Spiral Knights - Super Splodin' Shard Squad

Super Splodin' Shard Squad

116 replies [Last post]

Wed, 11/21/2012 - 18:47

Zeddy

Shard Squad videos!

BABstacking and, later, DRstacking just in case you wanted to see how much awesome you're missing out on not getting the expansion.

Infinite failure in Ice Queen Palace.

Super Splodin' Shard Squad!

Was going to post in this in the Elite Bomber Thread, but Darkbrady suggested that I make a dedicated thread to the subject, instead. Yes, we have a million threads about shard bombs already, but here's one about (relatively) successful use of them. The hypothesis here is that, while shard bombs are poor on their own, it's strength lies in hybridization.

Today we did FSC, hybridizing shard bombs with eachother:
-Zeddy
Scintillating Sun Shards (not maxed)
Deadly Crystal Bomb
Shocking Salt Bomb
Full Volcanic

-Darkbrady
Scintillating Sun Shards
Deadly Crystal Bomb
Ionized Salt Bomb
Volcanic + Mad + 2x Boom module

-Tohlevi
Scintillating Sun Shards
Deadly Crystal Bomb
Shocking Salt Bomb
Full Volcanic?

At first we tried all spamming crystal bomb, but we found ourselves to be much more efficient when I switched to Sun Shards and kept the enemy perpetually stunned. Salt bombs were broken out mostly for slimes. Nothing was skipped: we did all rooms in the Charred Court, and anywhere we went, we did in unison. The result was that enemies were most of the completely harmless. The stronger stun on sun shards means enemies move slower than they would if we were using stagger storm, and it took us little effort to dodge their attacks despite the erratic knockback on the shards.

Sometimes the most efficient tactic would be to not plant any bombs at all, and rather wait until the enemies were gather so we could surround and keep them in place, continously hitting them with shards. Trojans were no trouble at all. One guy gets the aggro, while the other two just plant all the bombs they can at his back. They go down quick, though it's obviously nothing compared to blitzing them.

The biggest problem was fighting around large areas of spikes, fire or totems, as there would be a good chance of bombs pushing enemies into these areas where it's difficult to fight them. Kiting is key.

All in all, the run before Vanaduke took roughly 40 minutes, including discussions and the like. The run was a success until...

Don't bring nothing but shard bombs to Vanaduke. Just don't. Vanaduke moves around unpredictably a lot, so inflicting significant amounts of damage using nothing but shard bombs is a serious challenge. The constant explosions make the bullets during the mask phase hard to follow and if you're prone to lag during the vana fight the bombs will do nothing to help about the matter. I experienced some net issues during the battle, and as such I can't say if most of the trainwreck of that fight was due to shard bomb usage or poor Internet. Vanaduke was beaten after too many revives. Next time, we'll try stacking with something else. I have a feeling one shivermist would make a huge difference.

Wed, 11/21/2012 - 19:37

Forum-Brady

/approves of the title~Aye,

/approves of the title~

Aye, most of the threads about Shards thus far are complaints, requesting reversion, asking which ones to get or if they're worth getting at all etc. I figure that a dedicated thread to focussing on experimentation our having fun using them isn't something seen quite as often, and we have a good run to start us off with!
Also, I didn't want us to derail the Elite Bomber thread that's meant for more general bombing discussions, nor did I want this discussion to vanish in the midst of said general discussions.

This was a pure shard run to see how efficiently (and fun it could be) with extrapolation logic that if a run can be done successfully using pure shards, then surely they could be put into a real loadout and work effectively; the key is just finding what other weapon combos maximise their effectiveness thereafter. We all know that shards are seemingly next to useless to use solo with low damage and hit limits, but introduce a second shard bomber next to you and there's an enormous difference in the weapon, turning a few limp-wristed shards into a minefield of chaos that leaves the enemies fairly unable to react.

Trojans were easy in principle, but took longer than I'd have liked as their shield left them immune to much of the spread damage of the shards. The low damage, however, made taking aggro next to impossible which actually turned out to be a benefit as we could simply stand behind the Trojan without even needing to move and drop bombs, while the aggro target just ran back and forward (enough to keep the Trojan chasing, but not charging). I'm sure we could find faster ways to deal with these, but if nothing else the stun from SSS made them much less of a threat while we slowly dealt with them.

Throwing a few hazes and/or a vortex into the mix would transform what was already a fairly safe and fun experience into what should be a quite effective combo of damage-dishing. Hazes such as VT, VV or AoA (outside FSC, ofc) would allow the damage to flood in on the enemies while they get ping-ponged uselessly from side to side and should likely bring an otherwise "slow" experiment into average runspeeds. Vortexes would also be key in solving the problem of dealing with restricted floor space issues (spikes, fire, totems) that deny the constant, flightly movement required for this.
Also, after this run we discovered that vortexing targets to clump them together, followed by a quick shiver, forced a large group to be frozen into a "vortex shaped clump", which allowed incredibly easy sharding as the first explosions would only break the ice and the second ones KBing them into each other, and without the vortex explosion pushing them away again.

Vana, indeed, was a horror story. It did not work, in any sense of the word. It was just awful; the mask phases and phase five especially; the mask being incredibly resistant to all of our bombs while being able to avoid most of the damage from them. A good 90% of our deaths occurred on phase four alone. Phase five was far harder than three, not only because of the slags (that were not even worth killing, as he kept respawning them -it took us that long) but because the second ring of big hot balls outranged our shards and prevented the shards from spreading, which absolutely destroyed our DPS. We had to revert to dropping shards randomly across the whole floor and trying to bait him onto them, which was both dangerous and slow.

As glad as I am that we did manage to finish Vana, it was more for personal accomplishment, and not something I plan on doing again. Ever. Vana easily took as long to kill as it took us to complete the entire dungeon; and we stopped to discuss often.
However, we have some screenies for posterity!
It Begins! T'was terrifying, to be sure.
The Fun Phase~ To be fair, the first phase was a good laugh; he hadn't whipped out his big hot balls yet, so we could just stand next to him and shard!
The Mask Where it started to get bad. Really bad.
Nearly An Hour Later~ Honestly, I was shocked when he collapsed. I was expecting to be there another half hour!

