Your energy would be better spent discussing the new bombs, and how to better balance and improve them and their niche. I own an RSS, it's neat and it's rather helpful and I take it with me sometimes, but I've also seen the new bombs, and I see their merit and utility. If they fix up some things like the 2nd round detonation time, I see them becoming very decent bombs in their own right. It's a bit of a shame you have to trade one for the other, but you certainly could do much worse. It's not a nerf, and anyone who says it is either shortsighted or blinded by the loss of their beloved bread and butter, but a complete change of purpose. The devs are determined and I don't doubt their conviction. They're doing what they feel is best for the future of the game, and I respect that.

I would be more accepting if these new bombs still filled a distinct roll but this is not the case. Honestly with the time I got to try them out, nitronome or Ash of Agni would do the same job better.

I believe that we have a legitimate argument and I have said it multiple times.

But just one more time:

OOO is taking a whole unique bomb playstyle and tossing it out for six badly under performing nitronomes/DBBs. Even if they get some type of massive buff, they will only make bombers use then instead of nitronome (nitronome becomes obsolete). There is only so much they could do with the mechanic that would not be flip-flopping on their stance to get rid of multi-hits. It will not be enough to make the new bombs effectively different from gear that bombers already have.

"They're doing what they feel is best for the future of the game, and I respect that."

They are not. As much as I respect their effort, they have made significant number of bad choices in recent months.

Because of its more-difficult-to-land style, the combined damage of the initial blast and 1 shard blast should be greater than the Nitro, maybe even on par with BAB, in the normal bomb's case. Something similar should happen with the Splinter bomb compared to DBB, and this kind of damage should carry over to the Crystal and Dark Matter lines. RSS and ISB, because of the status and damage bonus, can stay where they're at. This, a shard-explosion time decrease, or a mix of both, will help a lot. The range is tricky to hit with, perhaps the blast radius of each shard should be improved to help hit enemies that walk fast.

Stun also needs a fix. With a fix, it'd make RSS the go-to Greaver-buster, what with all the sprosions and the Fiend damage bonus. Bombers need a Greaver-buster, swordies have Flourishes and Heavy Swords and gunners have AP and Blitz, while bombs don't even have a standard attack to make them stop, that's more than a little ridiculous. But as it stands, Stun would only make killing Greavers that much more difficult. The best way to fix this is by making Stun also stop any attack in progress, or just neutralize it; the Snarbolax, for example, continues any bite it was doing when stunned, but the bite does no damage and triggers no arena effects. Subsequent attacks from a monster should be slowed but not neutralized. This will cause most of the problems with Vanaduke's Double Mace attack. The one exception may be "lumber-missiles", or enemies hit by Lumbers, as that adds to a Lumber's threat.
'
And the shards disappearing is stupid. Instead, make them keep going at the same rate when they hit a wall, hugging the wall as they do; horizontal shards will effectively stop at a vertical wall, while diagonal shards will keep going in a vertical direction. I realize this is to stop shard-clustering, but there are no one-space-wide hallways anywhere in Spiral Knights.

This raises a problem: what about blocks? Simple: make the Shards cause minor (as in, ONE) damage to enemies in their path as they fly out. Not only does it ease the pain Greavers cause to bombers, but it breaks blocks, preventing clustering in most cases, and if the ONE damage is caused, say, three times by a shard, the shards will once again be useful for chipping down minerals- that wasn't a bad thing at all- and the extra THREE damage won't be enough to be a game breaker.

As for Lockdown, the new bomb-lit graphic made it nearly impossible to kill anything even with the mega-radius Nitronome, as even the most Zerg-rush-mentality-ingrained Skolver Zombie will just walk right outta the range and then dash in and maul the bomber once the blast is gone. To fix this, make it tougher to notice, at least in Lockdown; make the 'enemy bomb radius' graphic the same it used to be, in Lockdown only.

All this will balance the new bombs quite nicely. I suppose we can pack a Polaris for turrets, or just blow 'em up with Nitro (I tried that, it does work somewhat efficiently if you're quick, as Nitro cancels their attack most of the time and keeps other baddies away) or DR for Polyps and Puppies (trust me, DR is still the best thing that ever happened to Bombers).

If all what I read was true and is to come true, then R.I.P RSS and all bomb users out there. It will be a sad day for bombers when this update takes place.

/e Chrizmaniac plays sad funeral music.

