I was gone for a fairly long time, before the shards were changed. I feel I can give a sort of impassionate response.

I feel that most of the complaints and "uselessness" of the new shards is simply because the old shards were so much stronger. Single target nuke, long range snipe, and a decent aoe weapon. If we were simply using this the new shard's clusterbomb style without knowing the old shards, we would only complain about the stun effect and enemies not being hit by the secondary explosion because they walked out of the range. That, and the bugs that prevent the shards from even appearing to explode in times.

If we never knew how the old shards worked, this would have been the ultimate multi target bomb. Run into a mass group of enemies, and repeatedly drop the shards in order to lay a sort of minefield, capable of covering a large area in delayed explosions. The damage wouldn't matter, simply because we never had a better choice before.

That being said. It sucks.

/cry

@Grittle, 50 seconds is a long time, even for a 3* weapon.

The bombs would be good near walls if it werent for two things. OOO being derpy and making them dissapear near walls, and OOO being derpy and hard-coding a 3 shard hit limit, after which monsters can't get hit by more shards.

Ever since they came out, I've been forcing myself to use shard bombs as much as possible in order to answer this exact question. I've found a few things:

-The shards have higher interruption and knockback than any other bomb. Unfortunately, the blast does not. This means that, unlike DBB, the shards on SSS is capable of knocking down wolvers in shadow lairs and danger rooms. The shards on DDMB can presumably do something similar with gremlins in danger rooms, as well. Unfortunately, they're still pretty rubbish against gremlins at this point because they're impossible to combo right when the core is too weak to knock them down as well. DCB is capable of knocking down Mecha Knights occasionally, depending on the depth and if you hit with one or two shards.

-Assuming the shards don't disappear, they are pretty brutal in chokepoints. Sometimes they don't disappear.

-Shard bombs do absolutely no knockback on lumbers, meaning you can kill lumbers at least as fast and efficiently with a DCB as if you had been using DR.

-SSS is pretty good on Devilites. Like you said in the OP, Fehzor, the enormous fuse time means you can plant this a good distance away from the enemy and herd them into the explosion. The stun makes it easier to run up and follow this up after the fact.

-These bombs are great for starting a fight against enemies behind blocks that take one hit. The initial blast will destroy the block, then put shards past them. With other bombs you'd have to put two bombs before you could start damaging. I find this handy in devilite levels where such blocks are frequent. Place the bomb, scurry away and swoop in from behind cover with a charged bomb once the devilites get interrupted and perhaps even stunned.

-In a party, they're sometimes preferable over nitronome due to the knockback being smaller.

-Salt Bombs are damage bombs that inflict shock. What's not to like?

-Shard bombs combo better with other party members using support bombs. I've had the pleasure of running with a fellow bomber, lately, and we've been trying out a lot of different bomb combos. Here's my findings so far:

--Voltaic Tempest + Deadly Crystal Bomb: VT will severely negate the erratic knockback of DCB. The swordsman on our team could fight uninterrupted

--Voltatc Tempest + Stagger Storm: The enemy is as good as completely immobilized. Our swordsman had a lot of fun killing everything while we were just kind of not doing anything. It took longer, but was very safe.

--Deadly Crystal Bomb + Deadly Crystal Bomb: The bombs were chaining well with eachother, and the small knockback meant the bombs were never completely missing. Our swordsman feared for his life, so he huddled up in a corner and ineffectually used blitz needle from a distance.

--Electron Vortex + Deadly Crystal Bomb: All the complications of using DCB was eliminated! Who cares about the delayed fuse when all the enemies are clumped up in the same area anyway? Shard bombs benefit more from EV than any other bomb does (apart from, you know, the old RSS), because other damage bombs only do damage once and over a large area, so they're easier to hit with and do not need enemies to be in very specific spots. Unfortunately, the swordsman in our group would often kill the whole clump before my second, or even first shards went off.

--Voltaic Tempest + Stagger Storm: Horrible substitute for Shivermist against Vanaduke. Do not do this.

