Bombers are the middle child of weapon type users. Swordies are the oldest and gunners are the small, whiny sibling who cries when their weapons aren't one shotting everything onscreen.
Poor bombers. If a player who considers themself to be a bomber wants to run fsc, you would think that elemental damage would be a good option, considering the undead enemies in the area!
Nope, because the 2 other siblings have whined enough for mommy and daddy GH to spend their entire paycheck on their toys. Mommy mommy, I want f2p mixer!! Daddy daddy, I want 5 star winmillion!
Meanwhile poor bomber is in his empty room with his old, handed down toy. Dark briar barrage.
Why do bombers have a p i e r c i n g damage weapon as their main damage source for vanaduke runs.
And when bombers, god forbid, use the fun bombs like nitro and bab and irontech in a party, their other siblings beat him because hes not playing the way they want him to.
"Hey bomber! Who said you could use your favorite weapon! You better switch to haze bombs right now or you're getting kicked!!"
The bombers out there want an arsenal that covers any level.
Poor, poor, abused bomber players. Me big sad.
Bombers are big sad
I mean yeah DBB is really good, but it, mist, and vortex are like the only worthwhile bombs which still isn't good. Though I will agree that wasn't a very good point they were trying to make.
Honestly a 5* deconstructor would probably get me playing again.
Dbb good weapon but is old and from generations before, meanwhile turb is new shiny weapon straight from the toys r us shelves.
Its obvious dbb wipes the floor with turb, but point is they prioritized the eldest son by spoiling them with a pointless toy they didn't need, meanwhile poor bomber is expected to sit in his room and play with his old, worn down toy, however well built it may be.
It's paint is chipping and now the poor bomber might get lead poisoning because of how old the toy is. It probably used lead paint.
That's how old it is. Poor bomber.
A 5 star deconstructor would make little bomber happy. Finally a new toy to play with!
I swear if they don't release exactly one bomb/sword/gun at the same time people come on and say that one class is absolutely hated by the devs or something. The sad thing is that they listen to this nonsense and now half the weapons are guns. Next they'll make a bomb and Toyoti will be using marginalized people to attack them for not buffing swords or something.
But yes. I hear this a lot and I think it's just that bombs feel counter intuitive, which is sort of their charm and gimmick.
I love how bombs make the game feel more chaotic, it's really fun to use them.
I'm not fully sure this is true because I didn't have 5 stars back then, but I heard that shard bombs used to be a great damage option before some sort of nerf they recieved.
Have a seat, let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was Crystal Bomb. On the wiki you can still see it. It looked like this: https://media3.spiralknights.com/wiki-images/9/92/Crystal_Bomb_demo_char...
I believe damage was pure elemental? Wiki is unclear on the matter, and my mind is equally blurry. It did OK damage. One time in April 2011, I had recently started the game and wasn't sure if I cared for it or not. Swords were a bit boring, guns sucked, bombs seemed way too small except 1* Haze Bomb which was enormous. We'll get into the haze bomb tangent some other time.
However, I found a box, and in that box was a crystal bomb because equipment would frequently be in boxes.
That was the box that changed my life.
I tried it immediately, of course! I set it down, watched the 8 projectiles spread out in a perfectly even pattern and kick butt. Nostalgia from the 8-bit days rushed through me, and I enjoyed seeing how close to enemies I could put it to maximize the amount of shards hitting. Even beasts and gremlins seemed to take decent damage if they were right on top of it! I could plant it in strategic location and clear a room of blocks in just a few plants, faster than a sword or a gun.
It upgraded into two paths: Sun Shards and Salt Bomb. Salt Bomb was a gimmick nobody used because it took as long to charge as Gran Faust, yielding a Shock Strong that only a few Lockdown players cared about (when Lockdown later became a thing). Besides, it had slime bonus but did split normal/piercing. It was weird.
Sun Shards was the one all bombers liked. It did split elemental/piercing (which effectively was a huge jump in total damage), and was effective against pretty much everything. The damage type also suited Vana runs just fine, and it was pretty much known as the elemental damage bomb. It was loved for its depth, speed, high damage and fun, unique patterns.
You should watch this video of Qwote using it against Vana:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPj8Bh2Qj3Y&list=FLYCvegMrhWgAl6I37ZmttiQ
Qwote is a legend for another time, but he's the most humble and skilled bomber I've ever met.
Some Lockdown players hated it very vocally. Some of these were massive whales, and one guy worked for Sega or something. No evidence exist that this was the reason for what later was known as the Shardtastrophe.
