Shadow Priest

Welcome to our guide on Shadow Priests! Shadow Priests are ranged spellcasters with a high degree of durability, survivability, and raid utility. A single Shadow Priest adds three team buffs, can enhance movement speed during the encounter, mass dispel enemies and friendlies of buffs/debuffs, and are among the best classes in the game for raiding.

To wield a Shadow Priest is to be an active spellcaster. Constantly adding damage over time (DoT) effects to every enemy, frequently hitting powerful single target damage spells, filling in with channeled beams of energy, and having a high degree of mobility to ensure you're always in position.

This guide is written with a specific Shadow Priest build in mind - the Auspicious Spirits build (heavy on the Critical Strike stat). There are other ways to build a Shadow Priest, but this is the one we've found to be most effective and consistent in a PVE environment.

Talents
This section describes each talent for Shadow Priest and at the end will state which talents we recommend for PVE on Firestorm WoD. There are several ways of building a shadow priest, this is the one we've found most effective.

 Defensives (lvl15) - Choose "Desperate Prayer" or "Angelic Bulwark"  Movement Speed (lvl30) - Choose "Body and Soul" or "Angelic Feather"  Damage Buffs (lvl45) - Choose "Insanity" since it will always be active Shenanigans (lvl60)  - Choose "Dominate Mind" since it most adds to your utility  Damage Empowerment (lvl75) - Choose "Twist of Fate" since it's the highest DPS + survival  DPS Abilities (lvl90) - Choose your favorite, they're all good  Specialization (lvl100) - Choose "Auspicious Spirits" it's the highest DPS and most consistent What we pick: Desperate Prayer, Body and Soul, Insanity, Dominate Mind, Twist of Fate , Cascade, Auspicious Spirits. The items underlined are considered essential for Shadow Priest optimal DPS, the others are up for your consideration and choice.
 * Desperate Prayer: heals the caster for 82k hp, 2m CD. Note that this doesn't remove your shadow stance!
 * Spectral Guise: leaves behind an after image which can be targeted and stealths you for hidden movement, 30s CD. A pvp ability.
 * Angelic Bulwark: a passive that grants you an absorb shield equal to 15% of your maximum health (60k'ish) when your health drops below 30%. Can only trigger once every 90s.
 * Body and Soul: a passive that causes your Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith abilities grant the target a 60% speed boost for 4s. Can target yourself for speed as well.
 * Angelic Feather: enables you to place golden feathers at specified locations, anyone running over the feathers will receive a 60% speed boost for 4s. Has three charges and replenishes charges at a rate of 10s each.
 * Phantasm: using your Fade ability will remove all movement impairing effects and prevent your speed from being reduced for 5s. When combined with the glyph Fade will reduce your damage by 10%, remove all threat, remove all movement impairment, and prevent you from being slowed - all on one button. But is mostly a pvp ability.
 * Surge of Darkness: your Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague have a 12% chance to cause your next Mind Spike to be instant speed, deal 50% additional damage, and not consume your DoTs. Can accumulate three charges.
 * Mindbender: replaces Shadowfiend with a vastly improved version that deals more damage and heals your mana while active, 1m CD.
 * Insanity: a passive that causes your consumption of shadow orbs to double the power of your Mind Flay and Mind Sear (single target and AOE core abilities).
 * Void Tendrils: summons shadow tendrils to root up to five enemy targets within 8yrds for 20s or until the tendrils are killed, 30s CD.
 * Psychic Scream: AOE fear ability which causes up to five enemies within 8yrds to run. Any damage will interrupt the fear. 30s CD.
 * Dominate Mind: control the mind of an enemy target upwards of level 103 for 30s.
 * Twist of Fate: a passive which states after damaging a target below 35% health you gain a buff which increases your dps and healing by 15% for 10s. Anytime you damage a trash npc or boss at low HP this will refresh the duration to 10s.
 * Power Infusion: empowers your priest for 20s increasing your haste by 25% and reducing mana costs by 20%, 2m CD.
 * Shadowy Insight: your main DoT and Mind Spike have a 5% chance to reset the cooldown of Mind Blast (core orb generator) and make the next Mind Blast instant cast.
 * Cascade: tosses a shadow bolt to the target moderately damaging the target and bounces to other nearby targets dealing AOE damage, 25s CD.
 * Divine Star: fires an attack in front of you 24yrds ahead then returns to you, damaging all enemies in its path, 15s CD. Works on Firestorm but has no animation.
 * Halo: shoots a ring of shadow energy expanding outwards to 30yrds and damages all enemies in its path. Deals the most damage to targets exactly at 30yrds, 40s CD. There are addons that will mark the 30yrds distance so you can make the most of this ability.
 * Clarity of Power: a passive which causes your Mind Spike, Mind Sear, and Shadow Word: Death to deal 40% additional damage on targets not affected by your DoTs. Also reduces the CD of Mind Blast by 3s and makes it instant cast. This might as well be another priest spec, it completely changes how one plays Shadow Priest.
 * Void Entropy: is a 3rd DoT that consumes three Shadow Orbs to deal +100k damage over 60s to the target. Devouring Plague refreshes the duration to 60s when used.
 * Auspicious Spirits: your shadow apparitions now deal 2x the dps and grant one shadow orb when created. Apparitions are created from a passive that triggers from your crits.