We've got a few more runs planned next, including another full shard run (outside FSC) and the beginnings of mixed loadouts to start using shards to their full potential (we hope!) and can hopefully bring them up to competitive standards! Wish us luck :D

Thu, 11/22/2012 - 01:55

Hariender

Daawwwww
You guys have fun with shard while i have to keep farm in order to pass 5* Hall of Heroes,
btw nice so many shard colurfull :D
if you do it again can you post vid how did you do on 4th floor last closed area the one that have fire and spike tight area?(shard bomb)

Thu, 11/22/2012 - 14:36

Zeddy

I definitely plan to record a full run sometime. The final area before Vanaduke went a lot smoother than you might imagine.

Thu, 11/22/2012 - 17:40

Forum-Brady

Oh, also just realised that

Oh, also just realised that you never mentioned that we did the right path on D26, with the trojan and puppies; I feel that counts for somethin'.

But aye; a lot of the rooms we expected to be difficult actually went a lot better than expected. The run was a bit slower/longer than I'm used to, but by no means was it overly challenging and we did not face death often; most deaths were just the result of stupid things like walking into fire/attacks while blinded by the shards. It may just be my memory, but I can't think of any one area that was particularly challenging, and the last room did go a lot smoother than expected.

Fri, 11/23/2012 - 05:43

Forum-Brady

Update:Have just done a few

Update:

Have just done a few runs with Pyneapll to test out "real" sharding runs, albeit still pure bombing runs.

I'm now utterly convinced that vortexes are the answer to many of shards problems, oh yes. What we were doing was dropping a haze and vortex and then spamming shards onto the crowd; I guarantee you that it was killing crowds at a competitive speed, and when doing it by predicting spawns it was as fast as one could reasonably ask of any weapon. I've used vortex+blitz on such crowds and cleared them little faster.

RJP = SSB + Graviton + AoA
FSC = DCB + Electron + VT

Stagger and Venom help out as well, but tbh none of the hazes are really necessary (as it doesn't do much to change the kill times, but it does help clear off stragglers and the shock helps keep them together.

The ideal thing to do is land a shard inside a vortex rad before it dets so that when the vortex dets and sucks everything in, the shard is timed perfectly to go off just after they all clump together, guaranteeing that the initial explosion hits everything. From there on, dropping shards around the cluster continues to hit most of them while spreading more shards around the area to kill off any survivors or anything that gets KBd.
The key thing of note is that regular bombs hit every target within its rad, and that's it. It's over. Shards have nerfed damage but hit multiple targets multiple times.
Using shards on their own has an awful dps rate because a target will be KBd and hit the next shard, and targetting large groups is a challenge. With group shardbombers and a vortex in the middle, the whole group gets [hit (per bomb) then hit again (per shard)] (per bomber) and the dps rate absolutely skyrockets. Ridiculously so.
After all this, it actually starts to become a viable weapon choice and keep up with the crowd.

I'm theorising that all this was done deliberately by OOO to encourage a weapon that entices players to synchronise and work together as a unit, rather than do their own thing. As much as the game is separated up into classes, the fact is that people still don't really "play class roles" in SK and you often get an "ideal loadout" that everyone in the group adopts and proceeds to just mince through the level.
You also have weapons that are OP or encourage usage over others, or that you only need one of in a party to take care of the mission. Such weapons are blitz in FSC or Pepperbox in RJP. Even if only one person has those weapons, no one else even needs to be conscious during the boss fights or the strong enemies (trojans and lumbers respectively) and thus teamwork gets thrown out the window.
Shards are encouraging people to team up and work together as a unit with multiple weapons and combos, rather than running of and godmoding stuff solo, and in such a way that it's actually really fun to do so; I'm honestly having more fun sharding than I ever did dpsing with any other bomb.
I suppose it's not helped by the fact that the injected a "team bomb" into the game by replacing a bomb that was, as above, so OP it could clear FSC solo, so everyone was expecting a similarly OP bomb instead of one that warranted teamwork and combos; how many people thought "hey, I should use my new RSS with a team" when before they could whip out their RSS and destroy the world.
Then again, there may be some deliberate message in that: the teamwork bomb replaces the godmode bomb. Coincidence...?

However, shards still seem to fall apart against trojans, puppies and LD. I simply can't find an effective way to use shards against Trojans or puppies, even in a group; or certainly not a way that kills them at competitive speeds. Then again, bombers never really did have a great bomb against puppies (RSS, I guess...) but DBB destroys Trojans so much faster than SSS, even without the aid of stun. Thanks to their shield and regular movement, they are just not a viable target for the bomb.

I say it falls apart in LD purely because its I can't find anyone to test team-sharding with. Whether it works or not in a team is yet to be tested or concluded on.
Using it solo falls apart because even with vortexes it's too easy for players to dodge it, and even when they can, the damage lacks. This bomb is as a bomb in the traditional AoE sense; meant only for crowds. Expecting to catch a large crowd in LD with a single bomb or combo is pretty infeasible.

Fri, 11/23/2012 - 05:41

Fradow

Thanks for the great testing

Thanks for the great testing and informations Brady.

I had the occasion to test a Wolver Den with him by both doing SSS : it seemed to be about on-par with DBB, perhaps a little inferior, but not by much (whereas soloing with SSS landed awful results for SSS vs DBB).

I'm always interested to know more about that, feel free to invite me one day for those test runs. I don't yet own a crystal bomb, but have SSS and both Vortexes, as well as an almost full bomber set (missing a trinket).

Fri, 11/23/2012 - 06:01

Forum-Brady

Maybe GWW should be next,

Maybe GWW should be next, then; I'm yet to do GWW and IMF with the shards~

Fri, 11/23/2012 - 09:16

Alice-In-Pyroland

I'd suggest doing the Danger

I'd suggest doing the Danger Missions, not only do they each provide radically different and interesting situations to use bombs in (Unlike IMF where most of it is just avoiding environmental hazards, and rooms full of switches that bombs trigger constantly) but the 'bosses' in Danger Missions are usually actually capable of being beaten by bombs in a reasonable and effective time-frame, where as Snarby, Twins and as you already know, Vanaduke are all exceptionally tedious fights to bomb against. Twins especially can be horribly tedious, and if you do it you're going to need a non-shard bomb for the switches.

