Asked this a bit ago on r/MHGU and tried xposting here after it got no comments, but it didn't show up so let's try this again!

It seems like these brave arc shots hit a lot of times. 6 hits for focus, and... I don't even know how many for the blast arc shots! After both the triple pierce and the explosions it must be 10 . Do brave arc shots apply full status/element damage for every hit?

edit: I decided to do some very sloppy testing on the velocidrome to make sure the element effect isn't strictly graphical. I used two 70 attack wide arc bows, but one bow also had 18 ice damage. Using only fully charged arc shots (lv3 without brave mode, lv4 with) it took 31 shots with the ice bow and an incredible 163 arc shots with the raw bow. Mind you, hitting this jumpy little fucker wasn't easy. I missed more than half my shots, got cancelled while charging, the little velociprey fucks decided to commit mass suicide by being dino shields, and that's not even counting how many times he jumped behind me before I could finish aiming. It took so long that I got the 10 minute quest warning! It didn't start limping until 117 fucking arc shots! I died twice!! (sidenote: poison coatings are really good at killing small monsters.)

Anyways, weird hit mechanics aside (wide arc shot is weirdly random with how many times it hits, I've noticed. Seems to be based on distance) the difference is so dramatic that not only am I certain that brave arc shots do element damage, but it may actually be optimal for dealing elemental damage and status ailments! These were fully charged by the way, which favors raw, and yet elemental bow was still 6 times more damaging. I guess just no one wanted to give arc shots a chance...

Edit 2: did some tests with the Arca Rapterra trying to inflict poison on a basarios. I got 9 shots for both pierce 4 and the arc shot blast. This supports my notion that arc shots do status/element damage, but indicates the difference is not as pronounced as Velocidrome made me think. More likely arc shots simply do very low raw damage so that 18 ice was drastically more damaging than the 70 attack. Additionally, and I don't know how I would test this, it's possible that only the arrow portion of the attack (not the blast portion) applies status. I'm thinking this due to some inconsistencies in how many shots it took to poison the Basarios.