- Author: Passion
- Date: August 6, 2022
- Updated: August 6, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Besides your gear and talents, there are 3 additional ways you as a player can increase your character’s power: gems, enchants, and consumables, which make your character significantly more powerful when combined correctly.
Many guilds and raid groups may not invite you at all if you don’t have the correct gems, enchants and consumables — but worry not, this guide will help you avoid that problem!
Gems
The Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is the best choice for Shadow Priests. Because of the order of operations for critical damage, this 3% increase ends up as closer to 9% when combined with Shadow Power, making this deceptively strong.
To activate this gem you will need 2 blue gems in your gear, which should not be too tricky and will hopefully allow you to pick up two nice socket bonuses.
As a Shadow Priest, you will only want to use Runed Scarlet Ruby / Runed Cardinal Ruby gems for your Red sockets, as well as for any sockets with weak socket bonuses. These are your main gems throughout the expansion.
These gems are weaker than pure spell power gems. However, occasionally you may have an item with a Yellow socket that has a powerful socket bonus, such as +spell power, +haste or +crit. In those cases, you can socket one of the gems listed above.
If you’re under the hit cap (as explained in the Stat Priority section), you can use some Spell Power + Hit gems (Veiled Monarch Topaz / Veiled Ametrine) instead. These will be slightly stronger than pure spell power gems while you’re under the hit cap, but you generally don’t want to cap with gems.
You need at least 2 Blue gems socketed in your gear in order to activate your Meta gear, and these gems are your best option, offering a good amount of spell power. As much as possible, make sure you socket those 2 gems into Blue sockets.
You will generally want to use Red gems in Blue sockets. The exception is items with socket bonuses that offer 5+ spell power, in which case you should be socketing Purified Twilight Opal / Purified Dreadstone.
Enchants
This is the best enchant that you can acquire for this slot. If you don’t have the Kirin Tor rep required for it, you could instead use the significantly weaker Arcanum of Dominance enchant from Wintergrasp.
Players with the Inscription profession should use their profession-exclusive Master’s Inscription of the Storm enchant here, while everyone else uses Greater Inscription of the Storm.
If you don’t quite have the The Sons of Hodir reputation necessary to buy it yet, you can use either Lesser Inscription of the Storm at Honored or Inscription of Dominance (purchased with 30 Stone Keeper’s Shard from Wintergrasp).
Players with the Tailoring profession should use their profession-exclusive Lightweave Embroidery enchant here, while everyone else uses Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed.
Players with the Engineering profession who do not have Tailoring can use Springy Arachnoweave instead. It is a good bit better than the default enchant, though for us Priests the slow fall effect isn’t useful, as we have Levitate!
Enchant Chest – Powerful Stats is generally the preferred option of the two, providing a little bit of everything. Enchant Chest – Major Spirit is the higher damage option by a very small amount, but we’d generally recommend Enchant Chest – Powerful Stats unless you really want to squeeze every last of drop of damage out of your character — but the difference between the 2 is really tiny.
Players with the Leatherworking profession should use their profession-exclusive Fur Lining – Spell Power enchant here, while everyone else uses Enchant Bracers – Superior Spellpower.
Additionally, players with the Blacksmithing profession should use Socket Bracer to add an extra socket to their bracers. It stacks with enchants.
Players with the Engineering profession should use their profession-exclusive Hyperspeed Accelerators enchant here, while everyone else uses Enchant Gloves – Exceptional Spellpower.
If you’re slightly shy off meeting your hit cap (explained in the Stat Priority section), you can use the Enchant Gloves – Precision enchants instead. This is more of a last resort, however — do not rely on this enchant for your hit cap.
Additionally, players with the Blacksmithing profession should use Socket Gloves to add an extra socket to their gloves. It stacks with enchants.
This is your only option for this slot.
Engineers are able to enchant their belts with Frag Belt, giving the ability to throw a weaker grenade for free every 6 minutes. This is generally not incredibly useful in raids as you will want to use Saronite Bombs, but you may as well use this if you are an Engineer already. This stacks with Eternal Belt Buckle.
