I've been considering going for one, just for the shock chance. I mean, there's no other shocking bomb (unless you count that 1* one you can only get in the starter energy bundle pack thingy) so even if you were to use it against targets it wouldn't be doing that great of damage to, you could still get shock status on a few monsters at once, right?

Also, totally know what you mean about the multiple hits. It's always great when something jumps right on top of your crystal bomb and takes 8x damage. >:)

By the way, about how much damage DOES this thing do against slimes? I noticed, the other day, while fooling around with the regular 2* crystal bombs, that A: they actually do half piercing and half normal damage like the salt bombs, and B: that the combination proved to be about half-damage to resistant creatures (compared to the like 20% or less damage it would have been doing if it had been 100% piercing damage). So what exactly DO you get when you take an attack that does half damage and then add a high damage bonus to it? Does it come out to about the same damage that a normal-damage bomb of equivalent power would do? If so, then I could see how the addition of moderate shock (and the fact that you can do double/triple/even more times damage to individual targets) would actually make these worth using.

Resistant enemies take about 20-30% of standard damage from the damage types they resist.

So let's say, for simplicity, that this comes out to 25%, and a single shard from the bomb deals 100 damage (exaggerated of course, just for example's sake.)
Normal damage: 50
Piercing damage vs Slime: 12.5
62.5 damage + ~15-20% boost from Damage Bonus: High = approximately 73-74 damage per shard, versus 100 damage per shard against Gremlin or Undead, 112-113 damage per shard vs. Fiends and Beasts, and 62-63 damage per shard on Undead.

I remember hearing that one of the 4* shardbombs has a very slow charge compared to its own 3* version...

Yes, those bombs are fun, but...

Try what you want with those things, in no situation they even remotely match what you can do with that weapon slot if you put a more useful bomb or an alchemer or something in it. In most situations where you would want to use a crystal bomb, plain sword or blast bomb are better too. In other situations, putting a fire / ice bomb right next to the target is. Most of the time you're off a lot better standing back (or helping with a shieldbump here and there) while watching the swordies / gunslingers do whatever you'd want to use that crystal bomb for.

The only situation where crystal bombs might have a place might be fighting big packs of wolvers (in some cases maybe gremlins / devilites) when you're solo, a lot too weak for the encounter and actually want them to jump around like crazy for half an hour, praying that that way they die before you do. It is slightly better at this job than the autogun line or the new T1 boss bomb. Also crystals are quite a bit more efficient if you're trying to get yourself kicked from a team for making the fight a lot harder or impossible to participate in for the others.

Where did the haze come from? Let's keep those out of the comparison for now ;)

As for crystal/nitro:

You get used to nitro with some practice - especially if the bomber is good and doesn't overuse it / use it in the wrong spot, at the wrong time. On the rare occasions I've been playing with a sword or guns and a blast-bomber was around, I loved using the nitro or big angry blast radius as a temporary safe spot: you can estimate when mobs are going to fly bye-bye and attack something in a way that would let you open to a counter attack without the bomb. Even if there's nitro-spam, often all you need is the right timing: No one forces you to let your guard down right in the split second you can't see much. Of course with nitro too it's possible to reduce the overall damage output of the team (or make it loose more hp), but if you try not to, you have a decent chance to succeed without standing around doing no damage at all - most of the time.

Well, and crystal bombs...There's just not much you can do if someone with a crystal series bombs insists on trying to "solo those wolvers in a team" or something like that. Maybe you can get in a hit or two, but mostly the whole pack will just jump around, occasionally get hit by a bomb projectile and randomly pop up behind someone to instantly bite and disappear. This, when confronted with the mobs / situations in questions, gives you two choices: start spamming haze bombs in places where they are really of no use so no one notices you're "unemployed" half of the time or make it worse and hope no one knows it's the crystal bombs that are causing the problem. Also: Bombers that think just because they can get two or more projectiles in from one bomb that way they need to use it to attack one or multiple puppies (or get very close without a shield to something big & spiky) are very "efficient" hp-burners and I'd recommend letting them lie there on the floor until the dangerous mobs are gone.

Don't get me wrong - the crystal bomb series can be fun and it can be useful in some situations. But it's really a rather suboptimal choice for the very limited amount of weapon slots one has no matter where you're going and I wouldn't take one along unless the run probably will be rather easy and the team fooling around on the battlefield anyway.

Even though ISB doesn't have a 5* version, it's still really good due to shock. Even against T3 Wolvers it would probably be good because there are enough projectiles to hit them even after they poof.

Also, shocked mobs take more damage.