It’s honestly surprising to see Thoma capitalize
so well on his biggest strength and not only can he keep your characters protected but
there’s also a few teams he excels at. The only thing that really matters when looking
at Thoma’s playstyle is how the shield works. There’s the big shield you can get from
his elemental skill and then the smaller ones that get generated from his burst attacks. All of them stack together so you can grow
the shield into a chunky beast that absorbs most of the attacks. And what’s also cool about it is that he
gets a passive which helps increase the shield strength by up to 25% whenever a new shield
gets created and you can easily do this without any enemies present with any character. You can see for yourself after doing 5 attacks
when fighting invisible ghosts and the maximum shield strength is achieved. So it’s pretty easy when it comes to Thoma’s
shield management – you set it and forget it, then carry on with the next character. You probably want to do his elemental skill
first then the burst, so that the bigger shield gets generated and keeps you safe from an
incoming attack since you don’t actually gain a shield with the initial burst explosion
and you have to attack at least once to start generating them. Otherwise, just keep in mind there is a limit
to how big the shield can get but because of its unique nature of stacking and refreshing
itself constantly with Thoma’s burst attacks, you should effectively maintain it without
reaching the limit that if you can get hit at least once in a while. When you start thinking about Thoma’s build,
it’s basically like a puzzle you need to solve and the key to it is going to be his
efficient energy management due to his high burst cost. It’s also worth noting that his damage performance
isn’t something you can write Homa about since it’s clear miHoYo is focusing on releasing
characters that are great at one or two things instead of being good at everything like our
Benny boy or Xingqiu but it’s not that big of a deal and in reality, just helps us focus
on the best aspects someone like Thoma can offer. Also, there’s basically two ways how you
can build him, one of which is a more balanced take on his entire kit so you go for the usual
artifacts and stats while the other playstyle is just basically molding him into a shield
bot which means stacking up a lot of health from artifacts and weapons. Just keep in mind, no matter how you choose
to play him, it’s important to keep his energy recharge somewhere around 180% and
that’s if you don’t have his 4th constellation unlocked, which we’ll get into more about
this later in the video. So with that in mind, two weapons that pretty
much define him are going to be either The Catch or Favonius Lance and if you still haven’t
fully refined this godly fishing weapon, now would be the best time thanks to Thoma’s
passive but obviously, the Catch isn’t just great on him since a lot of you probably are
using this weapon on Xiangling or Raiden and if you don’t want them to compete for it,
Favonius Lance remains a solid choice, especially those extra particles you get to generate. Now for a budget option or if you want to
maximize his shield, Black Tassel is pretty good and on the other end of the spectrum
sits Staff of well Thoma you could even call it but it’s probably a weapon that you’ll
want to use on Hu Tao if you have her or even other offensive polearm users, although, if
you do decide to use it on him, it will boost his offensive and defensive capabilities by
a good amount. Just keep in mind that if all you’re missing
is some energy, you can always craft a single copy of Prototype Starglitter and just take
advantage of its substat but it is the weakest option out of all the energy weapons. Now for Thoma’s artifacts, it couldn’t
get more simple – it’s strongly recommended you try and get a full Emblem set because
it will increase his bursts’s damage and provide him the much needed energy while the
main stats should be Health on Sands, Pyro DMG on Goblet and Critical Rate on Circlet,
although if you decide to skip the weapon with energy substat, you can just swap out
the Sands with Energy Recharge instead. And as for building thick shields, a mix of
Tenacity and Emblem 2-set bonuses coupled with Health on every main stat is something
you could do, but just remember that this is a hyper focused build that isn’t well
rounded in all aspects. Also, if you decide to use Black Tassel, then
you’ll want Energy Recharge sands. But those are basically his builds, you can
see the comparison between the two here and for an end-game player, it’s more than likely
you’ll want to stick with the first one but for those who want a more healthy approach
to Thoma’s kit, well, it can be done. No matter how you build Thoma, it really comes
down to how well you understand his placement in team comps. Now there are a couple of details you need
to be aware of before setting off with your team and the biggest one has to be internal
cooldown also known as ICD when you’re using his burst. If you’re still not aware of it, ICD is
basically how often character’s abilities will cause elemental reactions and a good
example would be Xiangling’s Pyronado which has no ICD and will always cause a reaction
while in Thoma’s case, it will happen every 3 or so burst attacks with a small exception
being the initial explosion he causes that ignores ICD. To put it simply – his capability to cause
reactions is mediocre to say the least but his burst will apply a lot of pyro, so you
can think of him like a wingman who helps other teams set up their reactions instead. It’s also worth noting his Burst attacks
won’t reach enemies when they’re sucked up into Venti’s vortex and you cannot snapshot
it with ATK boosting abilities. But on the bright side, some of these limitations
actually work in his favor when it comes to building teams and there’s no better example