This is your best option for this slot, though Tailors should use Sanctified Spellthread instead, which provides the same stat bonus while being significantly cheaper to craft.
If you’re strapped for cash, you could use the more budget-friendly Shining Spellthread instead.
Players with the Engineering profession should use their profession-exclusive Nitro Boosts enchant here, while everyone else uses Enchant Boots – Icewalker.
However, the DPS increase of Enchant Boots – Icewalker isn’t particularly large, so you could also elect to use Enchant Boots – Tuskarr’s Vitality for some extra movement speed, which can occasionally save your life if you’re not an Engineer and thus lack access to Nitro Boosts.
Players with the Enchanting profession should use their profession-exclusive Enchant Ring – Greater Spellpower enchant here. There are no other options.
Remember that if you drop Enchanting as a profession your ring enchants will stay on the item but will not give any benefit.
When it comes to weapon enchantments, the BiS choice depends on specific situations or specific phase/gear requirements.
Enchant Weapon – Black Magic is one of the most powerful enchantments that you can acquire for a Shadow Priest, both at the beginning of the expansion and in its ending stages as well. The main situation in which you will want to change this enchantment is if you reach the 1-second GCD cap with Bloodlust/Heroism and Hyperspeed Accelerators, this puts the proc at risk of being wasted.
Enchant Weapon – Mighty Spellpower is the second option for one-handed weapons, generally being worse than Enchant Weapon – Black Magic if you can utilize the proc.
Enchant Staff – Greater Spellpower is potentially stronger than Enchant Weapon – Black Magic but can only be used on a staff. This is also a preferred option for players that dislike relying on random chance.
Consumables
If flasks are very expensive on your server, you could instead use a combination of the Spellpower Elixir and the Elixir of Mighty Mageblood. Note that these are significantly weaker than the flask, and they don’t persist through death, so if you’re wiping a lot in your raid, the flask may end up being cheaper anyway.
Shadow Priests have it easy with buff food — we can use a Fish Feast prepared by any Cook in the raid to gain the maximum amount of spell power possible. If your raid doesn’t have any cooks, or if you’d rather not partake in communal dining, you could use Firecracker Salmon or Tender Shoveltusk Steak instead — they confer the exact same boost.
If you aren’t hit capped, you can also use the Snapper Extreme food in order to reach your cap. This is only a last resort however — do not rely on them for your cap.
Potion of Speed and Potion of Wild Magic are the strongest potions you can use as a Shadow Priest. You are only able to use one potion per fight, but you can use one just before the fight starts. This is known as “pre-potting”. Generally you will want your pre-pot to be Potion of Wild Magic, to make sure you first cast of Shadow Word: Pain has the absolute maximum critical chance it can. During the fight you will want to sync your potion together with a burst window, preferably together with Bloodlust/Heroism, Hyperspeed Accelerators, your trinkets and Lightweave Embroidery if possible. If you end up past 50% haste during these burst windows you should consider using Potion of Wild Magic during the fight too.
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why does the guide say that Haste is the number 2 stat priority after hit but in the gem section it wants me to gem spellpower?
Hey there! Haste is an extremely important stat due to how it affects our entire gameplay, however, we never want to stack haste gems as it can severely impact the overall damage of our abilities. Therefore we want to stack spell power gems or hybrid gems such as Reckless Ametrine to assure that we do not dampen our overall damage output. You can stack Haste gems in the event of having close to no haste at all! However, Spell Power overall is a very important factor for your damage! You will also gain a lot of Haste from various gear pieces or trinket effects, so you should not stack haste gems completely!
Hello. Should we use potion of speed even if under Heroism/Bloodlust? This will probably take us far beyond the haste cap.
If it will put you past haste cap you will most likely be better off using Potion of Wild Magic
Shadow does not have a haste hard cap, so you wouldn’t have to worry about that – wild magic is generally better to report on longer ST fights and speed pot om other types, but to be sure you should sim it.
Potion of speed 2nd however is nearly always superior