Glyphs
The glyphs of a Shadow Priest are varied and hybrid. Some will enhance movement, many improve the pvp experience, and some are PVE optimal. There are too many glyphs to discuss individually so I will list only the ones we've found interesting or useful.

Major Glyphs
Glyph of Fade: Fade now also reduces all damage taken by 10% (Fade has a 30s CD, so you're taking 10% less damage 33% of the time)

Glyph of Reflective Shield: Causes 70% of the damage you absorb with  your shield  to be reflected back at the attacker, generating no threat. This is a DPS buff.

Glyph of Levitate: Increases the target's movement speed while levitating by 15%. This makes moving between bosses faster for everyone around you. You can also use it as an instant cast movement speed boost to avoid hazards. With both this glyph and "Body and Soul" talent I can spike my movement speed from 110% --> 170% instantly.

Glyph of Dispel magic: Dispel Magic now zaps the target lightly when you successfully remove a buff.

Glyph of Dispersion: Reduces the cooldown of Dispersion by 15s (making it 1m45s CD).

Glyph of Restored Faith: Leap of Faith now pulls you to the target, instead of the target being pulled to you.

Glyph of Mind Flay: Instead of slowing the target, using Mind Flay will give you a 15% movement speed boost for 8s stacking up to three times. If you ran this + Levitate + Body and Mind you'd have three different instantly available speed boosts.

Glyph of Power Word: Shield: 20% of the absorb from your shield is converted to healing. This doesn't remove your shadow form. Cannot be used with Reflective Shielding.

Glyph of Silence: Reduces the cooldown of Silence by 25s but reduces it's duration by 2s. This makes the cooldown of your interrupt 20s, down from 45s. I don't personally run this glyph, but interrupts are an important part of all high end combat and being able to interrupt more often is a buff to party success.

Glyph of Weakened Soul: Reduces the duration of the shield debuff by 2s. This means you can cast shield on yourself every 10s instead of every 12s. But it cannot be used with the other shielding glyphs.

 What to pick:  Fade + Reflective Shield + Levitate are my personal choices.

Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Shadow: Alters the appearance of shadow form to be less intense. Instead of being a dark shadow player, you're just a purple aura'd version of yourself.

Glyph of Shadow Ravens: Your shadow orbs now appear as ravens.

Glyph of Confession: Teaches you a comedic ability that forces a friendly target to confess a humorous secret. It's bugged on Firestorm that the caster cannot see the spoken secret. But it's entertaining for your comrades and is fun to do while prepping between bosses. Or to tease someone if they're dead.

Glyph of Dark Archangel: Gives you dark wings whenever you cast Devouring Plague, a shadow version of paladin wings. Depending on your tmog it could be the optimal choice!

