Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Shadow Priests in The War Within 11.0

All sections for Shadow Priest PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Shadow Priests in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Shadow Priest PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Voidweaver
Hero Talents: Archon
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new hero talent trees, Voidweaver and Archon. Archon is a bit weaker in its current state due to recent nerfs, resulting in Voidweaver being our baseline Hero build out of the two trees.

Let’s see how to best allocate our Hero talent points, starting off with Voidweaver.

Hero Talents: Voidweaver

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As it currently stands, Voidweaver will be your preferred Hero tree. In terms of what this tree does, we receive enhancements to how much Shadow damage we can deliver thanks to our hallmark node, Entropic Rift. This greatly boosts our Shadow damage once summoned by Void Torrent, not only for the direct damage it deals, but from talents like Voidheart, Void Empowerment, and Void Blast that give us another way of bursting our foes. Let’s look at our core talents that require a bit more explanation in order to increase their effectiveness.

Devour Matter is quite unique, providing us a way to consume all absorb shields with Shadow Word: Death on a selected target. This excels against Discipline Priests to counteract their Power Word: Shield. This also buffs Shadow Word: Death in the process and grants us 5 Insanity if our selected target had a shield before it was removed.
Depth of Shadows is excellent when paired with Deathspeaker, as it will proc its Shadowfiend effect for some bonus single-target damage on your selected target. Expect to gain the most value out of this talent when playing with an Affliction Warlock. The more Shadow Word: Deaths you land on low health targets, the higher your Shadowfiend uptime is.
Collapsing Void makes Entropic Rift deal more damage and grow in size the more Devouring Plagues you throw out. Once Entropic Rift expires, it explodes to all nearby damage for some hefty AoE cleave.

As for our flexible nodes, we can select No Escape instead of Dark Energy depending on the matchup at hand.

No Escape reduces your opponent’s uptime if they are in Entropic Rift‘s radius, and varies in its snare effect depending on how close they are to its center. This is most effective against melee cleaves.

Hero Talents: Archon

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Next up we have Archon. This tree provides us with a hefty amount of modifiers tied to our Halo ability, meaning that it’s mandatory to select Halo if you want to swap from Voidweaver to this Hero tree.

To utilize this build to its fullest potential, let’s break down some core talents listed here that require a bit more understanding.

Power Surge summons Halo 2 additional times, with each one being sent in 5 second intervals of each other after the initial cast. This also extends the radius of Halo to make it hit more targets that are further away from you.
Manifested Power grants you Surge of Insanity after using Halo. This allows you to deal some hefty on-demand burst with Mind Flay: Insanity, which becomes even stronger thanks to Empowered Surges directly below.
Incessant Screams summons a clone of your character after using Psychic Scream at the location you originally used it. After 4 seconds, it will send out another Psychic Scream. This is best against melee cleaves where you are the primary kill target, providing you some breathing room if they break out of your initial Psychic Scream.
Divine Halo makes Halo gravitate back to you after reaching its maximum distance, dealing a bit more AoE damage to enemy targets and healing to friendly targets, depending on who it passes through.

As for our flexible talents here, you can swap to Heightened Alteration instead of Word of Supremacy if you expect yourself to be the opposing team’s primary kill target, and if you are facing a setup based composition. This extends the duration of Dispersion for a longer damage reduction effect, helping us the most while our healer is affected by a lengthy CC chain.

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Priest Class Talents

In the Priest class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing into each tier. Some of most noteworthy mandatory talents are:

Shadow Word: Death to either execute your target, or break a majority of magic based CC.
Phantasm, which offers more opportunity for Priests to land Crowd Control with Psychic Scream or avoid danger.
Void Shift, allowing you to swap health with an ally and is not affected by dampening, denying any potential kills.
Sheer Terror reduces the chance of Psychic Scream breaking, which becomes more of a necessity when playing with Incessant Screams.

For our flexible class talents in our Voidweaver tree, Holy Nova and Blessed Recovery, or Move with Grace can be swapped around with other talents offered to us featured below.

Death and Madness lets us use another Shadow Word: Death on a target if our first one did not execute the target at 20% health or below.
Void Tendrils instead of Sheer Terror in our choice node, which can be selected against melee cleaves if your current composition doesn’t have any root effects. You could also use this on enemy healers out of a Crowd Control chain to prevent them from connecting back to their team, or against Preservation Evokers to delay Verdant Embrace or Rescue.
Mind Control if you want a unique way of Crowd Controlling your opponents, as you can control where your affected target moves at the expense of your own movement.
Spell Warding, which is on a choice node with Blessed Recovery, can be picked if you’re facing a double caster rot composition.

However, if you prefer using Archon, we recommend some slight changes from our Voidweaver build.

Divine Star for Halo in its respective choice node, as this talent is mandatory in order for Archon to be effective.

Shadow Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Misery to apply both Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain at the same time on your selected target after successfully casting Vampiric Touch.
Unfurling Darkness to benefit off of Misery again after casting Vampiric Touch, as your next Vampiric Touch is instant cast. Keep in mind that this has an internal cooldown of 8 seconds.
Dark Evangelism to buff our periodic effects on certain targets, mainly from Mind Flay or Void Torrent.
Tormented Spirits, incentivizing us to cleave with our DoTs, as Shadow Word: Pain ticks now have a chance to summon a Shadowy Apparition. This hits all targets affected by Vampiric Touch and makes our spread pressure a bit more noticeable.

As for our flexible spec talents, you can swap from/to Mental Decay for Deathspeaker if you prefer more direct single-target burst. This synergizes quite nicely with Depth of Shadows in our Voidweaver hero tree more for Shadowfiend uptime.

Shadow Priest PvP Talents

As a Shadow Priest, we have a default loadout that you will almost always use in most matchups: Catharsis, Phase Shift, and Psyfiend.

Catharsis allows you to deal damage back to your preferred target from your next Shadow Word: Pain. Since we are almost always the kill target, this will make our throughput a lot stronger if used properly. It’s important to use a WeakAura for this ability to make sure you’re not over-capping any accumulated damage.
Phase Shift as this allows you to avoid Crowd Control and incoming damage if timed correctly. It also pairs quite nicely with Phantasm, making it easier to push in and throw out Psychic Scream.
Psyfiend as your primary Mortal Strike effect on the target it hits. This reduces all healing by 50%, applies a powerful snare, and as a bonus some minor single target damage.

However, you can swap from/to Psyfiend if you are playing with a Rogue, Hunter, or Warrior that has a more consistent Mortal Strike effect, to any of our optional talents:

Mind Trauma to steal Haste against players, and is best against Preservation Evokers, Unholy Death Knights, Frost Mages, and Affliction Warlocks that rely heavily on this secondary stat. In order to benefit off this talent, you’ll be looking to fully channel a Mind Flay or Void Torrent on the target you want to steal Haste from.
Void Volley is promising against double melee teams that are permanently running you down. You can use either Void Eruption or Dark Ascension to summon a barrage of Shadow bolts near yourself. If any bolt hits an enemy target, it will apply a micro-fear effect that is not affected by Diminishing Returns.