Best In Slot Shadow Priest Shadowlands
This is the Shadow Priest guide for Shadowlands written by Jaerv#3537 and Viklund#2904.
Shadow Priests have historically been the kings/queens of spread out multi-target cleave. Sadly though, this has been significantly nerfed in Shadowlands. Making us primarily good at pure single target DPS with some value at stacked cleave from the Shadowflame Prism legendary.
All the things mentioned in this guide are subject to change. We will update it during the expansion as Blizzard changes class tuning and our knowledge of the fights, gear and simulations increases.
What has changed
On this page, you will find the best gear and best in slot items for your Holy Priest in World of Warcraft Shadowlands 9.1. If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Holy Priest gear and best in slot. Legendaries for Holy Priest. Posted: (1 week ago) Jul 09, 2021 Recommended Gear for Holy Priests in Shadowlands What is the BiS Holy Priest gear? With many different sources of gear ing and loot scarcity in Shadowlands, targeting your absolute Best in Slot gear isn't entirely realistic; instead, we've created a Best in Slot list from the ideal Holy Priest.
Recent 9.1 Changes
Patch 9.1 came with changes for 4 legendaries (1 for each covenant), Sphere’s Harmony, Pallid Command, Bwonsamdi’s Pact and Shadow Word: Manipulation
- Sphere’s Harmony: Boon of the Ascended’s cooldown is reduced by 2 seconds, up to 60 sec, for each stack of Boon of the Ascended consumed by Ascended Eruption.
- Pallid Command: Casting Unholy Nova summons a Rattling Mage that gains 2% additional damage and healing each time an enemy affected by Unholy Transfusion is damage by and ally, up to 100%
- Bwonsamdi’s Pact: Enter a pact with the Death Loa, calling forth a haunted mask that lingers on a target until Fae Guardians ends. Haunted Mask copies the benefit of the current faerie on its target.
- Shadow Word: Manipulation: Mindgames lasts an additional 3 sec and reverses and additional 10% damage or healing. When Mindgames can no longer reverse healing or damage, gain 3% Critical Strike for each second remaining for 10 sec.
Conduits:
- Dissonant Echoes: Now grants 20% increased Void Bolt damage (Was 35%).
Spells:
- Devouring Plague: Damage reduced by 18%
- Shadow Word: Pain: Damage increased by 25%
- Vampiric Touch: Damage increased by 25%
Legendary Changes:
- Shadowflame Prism: Damage reduced by ~15%
- Talbadar’s Stratagem: Nerfed by ~8%
Shadowlands Legendary powers grant impactful gameplay effects for your Holy Priest through the new Runecarving system. As your crafted Shadowlands legendary will be the most important piece of gear in the expansion, providing large performance benefits, it is crucial to pick the right legendary to craft and effectively spend your Soul Ash.
In this guide, we will recommend the best legendary powers and item slots for your Holy Priest for Shadowlands content, as well as highlighting which legendaries are not worth crafting.
9.1 Holy Priest Legendary Changes
- Legendaries can be upgraded from 235 Rank 4 to Rank 6 262 now using Soul Cinders.
- There are 4 new legendaries, one for each covenant.
- VenthyrShadow Word: Manipulation: Do not craft. Crit bonus after casting Mindgames.
- NecrolordPallid Command: Summons a minion after using your covenant ability, not worth taking as a primary legendary.
- Night FaeBwonsamdi's Pact: The cooldown reduction provided by this legendary is very interesting, especially in more casual content where you can buff your friends to massive heights. Though in a progress environment Holy has a better alternative. Fun legendary to mess around with.
- KyrianSpheres' Harmony: The cooldown reduction provided by this legendary gives a strong damage bonus but not strong enough to take as your sole legendary. Do not craft.
Ideal Upgrade Order for Holy Priest Legendaries
Assuming you're not looking for a specific legendary for off-spec, we recommend the following crafting order:
| #1 | Recraft Flash Concentration in the Neck slot if you have not already. If you have, upgrade to R5/6 |
| #2 | Relax and enjoy |
| #3 | Craft/Upgrade alternative legendaries below as desired. |
Recrafting Legendaries for Holy Priest in 9.1
Shards of Domination is a new system for Sanctum of Domination gear that provides powerful customizable bonuses by slotting Shards of Domination into specific gear pieces from Sanctum of Domination. Unfortunately, you'll be unable to add Domination Sockets to Legendaries in Patch 9.1; therefore, you'll typically want to avoid equipping legendaries in slots that conflict with Domination Socketed items. This includes all Helms, Shoulders, Chests from Sanctum of Domination as well as two other item slots depending on your armor type:
- Cloth: Bracers & Belt
If your current legendary does conflict with a Domination Socketed item, you'll typically want to recraft that legendary to a different item slot. Additional item slot options have been added to most legendaries to accommodate these new requirements. For convenience, we've highlighted the most useful legendaries for Holy Priest that you'll likely want to recraft as well as the new recommended slot for that legendary in order to avoid conflicts with Domination Sockets:
| Legendary | New Best Slot |
| Flash Concentration | Neck |
Best Holy Priest Legendaries
What Legendaries to Craft As a Holy Priest
We listed the legendaries in terms of impact. The strongest and important legendaries are ranked first; legendaries not worth crafting are not mentioned at all (and there are many of them!).