I'd also like to see you guys do Crimson Hammer, assuming you all have the expansion. I dunno if they've fixed it yet, but I was horrified when I bombed it last and discovered that the Battle Pods in the Seerus fight were apparently immune to Dark Retribution (Presumably because of them being in a wall) and I'm curious to know what shard-dps is like in that boss fight.

Fri, 11/23/2012 - 10:46

Zeddy

Crimson Hammer happens to be the run we were going to do first, actually! I did some solo attempts, and you can read about them in the Elite Bomber thread. It's next on our schedule.

I, too, worry about the battle pods.

Fri, 11/23/2012 - 22:20

#10

Forum-Brady

OCH was Zeddy's idea to begin

OCH was Zeddy's idea to begin with, and discussing runs with that is what started these tests off really; we haven't done it yet as we do want to do a 3-man run for it (since almost every enemy in OCH has a shield, mortars are everywhere and there's a lot of puppies) but it is on the agenda for sure.

I've already started on the DMs actually; that'll just take some time as we need to wait for them to cycle through, as opposed to being able to do them as and when we feel like, and as many times as we wish.

LoA today, was pretty scary fo sho'. There were three of us and it certainly took a bit longer than regular runs (not by much though, I wouldn't say) but we managed it with no wipes. Turns out that LoA is really not very bomb friendly. Bombies exploding all over the place in an attempt to outbomb you, gate switches being slow to react to bombs, kats being immune to vortexes, ACs and Slags having shields and Slags moving around as much as they do (as opposed to Trojans that are easy to leave standing still) making bombing them really quite difficult.
(@Zeddy: If you're up for another LoA shard run today, hit me up; I'd be interested to try it again and see if I can't do better, or ofc the next DM (GiM, if memory serves?) in a few hours~)

It was pretty messy, in the sense that we couldn't really plan nor use a specific bomb; we all pretty much just randomly cycled through vortexes and hazes trying to control the situation as much as possible, before unleashing the shards. We had stagger, VT and venom as well as a couple of vortexes and each of us were spamming the shards. It worked, but was tricky. The path to the left on the 2nd floor and the last room especially got pretty chaotic.

Then again, shard runs are still pretty new to everyone, so to expect difficult missions to be completed in average timeframes is reaching a bit; if we can do them at all, have fun (and without wipes?) then I'm calling them a win for the time being. Improved strategies, technique and speed will come naturally as we do them.

Sat, 11/24/2012 - 13:35

#11

Fehzor

Yeah. The shard bombs are not 'unusably bad' they're just 'worse' than most other options, and thus not the best choice. Kind of like heavy deconstructor and winmillion. But good for you, having fun with a sub-optimal item.

Sat, 11/24/2012 - 13:41

#12

Forum-Brady

having fun with a sub-optimal

having fun with a sub-optimal item.

Can't say I have too much fun playing shards solo, because they are so sub-optimal. But the whole point of this thread is demonstrating that a group of sharders is optimal and by no means weak/bad any more.

As it goes, we reckon that shards are so fail-flavoured from a solo bomber because they're designed to work well with other sharders. If a solo sharder could keep up regular dps/run times, then multiple sharders would literally become the next OP weapon combo; it would be completely unstoppable because they get such a large boost from each other. FSC would be a complete and utter joke~
So shards got nerfed so that they were balanced when being used in a group which just has the unfortunate side effect of making them nigh useless to use solo.

But yes, using them in a group, run speed aside, is great fun. The fact that we're keeping up decent times is just a side bonus :)

Sun, 11/25/2012 - 01:36

#13

Zeddy

@Brady

If you would like to do a run at the time, that's something I'd be up for the next couple of hours.

Edit: Today we did several runs.

Heart of Ice
Zeddy: Venom Veiler / Scintillating Sun Shards / Deadly Crystal Bomb (Undead low)
Snarbolax Cap / Shadowsun Stetson / 2x Bomb Focus Module (MAX CTR)

Darkbrady: Ash of Agni / Electron Vortex / Scintillating Sun Shards / Dark Briar Barrage
? (VH CTR and MAX DMG)

Pyneapil: Voltaic Tempest / Radiant Sun Shards / Dark Briar Barrage
?

Our general strategy was spamming haze and shards at a ratio of about 1:3. Pyneapil generally used VT a bit more because of how useful it is, and I would typically avoid VV unless there were healers and just stick to sun shards. The DBBs were taken out in case of greavers and trojans.

The result? We couldn't see anything! But that didn't matter much, because the enemy was unable to do anything, either! I think it's no coincidence that Heart of Ice and the shard bomb patch came out at about the same time. There are a lot of corridors 2-3 tiles wide that are absolutely perfect for sun shards. It really is the weapon best suited for a lot of situations we encountered, though not really all of them.

The howlitzer gate room was pretty much a disaster. Without guns or swords, it was difficult to take down the trojans without casualties, and we had nothing to interrupt howlitzers quickly with, leading to bullet hell. (Note to self: suggest projectile-eating bomb). Maulos himself took some time, but was very easy. All we did was spam sun shards, leading to all the enemies constantly being stunned and ice being cleared from the floor as soon as it appeared.

The conclusion I've reached from this run is that Sun Shards is a good support bomb. Stun helps a lot, and the interruption will greatly decrease the amount of attacks attempted by enemies in general. I don't think shards work as well at being DPS bombs as much as they work at general interruption and infliction of statuses stronger than haze bomb. Overall, I'd say Heart of Ice is well-suited to bringing a few sun shards along. Just make sure to bring something else for trojans, howlitzers and vana himself.

White Collar Captives
Zeddy: Scintillating Sun Shards (No other weapons were ever used, despite being brought)
Full Mercurial / 2x Bomb Focus Module (MAX CTR)

Darkbrady: Some kind of alchemer / Blitz Needle
I dunno, some gunner stuff

Pyneapil: Voltaic Tempest (No other weapons were used as far as I saw)
I dunno, some stuff

The general stratgey was that Pyneapil and I carpeted the area in voltaic tempest and sun shards, constantly keeping the enemies stunned, shocked and interrupted. Darkbrady threw some firepower into the mix with no worry about his own health, as the enemies never attacked him. He reported being bored as he was pumping thousands of damage per second with his blitz needle into the clouds of bomb flashes and lighting mist.

