Now that CoP has built in Ether Nightmare, I see it as a buff. At least all those pug members have a chance to cause 50 damage on their Arcane'd CoP instead of the usual 2 times zero damage. And you don't need to bring Ether Nightmare.
Which means you could bring an extra snare, because they'll be running from RoJ.
COp + ether is waaaay better then ether + radiation, especially for killing grasping who are IMMUNE to disease. Also, the fact that the degen stacks to over 10 makes it better against aataxes who have natural +6 regen.
The way I see it, the update to CoP nerfed cryway but didn't affect A/Me farming as much. If u think about it, CoP now does more damage, just not all at once. 5 degen for 10 secs is equal to 100 dmg. The -33% dmg from sf doesn't affect that. So bring spirit of failure, forget about ether nightmare, and now u have a new pve only skill slot.