Contents

1. Mission Statement
2. Useful Links
3. Talent Builds
3.1 PvE
3.2 Hybrid PvE/PvP
3.3 PvP
4. Mechanics
4.1 Spell Scaling
4.2 Spell Hit
4.3 Spell Rotations
4.4 Longevity
5. Gear & Enchants
6. Races (by popular request)

1. Mission Statement
So as anyone can see, the Priest forum has a few stickies that include very useful information on how to play a priest. However, there is no dedicated guide to playing a shadow priest, particularly at level 70 where most players will end up spending the majority of their time. While all the information one needs is scattered about the forums, I thought it would be nice to consolidate it into a nice little handbook. Also, prior to BC, shadow priests were a “joke” spec, and that stigma lasts to this day in many ways. At level 70 it can still be difficult to get a group as a shadow priest if you don’t have a guild to run with. I figure that if there are more shadow priests out there who are gearing themselves properly and know the best way to use their spells, it will improve the image of our class as a whole. This post is long, but I will attempt to format it in such a way that it is as readable as possible. I put a lot of work into it, so if you think it deserves it, feel free to report it for a sticky :). Also, since people don't seem to know, reporting for a sticky doesn't mean a reply of "sticky please" (although bumps and positive feedback are always nice). You click on the little biohazard symbol next to the "Quote" and "Reply" buttons and select the sticky request option. Thanks! =]

Nightshroud has an excellent guide (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=86706393&sid=1) which covers pretty much all the basic aspects of being a priest. Here I seek to dive into more nuanced information.

Also, if you're here for info about leveling as shadow, you'd be better served by going here http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12021216&sid=1 . Good luck!

2. Useful Links

http://linkzmax.googlepages.com/priest_dps.xls -- this is a spreadsheet that allows you to input your stats and model your theoretical DPS. Very good tool for checking to see which pieces of gear are upgrades, how aggressive your spell rotation can be for a fight of a given length, and checking to see how close you are to what your DPS theoretically should be. It’s worth noting that the results of the spreadsheet (particularly longevity) can be quirky at times, but it is still an excellent resource. http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?t=1880 is the original thread that introduced the tool, so if the link breaks (or seems to be out of date, the file says when it was last updated) check the thread to see if there is a new URL. The spreadsheet has no macros, so you don't need to worry about malicious code or a virus. Edit: sometimes the google page has been getting too many hits and dying, so this link has a backup, but it might not be as recent as the first link given. http://rs13.rapidshare.com/files/40340763/priest_dps.xls

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=106575248&sid=1&pageNo=2#23 Exhaustive and awesome compendium of priest macros by Troodi. This specific link goes straight to the shadow priest section, but be sure to check out other sections because a lot of general priest macros are useful for everyone.

http://www.wowwikki.com – Extensive, searchable database of all things World of Warcraft. Incredibly useful for any class—has descriptions of boss fights, game mechanics, and many other pieces of useful information.

http://www.shadowpriest.com – yeah, I know that this seems like a gimmicky website, but the forums at shadowpriest.com are probably the best source of information around for everything relating to the class. A large number of very talented players, including those from top guilds around the country, frequent this website.

Also, in case you don’t know of them already, there are the quest/item/profession etc. databases at websites like allakhazam.com, wowhead.com, and thottbot.com

3. Talent Builds
I wasn’t initially going to include a talent build section here, since there’s info in some other stickies, but there’s a huge number of posts about it so I thought it would probably be sought-after info.

Talent Builds Caveat: Obviously not everyone will agree with these builds, though there are players who are very successful with each of them (I actually pulled some of these builds directly from players who are very highly rated in the Arena or perform well on well-progressed guilds). Part of the beauty of this game is that you can tailor your character according to your own desires, and there is no lack of winning formulae. Experiment with builds on your own and settle with what you like; hopefully the ones below will give you a good starting point.

3.1 Pure PvE Raiding build
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?5002120130000000000000000000000000000000000503250210240123051551
This build gives you all of the good talents for PvE raiding. Only 4/5 shadow weaving because on a long encounter that’s all you need. 2/5 improved mind blast to make the cooldown coincide better with a mind flay sequence. Inner Focus, Meditation. The second tier in Disc has some throw away points in imp shield/Martyrdom; both are of questionable utility in PvE and you could put points somewhere else if you wanted. You could also switch out points in improved VE for more in improved mind blast if you wanted. The weakness of this build is that it passes up most of the good PvP talents, so it’s bad for that. But for farming and raiding, it excels.