"Please also note that it is not our intention to reduce the power of these bombs in any way."
Everyone knew that Nick was lying through his teeth because Nick was an habitual liar. We miss him. What a guy.
Power of these bombs was reduced in the following ways:
- Split elemental/piercing was changed into pure damage. Everyone's Undead VH sun shards become pure piercing. Bombers were very upset. They got a UV ticket for compensation.
- The way they changed from split to pure damage was simply cutting off one damage bar. They didn't increase the other damage bar by even a single pixel. Damage was effectively halved.
- The bombs got a 5* upgrade that with the reduced damage became mandatory for the bomb to function. RSS used to be an amazing way to save on energy. Possible suspect as the reason for this whole thing.
- Projectile range decreased from roughly all of your screen to like 1.5 tiles.
- Projectiles are no longer projectiles, but timed bombs that lay on the ground for a good 2 seconds.
- Blast radius not increased in the slightest.
- A hard hit limit of at most 3 shards + the core was stated to be implemented. It was really 2 shards + core, and it persisted across bombs. I got invinictinks trying to keep a greaver from biting me an died multiple times. If you became skilled enough with the bomb it became unusable. This got fixed 6 years too late by Gray Havens following what I'd like to think was my constant campaigning for it.
- A bunch of other shard bomb types were introduced. One of them was pure normal and nobody in their right mind uses it because Nitronome exists and does way more damage over a way bigger area way more easily.
- It became completely unusable in Lockdown unless you wanna cheat in a contest of achieving the most Lockdown damage.
Bombers left in droves, some sooner than others.
I tried very hard to make them work, and out of some kind of stockholm syndrome even developed a guild around the new bombs and underappreciated weapons in general called Shard Squad. We were sort of well known for a while. It was an interesting time, many good friends were made that remain close today.
And that's roughly the story of shard bombs. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I would absolutely love a bomb update on the level of the gunner update (except more bombs and fewer armors?)
Swords are for generic, boring blobs of grey matter that have no individuality and simply follow the herd....unless you use cutter/sudaruska/winmillion lines. Hit button charge brandish one shot everything big yawn much dull.
Guns are slightly better, with alchemers, mixmasters, magnuses, tortoguns!,... much more variety in terms of creative playstyle.....only for creative people.
But new bombs with new mechanics would be EPIC. Vortex that scatters shard bomb projectiles at end? Strobe bomb that grows in eize with each explosion? Laser type bomb that fires only in direction it was laid? Triangular blast pattern? Russian doll type bomb (a la Tom and jerry style)? I see much potential.
People seem to be missing the real elephants in the room, it is that Bombs' viability is HEAVILY tied to CTR. Without it, they are virtually worthless. With currently how painful it is to grind a 5* bomb from lvl1~10 and gain the CTR med (and a bomber worth his salt should also be wearing full volcanic/chaos set to obtain CTR max), new bombers would struggle to compete against swordsmen and gunners when it comes to damage output, you know, the thing that you need in SK to not entirely pull your hair out?
You can add all the new bombs in the world, but if the grind is too tedious, people would simply pass it in favor of gears that can get more bang for their rads. A fully heated acheron can kick a lot more jelly butts than a fully heated salt bomb.
And on the topic of gears, again, people seem to miss out how crucial they are in making bombs (barely)useful. Which means your armor loadout is limited and more importantly, sub-par. Elemental is overly covered, with mad bomber set (RIP) being pretty much inferior to chaos in every way, bombastic set is virtually useless (I don't own the mercurial demo set, though I doubt the MSI is worth loosing out on CTR). The only form of shadow bomber set you can get is very RNG dependent (well the armor anyways) and the piercing bomber set (starlit) is just usable but nothing more.
In summary, bombers need more variety in terms of gears that can help them plant more bombs.
In choosing armor, status resistance is much more important than damage protection. Viewed in this light, defenses on bomber armors are actually more diverse than defenses on sworder armors (although the shock bomber armor requires a Shadow Lair trip).
But that doesn't matter much, because so many people just use Chaos and/or the 3-star Black Kat helmet. (Or other Black Kat if they're lucky.)
In short, the problem isn't that sworder (or gunner) armor is better than bomber armor. The problem is that Chaos/Black Kat is better than everything else.
P.S. Yes, I would like new kinds of bombs.
Wow that's surprising. Did they not use the test servers back then?
As for the ctr thing Midnight, the only way to create more diversity for bomber's gear offensively speaking would probably be by introducing a new bomb stat that's only available through armours. I've always liked the idea of fuse time reduction, but is there any other way we can draw more people in to use bombing gear, other than their good defences Bopp mentioned?
