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A core choice at the start of your journey in the Shadowlands will have you decide where your allegiance lies; would you rather support the Kyrian of Bastion, the Necrolords of Maldraxxus, the Night Fae of Ardenweald, or the Venthyr of Revendreth?
Choosing a covenant is the most important decision your character will make in Shadowlands, as the covenant abilities and soulbinds will significantly impact your spec's gameplay and performance. Through this choice, your rotation changes, certain bonuses appear in dungeons for your entire group, and you are able to follow the story in different paths.
Shadow Priest Gear and Best in Slot - Shadowlands 9.1. ' 11/7/2021 em 20:35: Minor edit. Por EllipsisPriest. 06/7/2021 em 17:10: Update Raid BIS trinkets. Por EllipsisPriest. 28/6/2021 em 12:16: Reviewed for Patch 9.1.0 Por Anshlun. 28/6/2021 em 12:15: Reviewed for Patch 9.1.0 Por Anshlun. 28/6/2021 em 10:24: Minor fix Por EllipsisPriest. Sep 28, 2021 After the Shadowlands was introduced onto the platform, you are now able to collect various Legendary Powers, and at the same time, craft your very own preferred Legendary Items. There’s another system in the Shadowlands that centers around the Covenants, and there is a total of four to choose from for shadow priest shadowlands. PvE Shadow Priest Pre-Raid & Best in Slot. WotLK, and Shadowlands! WoW Classic Era Updated to Version 1.14.0 September 29, 2021. Short Answer: YES! Zax reviews the Shadow Priest spec in the beta for WoW: Shadowlands. Shadow got a massive overhaul out of nowhere. Usually specs are a mes. Priest – Shadow. Talbadar's Stratagem: While you have Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch active on the same target, your Mind Blast deals 60% more damage. This legendary requires a bit of setup but once you have all your debuffs going on a target, expect your Mind Blast to hit like a truck.
In this Shadowlands guide, we will help you choose the right covenant for your playstyle, based on how much they impact your performance as a Holy Priest, updated for Shadowlands Launch.
Best Covenants for Holy Priest
As a quick recap, we've created the table below to highlight the notable differences between covenants. Don't hesitate to click the headers to go to their respective guides!
Best Raid Covenants | ||
Covenants | Rating | Best Soulbind |
Kyrian | Good | Pelagos |
Necrolord | Good | Emeni |
Night Fae | Great | Niya |
Venthyr | Good | Theotar |
Best Mythic+ Covenants | ||
Covenants | Rating | Best Soulbind |
Kyrian | Low Keys: Good High Keys: Decent | Pelagos |
Necrolord | Low Keys: Good High Keys: Good | Emeni |
Night Fae | Incredible | Niya |
Venthyr | Low Keys: Good High Keys: Good | Draven |
Covenant Choice Changes with Patch 9.1 Holy Priest
Holy will continue to prefer Night Fae for Raiding and Mythic+ in 9.1. The covenant legendaries do not impact your covenant selection and all the covenants are viable for Holy Priest.
Best Holy Priest Covenants for Raiding
Holy in Shadowlands is often focused on utilizing many short cooldowns to reduce the cooldowns of their Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify, and provides two strong raid cooldowns in Divine Hymn and Holy Word: Salvation. Many of the Covenants offer some side-damage resources that don't mean as much to Holy Priest, given that there is no damage/healing interaction like Discipline has.
However, the healing the abilities do, how they are produced, and the soulbinds that support them are very significant to Holy and in that regard Night Fae and Necrolord compete well.
The Fae Guardians ability operates with 2 Fairies that can be cast on allies or yourself and another that automatically jumps to enemies to return mana to you. This covenant has received some strong buffs in 9.0.5 to double the damage reduction benefit of the Guardian Fairy, improve the quality of life of the Wrathful Fairy and to tease us with buffs to the benevolent Fairy that they then reverted, leaving it unchanged. The damage reduction given is valuable for further tank support, generally a weak spot for Holy Priest, the cooldown reduction is more valuable now that Divine Hymn provides a greater healing bonus to the raid after a full channel and the mana return of the Wrathful Fairies is increased through the automatic jump to an enemy, saving you a global to apply it.
The Unholy Nova ability produces solid healing on a low cooldown, with heavy control over where the ability will land to ensure it's maximum potential. With soulbinds, the Emeni bind has a sweet and easy to acquire bonus with Lead by Example offering up to 15% bonus intellect on demand. This is excellent to utilize before one of your raid cooldowns in Divine Hymn or Holy Word: Salvation.
Best Holy Priest Covenants for Mythic+
In Mythic+ the Night Fae is absolutely incredible. As mentioned above, damage reduction for the Guardian Fairy was doubled in 9.0.5 giving you incredible damage reduction to your tank and making them more stable when tanking difficult packs. The Wrathful Fairy mana regen will ensure that you rarely run out of mana in even the most chaotic of Pick Up Groups and the Benevolent Fairy can grant your favorite dps some notable cooldown reduction.
