SHADOW PRIEST ADVANCED TIPS

DISPEL MAGIC

So we thought about making a master in minutes to cover Dispel Magic, but honestly this ability is so incredibly important that it needs to be treated with the high same priority as mastering damage. 90% of players don't even realize how broken Purge effects can be, and we get it.

Removing one buff? Who cares about that?

Why would you press an ability that deals zero damage? Well, there's actually plenty of good reasons.

For one, since this ability is on the Holy School, it is by far the most efficient way to handle lockouts.

Whenever you're casting a Shadow spell, knowing there are kicks ready, your fingers should automatically start to hover over your Dispel Magic, using it immediately on the kill target multiple times if you get kicked. Now in these cases, it really doesn't matter what you remove.

It could be a shield, a high damage, or a low damage. It's all about the ability to handle the most efficient way to handle the most efficient way.

You're locked out of doing damage anyway, so why not dispel something while you reposition and wait for the lockout to end? Now you might be asking, should you only dispel during lockouts?

The answer is no. There are several high priority buffs that should definitely be dispelled, even when not locked out on Shadow.

These include major shields like Alter Time, Mage Barriers, and even Power Infusion. Burn a few Globals to remove these buffs is, most of the time, going to be a net positive.

Now, even maintenance buffs for healers, like Lifebloom and Earthshield, can definitely be worth a Dispel, but here, you're definitely going to need to use some Judgment.

If you have a higher priority damage Global Depress, then you might consider using that instead, but if you're repositioning or, once again, dealing with an interrupt lockout, then you absolutely can safely mash your Dispel.

We really want to stress in this video that Dispel Magic is such a vital part of your rotation, despite the fact that it deals zero damage. The act of removing important buffs with one simple button can be worth over a million damage in some cases, so get out there and weave Dispel into your gameplay.

POWER INFUSION TIPS AS SHADOW

Power Infusion is one of those cooldowns that is deceptively OP, granting 20% haste to an ally and also automatically to yourself when using the hardlocked Twins of the Sun Priestess talent. Now this might not seem like a big deal, but the net DPS increase can be absolutely massive for some specs.

Now while you can technically use PI on your healer, there's virtually no reason to ever do so in 3v3 or solo shuffle, as the net DPS gain from using it on a DPS is far more valuable. Now with that said, there are some rules you need to follow before using PI.

Number one, you should aim to press it early into the game, typically during the initial clash in solo shuffle, but only if you already have some targets dotted. You want to be using...

You want to be using PI in order to buff your burst window and not to establish those dots. Now there is a high chance that if you press PI off your mount and attempt to dot, that you're going to be immediately CC'd or interrupted, dramatically cutting down on its effectiveness.

So do not use it to initially dot, but to amplify your burst slightly after. Number two, aim to sync your PI with your partner's offensive cooldowns.

Power Infusion, like many others, is a good idea. It's a very good feature for major offensives and makes it very easy to align with your partner's attacks.

It has a two minute CD, making it automatically align with abilities like Dragon Rage and Icy Veins, and then sometimes aligning with slightly disjointed cooldowns, like Incarnation.

Now what this means, is that in both the early game, and even the late game too, you should aim to use PI with your partners' offensives by glancing periodically at Omni CD to telegraph when this should happen. Our third and final rule is to definitely be consistent.

That is so that you won't miss a situation, if your partner is the exact opposite. Remember to be consistent and as quick as possible up until the end of the game.

So that you can take control of how you're viewing it, and if you're playing it carefully enough to get them to take damage, it's not a bad idea. be careful when using PI against enemy mages.

Better players are going to instantly attempt to spell steal it, so before using, make sure you try to cover yourself with trash buffs from your healer if possible, or simply with Power Word Shield and Fortitude.

Now, in the off chance you're playing against a mage and priest, you might even consider delaying your PI until the enemy priest uses theirs on the mage, since it's going to give them less of an incentive to steal your realm.

USING PSYFIEND

Psy Fiend is one of the strongest, but honestly most balanced abilities in the game. No bias here, we promise.

Now, to cover some quick mechanics though, it can be used every 45 seconds, spawning at your feet and then immediately flaying your target, which slows them, but more importantly, it reduces their healing taken by an astounding 50%. This makes it incredible for snowballing pressure.

Intuitively, you might think to combine this with a CC chain on the healer, whether it be your fear or some kind of CC from your teammates. Sure, this is going to create a bit more pressure, but there's one problem with it.

The healer is CC'd anyway, so unless you're using Psy Fiend to counter the self-healing of a DPS, you're really not going to get much value here. Instead, most of the time you should use your Psy Fiend after the enemy healer has taken a CC chain or has sat through your stun silence.

