With the recent Morrowind update myself and many others have noticed that Impale has been hitting much weaker than it used to in previous patches. This likely has something to do with ZOS making most raid buffs additive with CP instead of multiplicative. Impale's tooltip reads: "Throw a magic blade with lethal precision to strike an enemy, dealing X Magic Damage.
Deals 300% more damage to targets at or below 25% Health."
With Morrowind, ZOS made skills or buffs with the wording "damage done" additive with CP instead of multiplicative. This change lowered the DPS ceiling which is what ZOS was trying to do, but it seems to be affecting some skills like Impale (which also have "damage done" wording) and indirectly nerfed them by pretty large amounts. Even last patch and before that, Impale and other % damage done skills like Puncturing Sweeps have been additive with minor slayer and minor berserk (again I'm assuming this is unintended), but now with CP also being additive these skills are hitting like wet noodles.
I decided to test Impale in a few different ways (10 to be exact):
CP used: 66 Master at Arms, 56 Elfborn, 56 Elemental Expert, 13 Thaumaturge, 10 Spell Erosion, 9 Staff Expert
Gear used: 5 Julianos (light), 1 Grothdarr (heavy), 1 Ilambris (medium), 1 vMA Inferno Staff (Sharpened), for minor slayer testing 3 Moondancer jewelry with 2 spell damage enchants, for non minor slayer testing 3 Willpower jewelry with 3 spell damage enchants. All gear was Legendary with magicka enchants and divines traits.
1) gear + CP + minor berserk + minor slayer
2) gear + CP + minor slayer
3) gear + CP + minor berserk
4) gear + CP
5) gear + minor slayer + minor berserk (no CP)
6) gear + minor slayer (no CP)
7) gear + minor berserk (no CP)
8) gear (no CP)
9) no gear + minor berserk (no CP)
10) no gear (no CP)
The increased damage done NEVER equaled to 300% except for when no gear, cp, or other buffs were applied to my character. Here are the damage results:
Damage before execute, Damage during execute, % increase, damage during execute if Impale worked as stated
1) 4844, 14280, 194.8%, 19376
2) 4592, 14029, 205.5%, 18368
3) 4728, 14250, 201.4%, 18912
4) 4475, 13996, 212.8%, 17900
5) 3361, 11693, 247.9%, 13444
6) 3138, 11471, 265.6%, 12552
7) 3250, 11655, 258.6%, 13000
8) 3026, 11431, 277.8%, 12104
9) 882, 3332, 277.8%, 3528
10) 817, 3267, 299.8%, 3268
The most important scenario is mainly the 1st one, because this is what most players who raid or do dungeons will be wearing. In this scenario Impale is only giving 194.8% extra damage during execute instead of 300% and 14280/19376 or 73.7% of the advertised value.
@ZOS_GinaBruno ,
@ZOS_RichLambert ,
@Wrobel
I haven't tested this with other skills yet, but I'm assuming this would also affect Executioner, Sweeps, Beam, passive executes, etc. as long as they have (deals x% more damage).
EDIT: A good point was brought up by
@Juhasow. The missing 22.2% on 8) is likely the result of the destro staff passives giving an additional 8% damage done on single target abilities.
