Related to the size of bootstrap capacitor, the needs for the bypass capacitor should be low ESR and placed as close as possible to the driver.
So a good choice is to place a ceramic capacitor near the driver.
This need also aplys to the decoupling capacitor of VDD.
Of course, you could add a diode from VCC to HB if its conduction voltage is lower than the internal one.
For the damage of driver, the possible cause could be the bootstarp diode damaged inside driver, the negative or positive voltage exceed the spec, the output stage being wrongly shorted.
BTW, why LO(w40,w41) is connected to a floating node? I think it would cause some trouble because LI is low.