What should shadow priests stack 4.2

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Ice Bear. Night Fae. This means that most of our other spells take priority over them whenever you get to cast them. The answer to that is a simple no, due to the way that channeled spells work in this game nowadays. During your Mind Flay or Mind Sear casts, if a more important spell ever becomes available, there is no punishment to cancelling them. For a more detailed explanation as to how and why it works like this, we recommend checking out the FAQs.

This will be your go-to option for most AoE types of content due to how strong it is. When using this talent you typically want to start a pull with at least 30 Insanity so that you can do a quick Mind Sear cast followed by a single Searing Nightmare to get Shadow Word: Pain ticking as fast as possible.

Then depending on how long the mobs will live you can either use your cooldowns here, or maybe even cast a few Vampiric Touch DoTs before continuing on to spamming Searing Nightmare. With our haste levels it can be possible to get 3 Searing Nightmare casts off within a Mind Sear channel, but because our haste is constantly fluctuating with various spells and effects we recommend only ever casting Searing Nightmare twice per Mind Sear channel.

If you try to go for the third, but fail to do so, you end up delaying that next Searing Nightmare by several additional GCDs, which is not a good idea. This will look something like this:. Surrender to Madness is a great tool to have in your rotation and allows you to get a second usage out of our major cooldown, Voidform. If you are a little afraid of the dying component of the talent, it is important to note that the value comes mostly from the Voidform creation, which you keep even if the target you casted Surrender to Madness dies, you just lose the cast while moving and Insanity generation increase.

To get maximum value out of this talent you want to make sure to only use it while Voidform is not already active, otherwise you do not restart the buff. We recommend using an addon like Exorsus Raid Tools that has a built in Time to Die tracker to help you estimate when a mob will die for optimal usage of this talent. Check out the addons page for more useful Addons. Both Mindbender and Shadowfiend are guardians that scale with your stats, which means that using them in combination with, for example, Intellect, Haste, or Mastery procs is ideal.

However, for both it is not ideal to delay them too much in order to accomplish this. They are not big enough damage increases to warrant doing so and maximizing the amount of casts is more important.

This is especially true for Mindbender, which has a short cooldown of 1 minute. When using Shadowflame Prism mastering this is important to get full damage out of the cooldown AND trying to line it up with cooldowns specifically Voidform for the most benefit.

There is an additional aspect to bear in mind here, however. Both Shadowfiend and Mindbender generate an amount of Insanity whenever they hit their targets. Shadowfiend only generates 3 Insanity per hit while Mindbender on the other hand generates 5 Insanity per hit.

This can in handy specifically when you want passive Insanity generation to help with Searing Nightmare casts in AoE, but otherwise will not be super noticeable. As a general rule of thumb you will want to use Shadowfiend or Mindbender right before casting Void Eruption before going into Voidform. Sign In Remember me Not recommended on shared computers. Sign in anonymously. Sign in with Facebook. Diablo III.

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Also his spec could be modified in compliance with bugs on 4. A decent guide, shame someone is trying to bash it though, seem's as though they have never heard of the Paralysis spec. The spare point here would go into "Pain and Suffering" to complete the spec to its full potential. The other spec is called the "Mortal Strike spec" on this tree you simply remove the points from paralysis into improved mind blast and one point out of harnessed shadows to fill Improved Mind Blast to 3 points.

Here are examples of the specs. Paralysis spec: Mortal Strike spec: Hope this clears things up for you. Shadowfiend deals some damage to the target, as well as granting you some mana.

It should, essentially, be used on cooldown. Its usage requires more explanation, so please check our section dedicated to Dispersion. Shadow Priests have a relatively simple rotation. However, there are several things you must understand in order to play your character to its full potential.

Shadow Orbs are an integral part of the Shadow Priest gameplay. The key to playing your Shadow Priest optimally is to ensure that your Empowered Shadow buff has a very high uptime.

This is because the buff has a 15 second duration, Mind Blast has a 6. This ensures that you will have at least one Shadow Orb each time you cast Mind Blast, thus refreshing your buff long before it expires. There is a single situation where you will not easily have the buff up, namely the start of the encounter. It is up to you to choose between ignoring the buff for the first few seconds or using an unusual opening rotation to force a Shadow Orb to spawn.

We will detail this in a subsequent section. As a general rule, you should aim to refresh your DoTs just as they are about to expire before the final tick of the DoT. There are a few subtleties that you should understand, though, to maximise the damage you gain from your DoTs. Namely, you must understand how your DoTs are affected by your current buffs and procs and you must also understand what DoT clipping is.

Your DoTs take into account all of your statistics at the time when the DoT is cast this is only important for Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch , though, since Shadow Word: Pain is updated each time it is automatically refreshed by Mind Flay. This means that a DoT cast while under the effects of self buffs and procs most importantly Empowered Shadow and Dark Evangelism will be very strong for its entire duration, even if these buffs and procs expire in the meanwhile.