I think bombs are very untapped and undiscovered as weapons. Being more creative with their blast zones could be a really interesting challenge for bombers. An idea that comes to mind is a plus-sign shaped blast zone that forces the bomber to play like bn or bomberman.
They used test servers. Everyone who tested new shard bombs said they were horrible and inefficient and shouldn't be released as they were.
I can't think of a single instance where test server feedback has been considered except that one time when they made catalyzer awesome and testers, including me, said new catalyzer was awesome and then they went ahead and removed the awesomeness and made it more worthless than before.
CTR is a disproportionately large benefit compared to other bonuses. Max damage and asi only increases their respective stats by 24%, but max ctr will halve charge time. I think it could be interesting for those other stats to have a larger effect, but failing that reducing charge times in general while decreasing effect of ctr would also be fine.
Seems as though they didn't trust the testers perhaps?
Was there screening for being a tester or did they let in random joes off the street?
Rules for accessing the testing server can be found here:
https://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/24087
I'm not sure whether the rules changed over time. In my recollection, it was any account that had ever had real money spent on it. Anyway, there was no screening other than "you've given us some money".
Bombs in the early game aren't very viable because of CTR and I think that could be addressed, but as time goes on you can begin to acquire many forms of bomb CTR- trinkets, volc demo, chaos, uvs, etc. and when you do that and invest they become incredibly strong, much stronger than swords and in such a way that they complement guns perfectly. This is also somewhat counterintuitive to a lot of people.
Playing the game as a bomber is an entirely different style, with some very weird mechanics. I'd prefer to use all bombs, but often have to sacrifice a weapon slot for a gun just for switches and/or finishing off a teensy bit of remaining hp, etc.
That's not to say bombers are "fine" post-nerf.
I remember back in 2011-2013 when I made my bomber set. It was because every party wanted a bomber. It was cool and fun to BE the bomber. Now people seem really ambivalent and only want you to spam whatever bomb they insist, and otherwise just wait in a corner, sord and gunne bois will take care of things.
Playing in a 4 man party, bombs are the most fun to use. But, as I said in the initial post, bombers are normally kicked when they use the fun bombs, or anything other than haze, DR, or DBB.
Bombers need a more developed arsenal or power returned to the shards (Panda said that they halved their damage with no compensation).
If they never had any actual screening for the test servers, none of the results gathered from it were probably ever going to be used seriously. Bugfixes or publicity about their upcoming updates were perhaps why the test servers were used.
They nerfed the shard bombs because of LD.
Balancing the game around LD is an extraordinarily bad idea.
Problem with the case of Lockdown is the fact it lacks it's own distinctive category for damage. All PvE gear function literally the same as they do in PvP. Which means some weapons that excel in PvE (ex Brandishes) suck in a PvP setting while certain other weapons function vice-versa to that.
Sun Shards was a case that it can be effective in both scenarios so in their attempt at trying to balance it for PvP they made it garbage for PvE.
A shame too cause in all honesty Sun Shards was one of the most genuinely interesting of the lineup and a very effective and versatile bomb.
I would've preferred that update just did the overhaul for Salt Bomb exclusively cause it needed the change badly (Slime Dmg Bonus on a PIERCING weapon, really?), Sun Shards could've just got a 5* variant for itself and would've been better off as its old equivalent.
august 2012
nick 100
also, bomber here. yes, we're still alive (in some capacity)
in response to bombers getting kicked. Here's how I avoid it.
I host the parties.
ez
Bombs are not good. I say this as a bomber myself. While they can be good in certain situations, ie, arena floors, decent in some missions and so and generally in places that function like arenas, like Vanaduke, they are incredibly lacking in the standard floors where they just take much longer to kill everything than any other class, not just because of lower dps but also because of the delay. While Bombing is viable as a supporting role, and I for one love playing support in vana, the problem is that that's the only real way to run bomber in most areas, or rather, most areas where bombing is viable. It's not viable in most areas, and finding good parties, where running as support is actually worth it, isn't that easy.
I also hate the fact that since bombers can only do charges, that means they desperately need the ctr, which makes bombastic pretty useless and that early game bombers suffer extra much, and that you basically have to run ctr max always, which is costly for newer players. Also that Merc demo is outclassed by Black kat for all intents and purposes except support bombing (and maybe running RRT), and needs ctr trinkets or ridiculous UVs.
