Best In Slot Shadow Priest Shadowlands
The current best in slot gear for Shadow Priests optimizing PvE DPS in WoW Shadowlands 9.1. Best Items to Upgrade with Valor Points for Shadow Priest in Shadowlands Valor Points is a returning currency brought back with Patch 9.0.5. With this new currency, players are able to upgrade items from Mythic+ Dungeon, either from running Mythic Keystones or from the Great Vault, up to item level 246.
Holy Priest Bis 9.1
Best Potency Conduits for Holy Priests
Holy-Specific Conduits
| Conduit | Description | Raid verdict | Mythic+ Verdict |
| Focused Mending | Increases the healing Prayer of Mending by a sizable amount. | Good HPS gain | Good HPS gain |
| Holy Oration | Reduces your Holy words by a greater amount. | Good HPS gain | Good HPS gain |
| Lasting Spirit | Increases duration and healing bonus of Guardian Spirit. Value is sizably increased in 5 mans if your tank is more self-heal focused (DH/Blood etc) | Niche | Excellent |
| Resonant Words | Increases the healing of your next Flash Heal or Healby a sizeable amount after casting any Holy Word, including Holy Word: Chastise. | Great HPS gain | Great HPS gain |
Covenant-Specific Potency Conduits
Covenant Conduits are generally decent but not high priority compared to the base Holy options.
| Covenant | Conduit | Description | Raid verdict | Mythic+ Verdict |
| Kyrian | Courageous Ascension | Increases the damage of your Boon of the Ascended. | Minor HPS/DPS gain | Minor HPS/DPS gain |
| Necrolord | Festering Transfusion | Increases Unholy Nova duration and damage. | Minor HPS/DPS gain | Minor HPS/DPS gain |
| Night Fae | Fae Fermata | Your Fae Guardians leave behind a copy of your fairies for 60% effectiveness when you move them. | Minor gain | Minor gain |
| Venthyr | Shattered Perceptions | Increases the damage and duration of Mindgames | Minor HPS/DPS gain | Minor HPS/DPS gain |
Best Raiding and M+ Potency Conduits for Holy Priest
Holy Priest has good value across their conduits and often will get strong value out of many of them. Focused Mending and Holy Oration require minimal extra work from the healer to produce results. Raids always place high importance on Prayer of Mending, Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify so that should come as no surprise. In dungeons, Prayer of Mending gains a lot more value in Shadowlands now that there is more regular group-wide damage present.
- Raids: Resonant Words > Holy Oration and Focused Mending
- Mythic+: Resonant Words and Lasting Spirit > rest
Resonant Words is your top option to increase the value of your next Heal especially with the high acceleration of Holy Words in dungeons and raids thanks to Apotheosis and the Flash Concentration legendary. Whether you have a tank with high self-healing or not Lasting Spirit is a must-have conduit in dungeons with how hard tanks get hit these days.
Best Endurance Conduits for Holy Priest
| Conduit | Description | Raid verdict | Mythic+ Verdict |
| Charitable Soul | Casts a small shield on yourself when you Shield an ally. Due to how nerfed Power Word: Shield has been, these shields aren't much. | Weak | Weak |
| Condensed Anima Sphere | New conduit in 9.1, moderate defensive value. | Decent HPS gain | Decent HPS gain |
| Light's Inspiration | Provides a HoT effect after casting the Desperate Prayer defensive. | Minor HPS gain | Minor HPS gain |
| Translucent Image | Causes your Fade to provide damage reduction on demand. Priests' defense is limited, so having any damage reduction is helpful. |
Endurance conduits are much better and more universal than Finesse. Between raids and Mythic+, you'll often want to run the same conduits.
Best Finesse Conduits for Holy Priest
| Conduit | Description | Raid verdict | Mythic+ Verdict |
| Clear Mind | Situational use on encounters with frequent dispels. | Niche | Dungeon specific |
| Mental Recovery | There's plenty of other slows in the game. This is either for PvP or World quests | Niche | |
| Power Unto Others | Grants slight cooldown reduction to Power Infusion when you utilize it on an ally. Okay for Mythic+ | ||
| Move with Grace | Now reduces the cooldown on Leap of Faith. Rarely do you ever need to use grip on cooldown. | Niche | |
Most of the finesse conduits are very niche or situational in their uses. Often you'll be best off grabbing double Endurance conduits to improve your survivability.
General Endurance/Finesse Priority
- Translucent Image: Top Priority
- Clear Mind: High priority if dispelling frequently, Mythic+
- Light's Inspiration: Medium/Low Priority
- Niche uses for Move with Grace, Power Unto Others, Mental Recovery
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:
Best In Slot Shadow Priest Shadowlands
| #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:- 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.
If you need help with the legendary system in Shadowlands, check out the following guides on Wowhead: