A shard bomb will normally explode and deal damage, but the shards on the ground deal damage & status proc 2 times per second. When the shards' normally time out, they do not explode as they usually do.

Clarifications:
No invincitinks.
For simplicity sake, tick damage of Dark Matter 5* shards is half of the DR's.
There would be either 4 or 5 ticks of damage per shard depending on the implementation unless the time-out of the shards is extended.
These are not the same as the Tortofist shards; They do not block enemy movement and do not tick for damage as quickly.
Each tick of damage from the shards will have minimal interrupt like the DR, being able to stop Greavers and Devilites from attacking.
Status procs reduced to low.

Doing some tentative calculations:
-DR balls rotate at an angular speed of 1/sec, and there are 4 of them.
-Dark Matter 5* would have shards that flash damage at a rate of 2/sec, and there are 8 shards. Damage is also halved.
>On a single, stationary target, DR does a minimum of 2 ticks/sec, 5* Dark Matter does a minimum of 1 tick/sec.
>On eight, stationary targets arranged in perfect formation, DR does a maximum of 32 ticks/sec overall, DM 5* does a maximum 8 ticks/sec overall.
However these are all with the consideration of open ground. In close quarters the nature of shards would allow them to clump up and deal respectable damage and especially status.
For example, in the small corridors where the DR can't effectively zone well, shards would shine and also be very shiny.

The issue I have with my suggestion is that there aren't too many places where you'd fight in a small, enclosed area to make this better than bringing a DR.