Shadowfiend

Shadowfiend is a priest talent. It is automatically learned for Discipline and Shadow priests. A pet action bar appears for the priest to command and control the Shadowfiend's spells.

• The 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 at dealing damage, 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 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.
• 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 Purify; 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 with all pets, moving out of range of your Shadowfiend (around 85 yards) will cause it to expire.

• 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. 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.
• 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. 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 Purify 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.

• The Shadowfiend appears as an epic card for the Priest class in the Grand Tournament expansion of Hearthstone. The flavor text reads: "Hopes to be promoted to "Shadowfriend" someday."

• Shadowfiend (Fires of Outland), TCG card
• Psyfiend (priest talent)