Shadow Priest Trinkets [4.3]

Trinkets. Love 'em, hate 'em, gotta have 'em. Alongside weapon and set bonus, trinkets are some of the most important things you can equip. So which ones do you wear? Below I'll list some commonly-available trinkets for the 4.3 shadow priest, and how good they are. Note: these are listed in ascending order of desirability for Ultraxion (because that's easy to simulate.) I'll try to note when a trinket preforms unusually on other fights, but I probably won't have any solid numbers to back it up.

Bottled Wishes - 2.43
Purchased for VP. Easy to come by, but probably not worth it, when compared to other items you could spend VP on. Macroing it to AA and macroing it to SF leads to the highest sustained DPS output, but it's still quite low compared to other trinkets. Preforms quite well amazingly on the Spine of Deathwing tendons, due to being a controllable on-use trinket. Best-in-slot for that fight, followed closely by the PvP spellpower-use trinkets.
Source: Valor points.


Necromantic Focus - 2.56
This is a very reliable, boring trinket that may as well grant a static 390 mastery rating. Not as good as it sounds. Worse yet, it only triggers off periodic spell damage, meaning it will drop off during your burst-phase. Pity; that's exactly when this trinket would otherwise have shined.
Source: Baleroc (Firelands).


Darkmoon Card: Volcano - 2.98
Created by scribes, this could either be the easiest trinket to obtain, or the most difficult, depending on your financial situation, and the markets on your server. Watching for its proc and intentionally refreshing DoTs during that time adds about 50 DPS.
Source: Crafted (Inscription).
Proc: 30% on spell damage, 45 sec ICD.
Proc damage: 1378.39 + 0.1151sp. (Crit: x1.50)


Insignia of the Corrupted Mind - 2.75 / 3.10 / 3.49
A decent trinket, to be sure. It would be better if, by the time you'll be finding this, you weren't already hitting the 30% haste mark. Haste over this is of lessened value, but dropping haste to account for this trinket isn't a damage gain either. Only the heroic version of this trinket is strong enough to warrant re-casting VT specially to take advantage of it.
Source: Yor'sahj the Unsleeping.
Proc: 15% on damage, 110 sec ICD.


Foul Gift of the Demon Lord - 3.14
Easily obtained from 5mans, this trinket is a good starter trinket for any shadow priest. The value listed here is assuming no proc gaming, with good gaming, the value is even higher. Notably, the use-effect, despite being nearly-worthless on its own, can trigger other procs with each pulse, including Spellweaving, the extremely-potent AoE proc granted by the aspect of magic during the Madness encounter.
Source: Mannoroth (Heroic Well of Eternity).
Proc: 15% on spell damage or healing, 45 sec ICD.


Cunning of the Cruel - ? / 3.61 / ?
This trinket was very hard for me to find solid numbers for, due to the fact that I don't have one. As such, I've only listed the normal-mode version here. This trinket preforms quite respectably on single-target, and may scale better than other trinkets to AoE fights.
Source: 1.8% drop from Dragon Soul bosses without a loot chest.
Proc: 15% on spell damage, 25 sec ICD.
Proc damage:  9368.5 + 1.57765sp. (Crit: x2.00)


Will of Unbinding - 3.42 / 3.87 / 4.35
Simple, boring, and undeniably good. By every trinket list I've seen, this will be either your best or second-best trinket. Grab it and never let go.
Source: Spine of Deathwing.



Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor - 3.93 / 5.39
This trinket doesn't do what its tooltip says. Through in-game testing, I found that the normal-mode version deals +2122 damage per charge over the tooltip damage, and I'm assuming that the heroic version does the same. Based on that assumption, I came to the values you see here.
Source: Ragnaros (Firelands).
Proc: 100% on magic crit, gain Electrical Charge; 20% per charge on gain charge. 2.5 sec ICD.
Proc damage: 3247 (heroic: 5423) per charge. (Crit: x1.50) Does NOT scale to spellpower.