So I just had a weird idea. What if shard bombs were a setup weapon?
With the standard attack button your knight would plant small shards on the ground, they wouldn't do anything to enemies in this state. On the charge attack the bomb you place releases a shockwave and deals damage (and status if you have SSB or SSS), any planted shards inside the shockwave explode and also release a smaller shockwave which works like the first.
With this mechanic you could lay down a chain of shards and detonate them by using the shockwaves to set off a chain of explosions. You could also work together with a team of other shard bombers to cover an entire field.
The regular charge attack would act more like a blast bomb with reliable knockback. The planted shards would have a decay timer so you wouldn't be able to fill a room completely.
That sounds really fun and awesome and I'd have the time of my life doing it you have no idea. I don't know that I want to like, remove the shard bomb from the game to make it though.
Even if they're kind of underwhelming, the developers did work fairly hard to make them and the result is quite nicely polished. So like optimally they could fix the shard bombs' invincibility frames glitch up and possibly give them some sort of damage increase and then implement this as well for a new series of bombs so that we'd have both. This would however, be better than the current shards.
Side thoughts-
Not that I want to steal your thunder, but more that I just really like this and want to brainstorm a bit on it for fun
It'd be cool if there were like, different parts to the bomb or variants of the bomb that optionally worked in conjunction with one another and other weapons... for instance-
Dynamite = can only place one of it at a time; very high damage/radius/knockback; does not detonate other bombs; short fuse on charge
Beacon = inflicts a medium amount of status and very low damage; detonates all other bombs in a large radius; medium fuse on charge
Fuse = can be detonated by any weapon hitting it; medium shock wave like in OP; half the radius of a beacon; long fuse on charge
So if you spammed beacons and fuses, then your party could trigger all of it to status all of the enemies. If you spammed dynamite + fuse, then your party could trigger that when they needed it, and if you spammed beacon + dynamite, you could trigger the dynamite from wherever you felt like it without your party interfering. Lots of room for party play and very party friendly, since your friends would be able to trigger the fuses to control the explosions themselves.
Just using one of the above would also work fairly well- Fuses alone would basically be placing small explosives for your party to use to their advantage or for you to capitalize on; using dynamite alone would be similar to using big angry bomb but with more control over when it explodes.. And finally, using beacons alone would let you plan ahead and then inflict a bunch of statuses whenever you need to do so.
More side thoughts-
You could also have them behave like the bombs in blast network, but with multiple shapes and patterns. The idea would be that they charge very quickly (think catalyzer) and then explode in some direction or pattern after a long fuse time is up.
Patterns could include the basic plus found in blast network, a shockwave that deals just status briefly (but that still detonates other bombs), a diagonal variant, a variant that shoots in whatever direction you're knight is facing, things like that.
Lastly
What if these could instantly detonate other bombs that you've placed? Like lets say you place one on the ground, and then before it goes off, you placed a big angry bomb? How neat would that be, if the bomb could trigger big angry or any other bomb for that matter much earlier than your enemies would normally expect?