PvE Shadow Priest Rotations & Cooldowns

The Shadow Priest rotation consists of a priority system for creating and spending Shadow Orbs while managing procs and damage-over-time effects. You’ll also be weaving in some cooldowns and utility spells, and maybe a little bit of healing as needed.

Spell Priority

1. Maintain Shadowform and Inner Fire at all times.
   • Note that the following spells will drop you out of Shadowform: Binding Heal, Flash Heal, Hymn of Hope, and Resurrection.
   • You will only want to swap to Inner Will for long runs where your other movement speed abilities don’t cut it, and you should be sure to swap back ASAP as it does not boost your damage like Inner Fire does.
2. Cast Mind Sear continuously if you are attacking 5 or more targets.
   • You should ignore the rest of this list with this many targets, but still use Cascade, Divine Star, or Halo on cooldown.
   • It’s optimal to channel your Mind Sear onto a tank or melee DPS instead of an enemy, since the primary target does not take any damage.
3. Cast Devouring Plague when you have 3 Shadow Orbs.
4. Cast Shadow Word: Death on cooldown if your target’s health is below 20%.
   • You will be able to cast this twice in a row if the target doesn’t die.
5. Cast Mind Blast on cooldown.
   • Be aware of Divine Insight procs resetting this cooldown.
6. Cast Vampiric Touch to apply and maintain its debuff on each of your target(s).
7. Cast Shadow Word: Pain to apply and maintain its debuff on each of your target(s).
8. Cast Mind Spike if you have the From Darkness, Comes Light talent and you get a Surge of Darkness.
9. Cast Cascade, Divine Star, or Halo on cooldown, depending on which talent you chose.
   • Cascade should ideally be used from maximum range and/or on a bunch of spread-out adds.
   • Divine Star should be fired up close into a stacked group.
   • Halo should be used from about 25 yards back from your target(s).
10. Cast Mind Flay otherwise.

Important Cooldowns

In addition to your core rotation spells, you have a number of abilities with longer cooldowns that you’ll want to utilize in opportune moments.

Damage Cooldowns

• Power Infusion (Talent)
  This spell used to be exclusive to Discipline Priests, but now Shadow can access it too. It provides a powerful 20% spell haste, 5% damage, and 20% mana cost reduction for all of your spells for 20 seconds. A great combination of throughput and mana reduction cooldown for when you need to burn an enemy down.

Healing & Defensive Cooldowns

• Desperate Prayer (Talent)
  Heals you for a nice chunk of your health on a 2-minute cooldown. If you have this talent, remember to use it! It can only be used on yourself.
• Dispersion
  This ability can allow you to survive the un-survivable. It reduces all damage taken by 90% for 6 seconds, and you can use it every 2 minutes. It also doubles as a mana regeneration cooldown. You won’t be able to cast anything while it’s active, so we recommend having a cancel macro.
• Fade
  This ability can allow you to drop aggro if needed, but it’s even more useful as a small defensive cooldown when used with Glyph of Fade.
• Vampiric Embrace
  This spell used to be a buff that allowed you to contribute a steady trickle of healing to your group along with your damage. It’s now a powerful raid healing cooldown, especially when used with Glyph of Vampiric Embrace. Line this up with some strong burst damage during heavy AoE and you can contribute some solid healing to help your group when they need it most.
• Void Shift
  You can use this to save another player who is about to take a deathblow, or even to save yourself. Just remember that you (or the other player) will be very low and will probably need immediate healing afterward. It can be a good idea to use Desperate Prayer or another personal cooldown alongside this for that reason.

Mana Cooldowns

• Dispersion
  This cooldown was already mentioned in the defensive section above, but it is also a powerful mana regeneration cooldown.
• Hymn of Hope
  This is a powerful mana cooldown for your entire raid group, but it requires you to stand still and channel it (and not heal) for up to 8 seconds (reduced by your Haste). Look for the best time to use it so you don’t waste its cooldown or fall too far behind on healing during its channel time. It’s a good idea to call out when you use this so that your team can pair it with their other mana cooldowns, because it not only restores mana but increases maximum mana, so any abilities that restore a percentage of your total mana will restore more while it is active. The mana return effect always prioritizes healers, even if there are other casters in your raid with zero mana.
• Shadowfiend/Mindbender (Talent)
  This is your main personal mana cooldown. Make sure it’s hitting something or it won’t give you anything. You can cast it right before Hymn of Hope to maximize the mana return you get from it, since your maximum mana will be higher while you channel that spell. If you want your Shadowfiend to benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp, you must summon it after the buff has gone out.

Utility Spells

Shadow Priests have a variety of useful utility spells that also bear mentioning.

Heals

• Binding Heal
• Flash Heal
• Prayer of Mending
• Renew

Crowd Control

• Dominate Mind (Talent)
• Psyfiend (Talent)
• Psychic Horror
• Psychic Scream
• Shackle Undead
• Silence
• Void Tendrils (Talent)

Movement

• Angelic Feather (Talent)
• Leap of Faith
• Levitate
• Power Word: Shield (with Body & Soul Talent)
  • Be careful using this if there is a Discipline Priest in your group.

Buffs

• Fear Ward
• Inner Fire
• Inner Will
• Power Word: Fortitude

Dispels

• Dispel Magic
• Mass Dispel

Revive

• Resurrection