Irontech/Irontech Destroyer

Summary: The bomb is incomparable to other Blast bombs.

Comparing the Irontech Series to ither blast bombs, it is quite terrible and ineffective. The slow walking speed, long fuse and relatively similar damage (comparing Master blast to Irontech) puts players off using it, and the only thing that a bombardier could use it for, is for the knockback. It cannot be used mid combat as mobs will surround the player before the fuse is finished. A mob can easily cover the distance from where it was flung to the player before another bomb is placed - resulting in death. Master blast bomb is easily the better option, with the shorter fuse, normal walking speed, and decent damage. The difference in damage on the Irontech vs. Master Blast is pretty much the same. Nitronome Vs. Irontech Destroyer is a similar story.
Overall this bomb can be improved by adding larger damage, or reducing the length of the fuse. This bomb series needs to be the 'Middle' bomb (medium fuse, walking speed, damage)

Rock Salt/Ionized Salt Bomb

Summary: Has a High+ dmg to Jelly while having piercing damage (which cancels out) then has normal damage which isn't effective or ineffective to any mobs.

Really having piercing damage and the High jelly bonus wasn't a good move as they cancel. There isn't a lot of use using this against jellies (especially as most jellies spawn in mobs, and shock on ionized?(rofl with quicksilvers)) and the normal damage doesn't quite make up for it. Comparing it Sun shards which has piercing elemental and fiend + (which absolutely wrecks fiends) it is the lesser. It was a good move as an attempt to balance it with the Shock thing. to make it balanced I suggest adding a small knock-back/knockdown (then stats wont have to change). You can't do to much to work around the jelly part (lore would be messed up), and personally i kind of like this bomb. I just here a lot of complaints, as well as i find it hard to use in some situations.

Big Angry Bomb.

Summary: Doesn't quite match Nitronome's standard (passes Irontechs easily). Small radius.

The damage, walking speed and fuse time is perfect, as well as the effects(scream), however It is felt that the radius is to small to be used over the Nitronome. It just doesn't meet the bombers(my) need for a high powered, big, angry, bomb. To fix it; increase the radius a bit or make the knock-back really awesome (knock-back on vannaduke?!?!?0.o). The bomb is verging on being the same as irontech destroyer.

Blast bombs
Just clearing this up (how it should be):

Nitro (smallest damage, shortest fuse, fastest walking speed) --> Irontech Destroyer (medium damage, medium fuse, average walking speed) --> Big angry (massive damage, longest fuse, slowest walking speed.)

It will just be hard to get the sweet spot for all of them, however base it all off the current Nitronome.

*~~~~~~*

Still to Write up:
-Gravidos (walking speed and radius are fairly low compared to other 4* bombs) Done ~ Jeburk
-Graviton Vortex (knock-back at end defeats the purpose) Done ~ Jeburk

Also I'm going to assume this thread can be used for the relating armors so:

Volcanic Demo Set

Summary: unbalanced from armor to the helm.

The volcanic set is fine, apart from the helm having a medium CTR, compared to the armors low CTR.
There is essentially no reason to get the Volcanic demo suit over the helm unless you are using it as a 'set'. However, many players choose a Mad bomber suit with a Volcanic helm (the set looks quite sad visually though), instead of the volcanic suit and the mad bomber helm (which looks great as a set). So if it is intended to balance this purely based on visuals - please don't. Basically the only fix this needs is to make Volcanic Demo suit medium CTR, or give Volcanic Demo helm a low CTR (increase defensive stats to keep it balanced with the other sets).

Bombastic Demo Set

Summary: No one likes it - No charge time reduction only a low damage bonus, and visuals make it look to similar to lower tier demo gear.

Compared to all other demo lines this set is a "STAY AWAY FROM IT" set. It only has low damage bonus, no CTR (which most bombers want).
The art is just pale green and a blueish color - certainly not something expected as a 5star equip and looks like it is just fused and heavy demo mashed together. even the VERY unbalanced Chaos cloak+cowl can be favored over this set.
Basically this set needs to have High damage bonus on the suit and helm (lower ele + norm defence as well) OR have incredi-awesome art. <-- (I will never blame Boswick if that happens)

Bomb of shocking

There is no Bomb of shocking (with blast radius).

Basically that's it. I love the shock effect vs monsters, and there is really no elite shock options for bombers. As a bomber i don't like shard bombs personally. I like a bomb with a blast radius. I guess there was a new 1* shock bomb introduced, but it hardly fills the niche for a shock bomb for serious bombers. I would love to see it added right there in the hazebomb lines with venom/fire/poison.

