Daawwwww
You guys have fun with shard while i have to keep farm in order to pass 5* Hall of Heroes,
btw nice so many shard colurfull :D
if you do it again can you post vid how did you do on 4th floor last closed area the one that have fire and spike tight area?(shard bomb)

Oh, also just realised that you never mentioned that we did the right path on D26, with the trojan and puppies; I feel that counts for somethin'.

But aye; a lot of the rooms we expected to be difficult actually went a lot better than expected. The run was a bit slower/longer than I'm used to, but by no means was it overly challenging and we did not face death often; most deaths were just the result of stupid things like walking into fire/attacks while blinded by the shards. It may just be my memory, but I can't think of any one area that was particularly challenging, and the last room did go a lot smoother than expected.

Thanks for the great testing and informations Brady.

I had the occasion to test a Wolver Den with him by both doing SSS : it seemed to be about on-par with DBB, perhaps a little inferior, but not by much (whereas soloing with SSS landed awful results for SSS vs DBB).

I'm always interested to know more about that, feel free to invite me one day for those test runs. I don't yet own a crystal bomb, but have SSS and both Vortexes, as well as an almost full bomber set (missing a trinket).

I'd suggest doing the Danger Missions, not only do they each provide radically different and interesting situations to use bombs in (Unlike IMF where most of it is just avoiding environmental hazards, and rooms full of switches that bombs trigger constantly) but the 'bosses' in Danger Missions are usually actually capable of being beaten by bombs in a reasonable and effective time-frame, where as Snarby, Twins and as you already know, Vanaduke are all exceptionally tedious fights to bomb against. Twins especially can be horribly tedious, and if you do it you're going to need a non-shard bomb for the switches.

I'd also like to see you guys do Crimson Hammer, assuming you all have the expansion. I dunno if they've fixed it yet, but I was horrified when I bombed it last and discovered that the Battle Pods in the Seerus fight were apparently immune to Dark Retribution (Presumably because of them being in a wall) and I'm curious to know what shard-dps is like in that boss fight.

OCH was Zeddy's idea to begin with, and discussing runs with that is what started these tests off really; we haven't done it yet as we do want to do a 3-man run for it (since almost every enemy in OCH has a shield, mortars are everywhere and there's a lot of puppies) but it is on the agenda for sure.

I've already started on the DMs actually; that'll just take some time as we need to wait for them to cycle through, as opposed to being able to do them as and when we feel like, and as many times as we wish.

LoA today, was pretty scary fo sho'. There were three of us and it certainly took a bit longer than regular runs (not by much though, I wouldn't say) but we managed it with no wipes. Turns out that LoA is really not very bomb friendly. Bombies exploding all over the place in an attempt to outbomb you, gate switches being slow to react to bombs, kats being immune to vortexes, ACs and Slags having shields and Slags moving around as much as they do (as opposed to Trojans that are easy to leave standing still) making bombing them really quite difficult.
(@Zeddy: If you're up for another LoA shard run today, hit me up; I'd be interested to try it again and see if I can't do better, or ofc the next DM (GiM, if memory serves?) in a few hours~)

It was pretty messy, in the sense that we couldn't really plan nor use a specific bomb; we all pretty much just randomly cycled through vortexes and hazes trying to control the situation as much as possible, before unleashing the shards. We had stagger, VT and venom as well as a couple of vortexes and each of us were spamming the shards. It worked, but was tricky. The path to the left on the 2nd floor and the last room especially got pretty chaotic.

Then again, shard runs are still pretty new to everyone, so to expect difficult missions to be completed in average timeframes is reaching a bit; if we can do them at all, have fun (and without wipes?) then I'm calling them a win for the time being. Improved strategies, technique and speed will come naturally as we do them.

having fun with a sub-optimal item.

Can't say I have too much fun playing shards solo, because they are so sub-optimal. But the whole point of this thread is demonstrating that a group of sharders is optimal and by no means weak/bad any more.

