- Author: Passion
- Date: August 6, 2022
- Updated: August 6, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Beyond directly making your character stronger through talents, equipment, enchants, etc, there are two essential tools you can use in order to improve your performance as a player: addons & macros. It cannot be understated how much of an impact these both can have on your gameplay — increasing your DPS or healing by a large percentage, preventing you from dying, etc. You will need the best addons & macros to be the best Shadow Priest you can be!
Addons
General
Shadow Priests do not require a large number of addons to effectively perform their rotations, however, a few addons can be seen as almost required, while others dramatically improve your overall quality of life. You will want to have addons that help you manage boss mechanics as well as help you keep track of your rotation, specifically DoT timers.
- DeadlyBossMods – Allows you to track boss abilities. A must-have for raiding.
- Details – Shows you how much damage, healing, etc everyone in your raid is doing. Flex on your friends!
- Plater Nameplates – Highly customizable replacement nameplates, allowing you to add DoT timers right onto nameplates for multi target situations.
WeakAuras
WeakAuras is a versatile addon with almost limitless possibilities. It allows you to install mini-addons created by other players, which are confusingly also called “WeakAuras”, in order to perform specific tasks, such as tracking the cooldown of a spell, having a visual or audio notification when something procs, giving you a warning when a boss uses an ability, etc. You can find WeakAuras that suit your needs on wago.io. It’s strongly recommended that you use WeakAuras; they’re a huge quality of life boost.
As a Shadow Priest, you will probably want to create or find WeakAuras that can help you better track your DoTs primarily. You can create separate notifications for each of them, and have them displayed as customized bars on your screen that show you the remaining duration of each spell!
Secondly, it would be a good idea to individually create or find WeakAuras for effects such as trinkets or Hyperspeed Accelerators, allowing you to properly time your burst window with your trinket procs.
I personally create a lot of WeakAuras, primarily for Shadow Priests but also for more generic uses or other classes and these can be found on my Wago profile. I also make and maintain a full suite of WeakAuras for Shadow Priests that should track everything you could every need! This can be found here or on my profile.
Macros
As far as Shadow Priests macros go, you will find that you do not require macros as other specializations and classes do. However, the following macros can make your life just a little bit easier:
Dispersion Macro
This macro is used to be able to cancel Dispersion on the same button you cast it. This is very useful in situations where you don’t need Dispersion for the full 6-second duration and instead want to go back to casting. Be careful though, this macro also means you cannot spam the button, because the first press will activate Dispersion and the second press will immediately remove Dispersion.
#showtooltip Dispersion
/cancelaura Dispersion
/cast DispersionShadow Word: Pain Empower (Burst Macro)
/cast Inner Focus
/Use [combat] 10
/Cast Shadow Word:Pain Mouseover Macros
This macro allows you to cast a spell by hovering your mouse cursor over a player model, party or raid frame. This is incredibly valuable, especially as a Shadow Priest as it means you do not have to stop targeting the boss to cast something like Dispel Magic.
This can be used as a baseline for any mouseover macro, simply swapping “Prayer of Mending” for your spell of choice.
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help][] Prayer of MendingÂ
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