Changes for Shadow Priests
Unfortunately this patch has very little in changes for Shadow Priests. Below is the impactful updates, check out the full notes here.
- Sustained Potency has been updated – It now also pauses the duration of Dark Ascension or Voidform for up to 20 seconds while out of combat or affected by a loss of control effect. This is capped at 20 seconds per cast of each cooldown (i.e. going in and out of combat more than once does not refresh the pause duration).
- Entropic Rift now displays a low-noise version for your allies, instead of being completely invisible.
What this means
Functionally nothing is really changing except Archon now can choose to take Sustained Potency even inside of Mythic+. The out of combat pause is very nice for dungeons, particularly in lower keys and it was already competitive to take anyways (particular for boss damage or really long pulls).
Dracthyr
Starting this patch you can also make a Dracthyr Priest. From a combat perspective you get a single Mastery point from Awakened, which you can see how that stacks up in the charts. Other racials are listed below. To see these changes I did a video when it first came out and a revised one after it was changed.
- You can fight in Dracthyr form or Visage form as a Priest
- Wing Buffet
- Tail Swipe is EVOKER ONLY
- Glide (at a reduced speed compared to Evokers)
- Soar
- Awakened
Anniversary Event
With this patch there is also an upcoming launch of the Anniversary event. This event includes lots of cosmetics as well as some new gear drops that I will go over in this post as it relates to Shadow Priest. I am not covering all aspects of this event, only the ones relevant for player power. To see more about this checkout the Wowhead guide.
Timewalking Dungeons?
Currently there is a trinket, Mindtap Talisman that is from Dire Maul. This was available on the vendor on PTR but I am not sure specifically what the source of this could be. It is quite possible it is just a Timewalking dungeon drop during the event. If that is the case it would drop and be upgradable to 580 item level. I bring this up because even at 580 item level it is currently extremely powerful. Beating out many trinkets at Myth track item level, although not being BiS.
Blackrock Depths Raid
This raid is returning with HERO track gear. This is a great opportunity for alts as well as a few key drops that might even be useful for your main. Through a Relic Coffer Key system you can also purchase up to 3 items from a vendor if you clear the raid enough and do not see the drops you want.
Notable Drops
The following is listing ideal stat pieces that drop from the raid. There could be others that drop and are upgrades, here is just a short list to see what is available.
| Item | Boss |
|---|---|
| Burst of Knowledge | Ambassador Flamelash |
The Burst of Knowledge is extremely powerful and is likely to get nerfed/adjusted at some point. Early sims put this equal or better to most trinkets at Myth track item level, even though Burst of Knowledge is only Hero track level. This means it is strictly speaking a purchasable item that is Best-In-Slot.
Currently this trinket is extra powerful since it is not on the shared trinket cooldown, meaning we can stack this in execute and use it with Spymaster's Web as an example. I suspect this will be fixed, but even still this is a strong trinket that we simply just bind to Power Infusion.
Cantrip Items
In addition to normal gear drops there are also Cantrip items with extra effects. Below are the ones available to Shadow Priest with information on their power level for us.
| Item | Boss | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Naglering | Golem Lord Angelmach | Not relevant for Shadow Priests |
| Guiding Stave of Wisdom | General Angerforge | With the loss in weapon item level this is not suggested in any case. |