3.2 Arena PvP/PvE hybrid raiding build
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?5002121130020000000000000000000000000000000053252010251123051051
This is the build I use all the time. It makes some minor tradeoffs to pick up the majority of talents that benefit both PvE and PvP. The main trade-offs are no spirit tap, no improved mind blast, and no shadow power. You get improved mana burn, which is extremely useful in the Arena, and only lose a paltry amount of DPS in a raiding environment.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?5002120130000000000000000000000000000000000053252010251123051351
This build takes shadow power instead of improved mana burn. If you don’t feel that you need Meditation, you could fill out shadow power.

3.3 Pure PvP build
From a shadow standpoint there are many builds that prove to be successful in Arena play. You may want to experiment from what I have here.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?5000321130320000000000000000000000000000000050232210251123051051
This build essentially trades max improved mind blast and shadow power for access to improved mana burn. Shadow power seems like a great PvP talent, and it is nice to have, but against well-geared teams you are fighting resilience when you try to build yourself for crit. Often times winning comes down to whose healers run out of mana first, and with improved mana burn you get the spell with the most mana drained per second in the game (though it will still get interrupted a lot). This is mostly a 5v5-type build. If you are fighting in smaller arenas, it’s often advantageous to heal, so you might do well to pick up healing focus.
You also might want to max silent resolve to avoid dispels, especially in small arenas.

4. Mechanics
I see on the priest forums a large amount of misinformation being spread, and most of it is about how to gear oneself properly, what spell rotations to use and the like. Most of this misinformation has its root in a lack of understanding about mechanics, so I’ll try to clear that stuff up here.

4.1 Spell Scaling (warning: math content)

I see the issue of shadow priest scaling come up a lot, so I want to lay down the truth here. The base mechanics are available at http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Plus_damage_and_Plus_healing

Before the release of The Burning Crusade expansion, mind flay was hard coded to receive (if my memory serves) a 45% coefficient of your spell damage in addition to the base amount, spread among the three ticks. According to the general spell scaling mechanic, it should've scaled at 3.5 / 3 = 86%, maybe with a 5% "tax" (like frostbolt) for the snare. When BC came out, the coefficient was changed (but still hard coded) to 57%. Also, SWP has a lower coefficient than it should: 110% base or 140% with 2/2 imp swp. People accepted this as an improvement, but begrudgingly complained that it was still lower than other casters.

These people failed to take into account the way that our talents interact with spell scaling. Shadow priests are in a relatively unique situation in which our talents do a very, very great deal to increase our damage from default levels. The formula for calculating spell damage as a shadow priest is as follows:

(base damage*(talent coefficient)) + (bonus damage)*(spell coefficient*(talent coefficient))

Base damage is simple enough, it's what you see in the tooltip (before talents). Your talents increase base damage, but that has nothing to do with spell scaling, so we will leave that behind here. If you want to calculate the changes to base damage on your own, just multiply the base value of the spell by the talent coefficient below (1.46). Bonus damage is whatever contribution you have from your gear, consumables, etc. (you can see it on your character pane). The talent coefficient is the cumulative effect of your talents. More specifically:

From talents, you get the following buffs to your shadow damage:
Shadow Weaving 10%
Darkness 10%
Shadowform 15%
Misery 5%

They combine multiplicatively in their effect on your damage to give the talent coefficient:

1.1 * 1.1 * 1.15 * 1.05 = 1.46

Recall the second term in the equation to calculate your spell damage: (bonus damage)*(spell coefficient*(talent coefficient ))

This term is the scaling of your spell. That is, it describes how the damage of your spell will increase as you get better gear (gear with more +dmg on it).

So, the scaling of a spell is (bonus damage) * (spell coeff.) * (1.46).

Shadow priest spells spell coefficients are as follows:

Mind Flay: 57%
SW:P: 146% (with the increased duration talent)
MB: 43%
SW:D: 43%
VT: 100%

Substitute these into your equation and you get the final scaling of the spell.

