anyone else seen a huge rise in the number of elites and bosses that get fully locked but still have health since the elite started? normal bosses like stations and fabs not attiroth or hubgum

Yes

I think there might be an side effect with the scruuge release or something the highened npcing isnt enough to cause the rise which im seeing where the majority of elites and bosses get heavily effected by this rather than it being the minority. eg we have a warp station with 10 lock and 42k health remaining

It's a temporary increase in lag caused by too many people doing the same thing.

You will see more extreme cases with more powerful and active ships.

Short version is increased activity means your click and someone else's click gets crammed into the server at the same time and only 1 click gets registered for hurting the NPC or base (maybe enemy players too, can't really test this). It's just a nasty side effect to Dan altering the game coding to prevent multiple npc and base disables.

Would be nice if it didn't exist but it's the price the galaxy now pays to stop people from getting 3x and 4x disables on bases and elites.