From this run, I conclude that sun shards and blitz needle is a good combinations. Sun shards are very disruptive but do low damage. Blitz needle does enormous damage but requires high control of the target, so they work well together. Sun shards and voltaic tempest are also good co-op buddies.

We also did an FSC which I'll let Brady report on as I have to go now. Our elusive OCH run remains unran for now.

Sun, 11/25/2012 - 02:53

#14

Forum-Brady

Todays Shardy Exploits

Todays Shardy Exploits include HoI and a timed run of FSC! :D
(EDIT: @Zed: I was rolling max:max on all my bombs. Always do~)
EDITEDIT: omg, we totes need to get a SL bombing run on the go O_O

HoI went well but was...not easy, with all dem projectiles and greaver hazes floatin' around a blinding screen. The Howler-Gate room, for example, as pretty awful, but many of the regular rooms were done with ease and great enjoyment! We came to the conclusion that had we had a 4th player, they would surely have to be a Blitzer, just chillin' at the edges and blindly unleashing charges into the crowd. We tested this in White Collar and the results were very favourable. The Blitzer remained boringly safe and could pretty much just stand still at the sidelines unleashing charge after charge without harassment while the crowd got statused, KBd, vortexed and ten other kinds of uselessified, letting the Blitzer just make up extra damage. It also greatly helped with Trojans.

As for the HoI run as it was; it was just great fun, and we realised that corridors are a shards best friend, by keeping the enemies perpetually KBd in a tight space, interrupted, stunned and unable to move or attack. The shards are also clearly designed to be the support weapon for Maulos, since it kept all of the enemies at bay and stunned, while perpetually breaking all the ice blocks he created. The fight was easy, but a bit long with the damage. A blitzer could have stood there next to him unleashing in abject safety and it would have been over in under a minute.

Some screenies for the occasion! I made a point to get the brightest, most flashiest and shiny moments of the run, just for kicks! We could not see a thing the whole run, but with all that KB, stun and hazing..honestly, we didn't actually need to see anything :)

Corridor Domination
Some More Corridor Domination
A Minefield
Vortex About the only time a vortex got used in HoI
Another Minefield
My favourite~ All dem statuses and 'splosions <3
More Blindingness
Maulos

The FSC run (exc. Vana) was done in <40mins (Average FSC runtime) although it was slowed down by the fact that we had only bombs and no utility weapons, so puppies, trojans, blocks, wheels, minerals etc all took longer than they needed to have. We played about mostly with control factors, such as vortexing them then shivvering them all in a frozen group before unleashing a few shards to clear the area. When anything went wrong, we simply "reset" the room with a BAB KB and started fresh with the vortex.
The general sense was, again, abusing the wide variety of control factors we had. One would think it'd be uncontrollable with all the KB, lockdown, interruptions etc, but we had a good rhythm going between us (except for Trojans QQ) and managed to control large and small groups fairly well between the various kinds of control.
The only real trouble actually came when there were too few enemies; we were left somewhat unsure what to use against a single zombie, for example; just use shards, DBB, BAB...? Large groups were where this setup shined, for sure. The larger the group, the faster it fell. The main hall in Charred Court was cleared within literally seconds while the Oiler/Puppy room to the Left took a lot more time as we ran around unsure which tactic to employ.

Charred Main Hall A vortex and shards clear this as fast as vortex and blitz, I assure you~
Spike Room
Zombie Spam
Vana With BAB and DBB...not good. Not good at all; we just ran around silly spamming hazes, running for our lives!

Sun, 11/25/2012 - 13:58

#15

Doctorspacebar

This is... interesting.

Perhaps I'll give the new shards another chance, providing Tsu is willing to use shards...

What'd you suggest a Shard Team should do against Rocket Puppies?

Sun, 11/25/2012 - 15:00

#16

Forum-Brady

Bring utility weapons.

Bring utility weapons. c.c

Nosrsly, the shards do work against puppies, but just slowly. Puppies and Trojans simply defeat the shards; we're yet to find a quick, effective means or dealing with them shy of just spamming DCB around them.
Luckily we've not come across many rocket puppies, but they will be an issue when we finally get around to our OCH run; I've been wondering the same thing myself, tbph. Maybe Zed has some more insight~

EDIT: SSB works nicely as well, since it has neutral damage and can shock them~

Sun, 11/25/2012 - 15:53

#17

Akvar

A bombers answer to the Howlitzer room in HoI

@Zeddy I have found that running circles around the howlitzers while placing DBBs is most effective. The howlitzer goes down in 2-4 blasts depending on group size/bomb buffs and the head always blows up in the next DBB blast. I would have to double check but I am pretty sure at bomb dmg med the howlitzer attack gets interrupted with the DBB, hope this helps.

Sun, 11/25/2012 - 22:20

#18

Zeddy

@Akvar

Oh, I'm aware. The problem isn't the howlitzers in the room I'm currently in. The problem is more when one goes down, all the surrounding gates open, and all the surrounding howlitzers start firing at you.

I find DCB to be handy against turrets in general, as you can keep them perpetually interrupted once you're close enough to run a circle around them.

Thu, 11/29/2012 - 14:41

#19

Zeddy

The long-awaited trainwreck

"Operation Crimson Hammer is my favourite run in all of Spiral Knights, I particularly like how quickly you can breeze through it and how not a single one of the enemies are annoying", said absolutely nobody.

Zeddy:
Shocking Salt Bomb, Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb, Nitronome (used twice by accident)
Full Mercurial Demo, Grey Owlite Shield, 2x Bomb Focus Module (MAX CTR, MED DMG)
Darkbrady:
Shocking Salt Bomb, Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb, Vortex? (never used)
Full Mad Bomber, Grey Owlite Shield, Boom Module and ? (MAX CTR and DMG)
Echoez:
Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb, Venom Veiler (never used) and Dark Retribution (never used)
Full Mad Bomber?, Grey Owlite Shield, Boom Module and probably Bomb Focus (MAX CTR and DMG)
Tohlevi:
Shocking Salt Bomb, Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb, ? (never used)
Grey Owlite Shield, unsure what else (unknown CTR, HIGH DMG)

Our most used tactic was to spam salt bombs while Echoez, lacking salt bombs, spammed sun shards to distribute stun. This worked excellently.

