Shadow Priest leveling guide

Level as Shadow: Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay from 20, and from 30 Vampiric Embrace turning your damage into your healing. It is the only Priest tree that kills things at a reasonable pace, and from 40 Shadowform makes you harder to kill than most cloth. Every dungeon on the way up will still take you as the healer; you leave Shadowform, heal the run, and go back in. The leveling tree ends on the Shadow raid build exactly, so there is nothing to respec at 70.

Your endgame is Shadow, the raid's mana battery and debuff carrier. Vampiric Touch gives your group mana for every point of shadow damage you deal, Misery makes the boss take 5% more spell damage from everyone, Shadow Weaving stacks the shadow debuff every Warlock wants, and your own damage is respectable on top. Raids take one Shadow Priest in the caster group from Karazhan to Sunwell, and you are leveling in the spec you will raid in.

Shadow, 1 to 70. Shadow Word: Pain on the pull, Mind Blast, then wand until 20 and Mind Flay after it. The real priorities in the tree are Mind Flay at 20, Vampiric Embrace at 30, Shadowform at 40 and Vampiric Touch at 50; Spirit Tap from the first point is what lets you go from kill to kill without sitting down. Holy and Discipline are not leveling trees: Holy kills with Smite and Holy Fire at a pace that stops being funny around 25, and Discipline has nothing that kills at all. If you want to heal dungeons on the way up, Shadow heals them fine; the heals are the same spells, you just cast them outside Shadowform.

1 to 10. Smite and a wand. Buy the best wand you can afford at 5 and replace it every ten levels; Shadow Word: Pain at 4 and Power Word: Shield at 6 are the first two spells that change anything. Fortitude on yourself and on anyone you group with. Sit and drink often; this is the only stretch where you will.

10 to 20. Spirit Tap arrives with the first point: after each kill your mana regenerates at full speed for 15 seconds, so you pull the next mob immediately instead of drinking. The fight is Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, wand, Mind Blast when it is ready, and the mob dies before it reaches you more often than not. Shield yourself before anything that will reach you. Renew between fights only if you are low; the wand costs nothing.

20 to 40. Mind Flay changes the loop: Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Mind Flay, and the slow on Mind Flay means the mob walks to you at half speed. From 30 Vampiric Embrace heals you for a share of every point of shadow damage, so you stop casting heals between mobs altogether; the fight heals you. Psychic Scream when two mobs are on you and Shield is down. Mind Control is at 30 and it is a trap while solo: it breaks early and the mob is next to you when it does. Use it to walk a dangerous mob off a cliff, nowhere else.

40 to 60. Shadowform. +15% shadow damage, 15% less physical damage taken, and you cannot heal while in it. Solo you never leave it; in a dungeon you drop it to heal and that is fine, the mana you lose is one shift. Vampiric Touch at 50 goes on before Shadow Word: Pain on anything that lives long enough for two DoTs to matter, which by 50 is most things.

60 to 70. Outland mobs hit harder and have more health, so the DoTs do more of the work: Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay to the end, Shadow Word: Death at 62 to finish anything under 15% (it hits you back if the target survives, so never open with it). Shadowfiend at 66 is a mana pot on a five minute cooldown. By 70 you are 47 points into Shadow, your tree is the raid build, and the only thing between you and a raid spot is hit rating.

Weapons: a wand, always, and a staff or a dagger and off-hand with spell damage. Wands are most of your damage from 5 to 20 and still a mana-free finisher after; Wand Specialization is the one leveling talent the order skips, because the five points are not in the raid build and Spirit Tap does more. Spell damage beats Spirit on a weapon for Shadow until 70; Stamina is welcome, because cloth.

Why not Holy to level? Because you will be a Holy Priest in dungeons either way. Shadow with the heals cast outside Shadowform is the same healer in a dungeon at 35, and Shadow is three times the questing speed. Respec at 70, or at 60 if you are chain-running the Hellfire dungeons and want Circle of Healing for them.

The rule that governs the order below: a talent row is locked until you have spent 5 × (row - 1) points in that tree, and you have level - 9 points to spend. Row 2 opens at 5 points, row 3 at 10, row 9 at 40. The consequence is that you will buy talents you don't especially want purely to open the next row. That isn't a mistake; it's how the tree works. The order below has been checked against the real tree: every point is buyable at the level it is listed.

Where it ends: 14/0/47, the Shadow build WoWSims ships as its default raid spec, point for point. The 14 Discipline points at the end are Unbreakable Will, the two Power Word improvements, Meditation and Inner Focus; they go in last because none of them kills anything, and the Shadow tree is complete at 50.

Spirit Tap before Wand Specialization is on purpose. Wand Specialization is +25% wand damage for five points, and from 10 to 20 the wand is most of your damage, so it is tempting. Spirit Tap is five points you keep for sixty levels and the raid build, and it is the difference between drinking after every second mob and never drinking. If you want both, buy Wand Specialization at 10 and plan a respec at 40; the order above assumes you would rather not.

