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Comment by Shadowb

Shadow word: death is an amazing spell!! it currently receives 100% of +damage and healing gear and it is instant cast, which is HUGE, especially for pvp since it has only a 6 second cooldown it is somewhat spamable. the "you take damage if the target doesn't die" is sometimes an issue, but not really considering the health that you will have at 62-70. this spell really adds to a priest's dps!

Comment by 11480

This spell can really put out some high crits. As far as I know, you're able to negate the damage done to yourself if you shield and/or take a shadow protection pot. Really nice way to get some instant damage and finish someone off.

Comment by tousdan

As a part Holy/Disc DPS'er in some instances where we can afford two healers, I must say that this spell adds a whole lot to a priest's dps output if you have lightwell as one of your talents.

Just let your Main healer know that you will take care of healing yourself and just use the lightwell every 2-3 PW:Deaths.

Oh and yeah, it's a great way to NOT give honor or marks in pvp. :)

Comment by Limiter

I looked at the rank 1 comments, and there's a post saying this gets 100% of dmg, even though it is instant. Can anyone confirm this?

Comment by 39423

Are you able to neutralize the damage if you have Shadow Protection or Prayer of Shadow Protection up?

Comment by 10844

if i have reflective shield and i use shadow word death wil i then throw 50% extra dmg back in his face??

Comment by 22744

DO NOT!!!
I REPEAT DO NOT use this skill on the Curator during his evocate phase (w/o a shadow prot pot and/or PW:shield, if you have less then 8k~9k health) or else if it crits you could 1 shot youself.
I am the kind of person who values spell damage and spell hit ABOVE everything else, (namely stam) and i have around 7100 health full raid buffs in dps gear (some "...Of shadow wrath" greens, which have no stats besides +shadow damage).
P.S. I learned this the hard way....

Aside from that...... this can be a lifesaving (lol irony) spell in pvp encounters, as if you time it very carefully you can rid yourself of sheep/ice trap. here are the steps:
1. Full health mage targets you for sheep and begins casting it you auto-target him back....
2. you wait until there is LESS THEN .3 seconds left of his sheep cast and spam click this spell
3. your spell hits the mage, and doesnt kill him, the damage you deal hits you and takes you out of sheep
4.GG /laugh (if it happens again within 12 seconds, hopefully you had your insignia on...)
or for hunter:
1. Hunter scatter shots you, and runs over to you.....
2. spam click this spell asap b4 you get traped..... (notice this is much harder to execute them Sheep as ice trap will imoblize you as soon as you are not affected by Scatter)

I encourage that you practice this with a mage or hunter buddy so you will be able to laugh at your CCer next time.
P.P.S. this might also be viable against fear (as it has a finite chance to break on damage).

Comment by 22744

Prayer of Mending is very useful if ya plan on useing this spell when ever its up.
BUT whats more useful is if ya got a Druid Healer in you raid, just ask if they can throw ya a Life bloom at the beginning of a pull and you can safely and planned SW:D your target.
AND if your druid is a very coordinated healer just ask them to always throw up another LB on ya after one expires.

Comment by savagy

Can someone tell me what happens if this spell is resisted? Do you still get damaged?

Comment by Furby

Just an absolute killer in PvP.
And is even extremely useful as a PvE spell.
As a level 64 (ATM =) ) Shadow Priest, all i have to do is VT, x2. By then the mob should be down to about 40%, otherwise i just wand until the mob is. Then i just do one Mind Blast and SW:D and the mob's dead. If NOT, then ofc i will loose a lot of my hp. BUT, on the next mob, i just add Vampiric Embrace. And poof, my hp is full again.

Comment by Phate01

Lol, the name of the avatar is for some reason 'Spell_Shadow_DemonicFortitude' instead of say..
'Spell_Shadow_ShadowWordDeath'

Comment by Stiverton

If death is caused by the damage taken from SWD then you will not suffer durability damage. A nice way to save some money.

Comment by calophi

This spell is great when you're grinding in an area where the mobs run away in fear from low health. It's a great way to take out the runners before they can go aggro another mob to help them. Plus, if they're running you know that the spell is likely to take them out instead of rebounding back at you.

Comment by 24269

If this spell gets reflected when you cast it, you receive damage x 2.

Comment by Irikan

If you shadow word death someone, and it crits but doesnt kill them, does it also count as a crit on you? and if so, can that proc blessed recovery?

