Tooltip say that every light or heavy attacks will do 27% splash dmg to 1 nearby enemy.
Instead, it give you a 27% chance to deal full damage to 1 nearby enemy.
Never happen to see ANY splash damage to nearby opponent. It is either do full damage or no damage for me.
Best way to check how its work is to ambush 2-3 guys standing near to each other and use battale log.
When Forcefull procs, you can clearly see that its damage goes right after your main ambush damage. Damage of Forcefull is the same as ambush damage.
And it is only happens like 1 out of 3 times which is pretty much as 27% chance stated on tooltip.
I exclusively used rank 1 on my NB due to lack of skill points, and it always worked as described in the tooltip. Every basic attack dealt 13% splash damage to a nearby target.
This was with combat text active, so I know it was properly working.
Now it seems completely broken -.-
Atleast whith ambush.
It still have 27% to proc instead of 27% splash damage, but it is now not dealing damage when proc on Ambush.
Instead, it just stuns nearby target for 1 second.
Tooltip say that every light or heavy attacks will do 27% splash dmg to 1 nearby enemy.
Instead, it give you a 27% chance to deal full damage to 1 nearby enemy.
Statistically, these two scenarios are exactly the same. However, you are right in that Zenimax are masters of incorrect tooltips and bugged skills.