PvE Shadow Priest Stat Priority & Reforging

Shadow Priests in Mists of Pandaria are primarily interested in Intellect, with their secondary stat priority depending on whether they have reached the Hit cap and how close they are to a Haste breakpoint. You’ll need to know how to prioritize these stats so you can select the appropriate gear, gems, enchants, and consumables as well as for reforging, which is also covered in this guide.

Stat Priority

Here is your general stat priority as a Shadow Priest:

1. Hit Chance (until Hit capped)
   • Spirit > Hit/Expertise
2. Intellect
3. Spell Power
4. Haste (if you have your legendary meta gem or you need to reach a breakpoint)
5. Mastery = Critical Strike
6. Haste (beyond breakpoints, before you have your legendary meta gem)

Hit Chance

Hit Chance will be your first consideration when playing any damage dealer at endgame. Every caster DPS needs 15% Hit Chance to ensure that their spells always land. A miss does no damage at all, so reaching the Hit cap is crucial. In Mists of Pandaria, Hit rating, Expertise, and Spirit all contribute to your total Hit Chance as a Shadow Priest. Once you have reached the cap, however, every point of these stats you gain above the cap is completely useless.

Hit rating on gear is directly converted to Hit Chance and is fairly straightforward. The other two stats that give Hit Chance are more complex.

Spirit provides out-of-combat mana regeneration to all mana users in Mists of Pandaria, with raw MP5 having gone away in Cataclysm. It does not provide in-combat mana regeneration for you as it does for healers. Instead, your Spiritual Precision passive ability converts Spirit to Hit point-for-point. That makes Spirit as good as Hit for reaching your Hit cap, while also improving your out-of-combat regen and allowing your gear to serve double duty if you have a healing offspec. Spirit therefore has a slight edge on Hit and Expertise for Shadow Priests, especially for Humans who gain 3% extra Spirit with their racial ability. We recommend reforging and gemming for Spirit instead of Hit or Expertise for this reason.

Expertise is not just for melee characters anymore: it can now contribute to your Hit Chance as a caster. You won’t see too much Expertise on caster gear, though, and it doesn’t offer any benefits that Hit doesn’t. It’s mainly worth noting due to racial passives. Dwarf, Gnome, and Human characters have racial abilities that will give you a free 1% Expertise, but only if you’re using the appropriate weapon type in your Main Hand slot.

• You need 15% Hit Chance to ensure that your spells never miss.
  • You don’t want any more Hit Chance beyond that, as it serves no further purpose.

• Every 340 Hit/Expertise/Spirit rating you gain increases your total Hit Chance by 1%.
  • Human gain 3% more value from Spirit due to their The Human Spirit racial passive.

• So you need 5100 total Hit Chance from Hit rating, Expertise, or Spirit, or 4760 if you are benefitting from one of the following racial abilities:
  • Draenei characters get 1% Hit from their Heroic Presence racial passive.
  • Dwarf characters gain 1% Expertise through Mace Specialization, but ONLY if you have a Mace weapon equipped in your Main Hand slot.
  • Gnome characters get 1% Expertise via Shortblade Specialization, but ONLY if you have a Dagger weapon equipped in your Main Hand slot.
  • Human characters gain 1% Expertise through Mace Specialization, but ONLY if you have a Mace weapon equipped in your Main Hand slot.

Throughput Stats

Intellect is your primary stat as a Shadow Priest, and you’ll want as much of it as you can get once you have reached your Hit cap. Intellect is the main source of your Spell Power and also increases your Critical Strike. (Note that in Mists of Pandaria, it no longer increases your mana pool.) Your Mysticism passive effect increases your Intellect by 5%, adding further value to every point you acquire. You can’t reforge other stats to Intellect, so you’ll want to get as much as you can from your gear.

Spell Power directly increases the damage and healing of your spells. Most of your Spell Power will come from your Intellect at a 1:1 ratio, but you will occasionally see it as a secondary stat on certain items such as weapons and trinkets. Each of your spells has its own coefficient that determines how much its effect is multiplied by your Spell Power.

Haste is similar to Hit for Shadow Priests in that you will be aiming for specific caps, beyond which it loses a lot of its value. These caps are based on breakpoints at which you will gain additional ticks from your DoTs: Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch. In between these breakpoints, Haste can still speed up your spell casts and global cooldown. But before you get your legendary meta gem (available in Phase 2), it’s not as strong beyond the caps as Critical Strike or Mastery, so it drops to the bottom of your priority. Once you get a Sinister Primal Diamond and your gear is more powerful (505 ilvl or higher), Haste becomes more and more valuable, competing with and even surpassing Intellect.

• Every 425 points of Haste is equal to 1% increased casting speed.
• The Haste cap for the global cooldown is 18,215 Haste Rating (17,614 for Goblins). At that point you will not be able to reduce the GCD any further.
• Your Haste will always be increased by 5% as long as you are in Shadowform.
• Your goal early on will be to reach the breakpoint for 2 extra ticks of Shadow Word: Pain, which is 24.97%. That’s 8085 Haste Rating (7684 for Goblins).
• Once you get your legendary meta gem, you will stack Haste regardless of breakpoints.
• The following Haste breakpoints for your spells are baseline with the 5% Haste from Shadowform assumed. These numbers can be affected by trinket effects, cooldowns, or other multiplicative buffs:

Mastery increases the chance for your periodic shadow damage effects to deal their damage twice via your Shadowy Recall passive effect. This includes your DoTs as well as your channeled spells, Mind Flay and Mind Sear. Mastery and Critical Strike are very close in value, with various buffs such as set bonuses tipping the scales in one direction or the other, but not by much.

• Every 333 points of Mastery increases Shadowy Recall by 1%.

Critical Strike increases your chance of getting a critical hit with your spells, doubling their damage or healing. It is very close in value to Mastery and both are good stats to have once your other priorities have been met.

• Every 600 points of Critical Strike is equal to 1% increased crit chance.

Reforging

Reforging can only be done for secondary stats, so you won’t be able to alter the Intellect or Stamina on your gear. Shadow Priests will want to reforge less valuable stats to Spirit until they cap their Hit Chance. After that, Hit/Spirit and other less valuable stats can be reforged into Haste to try to reach one of your breakpoints, or Mastery/Critical Strike if you are between breakpoints.

1. Spirit (until Hit capped)
2. Haste (if you have your legendary meta gem or you need to reach a breakpoint)
3. Mastery or Critical Strike (any other situation)