The 50% healing reduction acts kind of in a way as an extension of the CC because it makes the enemy healer have a harder time recovering. I mean, just think about it.

They just sat a long CC chain and now the target is suddenly taking 50% less healing. That is a ton of extra pressure that they have to deal with.

Now, against hot-based healers like Resto Druids, you can use Psy Fiend with CC at the same time since it can help counteract the CC chain. And again, Psy Fiend reduces all healing taken.

So, if the target you're killing has a major self-heal like Renewal, Deathstrike, or Impending Victory, then you might want to consider using your Psy Fiend with the sole purpose of nerfing those self-heals. Now, there is one key downside to Psy Fiend that we have to talk about.

Psy Fiend has very little health and can't be shielded. So, if the enemy is focusing you or has ranged abilities, it's pretty easy for them to take it down.

Almost instantly. Luckily, we have a Master in Minutes guide that shows you how to place your Psy Fiend like a pro helping you work around this weakness.

VOID TORRENT AS VOIDWEAVER

Listen, if you're playing Archon, your Void Torrent is, to some degree, a filler global. Sure, it does big damage and generates a lot of insanity, but it's not really integral to your burst sequence.

As Void Weaver, on the other hand, your Void Torrent is quite literally your bread-and-butter burst ability. It is the start of your Entropic Rift window, which is where most of your meaningful damage comes from, and there are some goals we want to achieve while using it.

First, if we're playing Insidious Ire, we ideally want to make sure all of our dots are already active on the target before we think about using Void Torrent, since it's going to give us a massive damage multiplier along with our mastery. Next up, we want to use Dark Ascension first before using Void Torrent.

Now, this might seem counterintuitive since Void Torrent's damage isn't actually buffed by Dark Ascension since it's counted as a periodic effect.

Now, the reason we do this is because we want to maximize the number of Void Blast and DP casts during our Rift window, so we want to get the Dark Ascension cast out of the way first in order to do so.

Then, assuming we're playing Dark Energy, we're going to want to start our Void Torrent cast on the target and then immediately start moving away, even out of line of sight, in order to prevent interrupts or CC from disrupting our cast.

Now, we're in our Entropic Rift window, so we're going to want to cast DP as many times as possible, since by doing so, we're going to maximize the damage done by collapsing Void. And while doing so, we're going to want to be generating Insanity with Void Blast.

This creates a simple gameplay loop during our Entropic Rift. We'll build with Void Blast and spend our DP over and over.

The explosion from collapsing Void can hit incredibly hard if we manage to land multiple DPs. Now, if you can manage to stick to all of these, then you're in for a lot of fun.

Now, if you can manage to stick to all of these, then you're in for a lot of fun. Now, if you can manage to stick to all of these, then you're in for a lot of fun.

Now, if you can manage to stick to all of these, then you're in for a lot of fun.

INSIDIOUS IRE TECH

Insidious ire is a passive on your shadow tree that grants a massive damage bonus to void torrent, mind blast, and void blast when you have all three of your dots on the target. In the mid game it's pretty easy to benefit from insidious ire because you're already in the groove with insanity already flowing.

But in the early game you really have a problem. You don't have any insanity to work with.

You need to do a bunch of ramping first, burn in a few seconds before you get a juicy void torrent off. But we can fix this with one clever trick.

In order to gain enough insanity to DP super early, we want one of your first globals to be shadow fiend. It doesn't really matter that we're wasting its damage here.

All we care about is getting our insanity bar filled as quickly as possible at the start of the game. You don't even really have to commit damage.

You could send your shadow fiend in on a target who's camping at a pillar. As long as it can attack, we will generate a lot of damage.

But if you're not sure what to do, you can just insanity, which is going to be bringing us closer inch by inch to a huge early game void torrent.

SHADOW WORD DEATH INTO SHIELDS

If you watched our sustained damage video, you already know that Shadow Word Death, for the most part, isn't too high on priority unless the target is in Execute range. But there's also one very common situation where Shadow Word Death skyrockets in priority.

It's when the target has a shield. If you're playing Voidweaver, you have a passive called Devour Matter, causing Death to deal significantly more damage into shields, while granting some bonus insanity.

If a mage refreshes a barrier that you can't immediately purge, either because they have too many trash buffs or if you're low on mana, then Shadow Word Death should be your immediate global in order to burn through some of the absorption.

This even works into shields you can't normally dispel at all, including Anti-Magic Shell from DKs. If the DK pops Shell, then immediately Death to chip it away.