For example, mind blast:

untalented mind blast scales at 43%

Multiply by 1.46: 0.43*1.46 = 0.6278

Final result: mind blast scales at 63%

The first number in the little chart here is the scaling of the spell itself, i.e. how much of your +dmg is applied to the final damage of the spell, by default. The second is the actual scaling when talents are factored in. The third number is the DPS scaling, or how much DPS will be added to the spell by 1 additional +damage. This final calculation is made by dividing the second column’s result by the spell’s cast time or duration. This is intended entirely as reference, and is up-to-date as of patch 2.4.

Mind Flay: 57% / 83% / 0.28
SW:P: 146% talented / 213% talented / .088
MB: 43% / 63% / .42
SW:D: 43% / 63% / .42
VT: 100% / 153% / .097


http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.php?title=Damage_Coefficients also conveys this info.

Scaling compared to other classes

Scaling compared to other classes is harder to model. The amount of benefit you gain in DPS from gear depends on a lot of things, like how much crit and hit you have, how well you execute your spell rotation, and other things. Dedmonwakeen over at shadowpriest.com has done an enormous amount of work with spell mechanics, and he's thrown together a simulation of how all casters scale with relation to the various caster stats. You can see the results at http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.php?title=SimulationCraft/Scaling and judge for yourself. In practice, it might be easier as one class or another to execute your spell rotation perfectly, which will do a lot to affect your DPS. Also, classes that can move while doing damage (warlocks and shadow priests for casters) catch up a bit in DPS scaling on boss fights (or for warlocks, pull further ahead) because most boss fights require you to move around a fair bit. Finally, gear for some classes may be closer to ideal in terms of stat allocation than gear for other classes, which will also have an effect on relative damage output. In practical experience, shadow priests suffer moderate to severe scaling attrition: we do very well on damage meters in T4, pretty well in T5, and not so well in T6 and beyond.

4.2 Spell Hit
Against a raid boss, you need 16% +hit to minimize the chance of your spells being resisted. There will always be a small chance (1%, and there is now evidence that bosses now have a small amount of resistance [around 24] which can’t be mitigated) for your spells to fail. You can use the DPS spreadsheet linked in section 2 to see how your DPS and particularly longevity will change with spell hit. With 5 points in shadow focus, you will need 76 hit rating to cap against raid bosses. This should be a priority in your gear setup to maximize your effectiveness.

If your hit is high enough, you can move points from shadow focus to other talents. From a post on the sp forums (I think by Speakeasy):

76 hit is the cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus
101 hit before you can go to 4/5 Shadow Focus
126 hit before you can go to 3/5 Shadow Focus
152 hit before you can go to 2/5 Shadow Focus
177 hit before you can go to 1/5 Shadow Focus
202 hit before you can go to 0/5 Shadow Focus

All numbers rounded up to the next whole number.

1% hit = 12.6 hit rating at level 70.

4.3 Spell Rotations

Highest DPS Rotation
Because of the different durations of priest dots, we don’t get a simple spell rotation to follow like most other classes. The highest DPS spell rotation you can use is one in which you keep VT and SWP up at all times and use Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death at the earliest opportunities. Mind Flay is used ONLY when both of your dots are active and both of your direct damage spells are on cooldown. It is advantageous from a DPS standpoint to wait to cast a MB or SWD if the cooldown for either will be up in around half a second. Vampiric Embrace obviously has no effect on your DPS, but you will most likely want to have it continuously active as well.

In list form, the priority of spells is:

1. VE
2. VT
3. SWP
4. MB
5. SWD
6. Devouring Plague (if you have it)
7. Mind Flay

Conservative Rotations
Your highest DPS spell rotation also burns through your mana the fastest. The DPS spreadsheet will give you the theoretical longevity of a given spell rotation, including variables for potion and shadowfiend use. Your actual longevity will vary because of issues like needing to adjust your position, lag (though the spreadsheet accounts for lag, it isn’t perfect, since lag is unpredictable), variable shadowfiend damage and mana potion return, and the simple fact that humans aren’t perfect so you will probably never have perfect execution of your spells. At any rate, there will be times when you cannot maintain your highest DPS spell rotation for the duration of a fight and will need to adjust. From an efficiency standpoint, and if your health is not a concern, it is preferable to stop using mind blast before shadow word death because swd is slightly more efficient, though you lose more dps by doing this. Using only dots and mindflay will decrease your dps by approximately 15%, but increase your longevity by more than that (how much depends greatly on +dmg and regen). If your gear is good enough (1250 +dmg raid buffed or so), you can probably go indefinitely with this sequence as long as you continue to use potions and your shadowfiend when you can. Ultimately, you will have to learn what rotations you can get away with using through experience.

