The Shatter Soul ability (the morph of soul strike from the soul magic skill line) is not working properly for 3 main reasons.
The ability (Values set for my magicka sorcerer) is supposed to hit nearby enemies for ~16000 damage if the enemy is killed while the effect is on them.
NOTE: if some of these tooltips that say "nearby enemies" could be classified into actual values i.e. "enemies in a 6 meter radius" that would be greatly appreciated.
The three issues with the ability in its current state are:
1.) If the ability is cast on a target and the ability itself does not kill the target, the ability will not proc it's AoE component. (A notable exception to this is the mage's wrath ability and it's morphs) For example: If I cast Shatter Soul on a target and my own curse or DoT effect kills the target, the AoE effect will not proc.
NOTE: This is difficult to verify as the timing is difficult to test and therefor I may be mistaken on this assumption.
2.) If the ability is cast on a target and another character scores the killing blow on that target the effect will not proc it's AoE component. I have verified this numerous times, and can provide video proof of necessary. The tooltip for this ability states that "if the target is killed, it explodes for 16000 magic damage to nearby enemies" This wording leads me to believe that if the taget dies while the channel of the ultimate is active they should explode regardless of who killed the target. If it is intended that the effect should only proc if the caster scores the killing blow with the ability itself, this should be clarified in the tooltip.
3.) The damage from the AoE component, on my sorcerer, tooltips for roughly 16000 damage, the actual tick of damage is about 6500 for a non crit, and 11500 for a critical strike. These number are roughly 40% of the listed value from the tooltip and is severely nerfing the damage output of this skill. Another interesting note is that the reason the damage is so low is because the ability is not functioning correctly, as it currently stands, if the tic of damage that kills the target is a critical strike, every target within range of the AoE blast will receive a critical strike from the AoE component of the skill that is roughly identical to the tic of DoT damage that killed the target, if the tic of DoT Damage that killed the target is a non critical strike, all targets in the blast radius will receive a tic of damage roughly identical to the non critical tic of damage from shatter soul that killed the target. For Example: if I cast shatter soul into a group of mobs and I kill the target with a 6.5k non critical tic of damage, all targets in the area will be hit for 6.5k, if I kill the target with a critical tic of damage for 11.5k all targets in the area will be hit for 11.5k. So instead of checking to see if the skill is active on a target that dies, then applying the tooltip damage to all enemies in the area, the skill is copying the damage of the final tic to everyone in the area. This is why the damage of the skill is doing 40% of the intended tooltip damage.
I would love a response from a DEV on this topic as some of this may be working as intended and just worded in a way that leads to player confusion, and other parts of the skill are actually not working as written in the skill tooltip.
@ZOS_GinaBruno Ill be asking the question on the next ESO Live if I can, and would appreciate and answer either here on this post, or there on live, thanks.