It works into rescue shields from Evokers too, and obviously Life Cocoon as well, but don't really expect it to completely burn through the absorption here. In any case, the moment you see any shield on your target, consider using Death instantly in order to help break through it.

PLACING YOUR PSYFIEND

So we all know that Psy Fiend can generate huge pressure for your team, but what we also know is that players these days have a million weak auras and mainplate add-ons ready to snipe it down. I mean, just ignore the fact that the skill-capped UI is probably part of the problem here.

Anyway, there are a few tricks that you can use to make Psy Fiend just a little bit harder for enemy players to attack. The first is to simply stand right on top of it once it's pressed.

This is going to help mask it with your character model and mainplate at the same time. You can take this a little bit of a step further by placing it on top of other minions, like Demo Warlock pets or even your own Void Tendrils if they're spawned.

Basically, the more mainplates you can surround it with, the better. And in case you weren't aware here, you can no longer shield your Psy Fiend, so get out there and conceal it for maximum pressure.

THE DEFENSIVE PSYFIEND

There is a Hail Mary play that you can make in the most dire of situations, and it's to use your Syphine defensively. Now, this sounds incredibly backwards, as typically you want your Syphine for pressure, but remember that age-old saying, a good offense is a good defense.

If your partner is under tremendous pressure and there's nothing you can do to immediately peel, one of the best things you can do is try and counter pressure. We can do this with damage and then multiply our damage with Syphine.

Some players, the moment they see a Syphine, will at the very least stop attacking in order to snipe it down. And these few seconds can give your team enough of a buffer in order to recover.

It's kind of like... a sacrificial lamb. You don't really care your Syphine dies, it's there to act as a distraction.

And hey, if they don't swap to your Syphine, well that just means you wound up getting full value from it, creating pressure and sort of even peeling in the process thanks to its slow effect. So don't discredit the niche, but highly practical defensive Syphine.

ABUSE CATHARSIS TO DEAL HUGE DAMAGE

Catharsis is one of the best PvP talents for one huge reason. It means you can still do damage while under pressure, even when you can't cast.

Now with that said, there is one huge mistake 90% of Shadow Priests make, and it's allowing their Catharsis to over stack. Now what this means is that they're losing out on a ton of potential damage, which can really add up over time.

The workaround is to simply use a Weak Aura to make it easier to track Catharsis stacks. This is one of the most commonly used Weak Auras for every high-rated Shadow Priest, making it easy to see when Catharsis is fully stacked with a glowing border.

So as the saying goes, if it lights up, press it and you'll be able to avoid the key problem of overcapping.

SURVIVING AS A SHADOW PRIEST

Being a Shadow Priest can be pretty stressful, and unlike some of those other casters, staying alive isn't always easy. That's why we put this video together to help you survive longer, stay in the fight, and get yourself far more wins.

Now to do this, we're going to give you the hierarchy of defensives in the Shadow Priest kit, letting you know which ones to use and when to use them. So let's get into it.

So to begin with, our first line of defense is Vampiric Embrace. This ability will allow you to stay aggressive while still sustaining yourself through incoming pressure by converting our damage into healing on our entire team.

Vampiric Embrace is a pretty easy press and forget tool, just make sure that you're using it before you burst every one and a half minutes, and you're going to be using this as much as you possibly can as simply put, the more damage you do, the more healing it provides.

Unfortunately for us, our other defensive abilities aren't quite as simple, though they may be a little bit more difficult to master. But we're going to give you a little bit of a look at them and we'll give you a little bit of a look at them.

So let's get started. So let's get started.

So let's get started. The first and most essential of these is Fade, which provides a 10% damage reduction and, if using the Faceshift talent, grants immunity to all damage and crowd control for one second.

Because of this brief immunity, we should aim to time fade when the enemy team is looking to burst, like using it on high impact spells like Chaos Bolt or Aimed Shots. This not only helps us survive, but also allows for more aggressive positioning making up for last lack of an Interrupt.

With expert timing, we can also use this to immune crowd controls like Ryzera does with Kidney Shot, resulting in his team being able to maintain tempo.

On a simpler level, Fade can also be used to walk out of abilities like Champion's Spear from Warriors or Ursal's Vortex from Druids, which can be vital to escape their setups.

Given all of these benefits, you might be thinking that Fade should always be saved for the high priority spells so you can just make a new Hydra tier montage, but in reality, it has such a short cooldown that it's often best to press it whenever you are about to take damage.

Since the damage reduction lasts for 10 whole seconds, frequent uses ensures consistent value, along with that nice chance of immuning crowd control through pure volume of presses alone.