^ thanks for Graviton+ vortex ill take it off my list.
Yeah i stayed away from venom- just didn't give a good impression of greatness in the preview but i didn't know why. (thanks for that)

also about the shock bomb > try static flash in t3 the resulting damage from the shock is awesome (at least last time i checked cold snap did 'bout the same 'crack' damage as freezy). I used my CTR medium firecracker in t2 sometimes and it is epic (radius limitations is arguable).

D= But i love bombs how they are. Nitronome is a great example of what bombing is about in SK. --> everything is good, apart from that i can't spam bombs as much as i could in the preview with mad bomber set + charge trinkets. (i.e. raise the CTR cap for bombs)

@Jeburk regarding Venom Veiler:
I agree with you that the debuff doesn't do enough. The bomb isn't viable at all solo and it pales in comparison to the Shivermist and Ash of Agni. From what I've tested in Tier 3, the debuff adds about 6% damage but depending on the weapon attacking enemies, the Ash of Agni's ticks deal way more damage.

Stopping menders from healing units is helpful but the Shivermist freezing a mender and sniping him out when he can't dodge attacks is much more effective which is a bit ironic since that is one of poison's main purposes (neutralizing healers). On top of that, from my tests in Tier 3, I was unable to kill a lumber while statusing him with a 4* venom bomb while hitting him with the elemental+ blast bomb in between while 2 menders were healing him. Either ground heal is bugged or poison is really bad but it left a bad taste in my mouth. I agree that the duration should be lengthened to give the bomb more combo potential and use while running solo (as of now if you use VV then switch weapons you barely have enough time to take advantage of poison). I initially made it to deal with healers in T3 solo but its ineffectiveness made me drop it from my lineup completely.

I think the idea is to lay the problems out in our initial post with a detailed, straight-forward and professional manner, similar to a Bug Report, about specific game imbalance between the current weaponry. THEN we can discuss our thoughts on suggestions, be it for improvements in combat or aesthetic appeal :P Keep the official reports clear of personal opinion! :D

That said, I totally agree about the Blast bomb alternates, Graviton, and Venom Veiler. There's almost no point to taking any other blast bomb except the Nitronome; the Graviton's apparent purpose is done better by the Shivermist, as well as having any strength undercut by its flaws; and the Venom Veiler needs a longer duration poison.

Seeing as the VV is already situational enough in requiring live healers, and it's damage is practically nothing, it's not a bomb that lends itself to being spammed. If the poison duration were increased, we could drop it, poison them, then go about our business killing them. The bomb remains situational enough that we don't use it all the time, and carrying one still fills a precious slot, but it is a useful and effective bomb when we do.

I think the only thing is that there aren't enough bombs to comment on. Once we mentally strip out the bombs that perform poorly, or are just not interesting, there really are only 3 bombs left: Nitronome, Ash of Agni, and Shivermist. We've no diversity.

@Fallout And I wasn't trying to implicate you didn't know your stuff. I KNOW you do. Just in the presentation. :D

Another suggestion would be for VV to have a specialized poison that weakens mobs defense specifically to bomb damage. So that in a large fight it was beneficial for bombers to drop the VV and then use other bombs. I really like the idea of the Bomber dropping/stacking Dots and combo bomb damage. Much more interesting than running circles using 1 bomb.

Deconstructer/EMP bomb

A bomb that disables Constructs for X amount of time--> deconstructor needs 5* bomb path...especially consider the 4* is probably subpar to 4* blast bomb--at the very least we can surmise that a 5* deconstructor would still be inferior to 5* blast bomb, based on empirical evidence.

Maybe split the tech path from heavy deconstructor to 2 5* bombs. A damage based one vs constructs and an EMP that disables constructs for a certain amount of time.

@Jeburk re:deconstructor:
I forgot all about the deconstructor bomb. Ironically the name is exactly what bombers desperately need, basically a bomb to deal with gun puppies, but like the VV it doesn't live up to its name. As of now the only answer for gun puppies is to carry a sword or participate in the slowest, most tedious battle ever. Perhaps the answer would be to make a 5* deconstructor with a fuse slightly longer than nitronome but split its damage into 3 seperate and simultaneous attacks which would cancel turret charge attacks. I don't know how balanced this would be but it is a solution that would work within the current system.

@ohgodmyhead:
>I think the only thing is that there aren't enough bombs to comment on.