In the start, things went really slow and we spent a lot of time chasing mortafires around, but then later on things went really slow and we spent a lot of time chasing mortafires around. Honestly, we're fresh out of this run from ten minutes ago and all I remember is chasing mortafires around. Nothing else was of consequence. Mortafires was the only thing that didn't get ripped up to shreds the seconds they stepped into our all-encompassing minefield of prettiness and instant, chain-exploding death.

Knockers? Dead. Thwackers? Dead. Puppies? Shocked, interrupted, then dead. Ghostmanes? So dead their grandmothers stepped on shard bombing minefields.

We kind of had to chase menders around a bunch, too. Tohlevi brilliantly started chasing problematic gremlins into corners, and then shielding next to them so as to keep them in place while we carpeted it. No matter what it was, it'd die pretty quickly like that. For the most part, damage wasn't a problem at all. As soon as a gremlin was hit by a shard, they'd knock right back into a different shard and get chained until they died. Everything was over as soon as they got hit, the problem is that hitting gremlins with shards is pretty tricky even when you're four people about it. Unshielded gremlins, obviously, were the easiest ones.

The beefed up lumber lasted maybe five seconds. I don't remember it getting an attack off.

I'm sure you're all curious about how we handled the turrets behind sandbags in the final room before the final floor and the final room before Seerus. They turned out to not be a problem at all, really. Echoez figured that the range of the core blast was just enough to hit the puppiies from the other side of the bag, while Brady chose to throw vials and fire vase. For rocket puppies, me and Tohlevi would shield in front of them so they'd kill themselves with their own rockets. Four players with four guns would've cleared the puppies four times as fast, I imagine, but we didn't really have a problem with it.

There were a lot of deaths. Most of them mine and Tohlevi's as we were encountering lag issues. Echoez was an immortal goddess among bombers and enjoyed relatively fast levels for her sun shards as a result. Brady went from occasionally accusing shards of being overpowered to requesting us to, and I paraphrase, "make love to my life".

We never fought Seerus. The battlepods before him were absolutely impossible with just shards as they'd heal up and revive faster than we could possibly deal damage during the two seconds the middle pod had its shields up. Honestly, I think the pods are impossible with pure bombing in general but feel free to correct me on that one.

Many thanks to the brave knights who attempted this suicide run with me.

Thu, 11/29/2012 - 15:11

#20

Forum-Brady

I have this cool habit of

I have this cool habit of managing to survive tight odds when I'm the only one alive/who can res (being a total ninja in the circle room with all the spikes and mortars and thwackers) but as soon as we're safe and the whole group's alive, I just die every five seconds. I'm not sure if it's a motivation/carelessness thing, but my death rate really seems pretty sporadic.
The bombs being OP though; that came up in choke-points and corridors. Whenever we were in a large room we found ourselves running wide circles while teh gremlins ran and tried to escape, but as soon as we hit a tight corridor or small room, we just godmoded it, leaving the gremlins absolutely nowhere safe to run and, as above, as soon as they got hit once, the chain was pretty unstoppable.

Honestly, it explains to me perfectly why they imposed a hit limit. It feels crippling and awful for a solo bomber, but as soon as there's a couple of sharders around, it creates a minefield that would be utterly devastating if every bomb could hit.

Great fun of a run though, despite the difficulties. Seerus was unfortunate, but we've come to realise that shards, as much fun as they are for a teamwork bomb, simply do not work on bosses~

Thu, 11/29/2012 - 15:29

#21

Alice-In-Pyroland

Seerus is as far as I know,

Seerus is as far as I know, completely impossible with pure-bombs. I knew for a fact that Dark Retribution didn't work and that Battlepods are immune to status, and with this recent run I now know they're immune to Shards. With that in mind, the only way I can feasibly see it even been possible is with four people, all with Max CTR and Max Dmg, chaining Nitronome. Whether that would out-dps the healing I dunno, but nothing else is feasible, either being too slow for damage or just being glitched out due to them being next to a wall.

Also I was using Volcanic Demo Helm / Mad Bomber Suit / 2x Elite Boom Modules.

Thu, 11/29/2012 - 16:11

#22

Forum-Brady

Seerus himself, I reckon is

Seerus himself, I reckon is more than do-able with bombs, or even just shards; it's just the damn battlepods constantly rebuilding, healing and spamming rockets everywhere that are the problem; they're impossible to keep up dps with bombs to actually advance the phase, but I reckon if we "cheated" the battlepods and broke them to bring Seerus out, then we could easily enough do his phases with shards and/or bombs.

Although nitro chaining sounds like a reasonable theory. The shards' fuse and low damage (and teh fact that the pods were ignoring 2nd ring shards) left us only dealing 1/2 bombs worth of 80~100 damage while its shield was down, whereas spamming Nitro would allow us maybe 2/3 bombs in each (at a good few hundred damage per bomb) while also pushing back those infuriating thwackers that kept respawning.

For future reference, I suppose~

Fri, 11/30/2012 - 16:57

#23

Zeddy

Got any questions about propane... or propane accessories?

Today we did C42:

Zeddy:
Shocking Salt Bomb
Full Volcanic Demo, Dragon Scale Shield, some fire and poison trinket (MAX CTR, >double max fire, ~low poison)
Darkbrady:
Shocking Salt Bomb
Volcanic Demo Helm, Vog Cub Coat, Dragon Scale Shield, Elite Bomb Focus Module and Elite Boom Module (Ultra CTR, Med DMG, >double max fire)
Echoez:
Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb
Full Volcanic Demo, Volcanic Plate Shield, Unknown modules (MAX CTR, > double max fire, ? dmg)

Toxoils are immune to stun, so a lot of the time Echoez was forced to impotently dish out less than neutral shard bomb damage with crystal bomb, presumably while being poisoned. She made the best out of it by going for waterballs when applicable.