It also is a pretty good idea to use your Power Word shield after your Fade as Fade clears all snares, and by combining them together, we can get a short burst of speed from our Body and Soul talent, allowing us to have a much more powerful attack.

Allowing us to have a much more powerful attack, allowing us to have a much more powerful attack, allowing us to take slightly less damage. To take this one step further, we can also combine this with our Void Tendrils to leave melees in the dust, which is particularly effective if we manage to trap them behind a wall.

Moving on, we then have Desperate Prayer, which will buff our stamina and heal us by 40%. Needless to say, this cooldown is best used early on in a game to hold on to disperse as the longer the game goes on, the weaker this spell becomes due to dampening.

Ideally, you want to be holding on to this spell for when you're healer is crowd controlled, so you can self sustain and stay aggressive while still taking damage at the same time.

It's also important to note that when using this spell, you generally want to use it before you drop to 30% to try and save your Bulwark's cooldown, as overlapping these two spells on one go can leave you very vulnerable on the next setup.

To help avoid these overlaps, we then have our next spell of Flash Heal, which although doesn't do the most healing in the world, it can save us in a pinch. Flash Heal will make you more vulnerable to the enemy's attacks, and it's a good way to keep your team safe.

Flash Heal will mostly be used when we're locked, as a nice panic button to hold on to our Bulwark. However, more importantly, if we use it at a higher health, we can abuse the protective light talent and gain 10% damage reduction for enemy cooldowns.

And the best thing about this is there's not much the enemy team can do about it, as if they lock us, we can just free cast damage instead.

Because of these factors, we should look to weave Flash Heals in frequently when we're kicked, as the damage reduction buff honestly lasts pretty long and it's going to help us out a lot.

So, if you're looking to use Flash Heal, you can use it as a way to keep your team safe, and if you're looking to use it as a way to keep your team safe, you can use it as a way to keep your team safe.

And if you're looking to use Flash Heal, you can use it as a way to keep your team safe, as the damage reduction buff honestly lasts pretty long and it's going to help us stabilize to go on the offensive as soon as possible. Next up on our defensive rotation, we should be letting our Angelic Bulwark proc.

Much like Desperate Prayer, Angelic Bulwark is also affected by Dampening, so we shouldn't rely on it too much as the game progresses. Because of this, we want to allow it to proc before to allow us to get more value later on in the game.

Much like Vampiric Embrace, there's really not much else to say about this cooldown, just definitely be aware of it since it's a very important skill to have. So, you don't overlap with our most powerful defensive cooldown.

Which brings us to Dispersion, arguably our strongest defensive button. Dispersion reduces all damage taken by 75% for 6 seconds and restores half your HP, but using it correctly is really what separates good Shadow Priest from absolutely dead ones.

The biggest mistake low-rated players make is treating it like a last resort panic button. If you wait until you're nearly dead, Dampening or Executes might just be a bit of a pain in the ass.

But if you wait until you're nearly dead, Dampening or Executes might just make it completely useless. Instead, you want to use Dispersion preemptively when the enemy team is popping major offensive cooldowns to soften the blow and make it much easier to go back on the offensive.

Now don't get us wrong, you don't exactly want to use it at 100% health, but pressing it around the 30-40% mark is more than ideal to avoid sticky situations like getting Cycloned low on the go or having your healer stuck in CC for an eternity.

Other than these factors, remember that Dispersion can be used to counter the enemy team's attack, or to counter the enemy's DPS. So don't try and be fancy with a pre-disperse, just avoid getting locked on Shadow and pop it when you get put into that stun first.

Finally, at the end of it all, we then have Void Shift, or in layman's terms, Life Swap. Now this cooldown is our Hail Mary and requires some pretty good reactions to pull off.

For those reasons, we really recommend getting some targeting macros for this or quite frankly, you're just going to be reacting far too slowly for it to be effective. As for how to use it, I'm going to be using it in the following way.

First, I'm going to be using it as a pre-disperse, and then I'm going to be using it as a healer. We generally want to use it when we literally have nothing else available as it's a ridiculously long cooldown.

Try and prioritize using it on your healer to save yourself as they'll be in the back and naturally less of an easier target to swap.

However, if you're playing with a class with an immunity like a Hunter, Mage, or Ret Paladin, swapping them can be absolutely fine as they have a get out of jail free card if they suddenly get focused.

Now as for those lobbies where you end up playing with a Priest healer, you can use it as a pre-disperse, or in layman's terms, just avoid getting locked on The general rule of thumb is that the healer will swap first.

However, you can always clear this up by simply talking in the starting room as this is far more beneficial than swapping each other and dying through as a result.

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