Quick question about the "wounding" legendary prefix and DoT. Don't upvote!

Pretty early on in my survival playthrough, a legendary raider blessed me with a wounding laser rifle (25 bleed DoT), and I was wondering if I'm better off making it an automatic with a gamma emitter for more burn damage, or making it semi-auto and focus on straight up bullet damage. Basically my question is this: is the bleed effect additive on a per bullet basis (and therefore can stack), or does the full 25 DoT have to tick off before the next can be applied? I've looked everywhere and can't find a good answer for this. Thanks!