The new Eradication looks underpowered at 6% proc rate, but I like the design of the talent better. A haste proc always felt out of place in an affliction build, and for what it's worth it does simplify the affliction rotation a little bit not to have to worry which cast time your DoTs have. Also, given that Shadowbolt is the Affliction filler, I like that they're explicitly integrating it into the tree a bit more with a talent like that. Eradicate will have to be iterated on a few times, make no mistake: at 6% it's pitiful, and its mechanic makes its value scales negatively with additional crit rating. But this very rough version is, I think, still more at home in the tree that the current Live version.

Something I saw in the talent tree that I didn't in the notes (but maybe I'm blind): Demonic Embrace is now 3 talent points for 10%, to make room for Fel Synergy in Tier 1.

First of all, for all of you PTR testers, come to silvermoon. it doesnt crash here for some strange reason.
Noticed a couple of things, runing the build i linked above (FG/Emberstorm) i was doing 3.5k on dummies sub 35%.
The soulfire proc thingie happened when the Incinerate landed on the mob, so i sometimes had to cast Inci > Inci > SF. Or if you're REALLY close you can go Inci > SF.
SF was critting for about 12k-14k with MC up and an average of about 5k noncrit. Casts were about 1.38s with 527 haste rating.
This testing was all done using COA to proc MC so no 13% magical buff.

Btw the firestone now grants you 5%crit.
And spellstone grants you 240 haste rating (yes that's right, 240 Haste rating). My haste jumped from 527 to 767 with the spellstone.


Another thing i tested was the meta/ruin spec with COE. SBs were criting for 8k tops (COE) and on meta highest crit i got was 10k.
Soulfire critted max for 15k on meta with trinket and MC up. Normal hit on meta with SF was about 5-7k

How much damage did the FG do and which glyphs did you have?

I'm wondering if they won't do what they did in beta for a bit and put in a glyph vendor. They didn't mention it, but you never know. I can't explore the PTR right now or I'd go hunting.

Agreed. It feels very stop-and-start right now, and F&B is still absolutely worthless. A nuke CD is one way to prevent people from recast/spamming it, but I wish they'd done a nuke+dot instead. Not being able to fluidly cast CB if you have even .001 seconds left on the CD just feels so jerky. Having that dot to clip would be a way to both add a bit more skill to the spec and would prevent someone from chain-casting it. I suppose there's the PvP aspect to consider [a dot can be cleansed, after all], but if they keep the piercing effect...these are all dreams of the past, though. They ruined that idea a while ago.

Personally, I'd say a smart guild would have an elemental shaman instead, but that's all opinion.

I'd argue that it's a bonus for situations where you have a ticking damage aura [i.e. Twilight Torment, Felmyst/Sapph auras]. It's not a DPS bonus though, sure.


I'm actually wondering if crit will be valued even less now. With Pandemic being switched to 1.5 modifier crits where before we got 2 and Erad being swapped to a crit talent [losing value the more crit we have], I'm curious to see how things pan out. People are suggesting 'ah look now we like crit more!' but taking those two things into account...hmmm. Especially if Erad really doesn't have an ICD.