It's been a while since OOO changed the shard bombs, and I would like to know what kind of strategies people have come up with.
Some other things I would like to know are; do you have a favorite shard bomb? What niche do these bombs fill for you? Are there any enemies you find especially easy to shard bomb?
the real slim shady yes i know the artist but its a weapon in SK?
I know how! Because I asked!~
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/64763
Not to demean this thread. I'm down for hearing more people's thoughts.
@Fehzor, Wow, I completely forgot about that thread. Well I guess this one is more along the lines of "what are you doing with it" rather than "what are they supposed to do," but they are definitely very similar.
Well, ISB is good for general shock distribution among non-strong enemies. Set pre-emptively before the spawns and then go nuts with whatever main (or ISB).
Spam-in-a-can.
Daisychain tactic is viable, (more controlled spam everywhere). Combine the shards with vortex if you wanna pure bomb.
mix-n-blast, Blast bomb + Shards make decent work, you could blast them out then home them in to a point if you use the shards well enough.
Lose the shards if you're against fiends.
When there are a lot of enemies around and I'm using Crystal Bomb (mostly in FSC), I'll try to plant the bomb at the same spot repeatedly. The outer shards have a tendency to knock enemies inwards, where they'll be bounced right back out again with the next bomb, where they'll be hit by the shards from the previous shards and et cetera. It doesn't kill things particularly faster than Electronic Vortex does, and if we're talking about large groups and/or you have teammates then there's just no contest.
Terrain is your friend with Crystal Bomb. In Legion of Almire there are a lot of these single blocks you can run circles around to always keep some cover between yourself and the enemy. In these instances, radius boms tend to get blocked, or the knockback will work kind of awkwardly due to terrain shenanigans, but with Crystal Bomb the shards wrap around these blocks and get more focused (provided they don't disappear (and also it doesn't really do more damage because of arbitrary 3-shard hit limit (in fact it can end up doing less due to invincitinks))).
Against Devilites, I like planting Sun Shards behind destructible blocks. The shards will be planted beyond the now-destroyed blocks and have a very decent chance at stunning the devilites. Lacking destructible blocks, I can plant a bomb and retreat, which will often make the devilites step onto the shards by the time they explode. Once stunned, you can simply run circles around the devilites and plant more bombs to keep them perpetually stunned until you've killed them. I used to bring DBB as a backup in case Sun Shards didn't work out but now I don't bother anymore. Devilites are the one opponent where I genuinely prefer a shard bomb variant over anything else. (Other than mini jellies.)
I don't think it's even worth it usin' shard bombs in PVE anymore, as I can do it faster with my gunner loadout or by hazing with a party.
For pvp though, switching between ISB and RSS is good for spreading shock+stun amongst people~
Spam everywhere = Nobody even remotely near your CP of choice.
Tested with the Sun Shards, the (PvP) lowest-damaging 3* supposedly DPS bomb. Go figure.
I just started using shard bombs yesterday and I'm only using 2* ones, but I have found that general "spam everywhere" seems to work well.
Also, I hear that the Real Slim Shady has been nerfed.