I think your ideas are very nice and you put it very succeedly why Ranger-Vet Bardin is lackluster. His passive is a nice thing for the team, but it doesn’t change the way he is played at all. He has no real “role” he fills during play, like boss killer, crowd controller, special killer. This game is all about having a party that has very distinct roles, and Ranger-Vet Bardin has no part where he truly excels. My suggestion would go into a similar direction as yours, but something the other folks here said would also be very nice: make his special a real bomb, or more precisely: give him the option to choose between his smoke bomb and a special offensive bomb. You could make it that just pressing the special key throws out the smoke as usual, holding and then pressing LMB throws the offensive version that could work like the “shrapnel” trait: all enemies hit take a bit of damage and get a debuff (e.g. they take more damage for a certain period of time, or deal less damage, or bleeding damage, something like that).