Stat Priority
Critical Strike > Haste = Multistrike > Mastery = Versatility

Shadow Priest as we play it is entirely about critical strike. Since the class is so centered around the creation and expense of orbs (and orbs are created from crits) it is required that you go as deep as possible into the crit stat. All of your enchantments, all of your gems, all of your gear choices should be centered around critical strike. Your crafted items should all be either crit+haste or crit+multi depending on how your haste stat is allocated.

Critical Strike: Causes your attacks, spells, and heals to deal 50% extra damage. Additionally, when you crit with "Shadow Word: Pain" (main DoT) you create a shadow apparition which will float and explode on your target. Each apparition created generates an orb and deals added dps (which can also crit). More crits means more orbs which means more casts which means more apparitions which means more orbs which... The dream is to have 30% critical strike.

Haste: Increases your attack speed, cast time, how often your DoTs trigger, and reduces the CD of various abilities. This is our attuned stat and we gain an extra 5% haste. Since we're in the business of creating and spending shadow orbs (orbs are created from your DoT's critical strikes) remember that Haste increases the rate at which the DoT triggers/procs. More haste means more chances at DoT crits, which increases your shadow orb creation and dps. Once you have about 20% haste you can move onto other stats.

Mastery: Increases the damage of Mind Blast, Mind Spike, and Mind Flay by a scaling amount. This looks very strong on paper, but is only ok in reality. There is a build of priest (Clarity of Power talent) that wants insanely high Mastery, but as we are recommending here Mastery isn't that desirable of a stat. It doesn't hurt anything, but it doesn't really add to the core of your dps. Do not hunt for mastery at all, it will appear on your 4p set and Kazzak items such that you'll have 40% quickly.

Multistrike: Grants two chances to deliver extra attacks / heals at 30% of their normal value. Fun fact, DoTs can multistrike and multistrikes can crit. This means that having a high crit + multi chance will increase your generation of shadow orbs allowing you to cast "Devouring Plague" more often. Get as much multistrike as you can get without sacrificing Crit or dropping haste below 20%.

Versatility: Increase your healing and damage by X and decreases your damage taken by half-of-X. This isn't the sexiest stat of all time, but it's always decent and strong. It improves the strength of your DoTs, apparitions, spell casts, and protects you from damage. You don't need to devote specific effort into getting versatility, but it is always nice to have.

Leech: Heals you for a portion of all damage you deal. Since we are dealing damage in the form of DoTs and Apparitions, having leech will significantly increase your survivability (self healing) passively. You don't need so much leech as to run the Kazz trinket, but it's still a highly desirable stat on priest. Keep in mind that leech is bugged on Firestorm, it only gives you leech-heals from damage not the healing you share.

Weapon and Armor Guide
Priests wear cloth armor only and can wield daggers, 1h maces, staves, and wands. For the purposes of this guide we are assuming you are using "Auspicious Spirits" as your core priest style (heavy on critical strike) and are following our recommended stat priority. Your character can have three crafted items. On WoD Firestorm crafted items are always BiS as they have the highest overall stats. Weapons can reach 715ilvl, armor can reach 725ilvl. All of your crafted items should be crit/haste or crit/multi. You will certainly want your weapon and trinket to be crafted as they provide massive buffs to your character. The trinket "Sandman's Pouch" is an auto-include for Shadow Priest, build one right away! It provides +351 intellect and procs every 2m for 3000 critical strike and lasts 20s. While the proc is active your shadow priest is an unstoppable force of DPS and self healing. Each class gains a large bonus from the Blackrock Foundry 4p set, Shadow Priest receives a massive buff from the 2p set. Your DPS levels will spike dramatically once you have the 2p, and will spike again (less so) when you have the 4p. The 2p lowers the cooldown of "Mind Blast" (your most direct shadow orb generator) by .5s for each shadow orb used. In practice this means each time you use "Devouring Plague" the CD of Mind Blast is reduced by 1.5s, which leads to more orbs created which leads to most casts of Devouring Plague which leads to more CD reduction which leads to.... The 4p set is a quality of life addition and something to aspire to take advantage of fully. It increases your haste (upwards of 12%) each time "Devouring Plague" deals its DoT damage. If you can maintain the 12% haste increase you will be a god at Shadow Priest.