Comment by 94757

I know a priest that used this on Curator on evocate, and Prince during enfeeble on the same run.

God that was a fun day :D

Comment by 136306

nice way to put it queggy :)

Comment by 139226

Let's say i cast this spell on a mage, and he doesn't die, can i reflect the shadow damage i would have taken with the Ultra-Flash Shadow Reflector?

Comment by Geri00

Can I cast this while enemy is behind me?

Comment by 124322

so.... if you use this spell on a warrior and he spell reflects, and the dmg doesnt kill you, does the warrior still take the damage?

Comment by lalilol

Just wanna add how nice this is to combine with reflective shield (disc. talent).

At lvl 62 my SWD hits for about 700. Those 700 hit my reflective shield and gets absorbed. My reflective shield then every now and then (quite often) crits the mob back for about 700. Or my SWD crits for about 1000 and the shield hits for about 500. Either way about 1400 - 1500 instant dmg.

It has yet to happen, but theoretically my SWD could crit for about 1100 which is also about the maximum of my PWS which then could crit for another 900 or so giving a total maximum of about 2000 instant dmg.

Comment by 166046

For any pvpers out there, you can use this to break sheep,fear and even blind if you cast it at the last moment. from server lag or something

Comment by Artea

As a holy priest, I usually only use this for sending my Prayer of Mending back to more useful locations. A useful experience a fellow priest learned recently during a naxx 25man run: Don't use this to kill zombie chow on Gluth. She had not been topped up after decimate, managed to one shot herself.

Comment by Psynergy

This spell can also help yourself avoid getting CC'd by means of Sap, Polymorph, Repentance and the like if timed right

Comment by cloudp

It's not from server lag, it's because the damage is applied as a one-tick DoT, so it's not instant. by Okiesmikie

hum. One tick DoT? damage OVER TIME implies always multiple ticks. Thats sort of the point of it...

Yes, the first poster IS right. If a perfect (imposible) situation existed, either you would cast SW:D first and the recoil damage would happen exactly then (which is to say, polymorph would be cast after that split-second), or you would get a "you can't do that while polymorphed" error message. If both casts were exactly at the same time (You cast SW:D EXACTLY when polymorph ends), it'd be a kinda strange thing - most likely you'd leave Poly then, but it would imply you cast ecaxtly after the spell begun, factoring all haste effects on the mage... If you're that fast, you have my respect.

Comment by Toldry

This spell seems to give you a hiden buff/debuff called "Shadow Word: Death" when you cast it, for a split second, probably to function as the thing that does damage to you when you cast SW:D.

I tried to make a macro that cancels that buff in order to avoid the damage;

/cast Shadow Word: Death
/cancelaura Shadow Word: Death

But it doesn't seem to work.

Comment by 268034

Being a healer Disc Priest lvling up I find this ability usefull in two ways. To begin with my rotation is PW:S > Penance > HF > Smite and many times target get to be ~500-800HP after the end of this rotation so SW:D really finishes th target at a low manacost instantily, second use is since i got 100% PW:S Uptime and i could use some mana from rapture using SW:D while its on if the target manages to break the shield i get a free SW:D.

Comment by 254321

see a mage casting polymorph at you? use shadow word: death

Comment by 297218

Can caster resist damage even if it damages target?

Comment by 334003

Note - do not use on Hodir =]

I have seen a video where one Spriest crits with this with the 400%-odd crit damage buff and the +50% magic damage taken buff on. He hit Hodir for 40k. 1-shotted himself from full hp. XD

Comment by Stormwaker

My mage friend comically likes to call it Shadow Word: Ninja. In battlegrounds or arena, he mocks how I'll pop out of nowhere and smack the button and "steal a kill". He even has a youtube video where out of no where I come up and ninja his kill...gave me a good laugh when I saw it :3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw_3ZSXYa5M

Compression and quality are sorta crappy, but between :50-1:12 I pop in and steal it, happened a few days before the account got hacked and banned for a solid year, before Blizzard gave it back, right after the Olympic theme and 2008 vintage pet and tabard (and Holiday, and 4th anniversary) :(

Comment by 521698

What about Rogue talent "Cheat Death"? Will priest still receive backfire damage?

Comment by TheMuffinMan

EDIT: Figured out my issue. Talents + Shadowform.

