Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents for Shadow Priests in Cataclysm
All sections for Shadow Priest PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal race, talents, glyphs, gear, professions and macros. This will help you have a good understanding on Shadow Priest in PvP for Cataclysm, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will show you what are the best PvP Shadow Priest talents in Cataclysm Season 9 and why you should choose them.
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Table of Contents
Best Shadow Priest PvP Talents
This will be your default talents for Shadow Priest. As you may be confused by the selection of these talents, let’s look further into why these talents are chosen.
Make sure to place 31 talent points in your Shadow Talent tree before placing talent points in other trees.
In order for you to learn more about the effectiveness of this build, here are some key talents that require some understanding.
- Psychic Horror applies a 3 second Horror effect, and has a disarm effect on the target applied to for 10 seconds. This makes it effective as a defensive ability against melee opponents.
- Silence applies a 5 second Silence effect on a target when used, but is prioritized on healers due to healers having the ability to dispel the debuff of off their teammates.
- Pain and Suffering gives us a chance to refresh your Shadow Word: Pain from using Mind Flay.
- Evangelism increases your periodic shadow damage, and is important to have at full stacks before using Dark Archangel.
- Dark Archangel generates Mana based on the stacks consumed, and increases direct On-Demand damaging spells.
- Sin and Punishment gives your Vampiric Touch dispel protection, guaranteeing anyone who dispels your Vampiric Touch, and players nearby the person who dispelled, to be feared for 3 seconds.
- Shadowy Apparition has a chance to proc additional shadow damage on your target that is affected by Shadow Word: Pain. Having additional Haste allows for your DoTs to tick faster, allowing for more procs and an optimization on your damage throughput.
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Optional Shadow Priest PvP Talents
We can adjust the talents, Improved Mind Blast and Improved Shadow Word: Pain, depending on your composition and preference. Having Improved Mind Blast can assist you to land more coordinated burst in particular burst windows, especially with specializations such as Subtlety Rogue, which is more reliant on control to score and find kill opportunities.
Make sure to remove two points from Improved Shadow Word: Pain and add those points to Improved Mind Blast for faster Mind Blast casts. If you plan on playing with specializations that require more sustained pressure with DoTs, Affliction Warlocks and Unholy Death Knights, it could be a better option to remove two talent points from Improved Mind Blast and add them to Improved Shadow Word: Pain.
Shadow Priest 2v2 Build
This build is a considered alternative when you plan playing double DPS and need additional healing. These are respective talents that you will choose for this arena bracket:
What seperates this build from the default Shadow Priest PvP build is the removal of talents in the Discipline tree for Improved Renew, Empowered Healing, Desperate Prayer, and Surge of Light in the Holy Tree. Surge of Light is essential for burst healing output, allowing to instantly apply an additional Flash Heal after using Heal or Flash Heal on your target.
This also synergizes with the talent, Empowered Healing, since it increases overall healing of the spells that are applied to Surge of Light.
Lastly, Desperate Prayer grants an extra burst heal on yourself. Make sure to attempt using your healing spells when Mortal Strike effects are not applied to your target, especially when performing in this bracket for optimal survivalibility.
Since Archangel is a must in 3v3 arena, we are not able to use these talents to increase our survivalibility since we need additional throughput to guarantee kill windows.