If you use bombs only, can rely on good teams and your teammates don't mind scratching you from the flloor a lot, mad bomber is the right one for you. It's definitely easier to control crowds, stack status effects + deal damage at the same time with mad bomber. The short charge time on all bombs can be lifesaving or "teamsaving" in many situations and on very rare occasion your teammates might even "complain" that they have nothing to do except collecting coins & mats. Just you need to be prepared to die on every second misstep and try to make as few as possible. You need to keep an eye on total team hp, what your actions do to it over the course of the run and decide wisely when to take a step back and wait in a corner while your teammates deal with a situation without you - or if it's a good idea to die in the middle of the fight to leave behind a tactical bomb or two. Being shocked often means the monster gets to hit you again and again until your teammates intervene. And fire means more or less, you're living on borrowed time. Give all the healing capsules to your teammates right away: using them yourself just means you'll be burning a little bit longer ;).

mad bomber suit is a better option than volcanic if you play in parties.
you gain a +2 damage and +1 CTR for the loss of status effects

Most of my bombs are UV CTR Medium, so the CTR bonus on the Mad Bomber in my case is overkill

Are you sure about the overkill part? You know the Charge Time Reduction from your gear stacks with your weapons?

Ahh thanks for enlightening me, Shoebox. :)

@ufna: The levels I was referring to are the respective values of the bonuses in question.
Each quality level for a bonus, from low to maximum, has a separate value not related to the bonus itself to determine effective stacking.

So, since medium is the equivalent to two levels, with the cap being six levels, you would only need three medium bonuses to reach maximum Charge Time Reduction.

As for any questions referring to armour.

Since the Volcanic Demo Suit only offers a Low Charge Time Reduction bonus, the best bomber set would be Volcanic Demo Helm (which has a Medium Bonus) with a Mad Bomber Suit, to get positive Fire Resistance, Very High Charge Time Reduction (Maximum with a level 5+ Bomb) and some additional damage for a weakness to a few minor statuses.
Although the Low Bonus on the Volcanic Demo Suit could just be a bug or a tooltip error, I would still recommend this or a similar set-up because it is just defensive enough to be feasible in Tier 3.

I have both sets. With few exceptions, I will run full mad bomber for T2 and first half of T3. After clockworks @ T3 I will either switch to a mix, continue using full mad bomber, or go full volcanic demo depending on the gate construction.

Get friendly with remedy pills and learn to avoid T3 shock stratums when wearing full mad bomber and you'll be fine. W/ full set at D25+ I'm doing something like 230 dmg instead of high 190's. You'll definitely want a damage bomb if you go this route to maximize its benefits though.

Not really since the shield status protection is only active when the shield is up. So if you have a skelly shield and get hit by freeze when the shield is down, the status will affect you based on your armor's status protection. You want to equip a shield based on what you think is going to be problematic rather than trying to cover your armor's deficiencies.

@Eek5 - what bombs are you running on T3 ?

so no irontech destroyer ? I hear that's better than nitro. I'm trying to resolve this. The only way i know is to craft both.