Spiral Knights - A new bomber loking for some direction

A new bomber loking for some direction

6 replies [Last post]

Wed, 09/21/2011 - 14:52

KennEH

Legacy Username

After playing as a swordie for little while, I realized pretty much everyone is a swordie, so I wanna switch to bomber. Problem is I have no real direction in how I should be building one. Can anyone recommend me bombs, and defensive items?

My current bombs are:
Electron Charge (lvl 4)
Sun Shards (lvl 3)
Super Blast Bomb (lvl 3)
Twisted Spine Cone (complete)

Current armour set:
Fused Demo Helm (lvl 4) - thinking of making this a Volcanic Demo Helm
Spiral Demo Suit (lvl 5) - Building a Mad Bomber Suit
Mighty Defender (lvl 8) - Bad choice I know, but it's better than the thorn shield I own

Thanks in advance for any help.

Wed, 09/21/2011 - 15:07

Bigfootm

What Dark Ritual?

Nitronome
Dark Briar Barrage
Any Vortex bomb, mainly used for partying.
A shivermist buster/voltaic tempest.
Radiant Sun shards
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Mad Bomber Suit (Prefferably with med fire uv+)
Volcanic Deno Helm (May want a shadow/piercing uv)
Volcanic Plate Shield (Good shield, great health, you really want a good elemental uv on it or you will need quite a few shields.)
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Elite Boom Module
Elite Boom Module

Wed, 09/21/2011 - 15:21

Gwenyvier

For Bomber I personally go

For Bomber I personally go Mad Bomber with a Med Bomb damage trinket (max CTR on lv 10 bombs and max damage on all bombs). For the shield it depends on the strata I'm going into, I have Grey Owlite, 5* Snarby, and Dread Skelly and switch up the shield depending on the theme of the strata. If its a status effect strata I go with Owlite. I use Snarby because I mostly use swords, and I don't want to make a 2nd Piercing shield.

For Bombs I recommend Nitro, AoA, DBB, Electron, Shivermist, Radiant Sun Shards, and Voltaic. The first 5 for PvE. Shivermist is great for most areas, but switch it out for AoA in Ice themed ones (most Ice themed monsters are immune to Freeze). The last 3 for PvP. Radiant Sun Shards actually seems to have decent use in PvP (or maybe I just suck at dodging it). Shivermist and Voltaic make good crowd control. Shiver will freeze all but Skolvers and Dread Skelly. Voltaic will zap everything except Mercurial, which you don't see much of honestly.

Also, don't forget to bring a sword with you. There's nothing quite as beautiful as dying because you got surrounded and can't charge a bomb to clear them out.

~Gwen

Wed, 09/21/2011 - 16:07

Icee

Nitronome first, everything else can wait.

People overstate the importance of both CTR and bomb damage bonuses. A medium bomb damage bonus is only about 10% more damage. It's essentially no more damage if you're using vaporizer line bombs since those get their damage from statuses not explosions.

CTR medium is worth less than half a second. Sometimes this matters; most of the time it doesn't. With mist bombs and vortices, the mist/vortex lasts a while so you don't need to drop as many bombs. With nitronome and other blast-type bombs, the knockback means that it's ok to pause a moment to let the monsters catch up so they'll be inside the next blast radius.

With that in mind, I'd stay away from mad bomber because the status weaknesses will kill you from time to time and the bonuses won't help as much as you think or I'd use other trinkets instead of elite boom. You don't need max damage as much as you'll need piercing or shadow defense. I'm currently running with heavy demo armor and the volcanic demo helm, but I'm planning to get a grey feather mantle, deadshot mantle, and either justifier or skolver as soon as I collect all of the recipes I need. (I equip two bombs, a gun, and a sword typically.)

I carry nitronome most places, except on beast and fiend strata where I'll take spike shower (soon to be dark briar barrage). My other bomb I switch between shivermist and ash of agni depending on the levels. I have a graviton bomb, but I find it less effective than either nitronome or shivermist because it is so much slower than nitronome and so much worse at crowd control than shivermist. Nitronome paired with Ash of Agni will make short work of jellies and gremlins, so there's little reason to carry a shadow bomb. Radiant sun shards has split damage, so it's pretty terrible against everything except fiends and undead. It also stops at 4*.

If I were you I'd get Nitronome as soon as possible, since it's a jack of all trades.

Next get Shivermist, Ash of Agni, and Dark Briar Barrage in whatever order you can find the recipes.

Wed, 09/21/2011 - 16:32

NicoyaKitty

Legacy Username

One tip would be to take a

One tip would be to take a fully heated bomb along with two pieces of demo armour into a PvP match and go recon. That should get you a Max CTR, so you can see for yourself whether it makes a meaningful amount of difference to your charge'n'drop flow.

As others have suggested, make the Nitro and the DBB first on your priority list as DPS bombs, and then fill in with AoA, VT or SB for status bombs, and possibly add an RSS if you know how to use it. Definitely get a 3-pack of shields to match the stratum themes, and keep something like a leviathan blade on hand for when you get mobbed.

I've got both an electron and graviton charge and I'm not sure I'm fully convinced of the utility of either, especially when soloing. If you're on a team with someone who has an autogun series weapon you could probably really shred things up, but over all it's very tricky to use.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should stay far, far away from the Big Angry, Irontech, Deconstructor and Ionized Salt bombs.

Wed, 09/21/2011 - 17:19

jcoulas

Legacy Username

@Icee I actually wrote up an

@Icee

I actually wrote up an insanely long post as to why your logic is extremely flawed, but I think I can sum it up much shorter.

I am be willing to show you in game but I think the text alone is perfect. (My name is Vaizrin btw, add me and I'll show you)
1) Let us both get shocked, you will not be able to drop a single bomb. I will.
2) I will be dropping bombs faster, and dealing more damage.
3) I can have up to 3 rings of AoA out, or any mist bomb. I know for a fact you can not without Ultra CTR.
4) Even if the +damage only made me do 10 more damage, on most mobs that will kill them. I will eventually end up 2 shotting monsters that take you 3 hits, 4 shotting monsters that take you 6, and 5 shotting some that may take you up to 8. I wish this game had easily accessible numbers of monster health and actual bomb damage - so these are just estimations. However the fact is every single point of damage I do more than you, is an increased chance that I will use less bombs than you.
5) Most importantly- I take less time to charge than you do. In a perfect world you would dodge every single attack ever, and if you claim that then I LoL at you since clearly this game is challenging enough that people can not always flawlessly run from t1-t3 without losing a life (there is a reason it is a very tough achievement to get.) In the end, I will be interrupted less than you. Think I was killing monsters faster with just a little bit more damage? Imagine you not only dropping bombs slower than me, but not being able to drop bombs at all...

@OP

Sorry for the random derail-
You've got great advice from BigFootM if you want to be a pure bomber, which is really fun and exciting.

I just would like to stress switching to the volcanic plate shield, as the defender line is nice but lacks flexibility. Even in a beast stratum there will be gun puppies dealing elemental damage that will just devour your defender's shield :)

Upgrade your bombs to 5* first, they make the largest difference. Then your shield, armor should be very last. The jump of 4* bomb to 5* bomb is ludicrous.

Wed, 09/21/2011 - 19:05

Soulstaker

Get one of the atomizers

Get one of the atomizers depends what runs you do.poison atomizer for JK and freeze atomizer for vanaduke

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A new bomber loking for some direction