Spiral Knights - What a bomb update should probably entail (the short of it)

What a bomb update should probably entail (the short of it)

6 replies [Last post]

Fri, 01/01/2016 - 01:04

Fehzor

The short of it? Feel free to skip the explanation portion. Suddenly, the post is a lot smaller. Why write the explanation? So I don't just sound like I'm crazy.

Big changes don't have to require big effort.

Charge = charge bomb up
Bomb is now stored, up to 3.

Release attack = place bomb
Uses a bomb from storage, or fails if none are there.

Charge time reduction is currently king for bombs but with this not so much. If you plan to use mostly a sword/gun, you can bring bombs as a side weapon without having to use chaos cloak. This change makes it combo perfectly- cornered? Pull out big angry bomb. Need to burst in an area? Dark retribution.

Small encounters are currently bombers' big weak point. With this, it becomes possible to crush small encounters, saving time charging while walking.

Blast bombs should use dark briar barrage for balance, not nitronome

Nitronome and lesser bombs = no knockback, irontech damage, no stun

Irontech destroyer = old nitronome walk speed/charge time, big angry bomb damage, no stun

Big angry bomb = old irontech, higher than current bab damage, larger radius

Heavy deconstructor = elemental variant of dark briar barrage, 5* and everything.

New blast bomb = shadowy variant of dark briar barrage

1* blast bombs = no knockback

You know what bomb people really like? Dark briar barrage. Why? It's simple, it doesn't make your party hate you and it works reliably and effectively and it doesn't scatter monsters everywhere. New players in particular should not be using a ton of knockback, because they're new and almost certain to bung it up.. rather, having no knockback and using what is basically dark briar barrage but slightly buffed (new nitronome) would be a blessing for them.

But there are players that like this knockback.. enter the irontech destroyer mentioned above. Same as old nitronome, but with higher damage and no lessened movement. Big angry bomb naturally closes the circle, becoming the old irontech but with more radius and damage than ever. Overall these changes appease any fans of knockback, and become a functional and fun part of the game.

Finally, specialized variants of dark briar barrage, to match what was done with valiance and grant bombers an effective elemental (finally) and basic, farmable shadow bomb.

The sane way to handle the shard bombs

Step 1: Remove all invincibility frames from these.
Invincibility frames effect bombs dropped later... so if I hit once the next bomb is nerfed if I'm skillful? What?

Step 2: All shards get: A status effect. A damage very high vs something. Damage of their 'high' variant.
Each gets a status effect and damage vs a monster family

Step 3: Buff the normal shards even more.
Either it gets more damage than the rest vs neutral targets, or random status effects

The invincibility frames you can research if you care, I put in a support ticket, there's not much more I can say besides that I've been looking into the issue for several years and that it's something I care deeply about...

But what I will say is that theses bombs are balanced with dark briar barrage; if you hit with enough shards, you outdamage DBB. If you don't you under damage but on average you should expect a bit more. The new blast bombs however mean that shards should probably up their game, especially since players hate them. This is why they'd get status effects and free damage ups. The other reason is that sun shards and salt bomb are A LOT better than their pure damage variants, and that without invincibility frames I'd for sure recommend sun shards as is.

The normal shards are currently really, really bad. Why? Shards vs normal targets are awful because they rely on multiple hits.. this means that they have to take on way more defense than do the specialized variants, and due to their already low damage kind of fail hard. To fix this, they could either be made to do more damage and therefore be more effective overall, or spread all status effects at once. The all status effects might be a bit too crazy, I'm not sure.

Graviton

Graviton = stun, no knockback, loses higher damage

Graviton destroyer is severely outclassed by the other vortex bombs. Here's how the status variants work in terms of balance:

Electron = keeps enemies together better; shock prevents knockback/movement and does damage due to shock
Obsidian = poison counters menders, like a lesser venom veilor that doubles as a graviton
Celestial = deals fire damage, can help to finish off a wide variety of mobs; very situational
Proposed Graviton = stun helps keep mobs pacified. Lack of knockback keeps mobs clumped

New bomb variants.

The gunner update brought us a lot of variants to existing weapons; it would only be expected that a bomb update do something similar; yet there isn't nearly as much room to grow for bombs. In the past I have suggested a few things, as have others.

Bomberman bombs: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/112824
A conglomeration of ideas: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/105796
Ideas from long ago: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/92245
All I'm doing is using google. People LOVE writing these and there are a ton of interesting ideas out there.

If no actual truly new bombs are to be implemented, I would suggest considering the following:

1. Variants for Dark Retribution; normal + fire and stun + elemental would be my choice

2. Airstrike pick up.. as a bomb! Already coded and everything..

3. Curse haze bomb; would be far less OP than people think

4. Fire + Ice haze bomb; initial blast deals strong freeze, mist does low fire or vice versa. This makes the frozen enemies immune to the fire.

5. Old Shard Bomb variants. People loved the old shard bombs, and it would be a quick way of getting new content back. I'd do pure elemental and pure piercing variants, with stun on both.

Fri, 01/01/2016 - 12:26

Falminar

This will make bombs actually usable for me.

Sat, 01/02/2016 - 06:03

Sir-Pandabear

I'm strongly against removing knockback. Irontech isn't obtainable until tier 3.

Making other damage type versions of DBB I might be convinced on, but nitro & friends are the main bombs and should knockback like bombs. I agree with only three points :

1. Storing bomb charges.
2. Removing invincitinks.
3. Normal shards suck plz buff.

Sat, 01/02/2016 - 06:58

Fehzor

Except the best (or at least most loved) bombs DON'T typically knockback "like bombs", they just knock the enemies down, and set themselves up to hit again.

