Why is Shadow Priest So Important in Mythic+?
It's an interesting question. Shadow Priest was one of the better dps choices for Mythic+ by the end of season 1 of Dragonflight but it was by no means dominant. That however changed as a meta for season 2 began to develop and with the release of 10.1.5 Shadow cemented itself as one of the most powerful DPS specs for Mythic+, earning itself a spot in the aptly named "God Comp". In this article I will go over what it is exactly that Shadow Priest brings to "God Comp", why it fits in so well, what it doesn't do so well, and what in my opinion needs to change in order to keep Shadow relevant but not Dominant in Mythic+.
Damage
Shadow is a strong AoE dps but not the best. There are specs that do both more burst and more sustained AoE than Shadow Priest even before the most recent set of damage nerfs. Shadow priest instead excels at two things, priority damage and Single Target in an AoE talent build.
Priority target damage is something that is valued highly in higher Mythic+ keys as oftentimes groups will combine multiple packs of small mobs with a large miniboss or dungeon boss to increase efficiency. This role has historically been carried out by either the Fire Mage, Subtlety Rogue, or even more recently Feral Druid but these specs have either been redesigned to no longer provide that powerful priority damage or are simply not tuned highly enough to see play at the top end. Fire recently changing from an ignite based AoE rotation to a Flamestrike based one has made their priority damage much worse and as the other current top M+ dps alongside Augmentation Evoker it has fallen on Shadow to pick up the slack in the priority damage role. Shadow deals its priority damage by simply Single Targeting whichever mob needs to take the most damage, as all of it's AoE damage is dealt passively through cleave effects such as
Psychic Link,
Shadow Crash, and
Shadowy Apparitions.
As is common with specs that deal strong priority damage, Shadow Priest also has very potent Single Target in its M+ and AoE builds. This is another major factor in Shadow's viability and an advantage over other potential dps choices such as Demon Hunter, Unholy Death Knight, and Arms Warrior, all of which have strong AoE in their M+ builds but fall short once they have to deal with a boss or single enemy.
Overall, Shadow does not have the most Burst damage and is typically more of a sustained dps spec in AoE situations. Thanks to
Void Torrent, Shadow Priest always some damage for every pull and having long cooldowns like
Void Eruption lend themselves incredibly well to high Fortified trash pulls and chaining multiple packs one after the other. While other specs might do more on individual pulls, Shadow very rarely has nothing it can do to contribute.
Party Synergy
Shadow has incredible party synergy in "God Comp", benefitting from Mage's
Arcane Intellect, as well as having low Critical Strike and Versatility to gain maximum value from Augmentation's
Sands of Time and
Prescience, and Guardian Druid's
Mark of the Wild. Shadow's own buff
Power Word: Fortitude also plays very well alongside Augmentation's
Black Attunement, providing a decent amount of extra base HP which also interacts nicely with the numerous damage taken reduction effects provided by Holy Paladin.
Shadow also mostly plays around a strong 2 minute damage window with
Power Infusion and often
Void Eruption which both line up directly with Evoker's
Breath of Eons.
Power Infusion is especially potent in this combination because of
Twins of the Sun Priestess as it provides two major cooldown's worth of power for the Augvoker's breath window. A huge amount of the strength of Godcomp comes from its ability to pull and burst down large numbers of mobs every 2 minutes and Shadow, while not providing that much burst damage of its own, provides a good amount of sustained overall damage for these large dangerous trash pulls thanks to
Twins of the Sun Priestess.
Survivability
Hear me out for a moment, but one of the major things that has typically held Shadow back in Mythic+ has been its survivability. Even though
Dispersion is a strong major defensive and Shadow's toolkit more generally has been considered excellent for surviving raid mechanics, Shadow has always struggled to have enough consistent passive / short cooldown mitigation to survive the near constant punishment of high end Mythic+ damage patterns. Despite Shadow in Dragonflight still having very low passive mitigation due to notoriously low versatility, the spec has gained
Protective Light as well as a reduced cooldown on
Desperate Prayer thanks to
Angel's Mercy. These alongside
Translucent Image, a mainstay from Shadowlands, give Shadow enough short cooldown defensive options to make up for its problems surviving constant large hits.
Utility / The Dungeons
Shadow's utility is in an interesting place, on one hand it is undoubtedly incredibly powerful and valuable in Season 2 of Dragonflightbut on the other it hasn't really changed going into this season after never really being a problem beforehand. Priests did receive one much needed direct utility buff in season 2, that being the removal of the 5 target cap from
Psychic Scream, but everything else is the same as it was at the start of Dragonflight. To go into more depth about why Shadow's utility is considered so strong this season I'll be breaking the rest of the section up into Affix Utility and Dungeon Utility.
Affix Utility
Dragonflight Season 2 introduced three new weekly affixes,
Incorporeal,
Afflicted, and
Entangling which alongside
Bursting are all able to be mitigated or removed by a piece of Shadow's Kit.
- Incorporeal: Both Shackle Undead and Dominant Mind can be used to control Incorporeal beings and stop their casts. Priest is one of 3 class (Priest Hunter Paladin) that can comfortably lock down both Incorporeal. Those controlled by Dominant Mind even work for you, reducing the damage enemy mobs deal by 5% per stack instead.