This is really true. Bombs are still missing curse, shock, stun, sleep status (I doubt any of these will ever happen for balance reasons lol) and good elemental (haze doesn't really count), shadow, pierce (5* please?) bombs. It's pretty sad that my shadow bomb is a nitronome w/ UV dmg to slimes, my elemental bomb is a nitronome w/ UV dmg to undead, and my pierce bomb is a nitronome UV dmg to beast.

Graviton is bad at dealing main damage since its DPS is incredibly low and is more of a crowd control bomb that is really bad at its job. Haze bombs are status effect bombs and not really damage bombs so they're more useful for their status to undead and construct rather than dealing elemental damage to them (although I do use it for this!) I can't really comment on sun shards since I have never used it.

I honestly wouldn't mind just seeing some cookie cutter blast bombs that dealt different damage but if you wanted to get creative then we could brainstorm that direction too although this probably isn't the thread for it. Damage bombs that AREN'T push would be welcome too since some people are bad at using nitronome for crowd control since it requires more strategy than just plopping them on the ground anywhere you want.

For now though, the answer to pure bombers looking to actually deal damage is to use a sword.

All these suggestions are good, but a meta-suggestion, or a plea really... I know this isn't in the format you requested, apologies.

Right now the shivermist buster, ash of agni and nitronome are really great things. They make me really happy to be a bomber. I feel quite useful to my peers in a group and quite capable on my own, and the game play is diverse and rewarding in both those situations. In balancing bombs, I would really love to see the other bombs brought to a level that would tempt me away from these bombs and not these bombs brought down to a level that I might start using the others.

Also, if what Npasq says about poison and menders is true, poison doesn't really make sense at all.

@jeburk excelent point, I have a graviton and now I noticed the animation looks like a GIF

if the animation is improved to look cooler I'll love that bomb a lot more

all of the haze bomb lines are lackluster UNTIL 5*... then they are pretty amazing. This is actually a good point... the difference between a fiery atomizer and an ash of agni is ludicrous compared to other 4* to 5* transitions (freezing atomizer and shivermist is the same). Perhaps a small bump to the atomizers radius to make that transition a little less spectacular is in order.

Big Angry Bomb:
An interesting and fun bomb to use (love the sound effects and angry face!)
However as Fallout indicated, the blast radius is somewhat lacklustre. ctr, decreased mvmnt speed are understandable though.

Graviton Bomb

It can't hit gremlins in t3

Because gremlins in t3 have the shield on their backs only the ones that are facing the center of the vortex when it goes off get hurt, which is maybe a third in a big group and never if it's a single gremlin. As gremlins are one of the shadow weak monsters this bomb is only really useful for slimes.

I mostly just wanted to point that out since no one else has, but I second most of the other complaints. It's not as good a control bomb because there's no safe way to approach a vortex full of constantly shifting monsters and the blast can fling them around dangerously, even more so then a blast bomb because you can't control the direction of the pushback based on placement. If you do try to take advantage of the clustered enemies with a sword or other bomb attack it will often knock them out of the vortex and negate the admittedly lackluster explosion damage. I don't want to bog this down with some page long description of an idea that belongs in the suggestions section but maybe if it didn't explode at all and just ticked a little shadow damage over it's duration then faded out, i think that would be super.

Freezing Vaporizers/Atomizer/Shivermist

Summary: When using Shivermist in a Flamelash Arena: Slimey Showdown, frozen oilers were not extinguished.

Other players explained to me that this is because Shivermist doesn't put out the oiler ooze, so the ooze keeps burning, recatching the frozen oilers (without unfreezing them), allowing them to heal, and essentially rendering lit oilers nearly invincible. With that in mind, burning oil splotches should be extinguished by freeze bombs just as the oilers are, so laying down a freezing mist can give players a fighting chance in an arena full of red rovers and oilers. To balance out the new power given to freeze bombs, the initial tick of the bomb on a burning oiler should merely extinguish it, not freeze it. To freeze a burning oiler, one would first put out its flame, then expose it to the freezing mist a second time.

Similarly, Fiery Vaporizer bombs should ignite that oily ooze (if they don't already), not just the oilers themselves.

I think most of us call it a bad crowd control bomb BECAUSE of all the bad you just listed. :P And I agree the Graviton Vortex radius is kinda small, and the explosive part smaller. I once tried to Grav chain several monsters, using a follow-up Graviton to pull them out of the initial Grav right as it went off, the combat equivalent of Nitronome chaining. Despite being a very risky maneuver, by all appearances the only damage the bombs did was the initial damage of each bomb (minimal) and the damage of the last one in the chain. I was kinda annoyed, cuz i thought I'd finally found a use for the bloody thing.