A second reason for using a conservative spell rotation is threat. Ideally speaking, there shouldn't be many fights in which the mechanics of the fight limit the threat that your tank can generate, at least early on in the Burning Crusade's raiding content (Kara, Mag, Gruul, Zul'Aman is not out as I write this, so we'll see about it). There are some fights that can increase the threat that you do, however, with The Curator in Kara being a salient example. Any time your party takes heavy AoE damage, if you're using VE you'll be causing a very large amount of threat (50% of the healing as threat, or 125% of your DPS total if you are healing everyone in your party for the full amount). On fights like these, it's tough to say "don't use VE," because it's helping the most on those fights. But if you're pulling aggro, or riding at the threat cap without pushing hard on DPS, it's generally better to leave VE out and rely on your healers to keep people up than to get yourself killed from healing threat or do pathetic damage because you are threat limited. Remember that you are returning mana to your party (quite possibly the healers) in direct proportion to your DPS, and that this is probably your most significant contribution to the raid.

If it is a fight that has no significant AoE damage, 80-90% of your VE heals will probably be overheal, so you will have to just lower your DPS. I'd encourage you to try to pursue whatever constructive avenues available to you to remedy a situation in which you are causing more threat than the tank, however, because it's going to end up limiting your progression as a guild when you get to the more difficult fights out there, especially if they have mechanics like an enrage timer and to drop the boss you need to be going balls to the wall the entire time. Usually the problem is one of two issues: the gear of your tank or the skill/knowledge of your tank (sorry to pick on you guys, but it's true). The former is easily solved; for the latter, either replace the tank or try to gently urge him to learn more about his class through another, more knowledgeable tank or the vast wealth of information available on the forums.

4.4 Spell damage and longevity
Because of vampiric touch’s mana return, our longevity while casting scales directly with the amount of damage we do. More damage returns more mana, and allows us and our party to last longer. As it turns out, longevity scales exponentially with spell damage. The chart below shows how my theoretical longevity changes according to spell damage. I used the stats from my gear and raid buffs, and adjusted the amount of +spell damage I had. The spell rotation is the most aggressive one possible. (edit: I should've listed the stats... I'm not sure what they were now, so I will probably go back and recreate this chart soon)


+dmg....longevity (min).....diff. from previous +dmg amount
0............2.75...................... --
250........3.24......................0.49
500........3.95......................0.71
750........5.03......................1.08
1000......6.95......................1.92
1250......11.24....................4.29
1500......29.29...................18.05
1600.….81.87…………...63.82


This chart, because it is based on theoretical performance, is not entirely accurate. It gets less accurate as longevity starts increasing more and more rapidly, since adjusting values much at all there will greatly affect results, given that longevity is scaling exponentially and is starting to really rise fast after 1250 +dmg. But at any rate, as you can see, you start to hit a sweet spot when you get around 1250 +dmg (raid buffed) where you can last a lot longer without running out of mana, and as you get higher it only gets better. This is a huge reason to value +dmg highly above all other stats (assuming you’re hit capped). The contribution from +dmg does a great deal more than increasing your damage per second; it returns more mana, more health, and makes you last a great deal longer without running out of mana during an encounter.


5. Gear & Enchants
The previous section talked about how to gear yourself. This section will reprise that to a degree, and give some specific pieces of gear that you can go for. This is going to focus on entry-level gear. Once you are doing 25-man raids, http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?t=6594 that thread has an updated list of the top five or so pieces of gear at each slot that you can go for.

When you are trying to gear yourself, you should focus on two things: +dmg and +hit. Again, with 5 points in shadow focus, you'll need 6% hit to be at the cap vs. raid bosses (76 hit rating).