- Afflicted: Shadow Priests can cleanse the Afflicted NPCs using Purify Disease and can reliably get 1 for each wave that spawn.
- Entangling: Shadow Priests can break the slow applied by this affix every 30 seconds by using Fade coupled with Phantasm.
- Bursting: Shadow Priests can remove stacks of the debuff applied when enemies die using Mass Dispel.
Dungeon Utility
Shadow Priest's dungeon utility has historically fallen into two categories, too niche to matter or completely necessary beyond a certain key level. Dragonflight Season 2 is firmly the latter category with Priest's two most unique pieces of utility,
Mass Dispel and
Mind Soothe, pulling exceptional weight in a number of very potent spots.
Mass Dispel especially has pushed Priests to near mandatory status beyond a certain key level as the only spell of its type to be able to remove multiple magic debuffs at the same time with any sort of regularity. Below are the most powerful spots to two of Priest's most powerful unique pieces of dungeon utility.
Mass DispelHalls of InfusionThe UnderrotThe Vortex Pinnacle- Gust Soldier: remove Rushing Wind in pulls where there are multiple Gust Soldiers or your healer's dispel is being taxed by something else.
- Turbulent Squall: You can remove shields with Mass Dispel, though due to its target cap of 5 there are some pulls where you cannot remove all of them and will have to use Dispel Magic as well.
Brackenhide HollowMind SootheBrackenhide Hollow- Priests can use Mind Soothe to open all 5 cages without engaging a single trash mob in the first area. Using conventional routing, a Priest will typically take cages 2, 4, and 5 by Soothing the packs nearest to them. You will also need to use Fade for the additional aggro reduction on the cage in the top left.
- Priests can use Mind Soothe, alongside a non aggressive CC such as Sap, Imprison, or Sleep Walk to skip the final pack before the first boss on either side. This lets you pull it into the boss late on for more efficient trash count instead of having to play it first on its own.
- While it is possible to skip Stinkbreath without Mind Soothe, it does make every method of doing so a lot easier to execute.
Neltharion's LairFreehold- As this dungeon is almost entirely humanoids, it's possible to use Mind Soothe to set up any number of trash skips and obscure pulls. The most common though are the two packs upstairs after the first pull and the packs after the first rope bridge, though routing does change in higher keys.
The Underrot- Mind Soothe can be used to make skipping the trash immediately after the third boss easier by walking to the left around the large aberration then banking right.
It's clear from looking at these lists that Priest and by extension Shadow's core utility lends itself exceptionally well to the current dungeon pool. It's important to remember however that in previous seasons Priest has found 1-2 relevant uses for
Mass Dispel per season, as well as struggled to make use of
Mind Soothe due to its restrictive typing requirements. While it's cool to see places these things can be valuable, there are clearly too many important places to have them in the current dungeon pool.
The shift in Dragonflight season 2 towards constant group damage in Mythic+ has also increased the value of Shadow's
Vampiric Embrace. In the past this ability hasn't been particularly effective in high keys as the patterns of damage intake were much more stop start and focused a lot more on one shots. Now with damage occuring constantly it's much easier to get value out of a vampiric embrace that doesn't just end up being overhealing or surplus to requirement alongside your healer.
Besides affixes,
Dominant Mind also has some uses across the various dungeons in Dragonflight season 2. While it's not used in order to take control of any specific powerful abilities like it has in the past, it still serves as an unbreakable CC for things like
Rockbound Pelter and
Rockbound Trapper.
Weaknesses
Despite everything listed above, Shadow does have weaknesses. Relying on
Shadow Crash and manually applying
Vampiric Touch means Shadow struggles to deal AoE damage beyond 10 targets or outside of windows when
Vampiric Touch is active. There's a lot good players can do to mitigate this issue but it still comes up in areas like the second section of Brackenhide Hollow with all the
Infected Lashers inflating the target count and making
Shadow Crash useless.
Despite the removal of
Psychic Scream's target cap, Shadow still only has
Silence as an interrupt which is most likely on a 45 second cooldown as accessing the points below for either
Last Word or
Psychic Horror cost a lot of damage. This means that Shadow could start struggling for a spot were the other meta specs to be replaced with ones that don't provide multiple ways to interrupt casts.
Conclusion
It's pretty clear that the major reason Shadow is valuable in Mythic+ is the potency of its utility this season. After multiple nerfs the damage is still competitive but definitely not competing for the top spots anymore and while priority damage is a very valuable damage pattern to pair alongside indiscriminate AoE specs like Fire Mage, it's not the only spec capable of providing it.
Mass Dispel and to a lesser extent
Mind Soothe are simply mandatory in high end keys this season, and with Holy Paladin being the meta healer that means your comp near enough must have a Shadow Priest. Things that might have held Shadow back in high keys in the past, such as a lack of on demand or passive mitigation, are either solved by the presence of a Holy Paladin and Augmentation Evoker or have been made up for with defensive changes in the Dragonflight talent tree.
However, as powerful as
Mind Soothe and
Mass Dispel are this season, it's both possible that they won't be next season, and that healing priests become meta instead which pushes Shadow out whilst keeping the same unhealthy dynamic of mandatory classes. Something should change in either the dungeon design or allocation of utility to make sure that in Mythic+, every time a challenge poses a question to your team, there's more than one adequate answer.