I hope they realize how wrong they are on that statement. I can understand their reasoning, but c'mon. Haven't they heard of shrapnel bombs? Its what RSS reminded me of. Don't take that away. I just got into bombing and the mechanic is VERY fun. Removing that will make this game become generic by restricting the paths into limited access. Even f you went full swordsman, if you had a winmillion you would have a gun essentially. Guns have their own close range heavy hitters too, like Blitz and, sometimes, alchemer lines and for close ranged situations. Bombs? They have range to them and deal fairly good damage. We have the close range hitter, BAB and RSS/ISB is the only projectile themed weapon we have.

And @Dukeplatypus
You say no matter how much we protest it wont change anything. I remember when we all said no to shadow keeps only being obtainable through iron lockboxes. didn't take long for them to fix that. Its basically a petition. If a lot of players dislike something they lose interest in the game which then means less money for OOO. After seeing all of the complaints they will either go with our idea of a new line or just trash the idea completely. No matter the situation, it is always worth a shot.

"It's basically a petition."

I petitioned for this a while ago, thread died pretty quickly. Maybe I should go necro it....

Also, why can't the 4* bombs be automatically upgraded to 5*? They did it with the old haze bombs.

They tried to make RSS pure piercing once but desisted after many complaints. Do you think we can pull the same trick again?
The community is more shattered about this change. BUT it's been a while and still unreleased.

Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would be complaining about them releasing the new shard bombs but keeping RSS the same as before, aside from the people who insist that it's OP.

People are complaining because the new bombs will REPLACE (As in the bomb we know and love will be removed from the game) the current RSS/ISB.

A player favorite bomb is being swapped out for 6 really underpowered bombs.

Nobody would be upset if with the new bombs if they were going to coexist with the current RSS/ISB.

Let's not let this thread die.

The GM's need to know that it is not right to completely change the mechanics and abilities of a weapon mid-stream.

I paid good CE for the bomb I have.
It will soon not be the bomb I paid for.
I paid for abomb with Elemental capabilities.
I paid for a bomb that explodes into shrapnel.
This is what is called bait and switch.
Or simply, fraud.

Give us a new line of bombs.
Leave the current Shard line alone.

And if you must make these changes, at least bump current owners to 5*.
Even though the new 5*'s are nowhere near as useful as the 4* I have now.

it would be like taking out sealed swords and brandishes due to their projectile charges.

This just isn't doing the situation justice. The bomb is supposedly being removed on the grounds that the way it is used simply wasn't intended. I will ask of OOO this:

Was shield canceling intended? It's an enormously powerful mechanic that completely circumvents the elaborate combos you have set up on weapons. Did you really intend for the flourish to be used by just jabbing away with the first attack and then slinking away halfway through the animation? If that's the case, why was the attack even made twice as long? Surely the length of attacks was tweaked for an endless variety of balancing purposes but they're being perfectly ignored due to the option of just blocking it away! It's not like there's some kind of skill-barrier to shield-canceling, it's just an unexpected mechanic you have to know about that will defeat the other mechanics in place, removing restrictions from them by just holding down a button.

Am I arguing that shield canceling should be removed? No more than I'm arguing for the removal of Radiant Sun Shards. See, that's our shield cancel. It's the bomber's advanced trick for being more effective. It's using a weapon outside of its intended purposes (using Flourish to cover a large group of enemies rather than its intended purpose: large piercing damage to single targets, doing perfectly safe attacks with heavy swords etc).

So take away the bomber's only option for a huge variety of situations, Three Rings Design, but when you do I want you to do so while telling us that shield canceling is a perfectly intended mechanic.

Let's not forget we will have the privilege of crafting a 5* RSS finally.
Too bad it won't be 5* of the bomb I already spent hard earned CE and Heat on.

If OOO made cars, the next press release would look something like this..............

I know we sold you a sports car,
But with the new factory REQUIRED upgrades
Your car will now be a minivan.
Please enjoy your new car,
And don't forget to spend some CE upgrading that to a 5* minivan.

^Fix'd

just from the training hall. I've decided to compare damage of Cold Snap (1*) and Sun Shards (3*) on training bots there. Well... level 10 cold snap - 26 damage, level 4 Sun Shards - 11 damage initial explosion and 14 damage shard explosion... yeah, bots there take neutral damage from any type of damage so... new bomb sucks... very hard...