Class armors are meant to be for weapon specialty, and defensive armors are for defense. I remember a thread a while back that asked for defensive gears to be given a buff in HP for sure, and offensive a lower base HP. If we change defensive armors, I am all for bomber armor getting a buff.

Perhaps all bomber gear (even just one part!) would prevent bombers CTR to be interrupted? Thus it's always the same time, hurt or not, to charge up your bombs. No longer will fire be the bane of bombers!
Potentially as well, if we can, I'd love to see bomb-inflicted statuses (by people wearing bomber armors) be more potent.

I guess what we need is bomber armors to buff bombs beyond what we have. Increased radius of bombs per piece (just slightly), change fuse times, etc. Different sets could do different things for bombs.

Example: Bombtastic could have higher radius for bombs(med per piece), volcanic decreased fuse times(med per piece), mad gets curse vulnerability but gets both higher radius and decreased fuse times (low per piece). Mercurial demo could see decreased fuse time (low per piece). Kat hiss set could see decreased fuse times and higher radius (low per piece).

After adding those, give chaos bomb radius decrease and bomb fuse time increase of low per piece. Bam, we've fixed mad bomber and made bomber gears relevant again while also making chaos less of a viable bomber armor without making it the worst possible thing for hybrids.

It means that a chaos bomber's bombs will be less viable than a mad bomber's bombs, but it won't negatively affect any other weapons. The difference between chaos and mad bomber would be a very high FTR (fuse time reduction), and BRI (bomb radius increase).

Pure swordsman you'll benefit from chaos if it's damage and CTR you're looking for. If you're wanting ASI, chaos isn't gonna help that, and if you want damage and a bit of resistance to say poison? Well, chaos isn't super helpful once poisoned.

But chaos does benefit hybrids the most of any offensive gear, as no other offensive gear will you get faster bombs AND more damaging swords.
What my proposed debuff does is it makes chaos give up the full effectiveness of the bomb in favor of gaining super effectiveness with all other weapons. Smaller bomb radius will affect chaos bombers, as will the fuse time increase. You could even make chaos have -2 to each of them to make 5* bombs have the radius between a 3* and 4* bomb, and the fuse time that makes the CTR sort of cancel itself out.
Difference is though that CTR keeps a bomber attacking whereas fuse time isn't negatively affecting the bomber's safety, just their damage output in a timely manner.

I thought about fuse predictions as well, but came to the same conclusion. I think bombers would overall be happier and more willing to adjust to better bombs even if it means they have to re-calibrate their timing. It'll still be a consistent timing luckily.

With radius increase, especially if they're on the not-five-star gears, will make bombing more viable in the early parts of the game. Heck, we have 0* gunner and swordie armor, why not do something similar but have a bomber one that increases CTR and radius by medium? Then the standard bomber gear would have a low FTR per piece up until 5* where it splits. We could potentially also create a piercing line that starts at 3* (off the 2* bomber) that has radius increase so new bombers can choose which they like more.

Potentially the range increase wouldn't be that big the larger the radius already is. With a VH a 5* bomb would have potentially another 2 tiles of space covered. That seems like a lot, but keep in mind only bombtastic can have that, and it sacrifices CTR. This means medium would be one tile bigger, which is huge for smaller bombs and would make vortex bombs even more effective while not making BRI mandatory for mist bombers (however that would be wonderful).

I'd like to see bombers be a more viable option in both clockworks and lockdown. Heck, if you want, make strikers have a -1 to each of the new bomb things, give recon faster fuses and guardian more range (+1 for each of them). You cannot achieve "Max!" with any of these new things unless they become a UV as well, which I'd avoid. Treat these new bombers stats like MSI.