And yeah, it's ridiculous that there's no shadow defence armor for the more casual players and that even for a not casual player the only shadow resistant "bombing" armor is pretty shit compared to the price, and that it basically has the same drawbacks as the Black Kat one, though that's also a critique of all kat armors (not helms).
And that Mad bomber is for like 99% of all floors just a chaos armor, with no bonuses for the drawback of being not exclusive. But yes, it's in part just that those armors are too good, but at the same time mad bomber really needs some reason to exist, and SL vana isn't enough of a reason since it's not viable there because fire weakness anyways.
The main issues are that bombing for almost all places have way less dps and the fact that their effective dps is further reduced by the delay in the start of every fight.
Things that could fix that:
As suggested above, fuse time reduction, which very much reasonably could just be stacked on all bombing armors at the same rate as ctr/dmg bonus so you get ctr and ftr med on a Volc for example, which would give all bombing armors purpose again. And allow their 6th uv to exist again, maybe. And make for a new trinket type to make with Mod Calibrators. Well, or make it a low on 5* armor, with other armors that specialise in it.
A new elemental damage bomb, for all I care it could just be a DR or Nitro clone with ele damage, although a new bomb would be fun.
Making shard bombs not useless again, The hit limit, even after actually being 3, doesn't make sense at all as it is and really doesn't deserve to exist, but fixing that doesn't really change anything except multi shard party play. Making their damage viable again, and preferably less random knockback so that that doesn't ruin their viability, though making them beter at flinching would work too, which more damage might just fix automatically. I mean, literally atm DBB is comparable to a perfect Crystal Shard hit, and DBB will actually reliably hit and flinch everything unlike Shard, which also has less aoe...
Thank you for reading my rant.
My bombing loadout for vana support:
Merc Demo Helm and Armor, Omega Shell, VV reskin, Crusher, DBB, Shiv, two ctr trinks and mov spd perk.
We pretty much agree on all but two of your points.
First, I've already addressed the armor protection issue in post #10 above. Short version: Bomber armor is more diverse than sworder armor, in the protections that matter most, but the real issue is that Black Kat and Chaos are too powerful.
Second, I'm not sure that fuse time reduction is unambiguously desirable. A key advantage of bombs is that they damage monsters where you used to be. Fuse time reduction would reduce or eliminate this benefit, effectively requiring you to stay closer to the monsters.
While I can agree that, yes, the distance you can make is an advantage sometimes, I'd argue that it takes too long for bombs to detonate for when you're actually in a fight and need to somehow do something about enemies near you. Like get them away with a blast bomb, or give them status with a haze type bomb. But yes, too substantial of an ftr by default would not be desirable, but a good bit would be, at least from what I've seen while bombing. Because one of a bomber strengths is sitting around and chaining bombs in the same spot, or such which would only benefit from an FTR.
And really? Bomber armor being more diverse? I don't agree with that, not at all in "the protections that matter the most" since I would like a shadow defence armor... And yeah, the real issue is Chaos and BK being too strong, its just that compared to gunner and striker armors, there are actual reasons such as the defence to not choose chaos over theirs, while mad bomber just has no use anywhere essentially.
I understand your point about wanting immediate damage. Fuse time reduction or some kind of non-charge attacks would help with that.
It seems that you haven't read post #10 above. If you're choosing armor for protection at all (as opposed to offense), then you should prioritize fire, freeze, and shock resistance over damage protection. For example, in a shock+fiend level it's better to have shock+elemental armor than fire+shadow armor. It's from this viewpoint that bombers are seen to have more diverse armor than sworders.
And here's mine: Wolver also has Poison resistance, although very slightly lower, it is on an armor with freeze too. And while slightly less deadly, sometimes it's just as deadly as being shocked.
And the bomber armor with freeze resistance is, generally, less useful since it has damage bonus. Although yes, wolver also has an armor with asi, but asi is generally always useful.
This is my opinion, and I know that you disagree with it, and I accept and understand your opinion, but disagree with it because in my experience, poison is also deadly and lack of shadow defence does matter.
I'm glad that you've now responded to my points about armor protection. It's okay to disagree. I continue to think that shock is vastly more dangerous than poison. Even if not, sworder armor and bomber armor are comparable, while gunner armor is far ahead in its customizability. Cheers.
Mommy mommy, I want f2p mixer!! Daddy daddy, I want 5 star winmillion! Meanwhile poor bomber is in his empty room with his old, handed down toy. Dark briar barrage.
Is it rude to point out how much better Dark Briar Barrage is than Turbillion? Never mind; it's probably rude.