Priests benefit from Berserking, increasing your casting speed from between 10-30%
• Undead: Similar to Night Elves, Undead Priests have the traditional racials like Cannibalize and Will of the Forsaken, but they also have Touch of Weakness, as well
• Blood Elf: Currently, Blood Elf Priests also have access to Touch of Weakness along with their traditional racials such as Mana Tap and Arcane Torrent

Best Professions

• Tailoring:
  • Tailoring allows you to craft several of your Pre-Raid and Phase 1 BiS pieces. These pieces are from the Spellstrike Infusion and Shadow’s Embrace sets. Along with this, we can craft our own Runic Spellthread
• Enchanting:
  • While Enchanting can provide a way for players to supplement their gold reserve through disenchanting items and selling the materials on the Auction House, we can also enchant our rings with enchants unique and exclusive to high-level enchanters. The enchant that peaks our interest would be Enchant Ring – Spellpower
• Leatherworking:
  • The only benefit that Leatherworking has for Priests is access to a party-wide buff such as Drums of Battle. Other than this, there is no real benefit to choosing Leatherworking
• Engineering:
  • Beginning in Phase 2, players are able to craft a very powerful helmet; Destruction Holo-Gogs. That’s the biggest advantage to choosing Engineering
• Blacksmithing:
  • Since Priests can only wear cloth armor, Blacksmithing is of no benefit to us
• Jewelcrafting:
  • Jewelcrafting allows us to craft exclusive gems such as Blood of Amber, Falling Star, and Don Julio’s Heart. It also allows us to craft some useful trinkets like Figurine – Living Ruby Serpent
• Alchemy:
  • Like many players interested in raiding or running heroics, you may find yourself in times of needing different consumables like potions and flasks. Being able to craft these yourself may save you a significant amount of gold in the long run
• Gathering Professions:
  • With Tailoring and Enchanting being our go-to choices for professions, we don’t have to worry about picking up gathering professions since we are able to use the different variations of cloth we find throughout the world to level Tailoring, and we can use the materials we find by disenchanting items to level up our Enchanting