As it goes, we reckon that shards are so fail-flavoured from a solo bomber because they're designed to work well with other sharders. If a solo sharder could keep up regular dps/run times, then multiple sharders would literally become the next OP weapon combo; it would be completely unstoppable because they get such a large boost from each other. FSC would be a complete and utter joke~
So shards got nerfed so that they were balanced when being used in a group which just has the unfortunate side effect of making them nigh useless to use solo.

But yes, using them in a group, run speed aside, is great fun. The fact that we're keeping up decent times is just a side bonus :)

Todays Shardy Exploits include HoI and a timed run of FSC! :D
(EDIT: @Zed: I was rolling max:max on all my bombs. Always do~)
EDITEDIT: omg, we totes need to get a SL bombing run on the go O_O

HoI went well but was...not easy, with all dem projectiles and greaver hazes floatin' around a blinding screen. The Howler-Gate room, for example, as pretty awful, but many of the regular rooms were done with ease and great enjoyment! We came to the conclusion that had we had a 4th player, they would surely have to be a Blitzer, just chillin' at the edges and blindly unleashing charges into the crowd. We tested this in White Collar and the results were very favourable. The Blitzer remained boringly safe and could pretty much just stand still at the sidelines unleashing charge after charge without harassment while the crowd got statused, KBd, vortexed and ten other kinds of uselessified, letting the Blitzer just make up extra damage. It also greatly helped with Trojans.

As for the HoI run as it was; it was just great fun, and we realised that corridors are a shards best friend, by keeping the enemies perpetually KBd in a tight space, interrupted, stunned and unable to move or attack. The shards are also clearly designed to be the support weapon for Maulos, since it kept all of the enemies at bay and stunned, while perpetually breaking all the ice blocks he created. The fight was easy, but a bit long with the damage. A blitzer could have stood there next to him unleashing in abject safety and it would have been over in under a minute.

Some screenies for the occasion! I made a point to get the brightest, most flashiest and shiny moments of the run, just for kicks! We could not see a thing the whole run, but with all that KB, stun and hazing..honestly, we didn't actually need to see anything :)

Corridor Domination
Some More Corridor Domination
A Minefield
Vortex About the only time a vortex got used in HoI
Another Minefield
My favourite~ All dem statuses and 'splosions <3
More Blindingness
Maulos

The FSC run (exc. Vana) was done in <40mins (Average FSC runtime) although it was slowed down by the fact that we had only bombs and no utility weapons, so puppies, trojans, blocks, wheels, minerals etc all took longer than they needed to have. We played about mostly with control factors, such as vortexing them then shivvering them all in a frozen group before unleashing a few shards to clear the area. When anything went wrong, we simply "reset" the room with a BAB KB and started fresh with the vortex.
The general sense was, again, abusing the wide variety of control factors we had. One would think it'd be uncontrollable with all the KB, lockdown, interruptions etc, but we had a good rhythm going between us (except for Trojans QQ) and managed to control large and small groups fairly well between the various kinds of control.
The only real trouble actually came when there were too few enemies; we were left somewhat unsure what to use against a single zombie, for example; just use shards, DBB, BAB...? Large groups were where this setup shined, for sure. The larger the group, the faster it fell. The main hall in Charred Court was cleared within literally seconds while the Oiler/Puppy room to the Left took a lot more time as we ran around unsure which tactic to employ.

Charred Main Hall A vortex and shards clear this as fast as vortex and blitz, I assure you~
Spike Room
Zombie Spam
Vana With BAB and DBB...not good. Not good at all; we just ran around silly spamming hazes, running for our lives!