The flexibility that it offers, even if you're not in a coordinated team is very valuable. While the Mythic Dungeon International highlighted how well an amazing team can take advantage of the cooldown reduction for challenging pulls, this increased damage reduction will heavily carry your tank support, allowing Holy Priests to be the ultimate tank supporters. The more you're able to allow your tank to avoid kiting out of DPS's Flame Patches or Wild Spirits the faster mobs will die and the run will go. Fae is the way.
Holy Priest Raiding Covenant Analysis
Kyrian
Due to the raid design, and the fact that some abilities naturally play towards the strength of the cleansing effect provided by Summon Steward / Phial of Serenity; there is already a value proposition in being able to negate mechanics from it. While some of these effects have been turned into magic debuffs rather than bleeds, there is still solid benefit in cleansing these debuffs, especially when mistakes happen and the alternative is death or expending overly large amounts of mana to power heal you through the error.
Boon of the Ascended is still a solid cooldown to have in a raid environment, but its also ANOTHER heavy cooldown for a spec that is chock full of them. To that end, it can be more challenging to properly fit this cooldown in without overlapping other healers or just stacking it on top of one of your other cooldowns. Building stacks in a raid can also be inconsistent depending on whether the encounter is single target or multi-target. The more enemies that you can strike, the stronger your subsequent Eruption will be, but that also needs to be aligned with incoming damage patterns. The more specific the scenario has to be, the less valuable a cooldown or resource is.
Some of the soulbind options are also solid to bring to the raiding table. Kleia grants a temporary debuff immunity in Kleia's Ascendant Phial, or a lot of stats and healing in Pelagos' Phial of Patience and Combat Meditation. Later on, Pelagos even gains Let Go of the Past to round it all up and seal the deal.
Necrolord
Unholy Nova is the Covenant ability for the Necrolords. Unholy Nova will split damage and healing depending on the number of enemies/allies hit. As a result, when using either to heal it can help reduce overheal by hitting many individuals because you're not putting massive healing into only one or two allies. It is a quick burst of healing with some trickle healing resulting from players damaging the enemy that has received the DoT effect.
A huge benefit to this Covenant is that you can leverage your soulbinds to further assist your cooldown windows. Lead by Example for instance provides 13% bonus intellect which you can time to have just before Holy Word: Salvation or Divine Hymn. It is simple to use, does decent healing to many allies, can be cast on an enemy, an ally, or detonate immediately if you cast it off yourself.
Fleshcraft creates a shield equal to 40% of your max health and reduces damage by 20% when channeling. If there is sufficient downtime then you can create some strong shields to better mitigate heavy burst damage or you can channel while a powerful mechanic is going off to protect yourself.
Night Fae
The chaotic Fae Guardians is the Night Fae Priest Covenant ability. It produces three faeries at once that can move to a new target depending on the spell cast. Initially they will instantly apply to an ally or enemy that you have selected. Targetting an enemy? The offensive Faerie will apply to it and the defensive and cooldown reducing faeries will apply to you. Target an ally and the offensive Faerie will not apply, while the other two will be applied on your ally. With the 9.0.5 changes if you target a friendly with Fae Guardians then the Wrathful Fairy will automatically apply to an enemy, this should be your preferred way of using the ability going forward.
Flash Heal moves the Faerie that reduces a major cooldown on the target, Power Word: Shield applies 20% damage reduction and Shadow Word: Pain applies the final Faerie that will regen mana if you are actively attacking the enemy. The cooldown reduction that Holy receives is toward Divine Hymn which can have some good value, especially if it can net you an extra cast per fight. If you are holding Divine Hymn for specific events then this cooldown reduction could be less relevant, but if it can fight in more efficiently then all the better. In that case you could reduce the cooldown of a DPS to increase their damage.
The soulbinds are quite good Dreamweaver for example has, Social Butterfly for a free 3% versatility OR Empowered Chrysalis which redirects a very small amount of heal into a shield OR you can choose a Potency conduit. Field of Blossoms provides an on-demand haste bonus and Somnambulist gives a small added movement boost.
Fae Fermata is the soulbind conduit that pushes you to 'juggle' your damage reduction or cooldown reduction buffs between two targets, which can be mana costly and GCD intensive but powerful with the 9.0.5 buff to the conduit. It reduces a cooldown that you often are planning out well in advance and needs to result in an extra use to see any sort of value. If not, you toss the cooldown reduction on a DPS to help them out.
Venthyr
Your Covenant ability as a Venthyr is big single target damage that has nothing to do with Holy. Each encounter has generally scripted burst patterns that can make planning its use very straightforward but the damage reversal is limited. So while Shriekwing will cast Wave of Blood around every 30 seconds, casting Mindgames before said damage will only reverse a small portion of that raid wide hit and frequently the affect is consumed by the boss on melee strikes on tanks. All in all though, it is good throughput on a relatively low cooldown.
