Please bear with me with this one. I might be a little confusing in my explanation.
Get all the formalities out of the way: Fort Aspenwood server, Twilight Arbor explorable… Before the choice selection for the paths.
I was playing my ranger today. My first hit did not kill the volatile bloom (not entirely a rare thing, sadly). My second hit, also, did not, nor did my third, fourth, fifth and so on. THAT is what was rare, and wrong (rangers might be mediocre in their damage, but they’re not THAT bad).
I was using a shortbow.
The health bar for the volatile bloom showed up at the top of my screen as it does for all enemies. After hitting it enough times to where it should have died, the health bar did not go away. Sometimes the volatile would trigger it’s poison cloud when my teammate walked by it, other times it would not. Sometimes the volatile would completely disappear(I think because someone else hit it), most times it would not. When the volatile did not disappear, the health bar also did not disappear, and I could not do any more damage. My ranger, though, kept shooting at the volatile bloom, when it should have – by all rights – been dead on at least the second shot since the first usually took it down to 1/8 health or some such.
It’s irritating when the enemies bug out and still show up even when they are dead, but more so when they just don’t die and you can’t figure out why. It’s also quite deadly when you can’t figure out if you can, or cannot step somewhere near a volatile without dying.
Mostly though, it’s completely baffling!
I don’t have a screen shot, but I’m sure I’ll be going into TA soon enough again, and it might still happen (so I’ll try to provide if I get one).
Incidentally, I also saw the health bar staying on dead hyenas in Fields of Ruin during the Foulbear Kraal event. I’m not sure if they’re related since my ele didn’t shoot at it, and the health bar at the top middle of the screen disappeared while the one over the dead body did not. …the volatiles just never disappeared, or died.
I also do not know if it was just me, or if it was a bug in twilight arbor, but my necro guildy did say that he couldn’t kill any of the volatiles, either (with his 1 skill for staff).