Bombs people tend to like
Dark retribution
Dark briar barrage
Haze bombs
Vortex bombs

Bombs people tend to not like
Shard bombs (bad for other reasons, but knockback is often cited)
Irontech/Big Angry

I'm not making this up- notice what bombs are 4s and 5s on Krakob's thing-

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hj8Hh59cFVm_ryNOWZIfRb0jAtE692xy...

The only knockback bomb that people liked was nitronome, and that has the least knockback and most predictable knockback of all of them.

-----

What I would say, is that it might be prudent to make the blast bomb split at 3*, possibly earlier. So it'd go like this-

2* = no knockback variant
3* path one = continuing on proposed path, with shadow/elmental paths possibly opening
3* path two = 3* irontech destroyer = current super blast bomb
(Paths finish as you'd expect)

That way, any bombers that want knockback starting out could have that. I could also see the split happening at 1*, similar to how padded lines work.

Sidenote

You don't like my idea for graviton vortex/that we need more bombs in general?

Sat, 01/02/2016 - 09:08

Sir-Pandabear

If you remove knockback from Nitro, it becomes a crappy DBB or a crappy DR, because DBB and DR have damage types that allow them to deal even more damage.

Right now I can justify bringing a Nitro over a DBB because it has knockback. Why would I ever bring your Nitro?

I can agree with adding stun to Graviton Vortex, but there is no need to remove knockback. People already like vortex, why make it easier to use? That's like giving more damage to Acheron.

Sidenote
Yes, I do agree on more bombs in general. Also bringing back RSS.

Sat, 01/02/2016 - 12:46

Fangel

Hmm

I'm gonna say keep nitronome as the knockback bomb. All cobalt knight sets are themed around normal damage with added knockback, and taking away knockback makes nitronome a lesser bomb. If you lowered the movement speed penalty of irontech along with its knockback, then you'd find yourself with a bomb people enjoy.

People don't hate irontech/BAB because of the knockback, it's because of the movement penalty.

The changes to bombs I would like to see, as it would make bombing more enjoyable.

Some potential bombs that I would also like to see:

Curse mist bomb

- the only source of curse we have right now is strong, by all accounts. Mist bombs deal minor status. As such, a curse mist bomb will not be all that OP. It would shine more in lockdown for sure, but at least it would punish popular gear more severely and make shock/freeze/stun UVs not the best thing ever.

Mortar

- Place it, and it fires a clump of 3 missiles into the air that land around the mortar randomly. Could be elemental + fire. Essentially the airstrike beacon bomb you wanted but a bit more to it.

Inverse blast bombs

- While graviton clumps enemies together, these blast bombs would pull enemies towards the center of the blast, but not necessarily hold them there. They might go flying out of the bomb radius even, but the "knockback" would probably be more manageable when the enemies are all in one general area instead of everywhere outside of one area.

Pulse bombs

- When placed, the bomb sends out a "pulse" across the ground, dealing damage and status to enemies within range. Lasts as long as a mist bomb and fires 3 pulses in total at 5*.

Spiral bombs

- A bomb that is essentially the rotating fire spirals in FSC. Could be the poor man's dark retribution.

Plus bombs

- Bombs that explode similar to bombs in blast network with a maximum range similar to other 5* bombs, perhaps slightly larger due to lack of diagonal coverage. Would be the "new old RSS".

As it stands there aren't many bomb choices, and of those bomb choices people only really use one or two bombs. Blast bomb? Nitronome. Need damage? Dark briar barrage and dark retribution. Status? Haze bomb. Group of mixed but fair bombers? Liter the floor with shard bombs. Team player + crowd control? Electron vortex.

Meanwhile guns have several different damage and status variants, and depending on your playstyle, one gun might be better at offense and to another player simply be a status weapon. Same with swords.

More game mechanics to bombs with that storage up to 3 charges would really open doors to bombers and hybrids and make bombs feel more like a weapon than a support glob.

Sun, 01/03/2016 - 01:11

Fehzor

The proposed nitronome would not be a strictly worse version as it would have higher base damage than the other bombs equal to the current base damage of irontech destroyer. So as a comparison, against any monster-

Best: On type damage i.e. dark briar barrage vs beasts
Second best: Nitronome
Viable but not optimal: Off type specialized i.e. dark briar barrage vs gremlins
Worst: Ineffective damage type i.e. dark briar barrage vs construct

But I understand that this isn't a wanted change and to be honest it isn't so necessary. What would either of you feel about something along the lines of the following:

Nitronome:

New shadow/elemental dark briar barrage variants

Heavy decon is possibly the new elemental line mentioned

Nitronome unchanged, possibly damage boosted to irontech's

Irontech:

Irontech destroyer loses its knockback

Same movement as nitronome

Keeps stun

Big Angry:

Big angry bomb takes longer to charge

Big angry bomb's fuse time drastically reduced, very quick tempered

Possibly some form of enhanced stun, damage, knockback

Possibly forces the user to move even slower while charging

The idea would be that nitronome is a well balanced bomb, that irontech could become something of a normal variant to dark briar barrage to fill the role that I would like it to and mentioned earlier, and that big angry bomb would take on a new role altogether, based on the storing charges mechanic. Pop out of hiding, tons of knockback, go for the mender with your dark chain gun. Cornered by a trojan? Big angry bomb offers an easy escape. Huge utility, huge burst damage, really mediocre damage per second- it'd be kind of like blasters are for sword users, or leviathan is for bomb users.

@Ideas for bombs, from Fangel

Generally speaking I love these sorts of ideas and I've even written quite a few of them. The ones you mentioned are definitely some of the more requested ones as well as a few new and interesting one.

Search

What a bomb update should probably entail (the short of it)