If they'd just fix disappearing shards, remove the 3-hit limit and up the damage so that all these tactics would actually be worth it, they'd be a good set of bombs.

@Zeddy, Brandishes are the only Brandish like weapons. They are the largest line with a common base that split into different damage types. Not to mention three of those lines have status. This lets brandish users rage craft brandishes and craft into whichever line a damage bonus fits better into, while gunners (alchemers) and bombers (shard bombs) are left to try and get specific UVs on specific weapons. OOO totally isn't playing favorites ¬.¬

OOO just doesn't want any bombs to have good single target DPS. They super-nerfed the DR, and then they uber-nerfed the RSS (and then screwed over the people that used them while letting others profit). To restrict single target DPS, they hard code a buggy hit limit (3, even though this sometimes causes monsters to become completely invincible to shards) into the shard bombs, and make shards randomly disappear (if you stand in the same spot and plant bombs, sometimes they disappear, sometimes they don't). I'm really starting to doubt that the disappearing shards is a bug. Heck, even a Gremlin Demo's bombs don't disappear near walls.

I've only been back for a few days now, but have been asking myself the same question, since I quickly noticed that my FSC godmode weapon was stolen from under me. In my opinion...

Sheer effectiveness, the shards seem to vastly underperform compared to even just whipping out a sword. In graveyards I can kill hordes of zombies faster with my Glacius in my Mad Bomber, than I can with DCB. I've not found any situation where any of the shards seem...well, worth it, in terms of effectiveness. Although, ISB seems to have benefited from the change; that works pretty damn nicely in jelly rooms or JK.

That said, there are benefits to them. For one, the fuses on them work nicely with low charge times, allowing utter spam of them so you can absolutely flood a small room with countless shards over and over, so that no matter where an enemy moves to, they will get hit (and interrupted/KBd); this is especially useful for devils, I find, as speed killing them generally results in a lot of personal damage.

They are a "safe" bomb to use, I find. You can run around a room dropping shards everywhere and kill the group while being basically danger free, you don't need to worry about every really getting hit and even placement tends to matter a lot less than, say, Nitro, as the shards spread themselves out and charge times are short. You may not be able to kill fast or effectively with them, but if you're patient and would rather kill safely, they're a lot more ideal than using some of the riskier bomb combos

Just up to you to decide whether that's "worth it" or not.

I have a theory regarding DSB vs SSS and DDMB vs SSB, but I only have SSS, DCB and SSB for now so I can't test until the theoretical next time I have test server access.

The theory goes, in particular for DDMB, that the core will be able to knock over a gremlin whereas an SSB will not. However, I fear I'm giving OOO too much credit with this theory.

I have tested regular shard bombs on the test server. The knockback is no better than the neutral knockback of any of the other bombs and as such the bomb is utterly worthless.

Hi again, Fehz :)

Well I call them safe because, as a bomber, I find myself spending most of my time constantly on the move anyways, so small KBs from that really don't create much of a danger. Once you get the hang of using Nitro safely in a party, the KB from the shards is completely negligible It is a bit more unpredictable, but as long as you can safely weave your way through a room, there should really be no trouble. Small circles around a central area lets the enemies get bounced around in the same area while chasing you, and allowing the shards to just stack up and hit them over and over and over; it may indeed take an extra couple of cycles of bombs, but I find there's virtually no danger during that extra time, esp when the bombs have shock/stun.

They do work at their job, it's just their damage that's...frankly, pitiful. Although, as Demo said, that may just be because many of us are used to the old RSS which was basically just a grenade to onehit....things.

And aye, LoA wasn't bad at all with a wee DCB there. Most of the mobs just respawn over and over anyways, so it's not too hard to just run aroud in circles dropping bombs left, right and centre and nothing can take two steps without a 'splosion in the face :D

I took out 3 Duskers with the 3* Dark Matter bomb. Is that a use?!?
In all honesty I don't think they knew what they were doing though...

~The Mighty Cheese Knight; WeeGee