There were some overall chaos, but for the most part we got through it all just fine without using pills. Slimes are pretty susceptible to bombs in general, so it was a nice run. Polyps were regularly interrupted through shards and, unlike OCH, the areas were mostly tight enough that chasing down gremlins never proved to be a big deal. Mortafires are still jerks, though.

The boss was the easiest boss to shard bomb we've had to deal with yet, perhaps apart from Maulos who was just a complete joke.

I believe that leaves us with Legion and GitM remaining. We missed GitM yesterday, but I believe Legion is tomorrow? How about it, guys?

Fri, 11/30/2012 - 19:44

#24

Fehzor

By the way, I'd love to join you guys whenever you go and do this! I'm friends with some of you I know, so please feel free to invite me; I've got a bomber hat and a chaos cloak and all of the shard bombs, so I should fit right in. I can also bring other bombs/weapons/armors, if you'd like. I will say that some of my shard bombs need heat though- the situations where I want to use them just don't give me a mountain of heat, and I've so many other things that I want to use. So yes, I do use them as often as many other items, but no, I don't bring them on every run. The elemental one did become heated within a month though, due to FSC lol.

And I would argue that people are unable to cooperate in random parties, and most parties do not consist entirely of tightly knit friends all wanting to use the same strategy. The shard bombs should be balanced and not sub-optimal when used alone... look at biohazard. You don't see people carrying that around very often in random parties, unless they're just playing around with it. You'd want to bring something else if you were seriously doing content for the first time.

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 00:59

#25

Zeddy

@Fehzor

Excellent! We obviously want as many shardbombers as possible for each of these runs. I assume your IGN is Fehzor?

I, too, have mused that shard bombs are the catalyzers of bombs. Do swords have such an equivalent?

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 04:05

#26

Fradow

I'm in for some fun too if

I'm in for some fun too if you lack a shardbomber! Currently only have SSS, but working toward DCB. Brady never invited me to any Shard run :'(

There is no sword that I know of that have similar teamplay as Catalyzers/Shards.

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 04:40

#27

Qwez

@Fehzor
Here's how cooperation works, you kill these guys, I kill those guys, afterwards, we help each other kill those guys. Cooperation isn't much of a big deal in this game because each player is pretty OP most of the time. However, there was this one time in vana how 3 man PUG somehow silently agreed to kill the slag guards first right as vana was starting final stage. Cooperation does happen occasionally and these moments of pure greatness are some of the reasons why I like running PUGs, there is the challenge of cooperation. I may not like the fact that the team isn't working out, but the challenge is so enticing.

I have a couple things I would like to have friendly parties of though: Ancient plate+Troika run (of something), Dark Retribution run, Seerus mask catalyzer run, cocktail of hazes run, and a couple more interesting things that sound fun. But alas, metagames. /salute Super Splodin' Shard Squad

@Zeddy
Troika, Calibur, Brandish, Sealed, Winmillion (shorter attack combo = more staggering), and Flourishes are all powerful swords. However the Cutter line is weak and has lower stagger rate in comparison to all the other weapons, Poison line of cutter takes this lower stagger rate further downwards. All swords can be used alone, but DVS is the hardest of them all. Rarely staggers enemies, low damage, charge is very dangerous as enemies don't get staggered and get pushed around (WHB apparently staggers enemies per charge hit). One teamplay factor is that if you use it alone it isn't that great, but in a party it's a more viable option as the enemies aren't really tracking you. Another factor is that poison is more effective when you have a team to take advantage of the poison.

On a slightly unrelated note I had a fun experience with Ionized Salt Bomb in a shock jelly floor. They run around so giddy and happy that I smile as they race around the room. But these heaps of fun like to pause for a second when you feed them salt, then they race off. For some weird reason, my guildies didn't quite like following me into rooms .-. /sad

I have always wondered, why do people like grinding the same thing with the same weapons with the same/similar parties? (How is playing the metagame all that fun?)

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 07:02

#28

Forum-Brady

@Fehz: Cooperation is a

@Fehz:
Cooperation is a problem, particularly for pre-stated reasons (as what Qwez has said) that it's really easy to get a "win" loadout and not need to cooperate. I'm having fun with shards because they require you to work as a team and party up. Now it sucks for PUGs assuming you don't randomly meet someone who happens to have shards and be into them too, but it makes it worth it to take the time and get a group together. We put off OCH for two weeks because we wanted to do it this way, but it was worth it when we finally got the whole team together and did it. It may require cooperation and teamwork, but it's totally worth the effort, imo.

@Fradow:
You've done at least one run w/ me, before we even made this thread! Get more involved D:

@Qwez:
I have always wondered, why do people like grinding the same thing with the same weapons with the same/similar parties? (How is playing the metagame all that fun?)

I have a speedrun "metagame" for Vana, for example, that I will use and repeatedly grind. I do this not for the fun of the run, but for the maximum cr/hour rate. I don't merchant or anything so my primary source of income is to farm Vana; when I'm doing this, I'm not really interested in a "fun" run that takes an hour to clear when I could be playing meta and clearing in <20mins and getting tokens twice as fast.
However, I do understand that this tends to get boring pretty fast, and only run this for so long before I just need a break. The rest of the time however, I'm happy to do runs differently or try stuff out. Even in LD I have like ten completely different loadouts, none of them are clones, and will cycle between them fairly frequently, as I'd just get bored otherwise. I see a lot of people only ever ever ever using 1/2 loadouts and it totally baffles me how they can stand to play so much, when they play the exact same thing over and over. Especially when they just /win with their ping/heart trinkies, seems to suck all the fun out of it imo. I like to just switch it up after a few matches and keep the interest alive, so I'm with you on that one~

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 15:57

#29

Forum-Brady

LoA today: worst yet by far.

LoA today: worst yet by far. Imo, at least, LoA is the least suited DM for shards, due to the high number of respawning/totemable creatures, silkies and shielded enemies, with their shields negating most of the shard damage. The AA noob ACs most certainly did not help, as the KB/flashes made predicting their hugely wide attacks pretty awkward, especially when it took so long to kill them and there was often more than one. The last room was pretty challenging in its own right, but I'll let Zeddy drop the main report w/ details. For now, I has the screeny, 'cuz I think we were all pretty happy to see the end of that level!