Summary: Nitronome isn't good against jellys anymore.

I used the Nitronome very often, it was my first bomb. Most of the times i heard complaints from people, who can't see anything because of my bomb. The only good situation was, when jellys spawned. However, now the jellys have spikes and the explosions get neutralized(for whatever reason???!!), when i get hit, which is pretty common at spiky jellys.

Enemies in a graviton should not be able to attack. It would still be an underpowered bomb even if this was the case. Anyhow, they are in a vortex, spinning in a circle (sorta) they shouldn't be able to attack. And even if they can, it should come out in a RANDOM direction.

Graviton is okay, but not good. I mean, if it was a free weapon and didn't take up a slot, then sure. Anyhow, i love my graviton just cause i like being different, but it really isn't very good.

>> ... explosions get neutralized (...) when i get hit ...

> I have noticed this too. It started recently too, it didn't used to do that.

Oh, it's worked like this for at least since the release. I've bug reported it a long time ago already, if you get hit while setting a bomb down, your charge timer gets set back but you still see the animation of the bomb fuse. And then it duds.

The new jellies are just another reason for me to switch from bombs to swords. If I'm gonna get hit anyway, I better be able to hit them back. I really want bombs without the charge time...

Dark Briar Barrage
Summary: Long fuse is unnecessary. Not the best weapon for what it is made for.

This kind of falls into the venom veiler category. When you think of a piercing bomb the first thing that comes to mind is probably a devilite, greaver, wolver destroyer. The flourish series murders fiends and wolvers compared to other swords so it only makes sense that the DBB is the best tool to take down fiends and wolvers, right? Not so fast.

Fuse Comparison (Nitronome vs DBB)
The fuse on the DBB is almost a full second longer than the Nitronome. BAB and Irontech have longer fuses but they also have more knockback. This seems like a balance decision to make setting up a BAB/Irontech chain more difficult than nitronome. Keep in mind that as long as the charge time is the same, once you start a chain the bombs will be exploding at the same interval. Because the DBB has no knockback and is purely a damage bomb and not a crowd control bomb like the Nitronome, it has to be used differently.

The lack of DBB knockback means that dropping a DBB usually leaves you vulnerable to attack. As a result, DBB usage involves more shield canceling and shielding in general. Because of this, the fuse time arbitrarily punishes effective use of the DBB as it "resets" the chain. For a bomb that purely deals damage, it seems strange to limit its maximum DPS. Most fiends have vicious attacks and charging the bomb already leaves you very vulnerable but to have to wait almost a full second to deliver your payload seems overly punishing considering a sword's charge allows you to deal DPS immediately.

The longer fuse also makes it difficult to time out attack cancels on enemies, which again leaves you very vulnerable.

Greaver Clears w/ Rigadoon, Nitronome, DBB - Back to the topic of not the right bomb for the job despite the giving off the impression that it should be, the main problems with the DBB as far as I've seen is that the nitronome's faster fuse and knockback makes it better for almost everything that the DBB is strong against. YES, you can kill greavers with the DBB (see above video) but it requires you being an absolute ninja. The nitronome's faster fuse means you have to shield less and allows you to better time an attack cancel and on top of that the knockback buys you another half second to drop a 2nd bomb and repeat.l YES you can kill devilites with the DBB but it also requires too much finesse for a bomb that specializes in pierce damage. Again, the slow fuse on the DBB means attack canceling is a lot trickier and it leaves you open to too many ranged attacks.

With greavers, having a faster fuse would allow you to attack cancel better and give you a better chance at surviving. With devilites, having a faster fuse would allow you to attack cancel more reliably and let you play the more defensive style that suits the DBB while not being punished for canceling your bomb chain.

I'm not sure if a faster fuse will make the DBB the best bomb for fiends but it'd definitely make it better than it is now IMO.

