Yep same here experiencing exactly the same as what you reported. Just another Nightblade skill broken by the patch. So is Stealth/sneak and Shadow Cloak. Seems ZOS is hell bent on destroying the Nightblade skill line and of course no scheduled maintenance on 9/18 or any feedback on all the posts reporting bugs and broken abilities and skill lines with the new update. Nightblades took a serious hit again. When will it end............................

Crit jumping up and down with no apparent reason is usually due to your side capturing and losing enemy keeps in cyrodiil.

And weapon damage has nothing to do with surprise attack or killer's blade damage - those scale with spell damage.

Killer's blade doing low damage is usually because the mob's health was above 25%.

Mystwraith wrote: »

Never been in Cyrodiil so buffs from there don't affect my toon.

I realise weapon damage has nothing to do with surprise attack or killers blade damage but my spell damage/crit stats have not changed either yet my damage output has.

That killers blade is not doing the same damage as pre-patch on the exact same mobs I was killing previously must then be down to surprise attack hitting for less. Would that then be right?

If that is correct then why would surprise attack be hitting for less when none of my buffs/stats /gear has changed?

Copied from my post on Update 4 Issues................................

Prior to the new update I could kill a VR6 Enemy with a two strike combo of 1 strike Suprise Attack followed up with 1 strike Killer Blade. Since the new update this is no longer possible. It now takes one strike Suprise Attack and two strikes Killer Blade to accomplish the kill. Whats up ZOS.

Nothing has changed on my end. I use a combo of sword and dagger for the Weapon Damage and Weapon Cit Buffs. In addition both have Precise traits and enchanted with Decreased Health which gives 39 Unresistable Damage.
Both the Sword and Dagger are VR14 with 146 WPN Damage. Prior to update I had VR12 Sword and Dagger which gave out 143 Wpn Damage. Both are crafted Hundings Rage for the addition 4% wpn crit. My statistics are

Weapon Damage total 212+10 which is over the 202 softcap and a Weapon Critical 53.1%.

For an added kicker if I switch out the dagger and put in another sword then I get the two strike combo kill. Dah?

Kego wrote: »

With 1.4 the Spell Penetration on Light Armor was reduced. You only get 28% Spell Penetration instead of 42%.

I think that is the reason why you are doing less DMG, cause the Enemies Spell Resist is now higher against you.

With a second Sword, you gain another 2.5% more DMG overall, which seems then enough again to bring your Enemy <25% for the Killers Blade execution.

I read your post and had a Ring of Physical Harm which gave an additional 13 Weapon Damage. Equipped that and still the same. Yes Equipping a sword in place of the Dagger allowed for the two hit kill but the Ring should of also took care of it while wielding a Dagger. Also tried enchanting a Dagger with 36 Magic Damage and that did not make any difference either. Therefore something else is wrong. ZOS has yet again screwed up something that was working prior to its update.

@Palidon‌
As @Kego‌ has said, killers blade uses spell damage and magicka, so a ring of physical harm won't help at all.