^^
lies. spamming isn't always great.

Since the gunpuppy buff their usefulness degraded a fair bit....
however, the main idea with rads is to strafe and assume where your enemy will step next. You need to be willing to get close to your friends and understand how enemies act. E.G. strafe while a skelly is following and place when he starts charging or when he goes to do a slash attack. Really, radiants tricks aren't something to be explained with words, check the videos of eeks using Rads, or find someone who already uses it alot, and see how they do it. the ice vaporizer really helps when your learning how to use it, and how its best to use it. ;)

Sun shards by themselves are a little bit tricky to use. Yes, you can get by just spamming them, but there's other things you can do to make them more effective.

1. Sun shards > any enemy that charges. Skellies, greavers, even trojans. The closer the enemy is to the explosion, the more shards will hit, and if you position it correctly it will one-shot these guys. What you do is lay the shards down, back up a little bit, and shield. When the mob charges (or leaps), it will hit the shield and bounce back into the shards. The numbers might not appear all at once, but it will probably one-shot the mob if you do it correctly. For trojans, you have to back up a bit, but I've gotten 4 shards to hit before (~1000 damage on t3).

2. Shield cancel after sun shards (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-lhP9q2B3A for demonstration). No other bomb requires it more. It doesn't have any pushback, you have to get close, and there's no hope of a status limiting movement. Bind shield to your left mouse button, and then press both buttons when you charge shards. I can't tell you how many times this has saved me from dying in either fiend stratums or t3. I'm not sure it takes off any recovery time, but that instant shield is very useful.

3. Shivermist is the best (safe) bomb to compliment it (because you'll be able to line up shots easily), graviton the best (risky) bomb. I would recommend, if you're using graviton, that you apply some sort of status on top to be safer. I often do graviton --> glacius (charged attack) and then approach with sun shards.

Times to spam sun shards:
-FSC
-Fiend Stratums (Kats are hard to pin down, might as well spam)
-Sniping gun puppies
-Some arenas

Times to try and maximize damage with sun shards:
-Enemies that charge
-Enemies with limited movement (shivermist/graviton)
-Enemies close together

You're kind of boned man. The RSS is a good bomb in very specific situations but FSC isn't really one of them.

You can try comboing it with a Graviton/Electron Vortex (drop vortex, drop RSS right in the middle and run) but it's super risky since the timing is very tight. If you're not wearing bomber armor you're not going to be able to pull it off; you need max CTR on the RSS.

Alternatively you can just drop it in crowded situations but even with max damage bonus, the DPS is going to be low if you only hit things with a single shard. That's just what it comes down to with the RSS. 1 shard = lower DPS than a lot of stuff, 2+ shards = same or higher DPS against a lot of stuff. The problem I've found with the RSS is that once a crowd thins out you're going to start hitting things with 1 shard and often times no shards at all. It's disheartening to go from dealing 3x damage to 0x damage.

If you're going to be dropping a bomb, hitting 2-3 targets is a huge waste when a DBB or Nitronome can hit 5+ targets consistently for the same average damage. Your single target damage might be lower from bomb to bomb but overall your damage output will be a lot higher and nitronome provides you with a pocket of breathing room on top of it.

The third option is just to use RSS in the support role, behind someone that is pushing but again you're only going to be pushing in a single or double shards with low DPS.

The best thing I've used RSS for in FSC is sniping out trojans since it's easy to put the RSS in a position to hit multiple times with high frequency.

I ran FSC a bit with the RSS. Unlike the other damage bombs, you want to kite while using it. The best way I found was to bait zombies into lunging and then dropping the RSS and stepping away. This works well unless they do their breath attack in which case you can circle around and drop one next to them IF they aren't in a large group. The problem is zombies are usually in pretty large groups and there isn't a ton of room for kiting. The other (super risky) method is to run up and drop it next to them and bait them into swiping as you run away but the drop animation is long enough where about 10-15% of the time you're going to get hit which is pretty annoying.

The conclusion I came to is that it definitely isn't the best/most efficient bomb for FSC but you'll probably do OK using it as long as you're very careful.

RSS vs FSC [video]

Ryoga,
The Vortex/RSS combo is .. OK but it is extremely high risk with middling rewards. The problem with dropping an EC and then standing in the center of it is that when it starts its suction you have a chance of getting trapped inside of it. To capture as many slags as possible, you have to place the EC's maximum radius right on the edge of slag feet. This distance causes slags to begin their attack charging and by the time you finish the bomb drop animation and start charging the RSS you'll be sucking in slags that are sometimes in the middle of their attack which means that you have a high chance of getting hit as they come in and you're defenseless.

The payoff is too low for me. Because the vortex spins slags around, placing the RSS right in the middle or even guessing and placing if off-center doesn't always result in multiple hits. I found that more often than not, I was only landing a single shard despite "good" placement.

As for the EC damage; it's ok. Shock does ticks between 25-30 in FSC. I wouldn't classify this as significant damage, but in some scenarios (i.e. the right number of players in a party, primary weapon damage, etc) it could make a 1-2 hit difference (but keep in mind you're losing 1-2 hits worth of time setting it up). The damage on the back end of the EC is decent but I wouldn't say it is significant at all; it hits a bit harder than a haze bomb and only if slags remain in the vortex as it expires.

I think as far as theory crafting goes, the combo is delicious. What's better than rounding up 8 slags and one shotting them with a RSS? In practice, I don't find it to be as great as people try to make it out to be. Yes, sometimes you one shot slags but I find that usually there is a lot of clean-up work to do and we know how inefficient the RSS is at handling stragglers.

"I have my Avenger and my Blitz Needle with those two bombs."

lol, avenger and needle is ALL u would need in fsc, i wouldnt even THINK of using those kind of bombs in sword/gun combinations, simply because u already have a good dmg output without having to risk dying

if its just for fsc and u want 4 weapons badly, an argent peacemaker and a shock gun would be a good add up

"but the combo is about all I can do in FSC."

"I have died a fair about of times because the spinning cyclone of slags[..this is getting annoying]"

"[I have died a few times with my avenger and my needle..but im getting better (=]"

if u want to use bombs(because of ur trinket or for w.e reason) with ur swords/guns, the staggerstorm/shivermist(hate this 1)/ash of agni(not useful in fsc, but overall #1)/venom veiler/voltaic tempest are a good choice, too and even ur DBB can do better