Shadow Affinity late is on purpose. It is threat reduction, and threat does not matter while you solo. It is in the order before the Discipline points because you will be in dungeons in your 50s and Mind Blast crits pull aggro; if you run dungeons from 20, move it up to right after Mind Flay and push Improved Mind Blast back. The engine validates either order.

The solo loop

Power Word: Shield if the mob will reach you, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, then wand until 20 and Mind Flay after it, Mind Blast again when it is ready. From 50 Vampiric Touch goes on before Shadow Word: Pain. Shadow Word: Death at 62 finishes anything under about 15% health; it hits you back for the same damage if the target lives, so it is never the opener. Spirit Tap means you pull the next mob the moment the last one dies; the 15 seconds of full regeneration are wasted if you spend them walking.

Two mobs: Shadow Word: Pain on both, Mind Flay the one that is on you, Psychic Scream if Shield drops and you are under half. Three or more: Psychic Scream first, Shadow Word: Pain on everything while they run, then kill them one at a time as they come back. Feared mobs come back at different times, which is the point.

Mana: you should not be drinking after 10. If you are, you are casting heals between fights instead of letting Vampiric Embrace do it, or you are using Renew on yourself at full health out of habit. Shadowfiend at 66 is the mana potion; Inner Focus at 70 is a free Mind Blast.

Healing

Every dungeon from Ragefire Chasm to Shattered Halls will take you as the healer whatever your talents, and the spells are the same spells. Leave Shadowform (click it off, or a macro that cancels it), Fortitude on everyone, Shield on the tank before the pull, and the rule is the same as every healer's: Renew on the tank between pulls, Heal (Greater Heal from 40) for the big damage, Flash Heal for the moments, and a lower rank of Greater Heal on a tank at 70% beats the max rank on one at 90%. Prayer of Mending at 68 goes on the tank before every pull. Fade when a mob turns to you; Shield yourself when it reaches you.

Macros so you never target-swap to heal yourself:

#showtooltip Power Word: Shield
/cast [target=mouseover,help][help][target=player] Power Word: Shield

#showtooltip Flash Heal
/cast [target=mouseover,help][help][target=player] Flash Heal

#showtooltip Shadowform
/cancelaura Shadowform
/cast [target=mouseover,help][help][target=player] Greater Heal

The third one drops Shadowform and casts a heal in one press; it is the dungeon Shadow Priest's whole life. The mouseover form is the habit worth building at level 20: hover a party frame, press, and your target never changes.

Threat

Mind Blast crits pull aggro off a tank who is still building threat. The fix is order, not restraint: let the tank land two hits, open with Shadow Word: Pain rather than Mind Blast, and Fade when a mob turns. Shadow Affinity in the talent order is 25% less threat and the moment you have it this stops being a problem.

Crowd control

Shackle Undead at 20 holds an undead mob for up to 50 seconds and is your dungeon crowd control in Scarlet Monastery, Scholomance, Stratholme, Auchenai Crypts and the Black Morass. Shackle it before the tank pulls, re-shackle when the warning in your UI says so (it breaks early on damage, so nobody should be hitting it), and never Psychic Scream a pack that has a shackled mob in it. Mind Control at 30 is crowd control that fights for you; in a dungeon, it is for the one mob a boss fight calls for and nothing else, because when it breaks the mob is on you, not the tank.

Buffs

Fortitude on everyone, always; Prayer of Fortitude at 48 (a Candle each) does the group at once. Shadow Protection on a group heading into shadow damage, Divine Spirit or Prayer of Spirit only if you have the Discipline talent, Inner Fire on yourself after every death (it has charges and silently runs out). Fear Ward at 20 is yours whatever your race in TBC: on the tank before a fearing boss, it is the most important buff you have.

Train every new spell rank the moment you can afford it; an old rank of your main nuke is the most common reason a level feels slow. Keep your bags clear of vendor trash before leaving town, and pick up every flight path you pass; the map is the biggest time-saver in the game.

Leveling set (Shadow): spell damage first wherever it appears, then Stamina, then Intellect, then Spirit. "Of Shadow Wrath" greens are made for you and are cheap on the auction house because nobody else wants them; a +shadow damage green at 30 is a bigger upgrade than any dungeon blue of the same level without it. A wand every ten levels, always. Cloth with Spirit and no damage is healer gear; take it when it drops and keep it in the bag for dungeons, but quest in the damage set.

