Shadowfiend

Shadowfiend
Shadowfiend Instant cast 6% of base mana Creates a shadowy fiend to attack the target. Caster receives mana when the Shadowfiend deals damage. Lasts 15 seconds.
Usable by
Class	Priest
Properties
Type	Offensive
School	Shadow
Cooldown	5 min
Talents
Improvement talents	Mental Agility, Shadow Reach, Veiled Shadows
Other information
Ranks	1

Shadowfiend is a Priest spell, attained at level 66 for 8 90 .

Notes

The mana gained from Shadowfiends' attack is 5% of the caster's maximum mana.
Without shadow damage bonus, the Shadowfiends' hits deal an average of 180 damage to an equal level mob without shadow resistance. Its average damage per attack, however, can be significantly lower due to melee damage mitigation.
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 or shadow resistance.
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. Note that Shadow Weaving will not affect shadowfiend damage.
The Shadowfiend grants up to 11 hits per use, although this number is usually 10. Its attack speed is 1.5 and it has a 15 second duration. It is rare but possible for it to get one final attack as it expires if it spawned adjacent to your target.
The Shadowfiend receives 357-393% of your shadow damage bonus over the 15 second duration depending on 10 to 11 attacks, or 35.7% per hit for 10 hits.

The patch 2.1 implemented a normal petbar for the priest to further help the priest control his/her shadowfiend. The bar functions as a normal petbar, with Attack/Stay/Follow and all three modes of Passive/Defensive/Aggressive. The shadowfiend will spawn next to the priest in Defensive mode with Shadowcrawl on autocast, and it will immediately attack the priest's current target. Despite Shadowcrawl being on autocast, it will almost never use the spell on its own.

If the Shadowfiend's target dies, it may pick another target at random, or it may simply return to the priest's side, both of which will cause it to waste time and you 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 conductive, using Shadowfiend shortly before Bloodlust/Heroism can yield a good deal of extra mana.

A macro to have the Shadowfiend use Shadowcrawl on your current target immediately after being summoned can result in about an extra 560 damage over its duration in high-end raid gear. Additionally, macros bound to your other spells to have the shadowfiend re-cast Shadowcrawl can yield another 950 damage. With the talented 3 minute cooldown, these macros come out to a DPS gain of 8.4. Every little bit helps.

It would be helpful if an experienced macro writer could post code snippets for the macros described above.

Despite the Shadowfiend spawning with Shadowcrawl on autocast, it will rarely take full advantage of the spell. This can be countered via macros that will order it to cast the spell when you preform your other actions.

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.

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