Quick poll like question to help players when making their decisions!
So a Haze Bomb, i trust many have seen the great support it offers when mobs of monsters are charging everywhere.
Which path do you prefer? Fire, Freeze or Toxic? (Specify solo or party play if possible)
I personally have gone with toxic atm for the team battles against jelly king~
Poison for Jelly King.
Freeze for graveyards.
Fire for who cares. Wolvers, I guess.
I'm a fan of freeze. I don't see it as often as Toxic or Fire so I don't run the risk of overlap as much. Although Fire is also very good and Poison is great for Jelly King.
Sheloba and I have been applying freeze/fire combos during the Preview and it worked awesomely. Damage over time is nice, but the ability to stop monsters in their tracks seems to be underrated by a lot of people, it rocks.
Watching monsters alternate between catching fire and freezing a couple of times, pure win. Makes me lol every time.
I recently got Freezing Atomizer and it can be a life saver in arenas. It'll just lock out half the monsters from combat while my group members can focus on the other half and I'm just sitting there dropping bombs repeatedly.
I'm disappointed with the first freezing vaporizer because it has a smaller range than the one star cold snap (the only other bomb I used) but the Mk II version should correct that.
But coming from my experience with cold snap, freezing is fun on just about any enemy, especially when alone.
I love Freezing as well. Being able to stop hordes completely in Arenas and Danger Rooms is fantastic. :D
Freezing only sucks for cold arena :D
To be honest, ALL of these bombs are superb.
The fire series deals the fire status, which means recurring damage to every enemy on the board... even when you're nowhere near them. Fantastic for enemies like undead or constructs that are dangerous to approach for sword attacks. Also a lifesaver in danger rooms.
Poison bombs are a fantastic investment when you're adventuring in a party- especially if you've gone too deep without the appropriate armor. They stop gremlin healers from repairing damage faster than you can deal it, and at the same time, cut enemy attack power in half. It's like getting double the health- in some ways, poison bombs are more important to my defense strategy than armor. The downside, of course, is that they're not a good offensive weapon, and the "healers do damage instead of healing" effect of poison involves so little damage as to be pointless. This is a weapon that's best to use when adventuring with other people who can attack while you drop poison clouds.
And of course, as mentioned, a good freeze bomb is excellent for crowd control. The downside is that as soon as a monster takes damage from fire, the freeze status is broken... and fire-inflicting weapons are really quite popular. (including the fire bomb)
So: If you're adventuring alone, craft a fire bomb, because the other status effects need to be renewed often, leaving little time to attack. (Until you get to the 5* version, which has a bigger radius) If adventuring with a large party of strangers, craft a poison bomb, because it'll mesh well with other popular weapons. For a small party, I'd craft freeze before poison, because not being hit > being hit for less damage. And, of course, just remember that each of these bombs will be useless on levels with a matching "theme"- the fire bomb will not affect enemies on fire levels, etc.
Re the freeze breaking thing: The good part is, as long as they remain in the field, they get refrozen! The downside to that is that refreezing kills fire. So you'd ave to reapply.
A friend and I enjoyed bombspamming some...freezer burn onto a group of Lumbers, and watching them collapse at the same time.
Fire is the best if the level is not of monsters immune to fire.
Drop some fire bombs, run around, then everything is dead, easymode.
Freeze is really good for crowd control or levels with fire immune enemies.
It also deals damage if you leave the enemies to defrost, so it could also be used as a slower fire bomb if your party doesn't defrost the enemies.
Freeze is a lifesaver against certain enemies like Vanaduke/Tortodrone/Trojans/etc
Poison is quite specific, I wouldn't really use it for anything more than Jelly king and arenas.
I have seen a decline in the number of healers in arenas lately though.
Poison also reduces the damage enemies deal, but how useful is that is arguable.
I would even make the following statement:
Fire - Pure dps
Freeze - Defensive/low dps
Poison - Tactical/defensive
For a more interesting combo..try the Shivermist with a Graviton Vortex. Preferably with another person ^^
I can't find a Fiery Vaporizer Recipe ANYWHERE
Hope to get lucky when you come across Basil in Tier 1, at the Crossroad. I think the merchant at the lower-middle of the Bazaar will occasionally sell it, so if you don't want to waste time/resources diving for one, you can also hope that vendor will have it.
Freeze, with Fire coming up, are well for soloing. Crowd Control or DoT, respectively. Both perform great in parties, though most may not realize the vulnerability the monsters are at while frozen and will just hit them with a normal slash or so.
I'm not sure how long the Toxic Vaporizers inflict Poison for, but it is probably optimal when used in parties. The defense debuff can be advantageous to multiple players and attacks, rather than one damage source if running solo.