Bring utility weapons. c.c

Nosrsly, the shards do work against puppies, but just slowly. Puppies and Trojans simply defeat the shards; we're yet to find a quick, effective means or dealing with them shy of just spamming DCB around them.
Luckily we've not come across many rocket puppies, but they will be an issue when we finally get around to our OCH run; I've been wondering the same thing myself, tbph. Maybe Zed has some more insight~

EDIT: SSB works nicely as well, since it has neutral damage and can shock them~

I have this cool habit of managing to survive tight odds when I'm the only one alive/who can res (being a total ninja in the circle room with all the spikes and mortars and thwackers) but as soon as we're safe and the whole group's alive, I just die every five seconds. I'm not sure if it's a motivation/carelessness thing, but my death rate really seems pretty sporadic.
The bombs being OP though; that came up in choke-points and corridors. Whenever we were in a large room we found ourselves running wide circles while teh gremlins ran and tried to escape, but as soon as we hit a tight corridor or small room, we just godmoded it, leaving the gremlins absolutely nowhere safe to run and, as above, as soon as they got hit once, the chain was pretty unstoppable.

Honestly, it explains to me perfectly why they imposed a hit limit. It feels crippling and awful for a solo bomber, but as soon as there's a couple of sharders around, it creates a minefield that would be utterly devastating if every bomb could hit.

Great fun of a run though, despite the difficulties. Seerus was unfortunate, but we've come to realise that shards, as much fun as they are for a teamwork bomb, simply do not work on bosses~

Seerus himself, I reckon is more than do-able with bombs, or even just shards; it's just the damn battlepods constantly rebuilding, healing and spamming rockets everywhere that are the problem; they're impossible to keep up dps with bombs to actually advance the phase, but I reckon if we "cheated" the battlepods and broke them to bring Seerus out, then we could easily enough do his phases with shards and/or bombs.

Although nitro chaining sounds like a reasonable theory. The shards' fuse and low damage (and teh fact that the pods were ignoring 2nd ring shards) left us only dealing 1/2 bombs worth of 80~100 damage while its shield was down, whereas spamming Nitro would allow us maybe 2/3 bombs in each (at a good few hundred damage per bomb) while also pushing back those infuriating thwackers that kept respawning.

For future reference, I suppose~

By the way, I'd love to join you guys whenever you go and do this! I'm friends with some of you I know, so please feel free to invite me; I've got a bomber hat and a chaos cloak and all of the shard bombs, so I should fit right in. I can also bring other bombs/weapons/armors, if you'd like. I will say that some of my shard bombs need heat though- the situations where I want to use them just don't give me a mountain of heat, and I've so many other things that I want to use. So yes, I do use them as often as many other items, but no, I don't bring them on every run. The elemental one did become heated within a month though, due to FSC lol.

And I would argue that people are unable to cooperate in random parties, and most parties do not consist entirely of tightly knit friends all wanting to use the same strategy. The shard bombs should be balanced and not sub-optimal when used alone... look at biohazard. You don't see people carrying that around very often in random parties, unless they're just playing around with it. You'd want to bring something else if you were seriously doing content for the first time.

I'm in for some fun too if you lack a shardbomber! Currently only have SSS, but working toward DCB. Brady never invited me to any Shard run :'(

There is no sword that I know of that have similar teamplay as Catalyzers/Shards.

@Fehz:
Cooperation is a problem, particularly for pre-stated reasons (as what Qwez has said) that it's really easy to get a "win" loadout and not need to cooperate. I'm having fun with shards because they require you to work as a team and party up. Now it sucks for PUGs assuming you don't randomly meet someone who happens to have shards and be into them too, but it makes it worth it to take the time and get a group together. We put off OCH for two weeks because we wanted to do it this way, but it was worth it when we finally got the whole team together and did it. It may require cooperation and teamwork, but it's totally worth the effort, imo.

@Fradow:
You've done at least one run w/ me, before we even made this thread! Get more involved D:

@Qwez:
I have always wondered, why do people like grinding the same thing with the same weapons with the same/similar parties? (How is playing the metagame all that fun?)