Flash Concentration
- Available Slots: Neck, Wrist
- Crafting Preference: Neck
- Stat preference: Mastery/Crit
Very powerful with a decent maintenance requirement. Heal's throughput bonus makes the spell quite efficient in stabilizing your tank and other party or raid members in all content. Maintaining the stacks of the buff in dungeons can be a challenge and you are less mobile but it provides very efficient single target which comes in particular handy on higher level dungeons as well due to the mana efficiency that you receive, allowing you to sustain throughput for a long period of time.
In raids, this legendary works well and with the 9.0.5 buffs to duration it is substantially easier to maintain and get high value from. There are so many short cooldowns that you cycle through regularly so maintaining uptime is very important. Once you do however, you're well set positioned to provide top level spot healing to the raid.
There is tremendous synergy between this legendary and Resonant Words and Trail of Light.
Verdict: Requires maintenance with a high reward. #1 Legendary
Harmonious Apparatus
- Available Slots: Shoulder or Ring
- Crafting Preference: Ring
- Secondaries to use: Crit/Mastery
Simple and easy to work with. So long as you're properly using Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending, you'll receive some good cooldown reduction over the course of raids or dungeons. Faster cooldown reduction on your Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify just means your healing becomes more efficient and you'll have greater mana efficiency early on in the expansion. This is key now that we have lost Essences and trinkets that regen tons of mana.
In 5 mans, this legendary is decent but rapidly loses value the higher that you go. The lower the damage is on the group the easier it is to just solely lean on Holy Word: Sanctify and Holy Word: Serenity to deal with the brunt of the incoming damage. However, as key damage increases, this legendary lacks the sustained output to heal higher level tank damage or Tyrannical bosses in an efficient manner.
Verdict: Simple legendary that is easy to operate but pales in comparison to Flash Conc.
X'anshi, Return of Archbishop Benedictus
- Available Slots: Legs or Back
- Crafting Preference: Legs
- Secondaries to use: Mastery/Crit
The return of the classic 'croak cloak' this is always a nice legendary to help you get familiar with encounters without the potential expense of costing your raid team a battle rez. The catch is that you don't gain much throughput with this legendary unless you force deaths to save yourself mana, but that also causes you to be rooted for a lengthy period of time where you can spam healing for no cost.
Verdict: Great when you're first learning encounters, but will get outperformed by pure throughput legendaries later on.
Best Holy Priest Legendary for Mythic+
Flash Concentration shines in Mythic+ keys for its high efficiency and powerful throughput. It takes time to properly manage but is absolutely worth it.Best Holy Priest Legendary for Raiding
Flash Concentration is your preferred craft for Raiding in Sanctum of Domination. With the increased duration and Fae buffs from 9.0.5 the spec pumps out powerful single target oriented throughput with ease.
Do Not Craft Legendaries for Holy Priest
...Everything else:
Class:Best In Slot Shadow Priest Shadowlands Build
- VenthyrShadow Word: Manipulation: Do not craft. Crit bonus after casting Mindgames.
- NecrolordPallid Command: Summons a minion after using your covenant ability, not worth taking as a primary legendary.
- Night FaeBwonsamdi's Pact: The cooldown reduction provided by this legendary is very interesting, especially in more casual content where you can buff your friends to massive heights. Though in a progress environment Holy has a better alternative. Fun legendary to mess around with.
- KyrianSpheres' Harmony: The cooldown reduction provided by this legendary gives a strong damage bonus but not strong enough to take as your sole legendary. Do not craft.
- Divine Image: Old artifact trait turned legendary. It generates moderate healing, but is often low impact and random.
- Measured Contemplation: Buffs the healing of your Flash Heal like the Azerite essence Devout Spirit from BfA. Problem with this legendary is that there is such a long duration between each buffed Flash Heal that its nowhere near as consistent as the Azerite trait it was made from.
- Vault of Heavens: Causing Leap of Faith to have multiple charges and to be improving your mobility. Fun, but not strong enough to see competitive play.
- Cauterizing Shadows: Steadily nerfed over Beta. Too weak to see competitive play.
Wow Shadowlands Best In Slot Shadow Priest
If you need help with the legendary system in Shadowlands, check out the following guides on Wowhead: