Decided to give the volatile mod a try. It split the arrow into alot of shots, which was cool, but felt extremely weak. I decided to go to the shooting range to get some numbers.
A single arrow did 107 (head) crit to Carl, and about 84ish body shot. I then backed up to let the whole volley hit and.... they each hit for 1 damage body shot and 2 crit? The arrow splits into 7, so that's 7 and 14 damage respectively.
Sooooo, this mod reduces single target damage by... about 90% give or take???????
Ok, what about the explosive head perk? I tried it and, landing all the arrows, barely did more than a single arrow, but this is harder to do since you have to land a full spread to get the damage. Backing up results in lower damage due to spread too wide and missing shots.
Okaaaay... maybe it's glitched and doing low level damage? I loaded back into the shooting range at normal difficulty.
Single arrow doing 240 to head and 184 to body. Now with shattered arrow, they do.... 4 head and 2 body each? That's 28 and 14 total respectively.
What about explosive head again? Total of 251 head and 196 body, explosion doing 104 of either. With shattered arrow, 259 total to the head and 252 body.
Definitely better, but... where is this actually useful??? You have to land the entire volley to get the full damage, which is arguably harder than just landing the headshot since it requires very precise distancing and aim.
So this mod has to be bugged. I'm trying hard to think of any other way it could be reasonably useful. Explosive Head makes it almost usable, but still definitely more of a novelty than something good. A mod should not rely on just one of the many perks we have available to be any amount of viable. Inversely, one single option should not completely ruin the utility of another option.
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I’ve tested three different types of Bows against CARL on Ultimate and haven’t experienced the sort of damage disparity you’re seeing. Here are the three Bows I used with Frame type, selected Perks (avoiding damage increasing Perks that could skew the numbers), Origin Trait and Masterwork listed, first hip-fired at close range to get a single body shot then again at farther range to get the split body shot, with Perfect Draws on each shot to ensure consistent numbers: [b][u]Mercury A[/u][/b] • High-Impact Longbow • Tunnel Vision, Adrenaline Junkie, Vanguard Determination, Draw Time MW • Single: 99 • Split: 36 x 6 = 216 • Split/Single: 2.18x increase [b][u]Hushed Whisper[/u][/b] • Precision Frame • Tear, Hatchling, Wild Card, Handling MW • Single: 83 • Split: 29 x 6 = 174 • Split/Single: 2.096x increase [b][u]Fortunate Star[/u][/b] • Lightweight Frame • Repulsor Brace, Destabilizing Rounds, Veist Stinger, Stability MW • Single: 66 • Split: 27 x 6 = 162 • Split/Single: 2.45x increase I also tested an additional three Bows with various damaging Perks enabled (Kinetic Tremors, Explosive Head, Jolting Feedback) and saw similar trends with the base damage of the Split shot dealing at least twice as much damage as the Single shot when ignoring the extra Perk damage dealt. Can you run your tests again while swapping out various parts of the loadout you used in your first tests to make sure there weren’t factors that we can point to as causing the issue (Exotic Perks, Armor Set Bonuses, etc.)? (΄◉◞౪◟◉`)