I use the QCX in both my SMG and Stalker loadouts, but I'm wondering if I should use Explosive bolts or not now.
They do identical damage, but its explosive and more effective vs max and vehicles. The downsides having 3 bolts with more drop. I tried the explosive tips. Even for bolt knife and it worked okay. Spash wasn't enough to stop me using it CQC. The issue i had was I kept making mistakes with drop after I switched back to non explosive tips. My accuracy suffered with regular bolts and I didn't like having to remember different drop configurations. Try to change your weapon optics and pretend its a brand new type of crossbow to mentally separate the two so you don't learn bad habits. When I auraxium my golden crossbow that is what I am planning on doing, and use nothing but explosive tips. Camo and a new optic would probably achieve the same result.
I've tried using explosive bolts with my SMG loadout, simply because I don't need a sidearm too much with my SMG and it's fun to have on the off chance you kill a vehicle driver while he's repairing. I only stopped in order to use the CandyCannon. For a stalker, I'd go with regular bolts for now, since the easier drop, extra round per mag, and better stealth qualities are worth more than the rare vehicle/MAX kill.
Explosive bolts are my favorite toy. It's always my secondary if I'm not running sniper or stalker loadouts. I use it to finish tanks and sunderers. I also take on Maxes and win (the bad ones) and harassers and win (solo or bads). They are great for scaring away tanks that have no idea what is plinking away at their health and making the scary explosions. The last thing these vehicle drivers usually suspect is an invisible (well..yeah.. ha! ..I know) player actually doing damage to them. And I think it's such a novelty that they frequently make stupid decisions as a result. My favorite scenario is when I have a nice pile of rocks or terrain that I can keep cloaking and ducking behind/around and popping up in different places to plink at them while they get more and more irritated until I either win or they run away smoking. Are you sure about this? Maybe I'm basing my recollection off of my VR testing, where the explosive damage wasn't working correctly...
Explosive took the same number of shots to take down infantry. (w/o flak) I never tested in VR though, I just ran around doing what I normally do with regular bolts in biolab. The explosives are great for comedic value. However I had to tone down my aggression because you only have enough bolts for 1 target comfortably, and 2 if you EMP. Getting caught in a reload is never fun and is a very real issue with the explosive tips reducing the clip size.
