After the launch of Bomb Gems yesterday with the new campaign, I’m really struggling to understand what role they are playing or how they are meaningfully adding to the gameplay for this campaign other than being Adana steampunky thematically/aesthetically.
They are less powerful Doomskulls that don’t cause skull damage and are harder to trigger the effects than most other Heroic gems. Wish gems were harder to trigger as well, but there was 4/5 chance of reward for their use in full spell mana fills. Other Heroic gems at least cause debuffs when regularly matched or mana multipliers. The mechanics of Bomb Gems aren’t unique in anyway. That’s why I’d like to propose some changes to Bomb Gems. Remember, Lycanthropy gems were updated midway through the campaign when they were first introduced, so there is precedence for something like this.
What would add actual functionality and strategic gameplay elements would be to have Bombs Gem count down on a turn-based fuse from when they were created/appeared on the gameboard. Say a 3 turn countdown which reduces each time the Hero or AI opponent’s team completes their turn. The resulting “explosion” would also have to do something more unique than just being a weakened Doomskull. What if on top of exploding mana, it changed any red gems in the radius into Fire gems that would cause additional fire damage to the opposing team in the blast. Or, it could inflict damage specifically focused on bypassing Armor by doing True Damage when exploding skulls/Doomskulls/Uberskulls.
You could have the resulting action happening when the countdown reached 0 be either A) a positive outcome of the bombs exploding gems for mana/inflicting true skull damage or fire gem conversion to the enemy on that turn, or B) a negative outcome where the bombs exploding on either the Hero/AI’s turn hurts them and helps the enemy. That way there is an incentive to explode the bombs ticking down during the course of the fight so you have to effectively defuse the ones which are timed to go off when it’s your turn, thus saving yourself and denying your enemy.
The community seems to really dislike adding elements which have negative consequences for the Hero/AI instead of positive effects, so even though I think the negative countdown is more interesting mechanically and strategically, I can see the more popular path being helping the Hero/AI when the bombs explode during the beginning of their turn.
Does anyone here have reactions to these proposed Bomb Gem suggestions? What would you all change to improve Bomb Gems from their current state? I think they really do need a rethink direly if they are going to be a permanent addition to the game.