Some classes should just aim to take the highest ilvl item at anytime, not Shadow Priest! You shouldn't blindly take a 685ilvl item that doesn't have crit, just to replace your PVP 680ilvl item with crit on it. Be deliberate with your item choices.  Crit > Haste > Multistrike .With the crafted weapon you likely will build, there are two paths of equal strength. First path is to simply create a 2h staff and be done with it. Make it crit/haste (more crit than haste) and enchant it with "Mark of the Thunderlord" (crit boost). This is the simplest and most straight forward option and what you should choose initially. Alternatively you can create a 1h spellpower mace and an off-hand tome ! The total amount of stats will be identical but using this method you can more precisely choose your desired stats. Imagine you have 23% haste and realize that's too high. You could create a 1h weapon with crit/haste and then create the tome with crit/multi. It's a way to min-max your build once you're completely established with your priest. It will be twice the cost in materials. Please note that off-hand crafted items, specifically shields/tomes, do not count toward the three limit for crafted items - you can have four crafted items.

The image on the right are the two essential trinkets you should collect. Additionally, you should get the 680ilvl PVP trinket that grants +663 critical strike and the Kazzak "Stat Stick" that gives +205 to all secondary stats. We are continuously testing various builds for what is optimal, but it's safe to say the choice of optimal trinkets is between these four trinkets. There is a school of thought that says heavy procs are weaker than consistently higher stats. The trinkets illustrated below are heavy-procs, and the stat-stick + pvp-trinket are large static increases to critical strike.

Core Abilities and Function
The basic idea of a Shadow Priest is to build up shadow orbs (three main ways) and to spend them on "Devouring Plague". I have broken down this section into Offensives / Defensives / Utility / Passives to increase your understanding of the class.

Offensive
In addition to these abilities, you will have an offense talent (lvl90) in the form of Cascade, Divine Star, or Halo. These are described in the talent section of this guide, all are viable - I pick "Cascade". For your offensive capability to be maximized, choose "Auspicious Spirits" as your lvl100 talent. This super powers your apparitions and increases your shadow orb generation.

Your job as priest is to create as many shadow orbs as possible and spend them to cast "Devouring Plague". The more orbs you create the more times you can cast D.Plague and the more dps you'll deal. Because D.Plague heals you so significantly it is a massive buff to survivability.

Mind Blast: blast the target for moderate damage and generates one shadow orb, 7s CD. BRF 2p set reduces the CD.

Devouring Plague: blast the target for moderate damage and then place a DoT that damages them over 5s equal to that damage. Heals you equal to the total damage dealt and consumes three shadow orbs to cast. This is your main shadow orb outlet, cast this as often as you can. It is the top priority at all times (besides defensives to avoid death of course)!

Shadow Word: Pain: places a DoT on the target which damages them moderately over +18s. Crits from this DoT will create apparitions which float and damage the target(s) and create shadow orbs for you. Put this DoT on most targets but cast "Devouring Plague" or "Mind Blast" as a higher priority. Instant cast DoT.

Vampiric Touch: places a DoT on the target which damages fairly heavily over 15s, has a long'ish cast time (1.3s affected by haste).

Mind Flay: a channeled beam which deals moderate damage over a couple of seconds and reduces the target's movement speed by 50%. More of a "filler" ability. Can be glyphed to provide a speed boost to your character.

Mind Sear: a channeled beam which deals AOE damage to all enemies within 10yrds of the target. It's not the strongest AOE in the game, but it works and is a single button. Most effective on clumps of enemies of four or greater. Can be good on Kromog's rune hands if they're stacked up (thank you DKs).

