- Author: Kurathis
- Date: May 20, 2021
- Updated: May 20, 2021
- Expansion: TBC Classic
Below you will find the stat priority list for Shadow Priests.
- Spell Hit Rating
- Spell Damage
- Spell Critical Strike Rating/Haste (Haste becomes more readily available on gear in later phases – however, it is found on Quagmirran’s Eye in your Pre-Raid BiS list)
- Intellect
- Spirit
- MP5 (Mana-per-five-seconds)
- Stamina
- Spell Hit Rating: Shadow Priests, like all casters, need 16% spell hit rating to be considered, “capped.” Shadow Focus reduces this number down to roughly 6% (Roughly 75 Spell Hit Rating)
- Spell Damage: Because 95% of our damage originates from casting spells, increasing our spell damage will further increase our damage output or DPS
- Spell Critical Strike Rating: While Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, and Mind Flay are unable to be critical strikes in TBC Classic, we can still critically hit with Mind Blast
- Haste: Haste is not a common stat to see on gear in the early phases, but as they’re released, Haste is a great stat to look out for. Contrary to the lack of clarity on Haste Potion’s tooltip, this does not apply to spell haste, only melee
- Intellect: Like any caster, Shadow Priests use mana to deal damage and thus, the more intellect they have, the bigger their mana pool. The conversion rate for intellect to mana is 15:1 respectively. Intellect also provides Spell Critical Strike at a much lower rate than Spell Critical Strike Rating
- Spirit: Spirit improves our mana and health regeneration rates while out of combat
- MP5: With a similar, yet different idea from spirit, MP5 improves our mana and health regeneration rates while in combat
- Stamina: If we’re careful and don’t pass our tank’s threat, we shouldn’t need to have our stamina tested. Also, with Vampiric Embrace, our damage restores some of our health
About the Author
Kurathis
Long-time WoW enthusiast who can't say no to a good-old poutine.
Do you know anything about haste break points for Phase 3 onward?
so i would love to see some info about haste rating for us coming up in p3, my understanding so far is that it only affects our GCDs and our cast/channel times. but not our dot ticks. so i did some math based on the rotation and i usually get 1 full mind flay and then go into a second one that i clip into a MB after the second tick, and that sort of flow is repeated a lot in the rotation, you get 1 full cast and then 1 is canceled on the second tick, that in my mind should be the lowest breakpoint for haste in the rotation and by my math i would need about 16.6% hast to take that second Mind Flay all the way through to its third tick. im seeing myself drop a LOT of spell damage for haste on the proposed BiS lists and im still only hitting like 13.8%, it seems like that might do literaly nothing for me, or maybe theres something im not accounting for in my math and it maybe just barely enough to hit the breaklpoint i just described, but if its not, i think haste might be a total waste for us this coming phase… ive done my research, but plz dont read this post as fact, im just posting what i THINK ive worked out so far in the hopes that someone can add to it or correct it.
Hi, theres a discussion about this topic on the shadow priest Discord -> https://discord.gg/cpwfbDyu
there seems to be a breaking point at 144 and 177 spellhaste.