+dmg is by far the most important thing to focus on, though. Your mana and health return, and not to mention your DPS, scales pretty much entirely with +dmg (see scaling section above), to the exclusion of everything else (apart from the aforementioned hit rating).

The best pieces of armor that are available to you for several slots are also crafted, which is handy if you don't mind putting time or gold into farming them. The list below is a good wish list you can go for before stepping into kara, but it's worth noting that you do NOT need to get everything listed here to get started there. It's just pretty much the maximum theoretical +dmg you could get without doing any raiding. Around 800 +dmg should be fine for entering kara.

The list (primarily by Talisman of Suramar, with a couple changes by yours truly) edit: There are some new Heroic Badge rewards that should be on this list, the wand in particular. I'll try to get around to adding them soon.

Head:
Spellstrike Hood - 46 spell damage/16 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24266
Neck:
Veteran's Pendant of Dominance - 26 spell damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33065
Alternately Natasha's Arcane Filament - 29 spell damage/0 spell hit http://www.thottbot.com/i31693
Shoulders:
Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders - 50 shadow damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21869
Cloak:
Illidari Cloak of Shadow Wrath - 47 shadow damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31201
Alternately Cloak of the Black Void (http://www.thottbot.com/i24252)
Chest:
Frozen Shadoweave Robe - 72 shadow damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21871
Bracers:
Illidari Bindings of Shadow Wrath - 47 shadow damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31225
Alternately Bracers of Havok - 30 spell damage/0spell hit (http://www.thottbot.com/i24250)
Gloves:
Tempest's Touch - 27 spell damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29317
Belt:
Girdle of Ruination - 39 spell damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24256
Pants:
Spellstrike Pants - 46 spell damage/22 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24262
Boots:
Frozen Shadoweave Boots - 57 shadow damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21870
Ring 1:
Cobalt Band of Tyrigosa - 35 spell damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29352
Ring 2:
Seal of the Exorcist - 28 spell damage/12 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28555
Trinket 1:
Icon of the Silver Crescent - 43 spell damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29370
Trinket 2:
Darkmoon Card: Crusade - 80 spell damage when stacked/0 spell hit http://www.thottbot.com/i31856
Alternately Quagmirran's Eye = 37 spell damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27683
Scryer’s Bloodgem is excellent if you need hit rating (http://www.thottbot.com/i29132)
Weapon:
Merciless Gladiator's Gavel - 225 spell damage/15 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32963
Off-hand:
Orb of the Soul Eater - 51 shadow damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29272
Wand:
Flawless Wand of Shadow Wrath - 25 shadow damage/0 spell hit http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25295

Total: 934 shadow damage/65 spell hit

Enchants:
Head- 22 spell damage/14 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29191)
Shoulders - 18 spell damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28886)
Cloak - Subtlety (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=25084)
Chest - 6mp5 (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=33991)
Bracers - 15 spell damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22534)
Gloves - 20 shadow damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=20727)
Pants - 35 spell damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24274)
Boots - Vitality (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22542)
Rings - 24 spell damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22536)
Weapon - 54 shadow damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22561)
Alternately 40 spell damage (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=27975)

Total: 188 shadow damage/14 spell hit

Gems:
16x Runed Living Ruby - 144 spell damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24030)
1x Runed Ornate Ruby - 12 spell damage/0 spell hit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28118)
(Use Runed Blood Garnet if you can't afford the Living Rubies)

Total: 156 shadow damage/0 spell hit

Grand Total: +1279 shadow damage/79 spell hit

Stepping into kara, you can get some more great stuff. Off of trash is Ritssyn's Lost Pendant (http://www.thottbot.com/i30666), which is the best necklace available in the game. Off Attumen, the first boss, you can get the Handwraps of Flowing Thought (http://www.thottbot.com/i28507 ) (2x 9 dmg gems), which would take you a very long time to replace.


http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.php?title=SimulationCraft/Trinkets/Priest has a list of the equivalent benefit of various trinkets and set bonuses, set to a standardized scale of how much +dmg you'd need to replace them and maintain the same DPS. This is useful for taking into account the "on use" abilities of trinkets and evaluating the relative worth of certain set bonuses.

