The proposed change to Scorching Embers is:
Old: “Fire breath causes enemies to take 20% damage from your red spells”
New: [Similar to Aug’s Molten Embers, but for red spells]
My concern with this is that it seems like a nerf disguised as a buff. For reference, it looks like Molten Embers current tuning is:
R1: 10% bonus
R2: 13% bonus
R3: 20% bonus
R4: 40% bonus
The main issue is that the minimum and R2 empowered versions are lower than the old iteration.
In single target:
I’d imagine one might chase that 40% for a bit more Engulf damage, but also recall that Engulf eats away 2 (was 4) seconds of Fire Breath. So it won’t be there for the Catalyze talent, which increase Disintegrate’s damage per action only when Fire Breath’s DoT is active. Engulf does about 15% of the single target damage profile, so all else equal that’s 2.5% extra from engulf over the old iteration of the talent. But all else is not equal: to get this boost requires added execute time on Fire Breath, because Tip the Scales is only once ever two minutes. And as previously mentioned, Catalyze damage would be cannibalized.
In multi target:
With the old iteration, you can open a big pull in m+ with a R1 Fire Breath and get that 20% not only for every Pyre, Firestorm, and Consume Flame, but also you could Tip the Scales on another Fire Breath, and the initial damage from that new Fire Breath would benefit from Scorching Embers if cast before the currently active Fire Breath DoT fades. Then, your boosted Living Flame from Leaping Flames would also get the 20%. With the new iteration, you’ll want to awkwardly stand far away so you can get your Dragonrage out before you Tip the Scales into Fire Breath - because you only have 5 seconds to benefit from Scorching Embers and you don’t want to spend that on Dragonrage’s GCD. You’re going to eat 4 seconds of the DoT with 2 Engulfs, so you would have to immediately Engulf twice, ideally by having 50% haste or more. And that’s fine for a burst, but for the rest of the time Tip the Scales is on CD you’ll have to charge to R3, which is of course just tacking on execute time to Fire Breath. Not to mention, you’ll have to hard cast your Leaping Flames boosted Living Flame (no 20% boost) after Tip the Scales - you didn’t have Fire Breath DoT uptime so you don’t have a Burnout proc. So look: even more tacked on execute time.
Conclusion:
The new iteration of Scorching Embers looks like it adds some burst damage potential, but cannibalizes damage elsewhere in the kit. It also adds additional execute time to the rotation, lowering actions per minute and thus seems like a nerf to Flameshaper Devastation, at least in my opinion. I could be wrong, but I’ll have to experiment more. I know other stuff is added on the PTR, so maybe power was moved elsewhere. Still, I don’t think a nerf to this talent is going to feel very good, and the talent Iridescence might out-compete the Red themed capstone for the Red themed hero talent.