Shadowfiend

Shadowfiend is a level 40 Discipline and Shadow priest spell that summons a Shadowfiend to fight alongside the priest for 12 seconds, dealing Shadow damage. A pet action bar appears for the priest to command and control its spells.

Improvements

 * Mindbender

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. 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.

Trivia

 * 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."