Spiral Knights - BAB and how to love it

BAB and how to love it

5 replies [Last post]

Mon, 05/05/2014 - 06:16

Holy-Nightmare

The Big angry bomb (BAB) is the most powerful bomb (per blast not DPS) and has an incredible knockback (enough to send the JK flying). Couple this with a massive blast radius and you have a nice bomb.

Unlike most blast bombs where you go and plant bombs nearby enemies this bomb is best used as area denial against monsters that use melee attacks.

This bomb creates massive knockback so playing the sword guy on a team with the BAB doesn't work well. Guns work well since they can hide in the blast zone (generally safe from monsters) and spam AT assisted shots. Bombing with a BAB bomber may work out good as you can lay down extra status types besides stun (see fire, poison) and possibly use your own blast bombs to "play volleyball" with the enemies.

For the BAB user I would suggest a CTR boost (with volcanic, mad bomber, or chaos cloak) UV or pet perk, till you reach LVL 10 on BAB and get that natural boost. After that you can change your pet perk to the damage boost.

The way I chain the BAB is by slowly moving the chain so as not to get out of the last bomb's blast radius, or by just chaining bombs in the middle of the field.

This bomb does best against moderate to slow melee enemies such as wolvers, mecha knights, knockers, and lumbers. It can fare well against cubes, lichens, thwackers, zombies and other mixed attackers.

Fast enemies like Greavers, or ranged enemies like devilites and tier 3 turrets (polyp, howlitzer, puppy) are more difficult to deal with.

The most noticeable downsides are slow charge, movement, and fuse time, the disruption it causes to average players (who have not experienced this rare bomb) and the comparatively low DPS (as this bomb is to be used defensively anyway DPS should not take precedence over party protection)

Mon, 05/05/2014 - 10:58

Autofire

You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

In my experience, the Big Angry Bomb should not be spammed. It's best use seems to be separating all of the monsters so that you can focus on priority targets, like healers. You could drop it in the middle of a room and then hop over to whoever you want to slash to death while the rest of the monsters are in disarray and/or stunned.

I don't think this is a good weapon on its own, nor is it good for spamming. (Because of the slow charge speed and movement speed.) Nitronome is a much better bomb for that. This bomb still has it's uses, though.

Mon, 05/05/2014 - 17:38

Fehzor

The problem with the big angry bomb is that it works directly against the mostly accepted strategy of clump n' destroy. Here is how it works:

Clump: Move all of the slags, slimes, bunnies, wolvers etc. into the same area, via statuses, aggro, vortexes................
Destroy: BRANDISH THEM AS HARD AS YOU CAN! SUDARUSKA SMASH! AREA DAMAGE WITH SWORDS! :SLDFJ:SLDJF:XZN
(Unless: There is something more important, like a healer or trojan, or the enemy doesn't clump well. Deal with those via other means, and plan for them. Like using spam. Spam is the number 1 tactic for devilites. They dodge and fidget right into it.)

Like Autofire said, the big angry bomb is best used to seperate all of the enemies, so as to pick which ones to destroy. This works perfectly fine as droppign the bomb and slamming your foes into walls allows time to spam supernova/polaris shots, but your party has to be working with you or they'll end up incredibly frustrated by your behaviour. This is also generally much less efficient than just clumping them and destroying them, especially when you cut off your team's strategy by blowing enemies out of clumps.

It can still be used in some situations with the other strategy (namely when clump n destroy would fail via menders that hide and enemies that don't agree with area damage), but due to its slow movement speed is generally not the greatest of weapons for the job, and is really outclassed by things like deadly shadow cloak + running up and killing the mender with acheron/dread venom striker.

Tue, 05/06/2014 - 15:09

Batabii

Question: is it feasible or even possible to combo BAB with Electron Vortex? Clump 'n' destroy...

Wed, 05/07/2014 - 10:26

Holy-Nightmare

@Batabii

Not likely as the fuse for BAB is super slow.

@ the rest

The BAB only really becomes a decent chain bomb at max CTR, it is also good for handling melee enemies like mecha knights and wolvers.

It makes for a good and fun solo bomb, but when used in a group it provides a safe zone for gunners to stand still and spam.

Wed, 05/07/2014 - 21:03

Fehzor

Bab works to destroy clumped enemies kind of, but there are much better options and it will take you a while, as every single hit will spread out the entire set of mobs as far out as possible, making things relatively difficult.

A better idea is to use them hand in hand, using vortex to clump and destroy, and then bab whenever menders etc. are present-- but the very idea of bringing the bab for this purpose would again require a large bit of cooperation. Unless you yourself wanted to bring a third weapon and use that?

So like:

Chaos + Volcanic Demo (Or mercurial demo + black kat + trinkets for bomb ctr)
MSI sprite perk
Defensive shield

Electron Vortex/Obsidian Crusher
Big Angry Bomb
Some Brandish/Dread Venom Striker/Sudaruska

Where you spam vortex/bab right off the bat in most encounters with many enemies, and then follow up with your sword. As long as your party can follow what you're doing you'd be fine.

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BAB and how to love it