Edit: Croce helpfully added:
If anyone was interested, for 6 of the crafted pieces (shadow weave/spellstrike/ruination) mats totalled are:
36xShadow Cloth
20xSpellcloth
16xPrimal Fires
38xPrimal Waters
10xPrimal Mights
8xNetherweb Spider Silk
3xPrimal Nethers

6. Races
A common piece of criticism for this guide was its lack of a section about what race to choose when playing a priest. The choice of a race is more significant for priests than any other class, because in addition to the base racial abilities, priests get specific spells available (usually) exclusively to a particular race, though there are a couple racials that are shared between Undead and Blood Elf or Dwarf and Draenei . Here I will give my admittedly biased opinion on their usefulness. I pulled the descriptions from Nightshroud’s post that is linked in the first section of the guide.
Your choice of a race should be based on both their abilities and any aesthetic preferences you have. People vary in this regard, with some caring only about a race’s abilities and others caring a lot about their looks. Neither approach is right or wrong, so pick what you like. I'm only putting abilities here when I think there is something about them that isn't immediately obvious from their descriptions. If you want to compare lists of racials to choose your race, go somewhere else, I don't have room to put them all in this guide anymore. =[

Blood Elf
Consume magic is a truly unique mechanic in the game, and I imagine it could be pretty useful in a raiding environment when you’re desperate for mana, or in an arena match of attrition in which you still have some buffs. The drawback is that you can lose any of your priest buffs, including a 60 minute PWF. Touch of Weakness is of marginal PvP use, but is otherwise mostly useless. I’m told it can proc blackout and applies shadow weaving, which is useful.
Overall, Blood Elves are a viable choice for PvE, but are probably inferior to the other Horde races for PvP. The AoE silence is nice for PvP, but you give up some very powerful PvP-oriented abilities from other races. You’ll still see a lot of Blood Elf priests just for their aesthetics, though.

Troll
Shadowguard
Note: Receives 28% Spellpower coefficient per charge, affected by shadow talents. Against a fully debuffed mob, you'll get 41% per charge. Also has the ability to proc Shadow Weaving and Blackout with each charge. It is a magic effect. Procs off nearly anything, like walking into a flare from a hunter, for example.

Hex of Weakness
Note: Does not stack with Mortal Strike or Wound Poison. The debuff is actually a Curse.

Berserking
Increases your attack speed by 10% to 30%. At full health the speed increase is 10% with a greater effect up to 30% if you are badly hurt when you activate Berserking. Lasts 10 sec. <157 mana - Instant - 3 Min Cooldown - Physical>
Note: Does not trip the global cooldown. Works with spells too.
Formula: Spell haste = 10% + 33% * ((total health - current health) / total health), but not higher than 30%
This means that the full bonus of 30% is received as soon as you have 40% health or less, whereas from 40% to 100%, the bonus linearly decreases to a minimum of 10%.

Analysis: Trolls are, in my opinion, very underrated as priests. People like to poke fun at us, but I think Trolls are arguably as strong as Undead. Shadowguard is extremely good for shadow priests, since it synergizes well with talents and gear. Expect it to do as much or more damage than SWP per tick at 70, and for very little mana comparatively. It procs off nearly everything, so it has some PvE use too against any boss that applies any sort of AoE debuff, and there is a huge number of bosses that do. Hex of Weakness is also like a poor man’s Mortal Strike, and is very nice to have in the Arena (especially on a team with no warrior or rogue), and has use against certain bosses that heal themselves as well. I generally downrank Hex of Weakness to rank 1 since the decreased melee damage is pretty insignificant even at the highest rank, but every rank has the 20% decreased healing. Rank 1 will run you a paltry 35 mana.
Beserking is a strong racial for any spec or scenario, and is great for popping off a 2s Greater Heal when you get low, or can be used in a DPS rotation (you can even injure yourself with SWD to get a better effect) for shadow. Overall, I think Trolls are a viable #1 choice for PvP, and are just as good as any other race for PvE (you’ll notice a trend that your racial choice as Horde doesn’t matter much for PvE, which is a lot different than Alliance).