than Hu Tao. In the past, it was either Amber, Yanfei or
Bennett that would act as pyro applicator for the prankster but it wasn’t that great
considering the overall synergy and now that Thoma is out, he has definitely become a great
addition to this powerful team comp. Not only his shield is the perfect answer
to letting Hu Tao live on the edge and maximize on her playstyle but he applies so much pyro
that it’s easy to swirl it with a viridescent Anemo user and then wrap it all together into
a nice performance. And let’s not forget the pyro resonance
and pyro particles you gain. Obviously, you’ll want Xingqiu for this
team to work and one important thing to keep in mind would be that from time to time, Thoma
will steal some of Hu Tao’s vaporize reactions, which basically means he consumes the Hydro
Aura on a target with his burst but this will become less of a problem if you have a C6
Xingqiu thanks to how his hydro swords will apply even more Hydro and keep this from happening
too often. Just understand that even if everyone is at
0 constellations, a team like this is still very powerful. Now if you play in the Abyss, there’s always
that competition between the two teams trying to share your strongest characters and recently
Raiden’s National variation has been seeing a lot of action from Abyss usage statistics,
however, Benny is wanted by basically everyone, so you can replace him with Thoma and it actually
works pretty well, not as great as with Bennett but it definitely gets the job done nicely. And since Raiden’s damage benefits from
Thoma’s 80 burst cost, you can also be more forgiving towards his energy recharge build
thanks to Raiden’s insane energy generation. There’s also Mono Pyro with Kazuha that
you can go for but just like every other Mono team, your results will vary especially when
you’ve got Abyss 12-1 with Pyro resistant enemies, although his non-intrusive playstyle
combines really well with the rest of the team. Now it’s probably a good time to talk about
his constellations because while they do offer significant upgrades, it’s not like you
cannot use him properly at C0 so most of them are focused on helping him do more for less. Like, for example, the 1st constellation as
mouthful as it is simply states that any character besides Thoma who get damaged when they have
his shield, will effectively decrease both his elemental skill and burst cooldowns by
3 seconds. It’s a pretty decent upgrade that helps
you with refreshing his shield consistently. The next constellation gives additional 3
seconds to his burst’s duration and the most notable thing you’ll notice is that
the duration will be around 18 seconds and thanks to the first upgrade, it will overlap
with the 17 second cooldown which means with proper energy management and getting hit at
least once, you can always expect to use his burst off cooldown. But probably the biggest upgrade has to be
the 4th constellation because it will essentially decrease his burst cost from 80 to 65 so you
can literally just use an energy substat weapon and Emblem set to keep his burst up consistently. In fact, this kind of indirectly buffs his
damage and shield since you can now have more leeway with substats like health. Finally, the last constellation actually rewards
the team for generating Thoma’s shields in the form of increased Normal, Charged and
Plunge attack damage by 15% which is pretty great but it’s definitely not a dramatic
upgrade compared to other C6 characters like Xingqiu or Kujou Sara. So in short, C0 Thoma is absolutely fine but
if you’re really deadset on obtaining some of them, the first one is actually a good
stopping point, although C4 is still probably his best one just because of how much easier
it makes it to build his energy management. Thoma’s housekeeper title is a fitting one
because he keeps your team clean from those nasty enemy damage numbers while at the same
time, you barely get to see him in action, just like any other housekeeper. The biggest takeaways about him would be that
his shield mechanic is really easy to use, just set it and forget it while focusing on
the rest of your team’s rotation. It’s also great to see him working just
fine at 0 constellations without needing to rely on any one of them, where the same cannot
be said about someone like Kujou Sara. You get what you wish for and any additional
constellations just provide him with high quality of life improvements to his overall
performance. Now on the other hand, few notable setbacks
about him has to be the high burst cost which means sacrificing offensive stats for Energy
Recharge not to mention miHoYo did get a little to stingy with his damage multipliers. There’s also the fact his base maximum health
is barely higher than Diona’s and almost 50% less when compared to other 5-stars like
Zhongli and Hu Tao, so if it already wasn’t enough you need to work on building that shield,
its overall absorption gets a slight setback from his maximum health. But overall, he is a clearly defined character
that works extremely well with Hu Tao and quite nicely with few other teams, so if you
like the idea of defensiveness and utility as part of your team’s features, well, you
did get to the end of the video. Thanks for watching and see you next time. One final note about Thoma would be that the
general mentality towards every new character release has been either they need to be universally
awesome or compete with other 4-stars like Bennett but let’s be real – miHoYo hasn’t
been doing this for a while now. Thoma is honestly a refreshing take on a character
that knows how to capitalize on his niche role and because right now he is featured
alongside Hu Tao’s banner, there’s a huge chance you end up with him if you’re trying
to obtain Hu Tao and you can then build a fun and viable team for yourself. And as always, give some time and we might
even discover something more awesome about him. Thanks for watching and see you soon.
