The Torgue Cobra would always add at least 150% of weapon damage as explosive splash. Right off the bat, that beats the hell out of BL2’s mockery of the weapon by almost double the splash damage. Depending on how full the tech pool was, it had a chance to add either 225% or 300% of the weapon damage as explosive splash. With Blast Master (Bad Ass should produce higher numbers, but I have never gotten a good enough one to put this to the test) Brick this leads to some incredibly high damage numbers when the 300% goes off (with very strong damage at 150% and 225%).
The Jakobs Cobra in BL2 would have been great fun if it had a 1/3 chance to do +150%, +225%, or +300% damage as explosive splash with each shot. Sniper Krieg may have been viable at that point despite it not triggering Bloodbath. Maya would have really enjoyed its synergy with Reaper. Still, at the very least, it should have had +150% damage as explosive splash in place of the 80% it received.
I know you are an expert at the finer details of Borderlands 1, so you seem like the best person to ask.
I don’t have the means to test it right now, or I would, but I am suddenly curious about something. Does the Cobra in the first game benefit from increases to grenade damage? It has a very large splash radius on larger procs, and I know rocket launchers benefit from increases to grenade damage, so if it does, then Warmonger could possibly outperform Blast Master for one-shot damage. A Bad Ass with the fifth line increasing grenade damage would then lead to some really absurd damage numbers too.
If I had to guess, I would say the Torgue Cobra does not benefit from grenade damage increases. However, not many weapons have that kind of splash radius (only the Volcano comes to mind for doing something similar, so I am curious now about that one as well) and it does not seem impossible.
To my knowledge, it does not. However, it’s legendary version of the explosive accessory rolls some extra potent blast procs if memory serves, and the baseline proc that it always gives is already pretty potent. If I remember right how explosive proc’s work, they add extra impact damage (a percentage of the base amount the weapon would otherwise do). Blast Master is one of the best coms to use with a Cobra (best 1 for Brick, but Mordecai’s Sniper com, and Lilith’s Specter com can give it a run for its money).
The one interesting thing that does get affected by grenade damage (besides the obvious) are rockets. This includes Rocket Launchers and Carnage Shotguns, and in both cases that effect stacks multiplicatively with weapon damage effects (similar thing holds true with bullet firing weapons and weapon damage versus bullet damage effects).
I was aware grenade damage boosted launchers/carnage shotguns (essentially weapons without a bullet). My interest was based on how much stronger a Cobra proc is over its purple counterpart. Even the baseline proc seems to do more damage than it should if it was simply an explosive accessory modified to be legendary, but of course that does not mean increases to grenade damage are causing that. Given the Cobra already has a unique proc chance pool, it may also be receiving a higher percentage of the weapon damage when it does proc.
It is probably a good thing it does not receive grenade damage increases as it is already extremely powerful.