The whole thing about bombers though is that they have to charge their weapon to use it. They are also AoE but still.
The demo stuff having natural aggro on them would become heavier per star level. At 2* you attract enemies within X radius... Let's say within 3 tiles of yourself. They're likely already aggro'd on you, or if you're in a group at least you're in bomb range. At 3* it'll be 5 tiles, 4* 7 tiles, 5* 9 tiles. Mad bomber would have an additional aggro range, having up to 11 tiles of aggro.

I would say bomber aggro also encourages enemies to attempt melee attacks if they have any. This means kats will try to bite you and retroids will attempt a swipe at you.

Dropping smaller bombs with lower damage/radius and faster fuses would be good. It's not an instant attack, but it's something that you can more easily time. These dropped bombs wouldn't leave unique types of things behind (DR will explode for damage, not orbs. Mist bombs would only have a small mist cloud in the explosion radius. Vortex will drop the end explosion, not the pull.). Have these bombs only dropped when you lower your bomb, thus not stopping any bomber who currents plays by adding a new attack when they just want to charge.

Something else to consider is that if we got this we should totally put bomb ASI: Med on each mad bomber piece and maybe a bomb ASD: med/VH on strikers in lockdown.

Bombers are a "prepare now, fight later" sort of class. Dropping bombs around yourself would be a way to keep things rolling.

Instant blasts make bombers too much like other classes IMO. I want to keep them special, hence the short fuse times on the ground. They can be a fuse time of 1-2 seconds depending on the bomb.

Other changes I'd say is that putting a bomb up and down no longer stops you in place, but whenever you let go of a charge it drops a bomb at your feet. Would be interesting if the longer you held the charge the closer to the max bomb charge it would get. If you charge up a bomb 90% of the way, then get hit by a sword, you'd drop a bomb with 59.4% of the bomb radius and damage (66% damage/radius would be the "curve", meaning that a fulled charged bomb will always do a fair amount more than a 99% charged bomb to still encourage fully charged bombs). Again, these bombs lack the special effects a fulled charged bomb would have.

The "flash aggro" idea is cool and all, but I personally feel having that be a bomber passive rather than a bomber attack would benefit them by opening up doors to allow for an actual attack that can break rocks and minerals and the likes. Setting short traps would be super fun

Holy-Nightmare,
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "aggroed to [the bomb]"...
In the time someone can charge and plant a vortex, another person can do multiple flashes (since not a charge attack). It effectively acts like a vortex by grouping monsters together. You mentioned yourself that vortex are used mainly for support, not dps.
Mist bombs are upgraded mainly for their range since status doesn't change. If you have the aggro technique, why waste the resources to heat up your 4 star mist bomb, or even 3 star for that matter?

Still not seeing what your idea of aggro is. Will it suck in enemies closer to you or does it just make them want to attack you?
Let's say there's a shuffle-bot 8 tiles away, and you flash 3 times in a row. What happens after each flash?

Having the ability to suck enemies toward you is very powerful, in Lockdown and in clockworks. You basically get to mess with their movement patterns. Allowing a normal attack to do this is pretty game-changing in terms of how bombers play.
Currently bombers spam bombs strategically and hope enemies will run into them. With your aggro attack, bombers will place bombs more sparingly and focus more on pulling enemies into bombs already placed. As long as your bomb is not too small, you can easily drag multiple monsters into the range before it dissipates.

holy that link sent me to a photo album of weapons/flags, could you explain that?

also I like the "flashes on release" idea, the new bombs should be able to charge without needing a normal attack first

Certainly better than what we have now, though I'm still not convinced for a few reasons- namely the learning curve of bombs and the nature of small encounters.

To start with, newer players that flash aggro are quite probably going to die because they just dictated all of the aggro onto themselves and aren't prepared to deal with said aggro. What the aggro flash was would eventually become clear to them, but how would you teach the importance of such a mechanic? I worry that younger players especially would have trouble conceptualizing

Small encounters are often killed and dominated by gun/sword users because of how instantaneous those weapons are, which has nothing to do with aggro. Take combuster vs dark retribution for killing three retrodes as an example. With dark retribution, you want to bait those construct into you but with combuster, you just walk up and slash away or release a charge- no waiting or baiting involved, and what the constructs do doesn't actually matter at all- they're really just sitting there and taking the hit.

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The good part of this is certainly worth mentioning however- such an aggro mechanic could really expand upon our combat system in arena like areas as well as with such small encounters. There are two ways I'd really like to see aggro incorporated into the game:

1. Items that deal with aggro

For instance, a weaker version of nitronome that while being charged, draws in aggro.. or a normal antigua variant that always draws aggro upon hit.

2. Monsters that always focus on people that are charging a weapon

Basically, the opposite of what you're saying. Imagine a construct mini that always focuses on the nearest player using a charge attack- since bombers are always using charge attacks, bombing would always draw constant aggro.. but sword/gun users could also take advantage. This same AI could be made into entire new levels of design, reused whenever needed.