So to answer future questions: It is very unlikely that your Shadow Priest will take the full recoil damage.

Comment by 318094

For those of you playing a priest after playing a mage, do note that Shadow Word: Death, unlike, say... Fire Blast, can be cast even when your back is turned to your target, which is useful for kiting and expeditious retreats. Just throwing that out there. :)

Comment by ranky26

On targets over 25% health, it does almost exactly 1/3 of the damage on the tooltip. At or below 25% it will do the tooltip damage.

Comment by 521208

Well, compared to Execute, it hits hard at below 25%. Plus the 40 yards range... love this spell now.

Comment by Psyklone

SW:D totally went thru my pally bubble just now :(

Comment by 770512

Probably a dumb question, but I thought I remembered a guide saying a while ago that using SW:D gave you some mana back. Does it? I havent seen anything on it. I'm guessing no, but idk.

Comment by Allakhazam

Seems like a total waste of mana. It's instant cast, but that doesn't justify the fact that you run the risk of spending double the mana (to heal yourself) if you do 1 less damage than your target's remaining HP.

Novelty spell imo.

Comment by Thottbot

I'm pleasantly surprised about this skill, as I wasn't too excited about it when the new spells were unveiled pre-TBC. I thought I'd rarely use it, if at all. But it's actually pretty good. It's instant cast, so it's great to use on fleeing monsters, plus it's a great instant follow up to a mindblast. The damage is absorbed by your shield, and I have resisted the damage several times with only basic shadow resistance from my Benediction and some remaining T1 gear. Plus, even though I know it is mainly down to luck, but for me it crits fairly often and does great amounts of damage. As a holy priest in some basic + damage gear I have seen it crit for almost 1100 damage, which is great for me.

Comment by Thottbot

All in all it's a good spell with some interesting uses. It's great for PvP and all the grouping you'll be doing for quests and instances in outland, as most priests seem to be shadow and it's quite effective at stealing killing blows to proc spirit tap, especially when coupled with mind blast. As alluded to above, the two spells are a potent combination. The mana cost isn't bad either, but the damage it can cause to you and five-second-rule mana regeneration (especially with spirit tap + solo grinding) are important considerations for determining when to use this spell.

It can pack quite a punch -- both to the target and yourself. I've yet to kill myself with it, but I've seen it hit for over 1700, which is a bit scary. It's not like I use a whole lot of spells in shadowform, but this has earned a place on my hotbar.

Comment by Thottbot

Coupling this with Mind Blast can be extremely powerful. With about 340 spell damage and 5 points in Shadow Power (15% more to crit with these 2 spells) gives me about 32% chance to crit. Very often these 2 spells crit right after each other. and with a 1700 MB crit and a 1500 SW death crit it's really mean, and even if it doesn't kill them 1500 health isnt a rediculous amount in BC considering I have about 5500 with fort buff. And you can always toss your embrace on there for the extra healing back. The best thing is that not a lot of people see it coming. Hate to be the people with 2/3 life that die so quickly.

Comment by Thottbot

It reminds me of the warlock Shadowburn spell, instant damage but a drawback if it doesn't kill. Not a good choice on Elite mobs in an Outland instance, for it's hard to judge how much health they have left.

Comment by Thottbot

I love this spell.... can anyone say priest burst damage. Use Mindblast and then this straight afterwards, i have never seen a health bar drop so fast, especially if both crit, which happens alot.

Comment by Thottbot

The best use and only time i even consider to cast this spell is after a binding heal jumps to me. If you cast this on a mob the tank has aggro on it will almost certainly damage you in return, and binding heal will jump once more.

Comment by Thottbot

I crit for over 1400 today. And this is with very low +damage. Gave me the feeling of "WOA." It was such a manly moment that I had to put on "Eye of the Tiger" to keep playing.

*Edit- I guess I should talk about the spell... When you don't kill something don't worry about it. It is just a more efficient way of "Life Tap/Shadowbolt." Or atleast that's the way I look at it. Just make sure you have about 2000 hp coushin becuase this spell can literally lay your ass out. Not kidding.

Comment by Thottbot

so, if you used the Shadow Reflector trinket, then didn't kill someone with this, would you reflect the damage at yourself? I don't have a shadow priest high enough to test this. Someone please try it. I want to know!

Comment by Thottbot

This is an awesome spell, but make sure that you sheild yourself so it will absorb the damage if the target isnt killed.

