We all know that bombs require charging, and sometimes a large radius nitro isn't always the best option, and sometimes you just wanna get that bomb off fast. I propose a new mechanic for bombs (possibly bombers only, maybe on a shield *winkwink OOO winkwink*.
The general idea would be to have two charges, similar to how bombs originally worked, however this one would be half the charge time, do half the damage, and half the radius, and then the full charge would yeild the same results. This idea may sound crazy, but I've thought about it for awhile, and how it's very hard to do decent damage or use bombs effectively until completely heated, and with gear. PS. This would only apply to damage bombs.
The radius effect would either stay the same with lower level bombs, or this could be a way to increase the blast radius of the low level blast bombs, making it easier to do damage and gain the basic mechanics of bombing in the beginning.
I've gone through the ptr without heated bombing gear, having major issues with damage compared to unheated guns or swords, merely from the lack of ctr and no way of gaining more damage bonus.
I realize there would be a lot of bug exploits and kinks to work out, but I think most people are turned off of damage bombs merely because it's fairly hard to start out with bombs as opposed to swords, or even guns. And even then, most people have problems with people using 2* blast bombs that knock everything around, having the ability to have les knockback in a party would work much better.
Why make it fixed? IMO, it would be much better if the mechanic was changed into "soap bubbles", i.e. , the damage would start at 25% of the potential and grow by 25% of the potential with each third of the time needed to charge up the bomb, the radius would start at no at all and then grow with each moment till you hit the charge time of the bomb at which point the bomb would have the current radius.
Then again, the damage could be also let loose.