WotLK Classic Shadow Priest Guide (2024)

Last updated on Feb 04, 2024 at 13:56by Abide3 comments

Welcome to our Shadow Priest guide for WotLK Classic, tailoredfor PvE content. Here, you will learn how all you need to know to playShadow Priest proficiently. Click the links below to navigate the guideor read this page for a short introduction.

Shadow Priest receives many, vast improvements in Wrath of the Lich King,going from being a bottom-of-the-meters support DPS to a full fledged damagedealer. Shadow Priest excels in fights with multiple targets, allowing them tokeep their DoTs up on as many targets as possible.

If you would like to see where Shadow Priest fall in the overall rankingsamong DPS specs for both PvE and PvP in WotLK Classic, we have created pagesdedicated to explaining what classes and specializations are the best of thebest through multiple factors. However, ultimately, you should not let theselists dissuade you from playing what you enjoy.

Here you can see the benefits of the different races for Shadow Priest inWotLK. Some racials are much stronger for you than others, helping you deal moredamage. However, you should not let this decide what race you choose; play whatyou want to play.

Draenei is one of the strongest races in PvE content for Alliance, asHeroic Presence is a great stat boost to your entire party. It stillremains a party-wide buff, not raid-wide, meaning the group you are in stillmatters. This buff helps you with your Hit Rating needs greatly, as well as the restof the players in your party, making Draenei an extremely powerful choice.

Humans remain a solid choice for Priest, but for different reasons thanpreviously. The Human Spirit is a decent benefit, but not all that gamechanging. Humans are also arguably the strongest race in the game for PvP.Having both Will to Survive, essentially a free PvP trinket, andPerception, Human is a solid choice if you will be doing PvP on yourPriest.

Troll is your best Horde Shadow Priest choice for the powerfulBerserking cooldown. This gives you a great DPS cooldown that you can useto quickly get all of your DoTs up. You also get Beast Slaying,further increasing your damage against any beast you encounter.

Blood Elves have become a powerful race choice in WotLK, having the new andimproved Arcane Torrent. This is a great source of Mana regenerationas well as a powerful silence on nearby enemies, which has some uses in bothPvE and PvP.

Undead remain a decent choice for their strength in PvP.Will of the Forsaken is still a great tool for PvP, especially arenas, andeven has some uses in PvE content.

Jewelcrafting is an extremely powerful profession in Wrath of the Lich King,being used by almost all classes and specializations. For a Shadow Priest,it provides you with Runed Dragon's Eye, which is a huge boost to your mainstat. Jewelcrafting provides the highest personal stat gain out of anyprofession.

In addition to having the strongest gems in the game, Jewelcrafters also haveaccess to some powerful trinkets early on, making pre-raid gearing much quicker. Figurine - Twilight Serpent is a good trinket early on to help with HitRating needs.

Tailoring goes hand in hand with casters in WotLK, remaining one of the bestprofessions they can use. First you have powerful cloak enchants at your disposal.Lightweave Embroidery is a strong cloak enchant, giving you an additional295 Spell Power every 60 seconds, making this much stronger than any othercloak enchant available. Darkglow Embroidery is your other cloak enchantchoice, giving us mana instead of increased stats. Averaging out to 44 Mana per5, this one is a good choice early on.

Tailoring also has the benefit of offering cheap leg enchants.Sanctified Spellthread is your Tailoring-specific leg enchant, and whileit does not have higher stats than other leg enchant choices, it is much cheaper,helping you save some gold.

Engineering on paper is not a great profession, but it provides ahigh amount of utility and added damage that make it arguably the strongestprofession in Wrath of the Lich King.

Visage Liquification Goggles is your pre-raid best in slot helm option,giving you another easy piece of gear to craft early on. Nitro Boosts is apowerful boot enchant choice, allowing you to cover a large amount of groundquickly. This can greatly increase your uptime on certain bosses that have highmovement mechanics.

Another unique Engineering enchant is Hyperspeed Accelerators, aglove enchant. This gives you another damage cooldown, greatly increasingyour Haste every minute. This glove enchant is almost worth taking Engineeringalone even before looking at all of the additional benefits of theprofession.

Springy Arachnoweave is a great cloak enchant, only being second bestbehind the Tailoring cloak enchants. The active slowfall is rather low valuefor you as you have Glyph of Levitate, making your Levitate free to use.You can however still use this and change your minor glyph. You can also use thisslowfall cloak without fear of it breaking upon taking damage, unlikeLevitate.

Engineering explosives continue on through WotLK with both Global Thermal Sapper Charge and Saronite Bomb giving you extradamage, especially during large AoE pulls. You also get to use Runic Mana Injector which give Engineers an additional 25% Mana comparedto the normal Mana potions.

Overall, Engineering remains a powerful option for everyone as it brings ahuge amount of utility and extra damage. If your raid requires you to haveEngineering, do not feel bad about losing out on a few passive stats as theutility you gain far outweighs them.

Using macros and addons makes your life significantly easier whenplaying Wrath Classic, and they can improve your experience a lot,depending on how skilled you are at customizing them.If you are interested in learning more about addons and macros suitedto Shadow Priest, check out our guides below: