Good morning Shadow Priests! This article will be covering what I think is the best way to gear as a Shadow Priest using the best gear in the current game. This article will include Cataclysmic Enchanting, Gearing, Reforging, and Gemming with why I chose the items I did. Everything is going to be broken down for a more in depth analysis and all of this gear is found through the Arena vendors and some will be found through the raid Dragon Soul. I will also take into account professions, and for this season I am going to be using Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting.

Gearing

It is very important that you know how to itemize your gear when playing arena because gear plays a giant role in winning. As always knowing what to use is very detrimental to your success in PVP so I’m going to briefly go over a few aspects of what you are going to need. The first being the Mooncloth Freedom which is basically getting four pieces of Mooncloth gear for the bonus. This is absolutely crucial in arena because you cannot afford to lose your movement and positioning. I will also be covering how much Resilience you should be wearing in the new season because Resilience has always been the most important stat for us in Arena along with Intellect following right behind it.

Main Pieces:

• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Mooncloth Mantle]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Mooncloth Gloves]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Mooncloth Leggings]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Mooncloth Robe]

Off Pieces:

• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Drape of Diffusion]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Pendant of Alacrity]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Cuffs of Prowess]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Band of Cruelty]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Treads of Alacrity]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Cord of Cruelty]

Weapons:

• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Gavel]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Endgame]
• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Touch of Defeat]

Trinkets:

• [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity]
• [Cunning of the Cruel]
• [Will of Unbinding]

There are many things you can do for gear this season, especially with access to the Raid Finder. However, the most important thing you need to remember is getting the full Mooncloth set for that Freedom and getting the hit cap. Another thing you should note is the abundance of Resilience that we have access to, this leaves us a lot of room with Dragon Soul gear to fill in those extra slots if we feel we have enough Resilience already. If you plan on using the Deathwing weapons I advise to not even try to go for Rathrak the Poisonous Mind because the proc is virtually useless for Shadow and it scales very poorly. I have not tried [Ti'tahk, the Steps of Time] yet but the proc seems very nice, however, I know we can get the same proc from the [Insignia of the Corrupted Mind]

enchanting

When it comes to Enchanting you don’t really have a lot of options. Most of these enchants are no brainers but I am still going to go over them anyway. Feel free to change whatever you like because only a couple of these enchants can be swapped around for whatever meets your desire.

Enchants:

• [Greater Inscription of Vicious Intellect]
• [Arcanum of Vicious Intellect]
• [Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats]
• [Enchant Bracer - Greater Speed]
• [Enchant Gloves - Haste]
• [Powerful Enchanted Spellthread]
• [Enchant Boots - Lavawalker]
• [Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent]
• [Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect]

Gemming

This can go many different ways when it comes to gemming. With the new season we finally have the new epic gems and they are quite expensive to get right now. Anyways, when it comes to sockets most people put in pure intellect gems in red slots, while some others may put in a orange gem containing intellect and resilience. We also got a new epic gem for the blue slotsthat we had previously in Wrath but got reinstate in Cataclysm and that is [Mysterious Shadow Spinel]. Now with [Cataclysmic Gladiator's Drape of Diffusion] this eliminates the use for those gems. However, you can always trade the cloak out for something else and then use the gems to reach the Spell Penetration cap. I personally like to use [Willful Lava Coral] for most of my slots because I need the resilience to compensate for the PVE pieces I use. The yellow slots I will be using [Mystic Lightstone] or if you are a jewelcrafter then use [Mystic Chimera's Eye]. Generally it comes down to a personal preference and when items you have access to, there is no really wrong way to gem half the time since you will mostly be going for intellect.

Gems:

• [Mysterious Shadow Spinel]
• [Willful Lava Coral]
• [Brilliant Queen's Garnet]
• [Mystic Lightstone]

Most of you will probably be using these gems in your setup. I recommend running a very basic build so everything feels well rounded in terms of stats. Be careful when getting these gems because right now they are extremely expensive and hard to get. Just make the right decisions when gearing so you don’t have to come back later spending thousands and thousands of gold replacing these.

Reforging

Here we are finally at the last section, Reforging. If you read any of my other gearing articles you probably know by now that Haste is still the stat to reforge to. If you cannot reforge to Haste then reforge to Mastery. Sometimes I like to reforge some items to just Mastery for that extra [Mind Blast] damage and empowered periodic damage. The reason why most Shadow Priests like to go to Haste is because Haste indeed effects everything we do, and by everything I mean damage, global cooldown, cast time, and more. You probably heard me mention that I like to favor Mastery more than Haste and that is true, but the problem is you have much slower cast times and in previous season it was terrible to stack because of how many teams had access to +30% casting spells. However, we aren’t going to be seeing that much anymore except from Warlocks and Death Knights which is pretty nice because having a Rogue sitting on you with Mind Numbing was not fun.

Conclusion

As always when it comes to gearing it is really a personal preference. If you have access to Dragon Soul gear I advise to use it especially the pieces that have both Haste and Mastery stats. Going strictly PVP gear is always a great choice too because having a huge amount of Resilience is never a bad thing, I just always liked mixing my gear up and trying to better myself with the overall stats. There is also a great post on arenajunkies about gearing in Season 11 and I recommend you all give that a look when making your decisions because a lot of great players have posted their gear profiles and it gives you more options of what you can choose to do. I also want to leave you with this tool www.chardev.org because it has helped me in the past in making decisions on gear instead of wasting conquest points and gold. Hope you all have a great season and good luck!