I know that it reacts with poison, causing additional explosions on contact with enemies suffering from serpent sting. BUT, if 3 mobs have serpent sting on them and the bomb hits all three, does the “extra explosion” gets triggered three times? I need to know if this is true because if it is then is it worth it to put bunch of serpent sting on mobs before throwing this bomb to boost aoe damage??
I don’t think it scales quadratically, but I’d have to double-check. I thought it just creates a single-target explosion on each. But, again, grain of salt there. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, as that’d have some interesting implications for Viper’s Venom and, especially, Hydra’s Bite.
It’s been a while since I’ve done short of Mythic unless carrying someone through Heroic gearing rq, so mobs tend to last long enough to warrant Serpent Sting anyways and I hadn’t thus thought about it beyond “Yeah, let me refresh these 4 GCD’s worth of stings with just one. Why not?”
Well, it’s always worth putting Serpent Stings on mobs if you are AOE-ing. Raptor Striking is the least of your priority…
That being said, by the logs on Warcraft Logs, it just looks like bonus damage to just the mob the Serpent Sting is on as overall it doesn’t account for that much damage. The main benefit is extending SS for another 12 seconds.
EDIT: So in the logs I can’t see a single case where he had SS on multiple targets at the same time he cast Volitile Bomb, so it’ll need to be tested on the multi-dummy setup. I’ll give it a try later. But if it did work that way, I think you’d see some massive numbers.
My thoughts as well. I’m usually refreshing 3-5 SSs with each Volatile, so I’d think it’d make up a larger number in my overall damage if it were scaling quadratically (i.e. if each enemy hit AoEs selves and all others).
So I tested this right before having to jump onto my Priest for a Mythic and actually, it looks like the OP is on to something there.
First, my details. My Tool Tip reads:
Initial Damage: 1,301 damage
Tick Damage: 1,301 damage
Volitile Damage to those with SS: Extra 355 damage
In Night Fae land, there are two “Cleave” Dummies. I waited until Volatile Bomb was up, turned off my pet and Serpent Stinged just one of them and got:
Direct damage: 3.8K damage (2 hits, one was a crit)
DoT: 2.2K damage (dots on two targets)
Volatile Bonus: 702 damage (So this appears to hit 2 targets)
The 2 hits on the Bonus was interesting.
I then repeated the experiment with both dummies Serpent Stinged and got:
Direct damage: 2.6K damage (2 hits)
DoT: 2.2K damage (dots on two targets)
Volatile Bonus: 1.8K damage (Which appears to be 4 hits one of which one crit)
I took a quick screenshot and left because I was late for the Mythic, so I didn’t keep testing, so I’ll try again when I can (which might not be until Wednesday) but initial testing looks each target with SS on them damages those around it, meaning damage can grow very quickly.
It also could be that my first try the Volatile bonus Crit to get 702 (again, I was in a super hurry and honestly though the test was more a formality), but there’s no way to get to 1,800+ damage on the second example unless both Volatile bonus damages hit both targets for 4 “hits” in total (of which one crit).
I’ve noticed this while doing skinning, when i’m pulling a ton of mobs with SS and i happen to get volatile bomb they get melted. i do think that the extra explosion is AOE
All i know is that i run hydras bite and with volatile bomb if i use it with all targets effected its basically like they were hit with and extra bomb.
But it’s not an “extra” bomb though, it’s an exponential amount of extras, although this needs more testing to confirm. If it does scale to 25 procs on 5 targets, the damage would be massive.