figured i'd close the loop on this one. The issue started a week ago. the update wouldnt do an index seek which i assume it was doing before because it ran considerably faster. Regardless i noticed the index was at 40% fragmentation. i also noticed it was automatically defraged a few hours before all my issues started.

So i defraged the indexs. but still could only get the proc to use a seek if i rewrote the update. I didn't have a problem doing that however really wanted to know what caused the issue. Nonetheless, once the weekend hit i rebuilt the clustered then the nonclustered the updatre was using. i instantly noticed the update using the index seek. It went from 3 hours to 9 mins with this mornings run. The process ended up failing down the line anyhow do a different step growing the tran log so large we ran out of space on a drive. It's like the wild west around here. One thing at a time please

thanks for your help