Bomb – Reign of Slime

Here’s a few ideas for a new family of bombs. The intent of this family is to introduce a new fighting dynamic to the game, forcing an adjustment of technique if they are used in pvp combat.

They are inspired by the behavior of certain lichens, namely oilers, who ooze bits of themselves onto the floor. These, as most of us know, become floor hazards if they come in contact with something that’s on fire, bursting into flame quite readily.
Other monsters also spit out gooey floor hazards. These would be chromalisks and other species of lichen. Tangentially, quicksilvers, being gel themselves of course, will adapt the shocking aspects of weapons and floor traps, becoming mobile Zeus bolts of doom.

The bombs appear as a gooey gel core in the palm of a knight’s hand, dripping glop onto the floor as a knight walks. Placing the bomb requires a charge, as usual – visualize breaking the slime core’s molecular bonds with the charge – and placing the core on the ground. Detonation is simply the gel oozing out into a radius, or splatting into concentrated piles of gunk, depending on the type.

4 different clades for the slime bombs:

Gel
Goo
Slick
Aggressive Core

Crafting trees will have a 1* version for use in T1 pvp.

Terms: Royal gel bomb comes from the sovereign slime terminology.
Barbaric comes from quicksilvers, who are, in my mind, seen as lichens outside of the royal family, harming everything around them, acting like barbarians. They even have their own armor line, the Mercurial set, separate from ice queen and regular crown slime sets. They are still slimes at heart. Er, at core.

RECALL THIS for the following bomb list:
Royal bombs spread out like liquid to fill the radius, melting out from the planted core.
Barbaric bombs splat out glops, like oilers, covering about 65% of the available radius.

Naming as follows:
1*: Tiny x Bomb, 2*: x Bomb, 3*: Brute x Bomb, 4*: Rocky x Bomb, 5*: Royal x Bomb, 5*Barbaric x bomb. 1-4* bombs will act like royal bombs.

Where “x” is gel, goo, slime, glop, or aggressive.

All slime family bombs will prevent wolver warping. The warp dust just can’t work if it’s coated in slick…a wolver in the bomb radius will be unable to warp out. Stupid wolvers can warp in.

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Goo Bombs

Goo bombs will get all over enemies, preventing efficient attacks with sticky stuff.
Preceding stars will induce effects at the same level, they’ll just have a smaller radius.

Royal – unpredictably reduce attack speed, movement speed, or ctr by a high amount. One of these three, randomly, for random duration, while inside the radius of the bomb (they are re-inflicted over and over, like the stun of a swarm seed). Effect(s) last a predictable 1 second after contact with the bomb Zone of Effect is lost. Think of like, a random stun-ish freeze-ish type of thing. Enter radius at your own risk!

Barbaric – splats out globs of gunk that will reduce enemy defenses by a significant amount, for the duration that they are in the radius. (think of like, negative defense orbs). An excellent choice for defending an area. Anything you don’t like that enters this zone has the integrity of a fine wine glass.

These could be very special – the splats fall randomly in the radius, and are invisible to everything but the user of the bomb. Maybe visble to allies so someone could trick a chaser into stepping on a splat. The center of this…mine field is indicated the planted gel core at the center of the radius. It tends to smirk at things it doesn’t like…which seems to be everything. So while you might not walk into a negative defense orb splat, you probably will. Many players will see the smirking center too late. Monsters are just silly things and will walk into it anyway.

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Slick Bombs

Slippery, bouncy mechanics! This bomb was inspired by certain games like pokemon that have areas of ice as parts of puzzles. Stepping onto an ice patch in pokemon makes you keep going in the direction you were headed, until you leave the other end of the ice or hit something solid. The slick bombs will do the same – players entering the radius of the bomb will keep going in that direction, slipping on the slimey slicks, until they leave the radius. They can still spin/turn/use abilities while they are stuck in this linear momentum, and attack while doing so.

The barbaric slick bomb will do something different, since it spits out mounds – it will accelerate (the royal bomb maintains their speed) enemies that touch it in the direction they were facing, and VERY quickly (like rubber band lag). If the enemy turns at the wrong time while under this influence, this could result in a ping pong effect, possibly trapping the target for the duration of the bomb’s detonation effects in the glops. While it could be difficult to target someone zipping around like this, a bomber would have a nice party with another bomber setting down DBB and Barbaric slick.

Slick bombs would force the use of long range bombs, guns, and charged swords, unless you’re able to turn and swing as you pass the bomber. Great reflexes. The radius of the Royal bomb is just perfect enough to prevent enemies from being on the capture point for too long…stepping on one end, passing over it, and ending up off the capture point on the other side, if the bomb is detonated in the center of the point. You must be rid of the bomber with ranged knockback charges if you want the point quickly. Or shock em up so they can’t keep planting.

