I really enjoy watching my Palico toss Meowlotov Cocktails at monsters and charge at them with the Rath-of-Meow, and I'd like to maximize the damage of those attacks.
How is the Meowlotov Cocktail's and Rath-of-Meow's damage calculated? Does it scale with weapon damage at all? Melee or ranged? Does blunt or cutting weapon type make a difference? Can these attacks apply elemental damage or status effects? Can they deal critical hits?
After doing some testing of my own, I found out that the damage of the two explosive attacks is only affected by the palico's ranged attack. The weapon's element, affinity, and whether it is a cutting or blunt weapon have no effect on the Meowlotov Cocktail's and Rath-of-Meow's damage.
That said, since a palico's weapon only adds a relatively small amount to a palico's base attack, the choice of weapon is for the most part irrelevant. From my testing, changing from the starting palico weapon to the weapon with the highest ranged damage increased the Meowlotov's damage by about 12.
Out of curiosity, I tested the small Meowlotov Cocktail bombs your Palico puts down after you put a monster to sleep and place a (Mega/Large) Barrel Bomb.
Seems like no armour skills affect the damage (Artillery, Bombardier, Palico Rally), and your Palico's weapon type and damage don't do anything either.
My cat has the gadget maxed at level 10, and the damage value I was seeing repeatedly vs Low Rank Great Jagras (sleeping) was 101 (x2 as the cat will place two bombs).