@jeburk:
Just to clarify some points, from my testing the DBB does the same damage that the nitronome does to neutral targets so giving it an additional dmg bonus may or may not be the best idea (I'll never oppose a damage increase on any bomb though!!) I think you bring up some good points though. If we're going to compare the DBB to the Nitronome (which seems like the most natural comparison to me):

DBB is better at killing:

• Gremlins - No knockback makes it a lot safer to deploy. (especially since it is easy to hit gremlins in the back w/ the nitronome and send them flying towards you in T3) Same damage unless you have a UV nitronome.
• Kat Ghosts - This is personal preference but DBB does the same damage as nitronome but the lack of knockback means that kat ghost groups are likely to stay clumped together making avoiding their attacks easier and more intuitive.
• Silk Wing - No knockback makes it easier to snipe these out of a group.
• Alpha Wolver - No knockback + pierce dmg makes this an easier bomb to use. This is basically the opposite of how DBB/Nitronome vs Greaver. You have to be a ninja to kill Alpha Wolvers w/ Nitronome and you have to be a Ninja to kill Greavers w/ DBB.

DBB is worse at killing:

• Constructs, Slimes - Strong to pierce damage
• Greavers - No knockback doesn't buy you any time to set a 3rd bomb (not 2nd because you can put two down before the first explodes by quite a bit) leaves you way too vulnerable to attack. Long fuse makes attack cancel difficult.
• Slags - Personal preference but it does the same damage but no extra knockback protection.
• Trojans - This is very slight but since the DBB's fuse is longer it leaves you more vulnerable for frontal attack while you wait for the bomb to explode.

Little improvement:

• Wolvers - DBB is slightly better due to pierce damage but wolvers are easy to kill with both weapons so it is kind of a wash. NOTE: The DBB is actually worse than the nitronome against T3 wolvers in scenarios where there are multiple mob types due to the long fuse time. If you have to move to avoid other attacks the wolvers are constantly warping to you and will often warp out of the blast radius before the bomb can explode.
• Devillites - I kind of want to put this in a completely neutral section but after extensive use with both nitro and DBB, the DBB is clearly the better bomb because of the pierce damage (at least in Stratum 5 where I've done most of my testing)... IF you manage to get a chain started. Again, the long fuse really hurts this bomb against devilites. If you drop and shield you have to wait almost a full second before it explodes so attack canceling them is TOUGH. The knockback on nitronome buys you a little extra time too. The lack of knockback on devilites is actually perfect in this scenario but the fuse hurts when setting up.

Half the things the DBB is good at is only due to the fact that it is a no knockback bomb and it behaves exactly as you'd expect a no knockback bomb to behave. (I.e. better for team play since it is less disruptive) The fuse and lack of knockback is brutal against devilites and greavers though. I think the combination of the two is what hurts the most since not only is it hard to time an attack cancel out, but you're left doubly vulnerable since you can't attack cancel AND there is no knockback which would buy you additional time.

Another possible suggestion is maybe a chance at minor stun (it is the ghost of snarby after all and what better way to haunt than to bring along the beast bell that killed you! heh) to buy you a little more time but I'm not sure how OP this would be. Honestly, I think a fuse adjustment is all it needs (or at least I'd like to see what a fuse adjustment would be like before I make additional assessments)

edit: I forgot to mention that I have been using the DBB almost exclusively with mad bomber so the balance discussion is using max CTR. I didn't really like it before it hit level 10 but that could be a combination of CTR and damage so who knows.

@ slyjohnny

I agree that the shivermist is very powerful. Over powered? I'm not so sure. When you are solo, weapon dancing between the shivermist and another damage dealing weapon takes both time and (depending on the mob, sometimes a lot of) skill. I agree if you are facing down one mob it can be amusing to continuously place a SMB behind him. It becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly though that there are far more efficient ways to kill a mob.

Now, if you were going to make a case for the SMB being OP, I think you'd probably start with a discussion of group play. There is a reason groups are so grateful when a skilled SMB player joins the party. But the fact is that this means the bomber is sacrificing damage for team work... and in a game where party play ends up being a lot of folks scrambling to hit the mob faster than the other guy... well, it's really refreshing to actually support your group.

In short, when I think of 'OP' I think of something that trivializes play to the exclusion of everything else. The shivermist buster actually enhances and encourages interesting combat interaction... in fact it requires another player or another type of weapon to be effective.

I totally agree the VV is under powered, though.

Big Angry Bomb.

Summary: Useless for DPS compared to Nitronome

I made this bomb expecting to be the most damaging and hard to use of the bombs, which would balance it's problems with lots of damage. Turns out it's quite the opposite, the bomb is slow to set, slow to blow up, has a small radius, deals about x1.5 of Nitro's damage, but pushes enemies so far away that dealing damage to them consistently with this bomb is impossible. Nitronome is better in every possible way. I have made Briar Barrage my dps bomb, given how BAB fails to fill this role.