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[Raid] Why boonthief mostly fails in Pugs on Matthias - and why a good healscourge carries so good


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Hi,

More and more Im reading "Im logging boonthief!" on Matthias kills. Usually thats then the point Im sighing "oh boi, this is gonna be harsh". And most of the time - Im right.

So, why does a very valid tactic fail so often quite spectacularly in Pugs?

It boils down to only really two things really. Too much dmg incoming, too spread out.

  1. Pugs have trouble handling mechanics and get downstated - a lot:You see this quite often, a squishy dps player gets poison, runs out.... and then circles the arena to find an empty well. Good players always know where the next empty well is before they get the poison.Or a player gets corruption, panic-dodges out twice, then runs the rest of the way out, drops the corruption and runs out - often dieing in the process. The correct way to handle this mechanic is the reverse. Run out, drop corruption, dodge once or twice out to not get hit and get back on boss.Not avoiding fire tornados.Getting hit by hadouken on their way to drop mechanics.Or just plainly getting hit by hadouken for the fun of it.Standing inside Matthias on the jump.And all of that is before 40%. At 40% all players get the bomb mechanic and start playing kamikaze bowling. Last second dodges (because the 3-4 seconds window wasnt enough time to spread out sufficiently - or theres suddenly a ghost running through the middle) and dodging of course into at least 3 other players, resulting in 4 downstates. The correct way is to NOT panic, never dodge at the end of that positioning window - and if you positioned yourself badly then take the fall for it. Really good players will btw overlap bombs to stay as compact as possible, but thats something you really shouldnt do in Pugs, because they will panic if you do that.But the worst thing that happens a lot in Pugs - is a missed reflect. A missed reflect means the boss stays invuln to steal. So boonthief cant get new ectoplasma. If that happens during fire or rainphase, then its pretty certainly a wipe because resistance runs out and the healer cant keep up anymore with all the incoming dmg (since pugs just ignore the debuff mechanics of those phases). A downstate-death spirale starts and you get to /gg.

  2. Pugs find it difficult to stack on Matthias:Im not sure why thats the case, but maybe players think they are safe from mechanics if they range dps. A lot of rather inexperienced players like to hover at around 600 range. The safezone on Matthias however is always behind him. Range dpsing only means you dont get boons, makes you hard to heal and you still get targetted by all mechanics.

Now, a healscourge on the other hand fits perfectly to counter all those mistakes. You can power revive players that died on their odysee trying to find an empty well or got kamikaze bombed. You have lots of condi cleanse, and barrier can be used to keep players alive through failed mechanics - like dodging hadoukens. The range of healscourge is sufficient for those "hoverers".But with a boonthief - theres no room (and also, if executed correctly, no need) for a healscourge.

Theres different ways to go about boonthief comps, usually I see in pugs 2 chronos+boonthief+druid, with chronos bringing feedback instead of WoA. That means you only have a druid as healer. Its more than enough if everybody plays well - its not even close to enough if players fail above mentioned mechanics. Thats the comp that actually triggers me the most, because theres no gain from using boonthief over a "carry" healer like healscourge, healscrapper or healtempest.Another comp I encounter frequently on monday clears, is a boonthief and dps-alacrity renegade, together with a druid and chrono. Again, not very optimal and you could just bring 2 chronos and any combination of might-healer+full-healer to get approx. the same squad dps, but with the added safety net of a fullhealer.

Bottom line: Im all for boonthief comps at matthias, I love them. But please, not in pugs. It just doesnt work in pugs.

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Guess it's correction time again.