Shadowfiend: creates a shadow monster to lightly attack your target for 12s, 3m CD. Use this ability on cooldown or when the moment is right. It doesn't deal much damage, but every little bit counts.

Shadow Word: Death: only usable on enemies below 20% health. Blasts the target for moderate damage and generates a shadow orb. When able to be cast this is the top priority shadow orb generator (which you use to cast "Devouring Plague"). Your apparitions, shadow pain DoT, and this shadow death ability are your shadow orb generators.

Mind Spike: blasts the target for light damage and removes all of your DoTs from the target. I never use this ability, I debated not even adding it to this section. It's essential when building around the lvl100 talent "Clarity of Power", but we haven't seen that talent perform at the same level as "Auspicious Spirits".

Defensive
Shadow Priest has several options in the defensive department. Amazingly the ability "Fade" is off the global cooldown so can be macro'd into your other abilities to ensure it's active as often as possible. I am including shields and healing in this section since they're core to the defensive capability of Shadow Priests. Shoutout to "Devouring Plague" for healing you for +40k hp at a consistent rate!!

In addition to these abilities you have your lvl15 talents of "Desperate Prayer" and "Angelic Bulwark" which add to your defensive capability. Keep in mind that the 82k heal from Prayer does not remove your shadow form, whereas your other dedicated healing abilities will remove you from your stance.

Fade: removes all threat from you for 10s on a 30s CD. Can-->Should be enhanced with a glyph that also reduces your damage taken by 10%. With the lvl30 talent "Phantasm" it further enhances this ability to remove all movement impairing and speed decreases while active. Fade should be used as often as possible and is not on the global cooldown, I recommend you macro it onto your other abilities to ensure it's frequent use.

Dispersion: transforms you into a shadow orb which prevents 90% of all damage taken on a 2m CD, but prevents you from casting spells or attacking - the effect lasts for 6s. It can be used while stunned, feared, or silenced and will clear all snares and movement impairing effects when it's cast and makes you immune to new instances of impairment while it's active for 6s. This is incredible on high damage moments during a raid like Flamebender's Fire Tornado or to help eat Inferno Slices on Gruul.

Vampiric Embrace: heals you and your allies equal to 10% of your single target shadow damage, lasts 15s on a 3m CD. This is a massive cooldown that can save your party at the right moment. Things like the hands on Kromog, Flamebender's Firestorm/Tornado, the boss in Phase3 of Furnace are all good moments to use this ability.

Power Word: Shield: grants an absorb shield (every 12s) that lasts for 15s. While the shield is active your casts are not interrupted by damage. Can be talent & glyph enhanced in a number of ways. The lvl30 talent "Body and Soul" makes shield a 60% speed boost. The glyph of "Weakened Soul" reduces the debuff by 2s allowing you to shield yourself every 10s instead of 12s. The glyph "Reflective Shield" causes your shield to damage attackers equal to 70% of the damage absorbed, this makes shielding yourself a dps buff!

Flash Heal: heals a target moderately on a short cast timer (affected by haste). Keep in mind that using this ability will remove your Shadow Form stance which is a massive dps and survival loss. Do not cast this ability in combat unless you absolutely must. If you find yourself needing to cast this ability there's a good chance you're doing something wrong and should adjust your playstyle to compensate.

Prayer of Mending: empowers a target with a light heal and will bounce to nearby targets when the target is mended. It will jump up to five times and lasts for 30s. The healing this deals is not particularly strong (about 5k) and removes your Shadow Form stance when used. You can include this in your pre-pull setup on boss fights, but I don't believe it's useful or necessary.

And remember there are useful consumables that act as defensives.

Utility
Priests have some significant utility abilities that make them a unique and useful class in PVE encounters.

Leap of Faith: pulls the target to your location, instantly moving them directly in front of you on a 1.5m CD. Can be used to pull someone from the fire or aid someone's positioning. Can also be glyphed in two ways further enhancing its abilities. "Leap of Faith" glyph will also remove all movement impairing effects from the target (pvp ability) and "Restored Faith" will pull you to the target (instead of target moving to you). While I don't think "Restored Faith" is worth the glyph slot, it's very cool you can convert Leap into something akin to warrior's "Intervene".

