Pure Shadow Guide

Author: James
Note: This guide was made for newcomers to Ascension, and isn't necessarily the most optimized versions of the build.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Pros
• Cons
• Leveling
• Starting Skills
• Mandatory Skills
• Recommended Skill Cards
• Leveling Talents
• Full Build
• Skills
• Talents
• Stats
• Items
• Classic
• Skill Rotations and Priorities
• The Basics
• The Rotation
• Single Target
• Multi-Target
• Useful WeakAuras
• Conclusion
• Mechanical Issues
• Recent Balance Changes
• [2022-04-03 - Live - Random Enchants]

Introduction

This shadow build focuses it's attention on the Random Enchant: Pure Shadow, this allows us to maintain an increased Critical Strike Chance along with an incredible amount of wide area damage.

We'll be combining Pure Shadow with Dusk Till Dawn, Mindburn and Shadow Core.
All of these Random Enchants work in synergy with Shadowburn, allowing us to hit up to 5 targets and applying Corruption to all of them at once, giving us higher uptime on both Molten Core and Eradication

With all of this in mind, let's go into the full guide, keep in mind that this guide was made based on a Spirit version of a caster build.

Pros

• Strong Single-Target and Cleave damage.
• Strong Cleave Burst.
• One of few viable Caster Specs for Dungeons.
• High skill ceiling for room to improve.
• Simple to roll on Draft / Wildcard.
• Steady Damage Output.

Cons

• Long build-up.
• Weak Single-Target burst.
• High skill floor.
• Must maintains stacks of Pure Shadow to be competitive.
• A lot of stacks / buffs to keep track of.

Leveling

For leveling, I'd recommend watching this YouTube video and following along with the path, it's quick & easy and avoids going into Dungeons.

Starting Skills

• Corruption
• Shadow Bolt
• Shadow Word: Pain

Generally you'll want to have your 3 core abilities at level 1, although you could ignore Shadow Word: Pain for now.

Mandatory Skills

These are abilities that you'll absolutely need for this build to function.

• Corruption
• Shadow Bolt
• Shadow Word: Pain
• Mind Blast
• Shadowburn
• Shadowfury
• Shadowform

Recommended Skill Cards

If you're able to, I'd suggest getting at least Skill Card - Shadowfury and Skill Card - Shadowform as the build doesn't function without them, and if you're willing to spend gold on Golden Sealed Ability Card, I'd recommend 2 of these 4 cards, and prestige or reroll using Hand of Fate till you get the others:

• Skill Card - Power Infusion
• Skill Card - Arcane Power
• Skill Card - Molten Armor
• Skill Card - Fel Armor

If you are lucky enough to have all four of these, then my priority list would be Skill Card - Fel Armor > Skill Card - Power Infusion > Skill Card - Arcane Power > Skill Card - Molten Armor. This is due to how hit dependent this build is and how hard it is to find gear with Spirit AND Hit.

Leveling Talents

I would advice against using this as a Leveling Build as we're very dependent on our Shadowfury, however if you choose to level as Pure Shadow, this is what I've done.

Ascension Build Calculator



The order of the Talents is not too important, but I'd recommend starting with Improved Shadow Bolt in Destruction Warlock, then moving onto Raze in Elemental Shaman, from there, you can do any order you desire.

Full Build

Ascension Build Calculator [Level 60]

Ascension Build Calculator [Level 70]

Skills

• Shadow Bolt - This is your main damaging ability.
• Corruption - Keep this up on your main target, it is used to proc Molten Core and Eradication.
• Shadow Word: Pain - Used only in emergencies where you would otherwise lose your Shadow Weaving stacks.
• Mind Blast - Used to trigger Backdraft and Shadow Weaving.
• Shadowburn - Combined with Dusk Till Dawn, this will hit 5 Targets and apply Corruption to all of them if you have 5 stacks of Dusk Till Dawn.
• Shadowfury - This is your primary Multi-Target Ability, with Pure Shadow at 10 Stacks, it will send a massive Shadow Crash into the enemies at the targeted location.
• Shadowform - increases your Shadow Damage by 10% as long the form is maintained.
• Molten Armor - Provides passive Critical Strike Rating from Spirit
• Fel Armor - Provides passive Spell Hit Rating from Spirit

Talents

Ascension Build Calculator

• Pure Shadow - Legendary (1/1)
• Mindburn - Epic (1/1)
• Dusk Till Dawn - Epic (1/1)
• Shadow Core for Raiding or Growing Corruption for Dungeons - Epic (1/1)
• Celestial Focus - Rare (1/1)
• Balance of Power - Rare (1/1)
• Precision - Rare (1/1)
• Darkness - Rare (1/1)
• Dark Embrace - Rare (3/3)
• Fierce Mind - Rare (3/3)
• Improved Shadow Bolt - Rare (3/3)

If you're using a Staff, avoid Celestial Focus.

Stats

Ideally, you'll want the following stats, however, always prioritize getting Hit Capped, remember that Hit Rating is different from Melee to Casters.

(Stat Priority: Spell Power > Spirit = Critical Strike Chance > Haste)

• Hit : 16% (8 Rating = 1%)
• Critical Strike Chance: 25% (14 Rating = 1%)
• Haste Rating: 12.5% (10 Rating = 1%)

Hit Cap for casters is 16%, so we always aim to hit this, no matter what our other stats are.