Conversely, gaining new buffs or procs will not affect the DoTs that you have on the target at the time. Those DoTs will continue to work based on your original statistics. This raises the question of when and how it is best to refresh your DoTs. For example, is it worth refreshing a weak DoT that still has more than a few seconds on its duration simply because you gained extra buffs?

To answer this question, you also have to understand what DoT clipping is. DoT clipping refers to the action of refreshing a DoT before its final tick has occurred. If you refresh a DoT while it had 2 or more ticks left, all ticks except for the final one will be "wasted". The final tick will be added to the new duration of the DoT which will, therefore, be extended to include it.

Furthermore, the final tick of the previous DoT, when becoming part of the new DoT, will be modified to your current statistics, and not the statistics of the old DoT.

As a result, if your DoTs have been applied under the effects of Empowered Shadow and Dark Evangelism , you should refresh them right before their final tick, unless you are no longer under the effects of these buffs, in which case you should let them fully expire before refreshing them. If your DoTs have been applied without Empowered Shadow, you should generally refresh them as soon as you gain the buff even if they have a long time still left on their durations , as the gain from this buff is great.

It is, however, also possible to simply refresh them before their final tick, as this will not have a very high impact on your DPS and this should generally only happen at the start of the fight. To better understand how you will put into practice the priority listed at the start of this guide, we will quickly walk you through it.

You should apply and refresh your DoTs on the target, based on the above guidelines essentially, just as they are about to expire. Then, if all your DoTs are ticking, you should use Mind Blast as soon as it is available. The situation will rarely occur when a DoT will need refreshing just as Mind Blast comes off cooldown, but if it does happen, we recommend casting Mind Blast first.

When a higher priority action is needed, simply interrupt your current Mind Flay and perform it. Indeed, it will prove a sizable DPS increase to interrupt Mind Flay as soon as you need to cast something else. It is useful to have a cast bar addon that allows you to see when Mind Flay ticks, as it is most beneficial to interrupt it right after a tick.

Other than moving as smartly as possible, minimising the distance you have to travel, there are three things you can do while moving:. As you can see from the above sections, maintaining a high uptime on the Empowered Shadow buff is important. While this buff will be automatically refreshed for most of the fight without you having to perform any special actions, the start of the fight is different.

Unless you have the luxury of starting the fight with one or more Shadow Orbs from trash mobs before the boss, for example , it will take a few seconds or more for your first orb to be generated. Therefore, you can choose whether you want to start the fight by applying your DoTs without the Empowered Shadow buff and missing out on the damage bonus or trying to force a Shadow Orb to spawn by doing a slightly unusual rotation.

Below, we present you with both options for your opening rotation. A standard way of opening the fight, that will result in slightly lower Empowered Shadow uptime:.

A different way of opening the fight, that will ensure a faster generation of Shadow Orbs and a faster application of the Empowered Shadow buff:. Regarding Shadowy Apparitions, this is entirely out of your control and will just result in being a DPS gain throughout the fight.

The Shadow Orbs generated by your Shadowfiend, however, can be put to better use, both at the very start of the fight as well as later on. At the start of the fight, this set bonus is extremely useful in allowing you to essentially start with the Empowered Shadow buff right away. You should perform an opening rotation like this:. During the course of the fight, you will obtain higher DPS by using this rotation each time your Shadowfiend is active:.

During this time, your DoTs will not be on the target remember that Mind Spike consumes all your DoTs , so you will have to reapply them as soon as your Shadowfiend runs out. As a Shadow Priest, you have 3 cooldowns. In this section, we will provide you with everything you need to know about how to use them. It has a 1 minute and 30 second cooldown. To put it simply, you should use Dark Archangel on cooldown, as many times as possible during a fight. There are a few things to keep in mind, however:.

Your Shadowfiend , as a DPS cooldown, provides a small boost. Regardless of this, it should still be used more or less on cooldown. The damage that the Shadowfiend deals is based on your current statistics most importantly, your spellpower , so using it when you have procs from Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent or Lightweave Embroidery is beneficial. Dispersion is an interesting ability on a 2 minute cooldown. It provides you with several benefits during its 6 second duration:.

As a drawback, while Dispersion is active you cannot attack or cast any spells. Your DoTs will still deal damage, though.

Dispersion's uses are two-fold. Firstly, you should use it to avoid dying, to minimise the damage you take and sometimes to bypass various deadly encounter mechanics. Secondly, you should use it as a mana regeneration tool.

You will find more information on this second use in the section below. Your DoTs are extremely costly, and mana will be a problem especially on fights where you are trying to keep your DoTs up on several targets.

Dispersion should be used as often as possible, in order to restore your mana, while sacrificing as little DPS as possible. This means you should try to use Dispersion during phase transitions or moments where the targets are not attackable.

Otherwise, make sure you use Dispersion immediately after using Mind Blast and while none of your DoTs need to be refreshed.