Damage numbers for all the new 5* shard bombs are now up on the wiki.
The damage comparison between the status versions and the regular ones are as follows. All numbers are from Strata 6, no damage bonuses and not including the damage bonus vs Fiend/Slime seeing as most Bombers I know pack damage bonus anyways.
Deadly Splinter/Dark Matter Bomb vs Beast/Fiend and Gremlin/Slime respectively:
Bomb: 128-143. Shards: 166-186.
Scintillating Sun Shards/Shocking Salt Bomb vs Beast and Gremlin respectively:
Bomb: 128-143. Shards: 147-165.
The bomb blasts themselves do the same damage. The shards are pretty close also, although not identical, dealing approximately 12% less damage at Depth 28. Honestly it is a smaller difference then I was expecting. The Sun Shards/Salt Bomb can inflict their status from both the initial bomb blast along with the shards.
They all seem to have a fairly good chance of knocking down smaller enemies, or just downright interrupting turrets. There is some trouble hitting Gremlin Thwackers, Mortafires, and Trojans due to their shields, the only other semi-difficult enemy to hit with them is Kats due to them moving quickly. They chew straight through most enemies... large groups are your friends when using these bombs. They take some getting used to due to their double explosion, but with a little bit of practice it becomes rather easy to hit enemies.
Now for the bad. The damage unless you hit with the bomb blast and at least one shard is easily outclassed by the DBB, it doing 258-285 in Strata 6. The shard bombs are also not all that well timed currently, hopefully that will get changed. The shards' fuse is too long to get a consistent double hit, allowing enemies to stand back up and get out of the secondary blast radius. Another issue is that the shards' blast radius (shards, not the bomb) is rather small and rarely overlap unless you manage to make them hit a wall.
Personally I like the new bombs, they're fun to use and have the potential to be very useful. I just hope the secondary fuse is shortened (hopefully by half) and the shards blast area is increased. Or their damage increased. Preferably all 3 of those, but if I had to pick I would take the shorter fuse and bigger blast radius over the increased damage.
~Gwen
Thanks for posting this. I have the Deadly Crystal Bomb and was wondering how the status versions compare. It is also good to see another reasonable poster making a useful post rather than rage over the old RSS.
I also find this bomb works very well once you get used to it and I think it is a fun bomb to use. I picked it up because it is the missling elemental DPS bomb from my collection and I think it fits that void well. I also agree with your suggested improvements. The shard blast delay is so long that fast moving monsters can easily avoid it. For the elemental bomb at least undead and most constructs aren't fast moving targets. The larger blast radius would be nice and might actually make it match other bombs like DBB in terms of overall usefulness.
I do think DBB is currently vastly superior for gremlins and wolvers (and other targets that get knocked down) due to superior knockdown allowing me to stand still and dispatch them with impunity. I don't know if I'd take the shadow crystal bomb over the dark retribution. Dark Retribution is extremely deadly against lichen colonies and other large targets due to getting a constant stream of damage. I haven't tried it, but I've heard of a lot of problems with shards dissapearing if the initial blast goes off inside of monsters.