Ftw

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 16:26

#30

Zeddy

Lag of Almire

Legion this time:

Zeddy:
Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb (low vs undead), Shocking Salt Bomb
Merc Demo helm, Mad Bomber Suit, Boom Module, Bomb Focus Module (CTR MAX, DMG Very High / Ultra vs undead with DCB)
Darkbrady:
Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb, Shocking Salt Bomb
Full Mad Bomber?, Boom Module, ? (CTR MAX, DMG MAX)
Pyneapill
Radiant Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb
Full Mad Bomber? Boom Module, ? (CTR MAX, DMG MAX)
Tohlevi:
Scintillating Sun Shards, Deadly Crystal Bomb, Shocking Salt Bomb
Mad Bomber helm, elemental cloak (He derped) (CTR... Very High?, DMG Very High)

Everything died all the time. Me, Tohlevi, Brady, Pynapill, the skellies, the silkwings, the deadnaughts, the lumbers, the spookats, the howlitzers Suddenly dead, suddenly everywhere. If we stuck together and spammed shards, we could carpet the area with some serious death. Things would die, but we weren't able to see a bloody thing, and since undeads don't seem to get interrupted they could just swipe at us for the half second they lived without us being able to react to it.

Points of note:
-The tight corridors and obstacles scattered around LoA makes it perfect for shard bombs. All the shards get clustered for maximum damage, so that's definitely a big reason things died quickly
-Spookats were tricky even with all the shards we were dropping. The best option wil always be to lure then into a corner that you're carpeting.
-For the room with the gate, we threw vials to lure the crusaders in one at a time.
-Deadnaughts went down surprisingly fast at times. We killed the very first one almost instantly. You don't see things go down that fast without blitz often. The general strategy is to have them charge into a wall you've covered with sun shards so they get stunned, then switch to crystal bomb and let them have it. This didn't work so well in the final room because the infinitely spawning crusaders kept murdering us from our self-created smokescreen of constant explosions. Crusaders were definitely the biggest problem in the run. I dare even say they were the only problem.
-For the room with the gates and switches, each of us stuck to a corner and just spammed bombs. It worked out pretty well as it kept the gates closed and had the enemies come into the corners where shard bombs are more effective.

We revived five times. The fifth time, Brady and I revived simultaneously so there were six revives in all. I think we could probably do better so I'd like to give it another go the next cycle. Hopefully with less lag-related issues.

Sat, 12/01/2012 - 20:59

#31

Tokinjen

I, dancinjen, want to do this

I, dancinjen, want to do this with you sometime.

Full party of four. I THINK SO.

Sun, 12/02/2012 - 00:15

#32

Zeddy

There are getting to be enough people in on this that we could run two parties simultaneously.

Maybe we should make a steam group or something.

Edit: Do I look for Dancinjen or Tokinjen in the game?

Sun, 12/02/2012 - 05:05

#33

Alice-In-Pyroland

If we end up getting enough

If we end up getting enough people involved and actually getting runs to a decent, consistent standard I could set up a Youtube channel for it as well.

Incidentally in-case a Steam group does get made; http://steamcommunity.com/id/AliceInPyroland

Sun, 12/02/2012 - 08:02

#34

Forum-Brady

@Zeddy:That's something

@Zeddy:
That's something worth noting about what I/we've been sayin' about the "teamwork" aspect of the shards. As much of a pain as it is to have to find groups and parties revolving around shards to make them work/fun, the very fact that we are going to the effort to do so and to make co-operative groups seems to be an effective ploy, on OOOs part.
Anyone we tell about this who's remotely interested in bombing tends to pick up an interest and wants to join in and play with us, irrespective of the location. People want to play co-op and work together doing this, just for the fun! A few people I know went from only having one shard they hated to making others just to join in our escapades.
S'workin', dawg~ :)

Anyhoo, I know a couple of others who're down with this who haven't posted. I could "promote" this thread a bit, check if they're on Steam etc and see if everyone wants to get into a group, since I'm confident we do have at least 8 (potential) Sharders in oor wee Squad. Gettin' everyone on at the same time may be tricky, but the fact is that our Squad is increasin' in size. I'd say we just make up the group (the name should be obvious :D ) and we'll start inviting those who wish to be a part of it~

On that note: another option on top of that would be to make a mini/alt guild for us, so we can get together, have a wee bomby related GH to discuss it/meet up and; more importantly (back to my original task!) so that we could try sharding as a bombing team in LD >:D

@Echoez:
Added you (I think) since Zeddy and I talk on Steam already~

On-topic:
Since we've done HoI pureshard already, I reckon we should give it a try as we suggested last time; a full hardcore run. Mostly shards, maybe some hazes/vortex and have a blitzer standin' at the back just unleashin' into the crowd while everythin's distracted by the shininess. Like we did our dry run in White Collar, but actually do it in HoI~

Sun, 12/02/2012 - 15:09

#35

Zeddy

Actually, I think we used a bunch of hazes on our HoI run, so it wasn't pure shard. However, pure-sharding doesn't really have to be our purpose so I'm down for that.

Oh, and: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/shardsquad

It's public at the moment. Anyone with steam who wants in on this business should join!

Sun, 12/02/2012 - 23:34

#36

Forum-Brady

Awesome! Now that we have

Awesome! Now that we have that, we just need a guild so we can LD when enough of us are around :D

EDIT@Echoez:
Nothin' wrong w/ recordin' runs already, pre-emptively, as some of the runs are just plain fun to watch. The screenies I have of Hoi last week for example; just look fantastic! Havin' a video of runs like that just to show people what we mean and how fun it can be.
Also, as far as "decent" goes, we can run them in good times already. Zeddy and I have run FSC in "average" times with shards; we're not far away from masterin' them :D

Also, you're welcome to come along for the SRJP run. I've not heard of anyone doin' shard shadow lairs before now so it could certainly be something worth recording!

Mon, 12/03/2012 - 03:48

#37

Forum-Brady

http://steamcommunity.com/gro

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/shardsquad#events/1731895678294539584

It's time! O:

The shard squad's gunna super 'splode with shards in the shadow lair!