Comment by Thottbot

just wondering

if this crits the enemy and doesnt kill you does it do the crit damage to you? and if it does do effects that proc on crit proc off this?

Comment by Thottbot

How good is this spell when it does a lot of damage that also gets reflected back. It consumes also the mana for your shield. Dunno if its really that good, maybe to finish off the mob, but thats it, not to start fights off with.

Comment by Thottbot

I'll be getting it tonight when i hit 62 wooooot

Heres a thought for dueling or if ally is quite far away:-

Cast Shield, wait for 10 secs, inner focus, start fite, mind blast, SW:D (shield absorbs but cooldown has ended), put shield straight back up! plus the 10secs u waited, mana wud have regenerated to cover cost of first shield + inner focus saved 100% of mana used by MB + u prob critted from the extra 25% chance from IF

sounds good way to start a fite to me! :) what u think?

Comment by Thottbot

I think shield is a waste of mana....should only be used if you are attacked and you are casting/channeling a spell....or eventualy to absorb the SW:D if it backfires...

Comment by Thottbot

You say you need shield to protect yourself against damage from the spell.

But what happens with reflected shield? This gives damage again back to the enemy (i have 50% reflect, dus with high damage, it should reflect pretty much back in theory) but not sure if it reflect indeed back, because it's your spell.

Comment by Thottbot

Look this is a very good spell if you know how to use it...

It IS a finishing move, so its always risky to use it before the mob has 2-10% left depending on mob and spec of the priest.

its also great if you are farming something from lower level mobs since you can almost always kill a nonelite mob from level 1-45 in one hit, its also a great imp killer even at your own level because of their low health, and when they are within your own level range they give u a free spirit tap and if u have powerinfused mushroom trinket u actually gain more mana then u use, and on the other hand killing any mob with this and having mushroom equipped u gain almost the same amount of mana used by the spell once the mob dies, so its a fine finishing move, shadow specs with a high crit chance spelldmg etc can almost rely on this to crit for a finishing move.

About shields, its ok that it can absorb the dmg or some of the dmg but its sometimes hard to calculate how muchis left of your shield, and especially if you are fighting multiple enemies.

As for pvp the one your fighting can pot or get a heal from someone so u dont know if its going to kill your opponent or not. But its still likely to if the opponent is alone, since its instant :)

Another tip is to put down a few vamp touch and embrace on several mobs that u can handle and then spam SW and MB since on the mobs u have embrace on so you can heal if they dont die from SW and get more mana :)

I always do the following combo for best mana efficiency and dmg result, vamp touch, shadow word pain, wamp embrace, mindblast and mindflay until u bring down the mob to your wanted SW-hp % and *pow* dead :p Calculate different on elite mobs and reput vamp touch and embrace if needed (bosses mostly) and you are always doing your maximum dmg and healing HP and MP with a not too much mana loss.

Be sure to let tank gain some aggro, for this is an aggro machine indeed. :)

Good luck

Rewws lvl 70 Shadow Priest Ravenholdt

Comment by Thottbot

Anyone tried this in combination with reflective shield(disc talent)? If so, does it reflect back 1/2 the damage you would sustain had the spell not killed the opponent?

Comment by Thottbot

for lvling i do not think i would use this spell. It costs mana, and the only time when i would use this is during my mana regen phase. Here is an extremely mana efficient way 2 kill a mob

vamp embrace, SW:P, mind flay, mind flay, (if the mob has a high amount of health mind blast if not) wand to death. On most mobs after mind flayind two times the mob is at half health. After you wand them down your almost at full mana again.

Comment by Thottbot

This spell should be called Shadow Word: Awesome.

Links

Shadow Word: Death

Shadow Word: Death	Level 85

12% of base mana	40 yd range

Instant	10 sec cooldown

A word of dark binding that inflicts 368 Shadow damage to the target. Deals three times as much damage to targets below 25% health.

If the target is not killed by Shadow Word: Death, the caster takes damage equal to the damage inflicted upon the target.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Shadow

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

Magic

GCD category

Normal

Cost

12% of base mana

Range

40 yards (Long)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

10 seconds

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect

School Damage (Shadow)
Value: 450 (SP mod: 0.316)
PVP Multiplier: 1

Flags

Shadow Word: Death

Buff

Spell Details

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