I was on reddit yesterday and came across an internesting post(i don't remeber the articleor the r/user so if you do please comment so i can give him/her credit). The gist of it was that wake up hits & bombs are no longer the best way to wake up a monster in MHW:I. Instead they suggest using Clutch claw wall stuns on the wake up. At first i firmly disagree but then i decided to do some testing and i wanted to shear my findings.

To start mega barlle bomb (MBB) deal 200 flat dmg w/o bombadier and From what ive seen in solo play wall stuns (WS) deal between ~400 - 600 dmg depending on mach up, distance from the wall, and what your ramming them into. in multiplayer ive seen WS deal ~1.2k - 1.4k dmg again depending on mach up, distance from the wall, and what your ramming them into. So lets take the average and:

solo WS: 500 dmg

multiplayer WS: 1.3k dmg

FYI ALL the following number are with all standard buff applied and attack up large. To star GS TCS on a wake up can do about 900 - 1.2k dmg if you land in the sweet spot. Hammer lvl 3 slam (dont rember the name so im'a call it super boop) can deal ~500 - 600 dmg. finaly CB amped axe 5 phial SAED deal 400 - 500 on the inital hit an additonal ~100 - 150 dmg per phial hit w/ artillery 3 and feline bombarder. again lets average these out and we get:

GS TCS: 1.05k dmg

Hammer super boop: 550

CB amped impact SAED: 1.075k dmg (450 CB dmg (125*5) impact phial dmg)

**Now if your wandering why i didnt include all the other weapons is beacause that almost none of them brook 400 dmg on their most powerfull hit. the worst being bow, DB, LBG, and SNS. For these weapons in particular at best got ~ 70 - 250 dmg on the wake up hit (avg ~160 dmg ). **

so lets total up all potential dmg with MBB and we get:

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Now these numbers are rounded from my limited testing, so take this with a grain of salt. Also these numbers are w/o potential dmg done while the monster is down from the WS because that is to hard to callculate in a multiplayer setting and im not a streamer so i lack the nessary recording equipment to record my dps and total up the number. My best guess is that solo dependeing on machup, weapon you can get an extra ~400-600 dmg and in multiplay about 1.2k - 2k depending on positoning and cordination. These also do not include slinger ammo damge. From what ive seen the dmg ranges some where between 140 dmg (20 stones deal 7 dmg) - 259 dmg ( 7 dragon pods deal 7 dmg on inpact then 30 dmg when they exsplode) and thats assuming every shot is counted and that the shot dmg is not included in the wall stun dmg.

Now given that a monster nest allows for clutch bombing (TM) and the monster is favorably postioned i belive the new best strat is will go something like this:

all players set bombs in front of the monsters chest or front leg leaving the head exsposed. next the 3 players with the highest dps weapons will go to the wall directly in front of the monster and wait. The player with the lowest dps weapon clutch claws the head and during the wake up animation, launches the monster into the wall triggering the bombs and stunning the monster. while the other 3 are oonga'boonga'ing the monster the 4th play will run up and join them if the monster hasn't died already. If it has they'll be there in time to carve the monster.

FYI not all monsters will be clutch bombable. For example Kushala sleeps on a plato and from what ive seen monsters dont fall off plato but run at the edge and then recover. Another one is i belive Valkahana because her nest is just ridiculously huge.

Another cool/ funny start i thought of is a sleep clutch bomb run. bassical 4 players with sleep SA (because SA amped sword mode has rediculous status multipier) repeatedly sleep clutch bomb a monster untill dead.

TL;DR, if you are hunting solo and are using CB w/ ampped axe impact phile SAED, Hammer super boop, or GS TCS, wake up slaps & bombs are better. IF you are using anyother weapon or in a group hunt Clutch claw bombing is better depending on nest geomotry and sleeping monster positioning. Bassicaly if the nest is to big use standard wake up hit and bombs.