Mass Dispel: dispels all targets within a 15yrd radius of magical buffs or friendly debuffs, it is potent enough to remove effects normally not dispellable. On retail it could be glyphed to further empower it, but it's not necessary here (it's built-in already). This is a superb ability in BRF for removing healing buffs on enemies.

Dispel Magic: a single target dispel that removes 1 beneficial effect at instant speed.

Power Word: Fortitude: is your raid buff, increasing everyone's stamina by 10%. Use this before every pull to ensure everyone is consistently buffed.

Silence: is your interrupt and cast prevention ability. It's on a 45s CD and can be glyphed to reduce that cooldown to 20s.

Levitate: causes targets to float off the ground, granting them a form of water-walking and slow-fall. Can be glyphed to provide a 15% speed boost to targets while floating.

Resurrection: is your revive ability and will rez the target in about 8s (affected by haste). This is not a battle rez. Fun fact, if you are a Night Elf you can use your racial "Shadowmeld" --> lose combat --> and resurrect comrades using this ability. So this isn't a battle rez, but it sort of can be.

Mind Vision: allows you to see through the eyes of the target. Is a great move for taking screenshots of the group or to peer around corners. Not combat useful in most cases, but is a quality of life addition.

Passives
Shadowy Apparitions: When your Shadow Word: Pain (main DoT) deals critical striking damage you create a shadowy version of yourself that floats toward the target dealing light damage. When combined with the recommended talent "Auspicious Spirits" this apparition will create a shadow orb. Mind Quickening: Increases haste and multistrike to all party and raid members by 5% With this passive a single Shadow Priest buffs haste + multistrike + stamina, three buffs from one class.
 * Put Shadow Word: Pain onto many targets while you have a high crit chance. Dark spirits will ooze from your character and float slowly toward the target deal damage.  When the spirit hits the target you gain one shadow orb per spirit damaging.
 * You get the spirit from the DoT's crit, not the spell's initial damage.

Mastermind: You gain 5% more haste stat from all sources. All classes have an "attuned stat" and this is yours. If only we had attunement to crit! Aim to have about 20% haste overall.

Shadowform: Assume a Shadowform (stance), increasing your shadow damage by 25% and increasing your armor by 100%. However you may not cast any healing spells while in this form.
 * As a shadow priest you must maintain 100% uptime of your Shadowform, you are weak paper without it.
 * The lvl1 talent "Desperate Prayer" doesn't count as healing.
 * "Devouring Plague" passive heal doesn't count as healing.
 * "Vampiric Embrace" doesn't count as healing.

Macros and Utility
Macros are tiny scripts that you put onto your bars. You can use these to add multiple abilities onto a single button or combine abilities that are off the Global Cooldown (like Fade). Here are some that we use and have found useful.

#showtooltip Shadow Word: Death

/stopcasting

/cast Shadow Word: Death

#showtooltip Shadow Word: Pain

/cast Fade

/cast Shadow Word: Pain

#showtooltip Silence

/stopcasting

/cast silence

#showtooltip Power Word: Shield

/cast [modifier:alt] Desperate Prayer

/cast [nomodifier] Power Word: Shield

Most of these are about using that ability ''now without waiting. ''Since many priest abilities have a cast time or are channeled you need /stopcasting on some abilities to ensure they're available to be used immediately. Can't be needing to interrupt and not being able to easily!

Buffs
You should always carry the "Greater Draenic Intellect Flask" (+250 intellect), "Pickled Eel" (+125 crit), "Elixir of Perfection" (+85 crit), "Oralius' Whispering Crystal" (+100 to all main stats), "Focus Augment Rune" (+50 intellect), "Draenic Intellect Potion" (25s buff of 1000 intellect), "Shieldtronic Shield" (68k absorb shield), "Mecha-Blast Rocket" (burst damage that cuts through armor), and "Drums of Fury" (25% haste to all raid members for 40s).
 * These buffs are the basics one should always carry on any established PVE character.
 * Additionally you should carry 200 "Tome of the Clear Mind" to ensure you can swap glyphs/talents at will.
 * Additionally you should carry 20 "Goblin Gliders" for quality of life and survival.