Shadow at 70, in order:

1. Spell hit to 16%. 202 hit rating from gear, less with Shadow Focus (5 ranks is 10% of it, so you need 6% from gear, 76 rating) and less again with a Draenei in the group. Every miss is lost damage and lost Vampiric Touch mana for five people, so hit comes first and nothing else is close.
2. Shadow damage. Shadow damage or general spell damage; pure shadow pieces are rare and the Frozen Shadoweave set is the exception that proves it.
3. Spell crit. Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death crit; Mind Flay and the DoTs do not, so crit is worth less to you than to a Mage.
4. Spell haste. Faster Mind Flay channels and Mind Blast casts once it appears on gear in the later tiers.
5. Stamina. You take 15% less physical damage in Shadowform, and you still die to raid-wide damage if you ignore it.
6. Intellect and Spirit. Vampiric Touch and Shadowfiend are your mana; Intellect helps a little, Spirit less.

Share gear with Warlocks and Mages; expect to lose rolls to them, and expect your damage to be below theirs. You are there for Misery, Shadow Weaving and the mana you hand to the healers, and a raid that forgets that does not get a Shadow Priest.

Quest levels by zone, Horde side. A zone is comfortable when your level sits inside its range; move on when the quests turn green.

Dungeon ranges are the levels the quests and drops are tuned for; you can enter earlier with a group that knows the place. In Outland, every dungeon has a heroic mode at 70 that needs a key from the matching reputation at Honored.

You have not picked professions yet, so this section is the advice on which to take; pick them in the character card and it becomes the route.

The two questions. Do you want the profession to make you stronger at 70, or to make gold on the way? The crafting professions with a bind-on-pickup payoff (Tailoring's cloth sets for casters, Leatherworking's sets for mail and leather wearers, Blacksmithing's Armorsmith and Weaponsmith lines for plate, Jewelcrafting's trinkets, Engineering's goggles, Alchemy's flask that lasts through death) make you stronger and cost gold to level. The gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) make gold and cost nothing but detours. The usual answer is one of each: the crafter your damage gear wants, and the gatherer that feeds it.

For damage: the crafting profession that makes your armor class's set (Tailoring for cloth, Leatherworking for leather and mail, Blacksmithing for plate), paired with the gatherer that feeds it (Tailoring with Enchanting or a gatherer for gold, Leatherworking with Skinning, Blacksmithing with Mining). Engineering with Mining is the universal second choice for the goggles and the gadgets.

Leveling a profession costs the least when you do it while you level the character; every zone's nodes and drops are the ones the route wants at that skill. Pick early.

14/0/47. The Shadow build WoWSims ships as its default raid spec, and the build you leveled into: your tree at 70 is this one, point for point.

The core is the whole Shadow tree minus one rank each of Shadow Weaving and Shadow Power and the two points in Improved Vampiric Embrace, Silence and Improved Psychic Scream. Improved Vampiric Embrace is the one people argue about: two points for 10% more group healing from your damage, usually taken from Unbreakable Will, which does nothing on a boss. Both are legal; the preset keeps Unbreakable Will and the engine validates either.

Raid job description: Shadowform on before the pull and never off. Vampiric Touch first, Shadow Word: Pain second, Mind Blast on cooldown, Shadow Word: Death on cooldown once the fight is under way (it hurts you if the boss survives, which on a boss is always; a healer will cover it), Mind Flay in every gap. Keep both DoTs up without clipping them; re-cast Vampiric Touch when the last tick is about to land, not before. Shadow Weaving stacks to five from your own hits and the Warlocks' Shadow Bolts; Misery is on from your first Shadow Word: Pain. Shadowfiend when you drop under half mana, and Inner Focus into Mind Blast on cooldown.

Where you stand matters more than for most damage dealers: Vampiric Touch returns mana to your party only, so you belong in the group with the healers who need it or the Warlocks who Life Tap, and the raid leader decides which. Vampiric Embrace heals your party too, which is a small argument for the melee group and a large one for whoever is taking the most damage.

Hit before everything. Shadow Focus covers 10% of the 16% you need against a boss; the other 6% (76 hit rating) comes from gear before you buy a single point of spell damage. A miss is lost damage, lost Misery uptime and lost mana for five people.

When to respec: never. You leveled in this build. The only Shadow Priest who respecs at 70 is one whose raid asked for a healer, and the respec plan below covers that.

Pre-raid gearing, the short version.

1. Spell hit first, from the Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm quest rewards and the normal dungeon blues with hit on them. Nothing else matters until you are at 6% from gear.
2. Heroic dungeon blues with shadow damage or spell damage and Stamina. Honor Hold or Thrallmar to Honored for the first heroic key; Lower City, the Sha'tar, Cenarion Expedition and Keepers of Time for theirs, and the Sha'tar and Lower City reputations also sell caster pieces.
3. Spellstrike Hood and Pants from a Tailor; the Frozen Shadoweave pieces are bind-on-pickup to the Tailor who makes them, so those you cannot buy.
4. A wand with shadow damage; the heroic ones are good for a long time.
5. The Karazhan attunement chain runs through every dungeon on this list; do it as you gear.