Undead
Devouring Plague
Receives 100% Spellpower coefficient over the course of the DoT and makes use of Shadow damage talents. Often macro'd with Inner Focus. Disease effect.
The main draw is the combination of Devouring Plague and Will of the Forsaken, which are both very powerful. Devouring Plague is however very expensive, and arguably not worth the mana cost unless it is used in conjunction with Inner Focus. Will of the Forsaken is obviously a very powerful ability in PvP, and has uses relatively frequently in PvE as well. In my opinion, giving up WotF is the biggest sacrifice made by a player who chooses a race other than undead, particularly if he or she plans on speccing holy (but that’s not what this guide is about, is it?). In short, you can’t really go wrong in choosing Undead.


Draenei
Symbol of Hope
Note:Mana regen buff is a Magic effect.

Chastise
Note: like other holy racials, chastise is unusable in shadowform

Gift of the Naaru
Note: Spellpower coefficient of 100% and is affected by healing talents. Cannot be cast in Shadowform.


Analysis: Character limit looming. Draenei is, however, probably the best overall race for both PvP and PvE, though for pure PvP dwarf may be better for stoneform vs. rogues.

Human
Desperate Prayer
Note: Spellpower coefficient of 42.9%. Affected by Spiritual Healing and can crit. Reportedly will take advantage of Inner Focus's crit bonus without using up the Inner Focus.

Perception
Dramatically increases stealth detection for 20 sec. <0 mana - Instant - 3 min cooldown - Physical>
Note: The stealth detection buff is 10 effective levels. A level 60 Rogue will become as detectable as a level 50 Rogue, all else being equal. This increase is not as "dramatic" as it sounds, but activation is free.

Analysis: The racial spells are pretty bad, in my opinion. I don’t believe you can use Desperate Prayer in Shadowform, but it would be nice to get Alliance confirmation. Feedback is simply horrible… it doesn’t even have a long enough duration to be used in arena preparation so as to avoid the prohibitive mana cost. If you choose human, it will probably be for either aesthetic reasons or roleplaying reasons. Perception is good for PvP, but not enough to make up for shortcomings in other areas.

Dwarf

Chastise
Note: like other holy racials, chastise is unusable in shadowform. Identical to Draenei spell.

Analysis: Before draenei came along, dwarves were the kings of Alliance priests. Fear Ward actually earns dwarves and draenei preferential treatment on certain encounters (particularly pre-expansion ones, though there are some in TBC also), since it can decrease the difficulty of fights where the tank and/or healers get periodically feared by a large margin, since it entirely negates any fear effect (you receive an “immune” message if you try to fear someone with the spell on them. In the arena, fighting a team with a dwarf priest makes it a lot harder for warlocks and other priests, and can stop warriors from using Intimidating Shout to good effect as well. Stoneform is also great against Rogues and Hunters, and poison effects are somewhat common in PvE as well. A very solid racial choice.

Night Elf
Note: Spellpower coefficient of 100%. Also deals arcane damage, and can be used if shadow and holy schools alike are locked from a counterspell.

Analysis: Night elves are pretty decent for PvE; starshards provides free damage. They are also viable for PvP, but not optimal.

Ska was here.

I thought it was a very good guide but I think it would be helpful if you included things about lvling as shadow.

-Brady

There is already a sticky devoted entirely to leveling as shadow, but I guess I could link directly to it.

Leveling as Shadow =/ Playing as shadow.

Very nice post.

Anyways, reported for a sticky!

bump

Always good to see new guides that aren't in leetspeak and fill several posts with good information.

Oh hey, new guild Glor?

Very nice!!!

Nice to see constructive work on this forum!

---

Q u o t e:
Always good to see new guides that aren't in leetspeak and fill several posts with good information.

Oh hey, new guild Glor?

---

Yeah, SPQR was too small to really have a good chance at lasting... the leadership got tired of the second job feeling of running a guild and called it quits, but it was a nice casual stopover for when BC came out, as I was pretty burned out from 5-day-a-week raiding at expansion release. I found a guild that raids on only 3 weekdays (and Sunday) and also manages decent progression (we're working through SSC right now) without being full of egoists and drama queens. Works for me!

Bump to be made stickie!

Sticky!

Thanks a ton. As a lowbie shadow priest, this gives me a ton of useful info (including what mats to farm for on my rogue). Hope it gets stickied...