How to Play One
Shadow Priest is all about generating your main resource (Shadow Orbs) and spending them on "Devouring Plague" to deal massive damage to your opponents. There is no set rotation for Shadow Priests since the lvl100 "Auspicious Spirits" creates an element of randomness, instead it is a priority-cast class. Your job is to cast the right spell at the right time, not necessarily in a specific sequence.

As this spec you are durable and useful. You have constant access to absorb shields, strong passive heals, and a multitude of movement speed enhancing abilities which ensure you're always in position. With your easy access to AOE, self heals, two strong dispel (anti-buff/debuff) abilities, and Levitate, you are a highly sought after and useful of any raid team.

Cast Priority
With a clump of NPCs exceeding four, the top priority becomes casting your main DoT and channeling "Mind Sear". Try to end each encounter with five shadow orbs prepped, especially before a boss pull. Shadow Orbs do not disappear until used, even if you relog or quit the game.
 * 1) Cast "Devouring Plague" whenever possible, #1 priority
 * 2) Cast "Shadow Word: Death" (only on targets under 20% HP) when possible
 * 3) Cast "Mind Blast" on cooldown, but only when it will generate a shadow orb successfully
 * 4) Put or refresh "Shadow Word: Pain" on the target(s)
 * 5) Place "Vampiric Touch" onto the strongest enemies
 * 6) Cast "Shadowfiend" on cooldown
 * 7) Cast your dps talent (Divine Star, Halo, or Cascade) on CD while in a good position
 * 8) Cast "Power Word: Shield" on CD
 * 9) Channel Mind Flay onto the weakest target to trigger the 15% "Twist of Fate" DPS buff

If you're using the "Glyph of Reflective Shielding" you should maintain 100% uptime of your "Power Word: Shield" since it's a defensive and dps buff. Having a high crit will increase the power of your shield, increasing how much dps your reflective shield glyph can zap opponents.

Once you have the BRF 4p set, it becomes a mini-game to maintain your massive 12% haste buff from the 4p bonus. To maintain this buff, keep casting "Devouring Plague" on varied targets to constantly refresh the short haste buff duration.

When fighting large packs of NPCs there is almost always a healer NPC buried among them. Use your visual acuity to find this healer NPC and mark them with a skull. Hopefully then every DPS will cleave down the skulled target and ensure the death of the healer NPC. Remember also that your "Mass Dispel" will remove HoTs from enemies!! This can be considered a dps increase despite not being counted on recount as such (if the enemies can't heal, less damage is required to take them down and you caused it).

Positioning
As a ranged spellcaster it is essential that you always be in the proper position. Use your movement speed buffs like "Levitate" and "Body and Soul" to increase movement speed away from hazards. All pro raiders will endeavor to survive every encounter with the mindset of refusing to die.

Your job is to make life easy on the healers. Melee DPS and tanks are going to eat a lot of damage and this soaks up the healer's attention, leaving less focus toward you. The best thing is to become self sufficient and never die.

Conclusion
Shadow Priests are a highly durable and multi-functional class. With one you can self heal exceptionally well, unbuff enemies. increase the movement speed of your comrades instantly, and can battle rez if you (wisely) choose Night Elf as your shadow priest's race.

The class is about generating shadow orbs and spending them on "Devouring Plague". Whenever your dps is lower than expected, it's because of poor use / generation of shadow orbs. While not a button masher class like Enhancement Shaman, this is a similar system of combat which relies on understanding the structure of priest combat - rather than a set order of operations..

There are many ways of building Shadow Priests, and this guide only discusses the "Auspicious Spirit" path. Experiment and find your own optimal, the one that flows for you.