I have a speedrun "metagame" for Vana, for example, that I will use and repeatedly grind. I do this not for the fun of the run, but for the maximum cr/hour rate. I don't merchant or anything so my primary source of income is to farm Vana; when I'm doing this, I'm not really interested in a "fun" run that takes an hour to clear when I could be playing meta and clearing in <20mins and getting tokens twice as fast.
However, I do understand that this tends to get boring pretty fast, and only run this for so long before I just need a break. The rest of the time however, I'm happy to do runs differently or try stuff out. Even in LD I have like ten completely different loadouts, none of them are clones, and will cycle between them fairly frequently, as I'd just get bored otherwise. I see a lot of people only ever ever ever using 1/2 loadouts and it totally baffles me how they can stand to play so much, when they play the exact same thing over and over. Especially when they just /win with their ping/heart trinkies, seems to suck all the fun out of it imo. I like to just switch it up after a few matches and keep the interest alive, so I'm with you on that one~

@Zeddy:
That's something worth noting about what I/we've been sayin' about the "teamwork" aspect of the shards. As much of a pain as it is to have to find groups and parties revolving around shards to make them work/fun, the very fact that we are going to the effort to do so and to make co-operative groups seems to be an effective ploy, on OOOs part.
Anyone we tell about this who's remotely interested in bombing tends to pick up an interest and wants to join in and play with us, irrespective of the location. People want to play co-op and work together doing this, just for the fun! A few people I know went from only having one shard they hated to making others just to join in our escapades.
S'workin', dawg~ :)

Anyhoo, I know a couple of others who're down with this who haven't posted. I could "promote" this thread a bit, check if they're on Steam etc and see if everyone wants to get into a group, since I'm confident we do have at least 8 (potential) Sharders in oor wee Squad. Gettin' everyone on at the same time may be tricky, but the fact is that our Squad is increasin' in size. I'd say we just make up the group (the name should be obvious :D ) and we'll start inviting those who wish to be a part of it~

On that note: another option on top of that would be to make a mini/alt guild for us, so we can get together, have a wee bomby related GH to discuss it/meet up and; more importantly (back to my original task!) so that we could try sharding as a bombing team in LD >:D

@Echoez:
Added you (I think) since Zeddy and I talk on Steam already~

On-topic:
Since we've done HoI pureshard already, I reckon we should give it a try as we suggested last time; a full hardcore run. Mostly shards, maybe some hazes/vortex and have a blitzer standin' at the back just unleashin' into the crowd while everythin's distracted by the shininess. Like we did our dry run in White Collar, but actually do it in HoI~

Awesome! Now that we have that, we just need a guild so we can LD when enough of us are around :D

EDIT@Echoez:
Nothin' wrong w/ recordin' runs already, pre-emptively, as some of the runs are just plain fun to watch. The screenies I have of Hoi last week for example; just look fantastic! Havin' a video of runs like that just to show people what we mean and how fun it can be.
Also, as far as "decent" goes, we can run them in good times already. Zeddy and I have run FSC in "average" times with shards; we're not far away from masterin' them :D

Also, you're welcome to come along for the SRJP run. I've not heard of anyone doin' shard shadow lairs before now so it could certainly be something worth recording!

The lag was terrible... but we did it. Slowly and painfully. Polyps are the worse enemy of all time.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540693576077733504/9E6EB1D43EFAF25C7C4...

Just want to make a note of the fact that while on my crazy Dark Matter Bomb rage crafting spree I got a lot of UVs, including two CTR Highs and three CTR Meds, so if anyone happens to be looking to purchase one, message me.

also the videos should be up on the YT channel over the new two days or so.

New video

S'kinda sad to say that that really is as much as needs said about that run. With the others, there was some fun or cool aspect that was worth bletherin' on about, but by the time we finished GiM all I really summarised it with was "We died a lot."

Shidara and I were pretty latent so we were especially on the deathy end of things, being hit with phantom range etc, but if I'm truthful I don't think it would have made a whole lot of difference if we had perfect connections. GiM is simply not made for shards.

Great vid Echoez =D

Would you mind telling me what setup you used for C42? (I want one of those BAB!)