Force pulse does basically the same base damage as any other spammable. But it also provides 3 status effects. With an Asylum staff, those are guaranteed every second cast. Each status effect does the up front damage that burning used to do (which used to be top tier for enchant damage). If the staff is charged, it’s possible to get procs of status effects for a light weave and another set from the skill. That alone is a lot of damage, but it gets better. If an enemy is within 8 meters of the target hit (size of Tarnished Nightmare proc) and has an active status effect, they also take magic damage that is roughly equal to the base damage of the three elemental damage types added together. In all, the actual damage can easily hit 200-400% higher than the base tool tip. This doesn’t affect PvE as much as PvP since dps is more about layering many sources of damage with minimal recasts of a single spammable. But in PvP, it’s so broken. Additionally, there’s the added benefit of a bug where status effects break stealth. So crouching players or NBs are both pulled out of stealth by this skill constantly.

This level of damage puts melee play (other than NB ganking)at a significant disadvantage.

Status effects also cost templars a lot. Before the status effect buff, the number of dots were lower and longer. So a Templar purge could reduce significant damage. The sheer number of status effects mean that longer dots may or may not get purged. To make purges work again for templars, they would need to purge N dots and all status effects or similar. Otherwise, the purge gets “eaten” by status effects that are short lived, free, and easily reapplied, especially by Force Pulse.

Overall status effects are a fun buff, but some skills, classes, and bugs need to be updated.