There is a nice bright side however, your soulbinds really take off later on. They take time to reach their maximum potential with General Draven's soulbind being the top pick. Hold Your Ground is just a generally strong overall trait but will only be able to be unlocked months into the expansion, if you're patient Venthyr can be a good pick if you play lots of Discipline and Holy and are looking for a covenant ability that is easy to use and stays strong. The Service In Stone trait is an adequate defensive but mainly just a compliment to the end-tree trait.
Door of Shadows is absolutely lovely movement and can help greatly in raids and dungeons alike.
Holy Priest Mythic+ Covenant Analysis
For full descriptions check the Raiding paragraph.
Dungeons are likely an area where you will notice the impact of Fae Guardians the most when it buffs other players. It's a fun gimmick made incredibly powerful by the 9.0.5 changes. The damage reduction alone is plenty reason to take this covenant and enjoy the huge tank support that you'll provide. The more coordinated you are, the greater the cooldown reduction can be and of course the bonus mana is always nice to have on hand for challenging bosses.
Holy Priest Covenant and Soulbind Guides
Now that we have highlighted each Covenant's strengths and abilities for you to decide which is best, you can read our in-depth Covenant guides below. These pages detail the best soulbind paths for Shadowlands PvE as well as optimal covenant ability usage for each covenant.
Recommended Raiding Build
Single Target
- Last Word / Psychic Horror
- Mindbender / Void Torrent
Multi Target
- Misery / Twist of Fate
- Last Word / Psychic Horror
- Auspicious Spirits / Shadow Crash
Recommended Mythic+ Build
- Searing Nightmare / Misery
- Last Word / Psychic Horror
- Shadow Crash / Auspicious Spirits
- Ancient Madness / Hungering Void
Boss specific recommendations and strategy:
Raid BossesTier 1 (15)
Fortress of the Mind - The best for single target fights. More insanity generation, and more damage from Mind Blast and Mind Flay. Also synergizes well with the talent Psychic Link and the Talbadar's Stratagem Legendary.
Death and Madness - Can be good in Mythic plus when mobs in a pull dies at different times, and to load up on insanity before the next pack. The biggest downside is that it does substantial reflect damage, which can be dangerous. If your group is doing big pulls this can be a good pick because you basically want to Mind Sear -> Searing Nightmare and not cast Mind Blast or Vampiric Touch, making the other talents considerably less valuable. Death and Madness helps you finish off the remaining mobs after you’re done aoe’ing and will give you a full battery of Insanity for the next pull. Also has incredible synergy with Shadowflame Prism, since chain resetting Shadow Word: Death just gives you more Rifts from the Legendary.
Unfurling Darkness - While not having much value in PvE is the clear winner for PvP - after casting Vampiric Touch your next Vampiric Touch is instant and deals initial damage. Synergises well with both Misery and also Damnation.
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Tier 2 (25)
Body and Soul - The best talent in this row. Giving us some much-needed mobility.
San’layn - Would be a great survivability talent if it wasn’t in the same row as our only reliable mobility spell.
Intangibility - Would be a great survivability talent if it wasn’t in the same row as our only reliable mobility spell.
Tier 3 (30)
Twist of Fate - The best talent for pure single target DPS.
Misery - The best talent in multi-dotting situations.
Searing Nightmare - The best talent for 3+ target AoE. Is picked for most dungeons. If it can hit 3 or more targets you completely stop casting Devouring Plague.
Tier 4 (35)
Last Word - You pick this if your group needs more interrupts.
Mind Bomb - Weak pick because it replaces Psychic Scream.
Psychic Horror - Instant single target stun. Very strong pick in both raids (if there are adds to use it on) and M+.
Tier 5 (40)
Auspicious Spirits - Best single target and low target cleave pick. Increases your Insanity generation and the damage from your spirits.
Psychic Link - Strong for spread cleave. Does nothing on single-target.
Shadow Crash - Strong stacked cleave pick. Not far behind Auspicious Spirits on single target due to the high insanity generation and high damage.
Tier 6 (45)
Damnation - Can be nice for world content to quickly kill a target however, it has no real value in PvE content. It synergises well with Misery and Unfurling Darkness, since the application of Vampiric Touch through Damnation deals the initial damage.
Mindbender - In combination with the Shadowflame Prism legendary this is the strongest pick on single target and cleave.
Void Torrent - Strong single target pick if you do not have the Shadowflame Prism legendary.
Tier 7 (50)
Ancient Madness - Can be useful in situations of big AoE where you want to remove void bolt from your rotation while in Void Form. Synergizes well with Searing Nightmare to burst down those big AoE packs in M+.
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Hungering Void - The baseline choice for single target and multitarget cleave. You can extend your Void Form by a significant amount depending on your haste and crit. It also makes your void bolt increase your damage done to target for 6 seconds.
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Surrender to Madness - This talent gives you a 25 second STM buff, increasing your insanity generation by 100%. It also activates your Void Form for 15 seconds. When the target you cast STM on dies you lose the STM buff but you don’t lose the Void Form buff.
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If you can utilizeSurrender to Madness perfectly, it can be strong in low dungeons, where the time between pulls are shorter than the cooldown of Voidform (less than a minute). Currently does not see play in most situations.