EDIT:
Also, the "Shard Squad" guild has now been created and will be a place for us to gather, chat/meet about our co-op runs and future plans and even play LD as a group of useless bombers. Alts are happily accepted as we see how well this develops and how much interest folk begin to take in our wee shard project.

Furthermore, we have a plant in our GH and we are expecting its growth rate to be explosive! /pun

Mon, 12/03/2012 - 04:30

#38

Zeddy

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/69789

It's up.

Mon, 12/03/2012 - 18:00

#39

Forum-Brady

We did it! :DZeddy, Fehzor,

We did it! :D
Zeddy, Fehzor, Echoez and I just finished our first pureshard SRJP run! Was a total disaster, horrible and painful, but oh-so-much fun! We did everything with only shards, inc IQ herself and the UP!
Was pretty hard (esp since it was quite a while before any Vitas dropped, leaving with us with our 3~6 vitas for quite a while.

The main problem were that the shards were blinding, and mixed with the (quite deliberate) camouflage of the polyp spikes and ice cube ground spikes i the white floor, we couldn't see the majority of the attacks aimed at us from either. Ground spikes were on the verge of impossible to dodge by the time we actually saw them.

UP was great fun, although certainly the hardest UP I've done to date~

Otherwise, will let Zeddy give the full report of it all soon~

It was messy, however next time it'll be a real shard run: hazes and vortexes included, which will let us do them much smoother and to full efficiency; we really did gimp ourselves quite heavily using only shards, especially since all SL monsters have just so many HPs; dem lichens included...they just would not die.

We got a video of it all, and will be showing it off once Echoez has finished cutting it and making it look pretty, and are looking forward to our next SL run which will be a serious bombing run, with the intentions of being done to a higher standard :)

Mon, 12/03/2012 - 20:21

#40

Fehzor

The lag was terrible... but we did it. Slowly and painfully. Polyps are the worse enemy of all time.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540693576077733504/9E6EB1D43EFAF25C7C4...

Mon, 12/03/2012 - 21:08

#41

Forum-Brady

I never actually lagged that

I never actually lagged that badly, I just couldnae see a thing. The ground spikes were what got me the most tbh; almost every death was because ground spikes hit me before I even saw the telegraphs :(

Tue, 12/04/2012 - 02:51

#42

Zeddy

Brady pretty much got it for the report. If we were to attempt it again (we're not), I would've done a few things differently:

-I should've equipped my Mercurial armour rather than Mercurial Demo. I died a whole lot due to having no piercing defence. (And also being terrible at dodging.)
-Brady used full mad bomber which gave little payoff due to SSB having +4 against slimes in the first place. One boom module or something would've put him at max damage.
-Echoez brought only crystal bomb. While they're at least neutral to everything, sun shards could've been better to distribute stun and kill silkwings faster.
-Per my suggestion, Fehzor brought Ironmight Plate Shield instead of Royal Jelly Shield. Thinking about it, I'm guessing the latter would've tanked more hits from Polyps. I don't know if this turned out to be a problem.
-Echoez made some tactical suggestions that would've probably worked out really well if anyone had bothered listening to them. We should set up voice chat next time.

Wed, 12/05/2012 - 02:22

#43

Zeddy

Honestly, I think the pods are impossible with pure bombing in general but feel free to correct me on that one.

Myth busted. Nitro and DR makes the entirety of OCH a joke. I just soloed it today using those two bombs, Bombtastic Helmet, Mad Bomber Suit, a Boom Module and Bomb Focus Module for a total of Max everything.

Wed, 12/05/2012 - 10:45

#44

Alice-In-Pyroland

Just want to make a note of

Just want to make a note of the fact that while on my crazy Dark Matter Bomb rage crafting spree I got a lot of UVs, including two CTR Highs and three CTR Meds, so if anyone happens to be looking to purchase one, message me.

also the videos should be up on the YT channel over the new two days or so.

Wed, 12/05/2012 - 21:57

#45

Forum-Brady

Cannae wait to see that

Cannae wait to see that disaster of SRJP go up! Wonder if it'd be worth waitin' and puttin' up our next, real SRJP run alongside it, for contrast/interest? Or just better off givin' them some days time between for the sake of mulling over the differences~

Unless we just do awfully anyways. That'd be no fun D:

Fri, 12/07/2012 - 05:51

#46

Alice-In-Pyroland

New video

Fri, 12/07/2012 - 17:48

#47

Zeddy

Report for puresharding GitM:

Account of total party wipes:
1. Half a minute into the stage, we got the chokepoint with the puppies. The urns kept impotently hitting the puppies instead of the blocks behind them. We didn't actually wipe until the mecha knight behind the gate got us all, but by the time the gate was open we were all near-death.

Rest of the first stage went fine. In fact, it went more than fine. You don't see zombies die so fast on this side of vortex-combos often.

2. That gorram arena on the east side with the totems.

3. We were walking back from the east arena when there were two of us left with a single pip of health. I was hiding in a nook along the passage with the shankles when I think Zdarklight walked in, shocked. The shock tick from him finished us both.

4. That gorram areana on the west side with the infinitely spawning shock-bombies. I was the sole survivor for a while, notably killing a gun puppy using a curse vial (and all my other vials) before dying.

5-9. Do not fight bosses using pureshards.

The party consisted of me, Darkbrady, Shidura and Zdarklight spamming sun shards and crystal bomb.

Fri, 12/07/2012 - 17:51

#48

Forum-Brady

S'kinda sad to say that that

S'kinda sad to say that that really is as much as needs said about that run. With the others, there was some fun or cool aspect that was worth bletherin' on about, but by the time we finished GiM all I really summarised it with was "We died a lot."

Shidara and I were pretty latent so we were especially on the deathy end of things, being hit with phantom range etc, but if I'm truthful I don't think it would have made a whole lot of difference if we had perfect connections. GiM is simply not made for shards.

Sun, 12/09/2012 - 21:03

#49

Riexon

What is SRJP?

Is it Shadow Royal Jelly Palace?

Sun, 12/09/2012 - 23:25

#50

Sir-Alfred

Great vid Echoez =D Would you

Great vid Echoez =D

Would you mind telling me what setup you used for C42? (I want one of those BAB!)

Search

Super Splodin' Shard Squad