Expect to be compared to the Warlocks and lose. Your raid spot is Misery, Shadow Weaving and Vampiric Touch, and the number that proves you are doing your job is the healers' mana at the end of the fight, not your damage.

The heroic keys are reputations from the dungeons themselves: Honor Hold or Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, the Sha'tar and Keepers of Time, each to Honored. Healers get the groups fastest, so a Priest who heals heroics has every key within a week.

Karazhan attunement starts in Deadwind Pass and runs through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Arcatraz to Black Morass. Do it as you gear; every one of those dungeons drops something you want.

Start reputations before 70. Every Outland dungeon reputation reaches Honored from normal runs on the way up, and Honored is what buys the heroic key. Cenarion Expedition (Coilfang), Honor Hold or Thrallmar (Hellfire Citadel), Lower City (Auchindoun), the Sha'tar (Tempest Keep) and Keepers of Time (Caverns of Time) each gate a heroic; run the normal versions while they are your level and the keys are waiting when you arrive.

Pre-raid gear is dungeon blues, reputation rewards and crafted pieces. Heroics drop the best of it and pay Badges of Justice for the rest. Quest blues from Nagrand, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley fill the gaps; do not skip the last three zones' quest lines on the way to 70, they are the fastest gearing there is.

The Karazhan attunement (the Master's Key chain through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Old Hillsbrad, ending in the Black Morass) is the first raid gate on the Anniversary realms; start it the week you hit 70 because it takes a group for every step.

Anniversary realms have Dual Talent Specialization, so the cleanest plan is two trees: Shadow to level and quest in, and the healing build in the second slot from the moment you can afford it. A Priest gets more out of dual spec than almost any class, because the raid wants you as a healer and the world wants you as Shadow. Check the trainer for the price in game; sources disagree on what TBC Anniversary charges.

Reading an order from any level. Every talent order on this page is a list of which point to buy at which level, and the trees in the talent section have a level slider that can show any of them. To respec into a build at level 60, pick that build above the trees and drag the slider to 60: the highlighted cells are the 51 points to buy, in the order the table lists them. Every order has been checked so that each row is open by the time you reach it.

You are already there. The Shadow leveling order is the raid build. The only respec a Shadow Priest pays is the one into Holy when a raid asks for a healer, and on Anniversary realms dual spec makes that a second slot rather than a choice.

The number to budget: 50g per respec on original rules, the dual-spec price once on Anniversary. A Priest who respecs once at 70 pays well under 60g; nobody should be flipping specs per dungeon.

Priests watch debuff timers on the target and buffs on five other people at once, and the default UI shows neither well.

• WeakAuras: Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch remaining on your target, Mind Blast ready, Inner Fire missing, Shadowform off when it should be on, and at 70 the Shadow Weaving stack count and Shadowfiend ready.
• Healing frames: Grid with Clique, or Healbot, from the first dungeon you heal. Mouseover healing from the basics section becomes click healing, and you see Weakened Soul, Renew and Prayer of Mending on every frame.
• Decursive or a dispel frame: Dispel Magic and Cure Disease on a click, with the frames flashing when someone needs it. Priests are the raid's dispellers.
• A threat meter (Omen) in every group; Mind Blast crits are why.
• One boss-mod addon, DBM or BigWigs, not both.

The addons that pay for themselves on any class: a quest helper (Questie) so you stop reading quest text for coordinates; a bag addon (Bagnon or similar) so you can see what you are carrying; a boss mod (Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs, never both) the day you start dungeons; and WeakAuras once you have a cooldown or buff you keep forgetting. Bind every ability you use in a fight to a key before you hit 20; clicking is the single biggest thing that makes a character feel weak.

Ticks are remembered in this browser for this class and spec.

Now

• Spirit Tap 5/5 first; Mind Flay the moment row 3 opens at 20
• A wand at 5 and a new one every ten levels
• Shield yourself before the pull, Shadow Word: Pain on it, never heal yourself between mobs after 30
• The mouseover Shield and Flash Heal macros from the basics section on keys
• Fortitude on everyone you group with; Inner Fire back up after every death

40 to 70

• Level 40: Shadowform, Greater Heal, mount; the cancel-Shadowform heal macro on a key for dungeons
• Vampiric Touch at 50; Prayer of Fortitude at 48 with a stack of Candles
• 60: epic riding; 62: Shadow Word: Death as a finisher only
• 66: Shadowfiend on a key next to your mana potion; 68: Prayer of Mending on the tank before every pull
• No respec at 70; you are already in the raid build

At 70

• Spell hit to 16% before anything else; Shadowform on, Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Blast, Mind Flay
• Stand in the caster group; your Vampiric Touch mana goes to your own group only
• Mass Dispel at 70; Honor Hold or Thrallmar Honored for the first heroic key