| Shadowfiend |
- Shadowfiend
- Level 42 priest ability
- 40 yd range
- 3 min cooldown
- Instant cast
- Creates a shadowy fiend to attack the target. Caster receives 3% mana when the Shadowfiend attacks. Lasts 12 sec.
|
| Usable by |
| Class |
Priest |
| Properties |
| Type |
Offensive |
| School |
Shadow |
| Cooldown |
3 minutes |
| Other information |
| Level learned |
42 |
| Improvements |
 [Mindbender] |
Shadowfiend is a priest spell that summons a Shadowfiend to fight alongside the priest for 12 seconds, dealing Shadow damage. Each time the pet lands an attack, the caster gains 3% of their maximum mana. A pet action bar appears for the priest to command and control its spells.
While the Shadowfiend can deal considerable amounts of damage, it primary use is usually to restore mana. Holy priests in particular may wish to use Shadowfiend as often as possible, if only to maintain their mana pool.
Notes
- The tier 3 talent [Mindbender] replaces your Shadowfiend with the Mindbender ability. The Mindbender has a duration of 15 seconds and only a 1-minute cooldown. Although it is far poorer both at dealing damage and restoring mana, with a potential uptime of almost four times that of the Shadowfiend, the Mindbender is capable of outperforming it in both these respects, provided the priest makes the most of its short cooldown.
- The Shadowfiend requires an enemy target (within 40 yards) to be selected in order to be summoned. It will spawn next to the target, and immediately attack it.
- The Shadowfiend comes with a normal petbar, with Attack/Follow/Move To and Passive/Defensive/Assist modes, and can be commanded accordingly. The Shadowfiend will spawn in Follow and Assist mode with
[Shadowcrawl] on autocast, and will immediately attack the target of its summons. The Shadowfiend always spawns with these settings, regardless of what it was set to last time it was summoned. The Shadowfiend will auto-cast Shadowcrawl on cooldown, regardless of its target's location.
- If the Shadowfiend's target dies, it will move toward the next relevant target, that is any who has recently attacked or been attacked by you; if no such target exists, it will return to the priest's side. Despite the Shadowfiend's default Assist mode, it will keep attacking its assigned target indefinitely, regardless of the priest's subsequent targets.
- The Shadowfiend has a base attack speed of 1.5 and a 12 second duration.
- The Shadowfiend benefits from the priest's haste, with sufficient amounts potentially granting extra hits and consequently increasing damage output and mana regeneration. The Shadowfiend's haste is determined at the moment it is summoned, meaning it will not benefit from any haste effects gained by the priest after that point.
- The Shadowfiend receives 35.7% of your shadow damage bonus per hit.
- The Shadowfiends' attacks are shadow damage and can be partially resisted but follow normal melee damage rules, therefore being capable of critical strikes, but also susceptible to misses, parries, dodges and glancing blows. This reduces the damage output of Shadowfiends considerably on higher level mobs (especially in raid encounters) and in PvP versus classes with high melee mitigation.
- Shadowfiends deal shadow damage. Therefore, their damage can be increased by debuffs on the shadowfiends' target that increase shadow damage taken (e.g. "Curse of Elements") resulting in greater damage.
- Non-player area of effect damage taken by the Shadowfiend is reduced by 90%.
- The Shadowfiend can be the target of most friendly spells, including: direct and AoE heals,
[Power Word: Shield] and HoTs; dispels such as 
[Dispel Magic] and 
[Cure Disease]; and utilities such as 
[Levitate], 
[Mind Vision] and 
[Leap of Faith]. It should be noted that should a Prayer of Mending proc jump to the Shadowfiend, the buff will vanish (without jumping) if the Shadowfiend expires.
- As a player-controlled unit, the Shadowfiend cannot be targeted with many raid-wide spells such as
[Power Word: Fortitude], and cannot acquire these buffs. However, it can acquire the 
[Bloodlust]/
[Heroism] buffs.
- As with all pets, moving out of range of your Shadowfiend (around 85 yards) will cause it to expire.
Tips and tactics
- Should the Shadowfiend's target die, it will likely spend time either moving toward a new target or simply returning to the priest's side. Either will cause the Shadowfiend to waste time and you to forfeit valuable mana. Try to use the Shadowfiend on targets that will not die or otherwise become unattackable before it despawns.
- Shadowfiend takes on the buff of Bloodlust/Heroism if it is active when [Bloodlust]/ [Heroism] is cast, and it will hit the mob faster and return more mana. When circumstances are conducive, using Shadowfiend shortly before Bloodlust/Heroism can yield a good deal of extra mana.
- Shadowfiend benefits from buffs that increase your maximum mana.
[Hymn of Hope]'s buff increases maximum mana by 15% and will therefore increase the Shadowfiend's contribution by the same amount. Since the buff only lasts 8 seconds, this is best achieved by casting Shadowfiend immediately followed by Hymn of Hope.
- Since the Shadowfiend requires an enemy target to be summoned, healing priests may benefit from using a Shadowfiend macro to save switching targets.
- In PvP, the selection of a target for the Shadowfiend can be critical. Abilities such as
[Fear], 
[Psychic Scream], 
[Frost Nova] and 
[Entangling Roots] can all prevent the Shadowfiend from achieving many (if any) hits, wasting its cooldown. Canny opponents will make the most of these abilities, especially for healing priests for whom the Shadowfiend is often a key form of mana regeneration. For these purposes, try to choose a target that is unlikely to CC or kite the Shadowfiend. When playing against classes that CC regularly (such as other priests with [Psychic Scream]) consider waiting until after they use their key CC before summoning the Shadowfiend.
- Should your Shadowfiend be CCed, remember that you can dispel magic effects on it as you would any other friendly target. It is usually worth the expenditure of a [Dispel Magic] if it allows for an extra couple of hits. [Leap of Faith] can also be useful on occasion for bringing your Shadowfiend back into play, although it will automatically use [Shadowcrawl] if it is off cooldown. It is also possible to use
[Fear Ward] on your Shadowfiend.
- Priests self-selecting via the target self keybind can select their Shadowfiend by hitting this key twice, or once while already self-targetting. Conversely, priests should take care not to accidentally select their Shadowfiend, as this can easily lead to wasted heals or buffs such as [Power Word: Shield] or
[Pain Suppression].
Patch changes
Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28): No longer takes reduced damage from area of effect spells. Cooldown reduced from 5 min to 3 min. Now benefits from the priest's haste.
- Hotfix (2011-07-06): "Shadowfiend is now causing the casting priest to enter combat when cast on enemy players."
- Hotfix (2011-07-01): "Channeled spells are no longer being interrupted if cast immediately after Shadowfiend."
Patch 4.2.0 (2011-06-28): Shadowfiend uses the new Assist pet stance functionality.
- Patch 4.0.1 (2010-10-12): Now regenerates 3% mana when the Shadowfiend attacks, down from 5%. Range increased to 40 yards, up from 30 yards.
Patch 3.3.0 (2009-12-08): [Avoidance] (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
- Patch 3.1.0 (2009-04-14): Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now returns mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised.
Patch 2.0.3 (2007-01-09): Added.
See also
External links
