I see this is an old issue but I've been away for a few months and am just now finding this. I don't have any links to posts to add, and honestly I think hunting down old posts is only as useful as people want it to be.
Brinkman's evidence is compelling but innacurate and I can explain how this bad information circulated the net back then just as it does now.
Castersrealm or some omni site decides to compile info, they use spell charts from some brady strategy guide. Some other ambitious person decides they're gonna make a site but this one will be different from CR because it's gonna be just for SKs, but the proprietor of that site is himself only a level 12 SK and doesn't know anything beyond what castersrealm says so he copies and pastes it to his new better SK site. Now we have 2 people who never used a spell explaining to the world what it does, even with algorithms from that fancy strategy guide based on a chart given to the author back in beta.
Now I can tell you what I remember, I played an SK on povar back in 1999 on through to planes of power. To begin I can recall that vampiric embrace always gained +1 hp and +6 seconds every time you leveled. I can recall being annoyed by the fact that SKs best lifetap was via proc not actual controlled cast (I must not have known about life leech at the time). This was obviously pre kunark as SK gets plenty of solid taps post 50.
I can also recall the shroud of undeath spell line being a sidegrade not an upgrade. The reason it taps for 50 is because it had a much longer 20 minute duration, SKs were forced to make a difficult decision to constantly recast a significantly better short buff vs a weaker low hassle version.
My evidence is anecdotal and based on human memory, it doesn't have links to posts of speculation amongst random visitors to a spells page, and it's 100% right. A sane man has to admit that it's at least possible to remember wrong, but I don't believe that's the case here. Fortunately I have better things to do than go on a crusade for proof of authenticity.
Zeelot's link was compelling enough to have left this alone, it included reference to a specific patch date and someone's observations on the spell algorithm. Brinkman's links appear to be random blurbs from people theorizing on the usefulness of the spell, not one person saying, "I'm a level x SK and it's doing this much damage" it's just some guy running his mouth about what he imagines he'd do with that spell he just read about and now wants to comment on.
For what it's worth I also know Brinkman in real life. He advocated this change without consulting me. He meant well but was mislead by poorly fact checked posts. This is a perfect example of a conviction on flimsy evidence.
Well that's all I have to say, hope this gets repaired... every time my SK procs for 30 I get a little more angry.
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