- The shadowfiend attacks using melee shadow damage. Its attacks may be blocked, parried, avoided and partially resisted. It may also crit.
- Each actual hit returns 5% of the priests max manapool (was: mana based on damage, but they changed that). As long as you hit, you get 5% mana back regardless of how hard you hit.
- The shadowfiend attacks at one swing per 1.5 seconds. It lasts 15 seconds, meaning you get 10 hits off in an ideal solo case. You can theoretically get 11 hits if you spawn the shadowfiend next to the mob in question as it tends to hit just before despawning.
- The shadowfiend is NOT affected by the priests haste rating. It is however affected by external haste like bloodlust. Notably, it is affected by wrath of air which grants it up to 20% more attacks by default. The gains are usually neglected in a raid setting since the shadowfiend must run up to the mob, leaving us still at 10 hits. Unless you take advantage of...
- The shadowfiend Shadowstrike ability is on autocast, ideally allowing the shadowfiend to spawn next to the mob. Even if it is on autocast, it rarely if ever ever use this ability automatically. Make sure to cast this in a macro after summoning the fiend. This alone is worth 1-2 extra hits on any mob; spending precious time running really sucks.
- 6.5% of your shadow spellpower is added to each hit. This means the shadowfiend does scale in damage with your priest. Authenticity of this number is disputed, however. I have also seen the number 37% on wowwiki; frankly I do not know which is true. But everyone seems to agree that it scales with spellpower.
- Talents increasing your shadow damage spells also increase the output of your shadowfiend. That includes Darkness, Shadow Weaving, etc.
- Since 3.2, it does no longer have a high avoidanc_e rating, but in return it has a decent health pool meaning it is no longer oneshot by other players (instead, it's twoshot. Yay). It still has some damage mitigation from aoe, but not as much as a hunter pet. You're still better off not sending it into a raidboss warstomp, it will die. I don't know the exact number though.
- Used to scale with your stamina, attack power and armor. I have no idea if it still does. No priests have attack power anyway.