This is a different mechanic than simply blasting someone away with knockback - you can trick someone into floor traps, sliding to their doom, if the opportunity arises.

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Aggressive Core Bombs

These hail from the nastiest of turrets and royal brats. They are similar to the dark briar barrage, however, they are intelligent little globs of goo…watching…studying…damage is pure piercing.

Royal: plants a polyp that generates 5 mini glop drops. These cannot be attacked (they are invincible), and will follow enemies (by rolling after them like glop drops) for 7 seconds before expiring explosively, doing some knocking around, and dealing decent dmg if all 7 hit. They are quite fast little buggers. You will avoid them with a nice dash, if you can count seconds, or if one of your friends gets closer to them than you.... Think of it like a sort of homing bomb, a set of mini nitronomes that does work for you. Unstable cores in the flesh. Inspired by those little marbles in Aeon Flux. Potential: have them stick on to ppl if they get close enough, to ensure a hit.

Barbaric: these splats are different than other splats... They act like flattened glop drops, with spikes all nasty and protruding, but they will not exit the radius. Radius is invisible, they just won’t stray far from the planted core. The splats wander randomly within the radius of the turret (always flat and spikey), and they will track anyone coming into the radius of the bomb. They move very quickly and deal a huge amount of damage if you step on them. This bomb is more of a…stay away bomb than a damage bomb. It’s like an incomplete, intelligent, lower-damage spike trap that you can set yourself. Bomb lasts a few moments longer than the mist style (VV, VT, Shiver, etc.) bombs, and has a slightly smaller radius.

Players will tend to avoid this bomb, similar to the goo bombs.
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Gel Bombs

These are fantastic bombs that are dynamic, prismatic, and true to their oiler inspiration.
If an enemy, OR an ally, enters the effect zone of a Gel Bomb inflicted with a status, then the entire zone of the Gel Bomb will inflict that status to any enemy that comes into the radius of the Gel Bomb. (Like an oiler splat igniting if anything with fire on it gets close). Are ye cursed by a faust user? Run to yer bomber-mommy and hope that they follow! Are mecha knights giving you some trouble? Wait till they stutter amidst the gel, then they won’t be so haughty. Yes, the gel bomb will inflict multiple statuses in the radius if multiple statuses are introduced. Another strategy: pair up with a bomber, or bring a gran faust and a gel bomb with you, curse yourself up after planting the bomb and laugh at how sad your enemies are. Think of these as a sort of prismatic mist bomb. Note: if a gel bomb overlaps a floor trap, then the floor trap’s AoE has suddenly increased, and will harm enemies. (The trap will still harm any players – bomb won’t hurt user or user allies).

Royal: oozes into radius, doesn’t last too long.
Barbaric: splats incompletely into radius, lasts a lot longer than royal (royal families last a long time, but the position of king probably doesn't :P). All gel splats will communicate with each other and act the same way as any other splat nearby.

The gel bombs will deal damage in a small radius around the core when they detonate, but will otherwise be useless unless opportunities arise. Team up with other bombers to plant one bomb near a floor trap, and another bomb farther away touching the first, and then a bomb in an area you want to defend to use that trap for your own victory.

Spike traps: the radius of the gel becomes a carpet of flattened glop drops. Ouch!

Gel is prismatic to the user. So you can tell, if in lockdown, if some gel is good to run into or away from, if it’s not your team color.

Alternative: gel is black, and inflicts effects to anything in its radius if status is introduced. Imo, the prismatic is better, more dynamic.

When assimilating a status, the surface of the gel will burst into flame, crackle with electricity like chroma spit, ooze bubbles, get a pink haze for curse, etc.

While it’s not the most useful thing in the clockworks, where enemies of a status type are rather…immune…to their own status, spike traps are rather common.
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So, these could be fun. I see a lot of balancing issues, but it has the potential to give players the opportunity to enjoy bombs more, get cozy with slimes and their unstable cores, and force different strategies in pvp.

I'd like to know how they could be changed, what effects should be inflicted (goo was particularly...my first idea ended up being a Stagger Storm clone), in order to be nicely balanced.

Inspired by: oilers and their oozy floor hazards, blast cubes (which weapon to focus on? bombs, guns, or swords...slimes seem to be splodey), shard family of bombs (so this is a slime/core family of bombs) and various other games.

As always, sorry if a similar idea has been posted before. I always look around first. We all make mistakes.