Critical Strike Chance we want to aim to get about 25%, as we're getting the rest almost for free, using Spirit Stacking we're essentially converting 40% of our Spirit, into Critical Strike Rating. Assuming that we have 500 Spirit un-buffed, we'd get an extra 30% Spirit from Spirit Tap, which would put us at 650 Spirit, where that Spirit then converts to 260 Critical Strike Rating (18.57%). Aside from these stats, we're also getting an extra 10% from Pure Shadow, in addition to 30% from Molten Core.

Haste Rating is a hard one to math out, but essentially we want to get "GCD Capped" which means that by the time we've finished a cast, it lines up exactly with when we're able to cast another one. And we're already gaining a lot of Haste from Eradication and Backdraft.

Items

It's very hard to create a Best-in-Slot list of items on Ascension, as the progression is pretty fast and missing an item in one place, means we'll have to supplement the missing stats somewhere else, and it leads to a mess.
But assuming that you'd be able to obtain the absolute Best in Slot, these are the items I would aim for.

Classic

Best in Slot for Classic

Skill Rotations and Priorities

The Basics

At its most basic, the premise of Pure Shadow is to spam Shadow Bolt until you're at 10 stacks of Pure Shadow. Pure Shadow allows you to cast an empowered Shadowfury and gain the benefits of the Critical Strike Chance. Dusk Till Dawn wants you to use a cast time spell, like Shadow Bolt, going into the improved Shadowburn, and then follow up with applying Corruption on up to 5 targets.

This Mind Blast > Shadow Bolt > Shadow Bolt > Shadowburn > Shadow Bolt > Shadow Bolt > Shadow Bolt > combo is the heart of the build, and if you have that committed to memory, then the rest is simple. Anything beyond it is simply cooldown and movement management. The priority lists below will showcase where exactly they are to be used optimally, but as long as they are being used at all, your damage should not suffer too severely.

The Rotation

This is a priority system, not a rotation. This means things higher up have priority over things lower on the list, rather than cast them in this order. You would go down the list until you hit the first thing that is true, cast that spell, then go back to the top and start again. This of course assumes raw single target with no mechanics. Please do not go throwing Shadowfury into an immunity or Mind Control

Single Target

1. Cast Mind Blast
2. Cast Corruption
3. Cast Power Infusion / Berserking
4. Cast Shadow Bolt until you have 1 remaining stack of Backdraft
5. Cast Shadowburn if you are at 5 stacks of Dusk Till Dawn
6. Cast Shadow Bolt until you have no remaining stacks of Backdraft
7. Cast Arcane Power / Trinkets if you are at 10 stacks of Pure Shadow
8. Cast Shadowfury if you are at 10 stacks of Pure Shadow
9. Cast Shadow Word: Pain if Shadow Weaving is about to drop.

Multi-Target

1. Cast Mind Blast
2. Cast Power Infusion / Berserking
3. Cast Shadow Bolt until you have 1 remaining stack of Backdraft
4. Cast Arcane Power / Trinkets if you are at 5 stacks of Dusk Till Dawn
5. Cast Shadowburn if you are at 5 stacks of Dusk Till Dawn
6. Cast Shadow Bolt until you have no remaining stacks of Backdraft
7. Cast Shadowfury if you are at 10 stacks of Pure Shadow

Useful WeakAuras

Download WeakAuras Here
How To Download & Install WeakAuras

Weak Auras is the most important AddOn for players seeking to master their class and take their gameplay to new heights. WeakAuras allows you to display helpful visual cues anywhere on your screen, which enable you to play better. Most players use it to track their trinket procs, highlight on screen displays of their most important cooldowns, or track the timers of boss mechanics. It is highly customizable and makes keeping track of your procs and cooldowns effortless. The drawback of WeakAuras is that is has a bit of a learning curve and isn't the most user friendly. WeakAuras allows you to import other players data directly into their UI, however, and most players choose to simply import other people's WeakAuras rather than make their own. WeakAuras can be used to create just about anything you can imagine, as it is a LUA scripting tool (essentially an AddOn that creates other AddOns, in-game).

List of WeakAuras made specially for Ascension can be found here.

Conclusion

This build is always going to be great on performance, but due to certain content having more punishing movement, crowd-control or other disrupting abilities, this build can fall really far behind if our buff uptime gets denied.

We're able to push out a lot of cleave damage, making this build superior in Mythic+ Content where we can keep our stacks up throughout the entire dungeon.

This build scales really well with gear, meaning that we'll never be put behind on raw throughput and will always be able to compete with the other builds.

Mechanical Issues

Currently there is an "issue" where if there is less than 5 targets, Dusk Till Dawn will hit some targets twice, an example would be, if there are 3 targets, Let's call them Target-A, Target-B & Target-C

If I start casting Shadowburn on Target-B, Target-A and Target-C will take damage twice from Shadowburn, resulting in 5 hits, while only 3 targets are present.

Recent Balance Changes

[2022-04-03 - Live - Random Enchants]

• Shadow Bolt now scales 53.5% of your spell damage. Up from 48.9%.
• Shadowburn now scales 37.4% of your spell power up from 33.3%.
• Pure Shadow stacks are now gained on cast instead of hit. This means that you can use Shadowfury right after you fire your tenth Shadow Bolt and you do not have to wait for it to hit the target. Overall, this change should smooth over the rotation and create more viability especially in fast-paced environments where sometimes your Shadow Bolt casts would not deal damage to a target as it died after you finished your cast but before the Shadow Bolt could hit the target.
• Pure Shadow stacks can now additionally be gained from Shadowburn and Shadow Word: Death.