@"Yasi.9065" said:But the worst thing that happens a lot in Pugs - is a missed reflect. A missed reflect means the boss stays invuln to steal. So boonthief cant get new ectoplasma. If that happens during fire or rainphase, then its pretty certainly a wipe because resistance runs out and the healer cant keep up anymore with all the incoming dmg (since pugs just ignore the debuff mechanics of those phases). A downstate-death spirale starts and you get to /gg.Wrong. The only time when Matt goes invulnerable is when he transforms. Otherwise all damage just gets mitigated to zero but hits themselves do hit (which is why condiclasses should still try to keep on stacking condis when the bubble is up). And as such, also Steal works at all other times than during transformation. Proof (at 1:54):

  1. Pugs find it difficult to stack on Matthias:Im not sure why thats the case, but maybe players think they are safe from mechanics if they range dps. A lot of rather inexperienced players like to hover at around 600 range. The safezone on Matthias however is always behind him. Range dpsing only means you dont get boons, makes you hard to heal and you still get targetted by all mechanics.Boonthief can't fully mitigate kiting players, true, but Detonate Plasma still has 600 radius so by good positioning upon using the Detonate Plasma, even kiters can be usually covered. (if they're kiting further than that, they can't be doing damage anyway, except as pistol deadeye or shortbow soulbeast, and if someone's constantly that far, they probably don't do much dps anyway and might be better off dead to make it easier for rest of squad.

But with a boonthief - theres no room (and also, if executed correctly, no need) for a healscourge.Wrong again. Kitty elaborates later.Theres different ways to go about boonthief comps, usually I see in pugs 2 chronos+boonthief+druid, with chronos bringing feedback instead of WoA. That means you only have a druid as healer. Its more than enough if everybody plays well - its not even close to enough if players fail above mentioned mechanics. Thats the comp that actually triggers me the most, because theres no gain from using boonthief over a "carry" healer like healscourge, healscrapper or healtempest.Another comp I encounter frequently on monday clears, is a boonthief and dps-alacrity renegade, together with a druid and chrono. Again, not very optimal and you could just bring 2 chronos and any combination of might-healer+full-healer to get approx. the same squad dps, but with the added safety net of a fullhealer.There's 2 main problems which often lead to other problems with boonthief comps:

  1. Commanders rarely have a clue about how to arrange a boonthief comp and only a few have had an idea about what boonthief even brings. And that obviously leads to stupid stuffs like that 2 chronos+druid+boonthief indeed. If squad is going to use boonthief at Matt, chronos should swap to mirage or alacgade or something else but most choose to stay as support chrono instead (which usually means they bring Feedback, some alacrity and nothing else while one chrono going Feedback-mirage and other going alacgade would mean 3-4x damage from those two). Druid also loses almost all its usual perks in boonthief comps at Matthias as the only thing it would bring over other healers are "Search and Rescue!" and Nature Spirit for resses (while scourge and heal-engi with Toss Elixir R would ress better) and Sun Spirit for some minor burns. Heals-wise druid is on the weaker end of the scale after all dem nerfs. And it doesn't get any better with the other major problem.
  2. Druids never listen to you or ignore you or just...ARGGGGH when you ask them to bring Lingering Light, healtraits and SnR instead of GotL+Stone Spirit since boonthief brings full might and protection. This is the big problem and obviously leads to nerfed heals and ress-ability and ultimately to failure. This is the primary reason if experienced squad has failed Matt when Kitty's been boonteefing and a very common one as for whatever stupid reason some druids think "oh, but boonthief doesn't bring full might and GotL is needed" and no matter how many times you ask them and even if they say they swap to Lingering Light, they don't. Yush, like it sounds, Kitty's very frustrated about these kinds of druids. And ofc it isn't helping if people only know their build as far as Snowcrows' raid build pages say ('cause not that many people care to check their raid guide pages) and meanwhile community downvotes Kitty to hell if she tries to help out by giving build ideas on what kind of build to use as a healer (those ideas use snowcrows' gears since ppls most likely have them) if there's boonthief in squad. But it's not like the more popular build sources are giving any ideas to peoples either since they only run heal-alacgade.Tbh, the comp Kitty would recommend for boonthief comps is boonthief+power alacgade+2 pure healers. For ex. heal-scrapper+heal-scourge would be super-strong combo with heal-scrapper's strongest direct heals+Toss Elixir R resses and scourge's damage mitigation+resses.Bottom line: Im all for boonthief comps at matthias, I love them. But please, not in pugs. It just doesnt work in pugs.Kitty semi-agrees here. If squad doesn't seem to adapt by getting an alacgade and chronos swapping to something else, it's usually better idea to run usual double chrono+druid+healer comp as the squad most likely just doesn't have enough clue to work. But if someone actually swaps to alacgade, chronos swap to mirages or something and someone goes on 2nd healer, boonthief comp does work very well. How far people can adapt (most of all whether druid swaps to Lingering Light or not) determines whether boonthief comp will work or not.
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@"LadyKitty.6120" said:

Bottom line: Im all for boonthief comps at matthias, I love them. But please, not in pugs. It just doesnt work in pugs.Kitty semi-agrees here. If squad doesn't seem to adapt by getting an alacgade and chronos swapping to something else, it's usually better idea to run usual double chrono+druid+healer comp as the squad most likely just doesn't have enough clue to work. But if someone actually swaps to alacgade, chronos swap to mirages or something and someone goes on 2nd healer, boonthief comp does work very well. How far people can adapt (most of all whether druid swaps to Lingering Light or not) determines whether boonthief comp will work or not.

Your snarky comments aside, (correction time again? where did you ever correct me before? but whatever) thats the issue here. Pugs believe that boonthief replaces the healer - yes thats actually a comment I constantly read when someone insists on joining/swapping on boonthief. "We dont need a second/full healer with boonthief", when the truth however is... every pug needs a second healer on matthias.

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Boon thief replaces a chrono, but heal thief can also replace a healer and bring detonate plasma. Boon thief can do either modest dps or heal, depending how it is specced.

Imo, if you bring boon thief, you shouldn't need any chronos but you will need an alac Ren to provide alac, which boon thief doesn't do. Then add banners and healers to taste

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If you want to go there tech all a heal scourge is, is barrier + res bot. In all honesty I don’t think people truly understand what a boon thief brings to the group. It bring every single boon besides alac. Which means if boon thief is dodging, you can have your group face tank every hoduken. You can have your group face tank tornados, the storm aoes. Mathias shard blast after 40%. Why? Because boon thief provides blocks each time you hit detonate plasma. Which is far superior compared to making your heal scourge res 24/7.

I think people don’t put heal/boon thief into how much it benefits into this fight that pretty much 90% of the fight you can make for memes because of the resistance, aegis, stability it brings. And don’t forget if thief has 100% bd, these boons will stay on your bar unless someone is hit. Then all you do is dodge when your steal skill is under 9 secs. And steal and hit detonate plasma again. As much as your rant is about heal scourge, in honesty heal scourge is never in a true good comp. heal scourge only does barrier and res. Not because it fixes problems. Only because it can res people. As far as heal/boon thief in Mathias it is much more beneficial to the group.

Also if you ever see 2 chrono + boon thief + Druid. I will say walk away from the group. Since no one understand the value of boon thief in the fight or how to properly use the comp. it should always be 1 boon thief, 1 heal ren, 1 Druid for sprits, bs, mirages.

Or 1 heal thief, alacrigade, Druid, bs, Mirages.

Or a diff comp. I boon thief,1 Druid, 2 condi ren, bs, mirages.

Or a slightly better healing comp. 1 boon thief, 1 heal ele, 1 heal ren, 1 condi sb for spirits, bs, mirages.

There’s so much versatility with the Mathias comp that is better with a boon thief then it is not.

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I love how people give their recommendations which are:

A.) completetly ignorant of the fact that this is about boonthief OR heal Scrouge. Suffice to say, if you are running solo heal on Matthias, even with an amazing boonthief player as 2nd support, your group is beyond what most PUG players can or will do

B.) A lot of PUG players are not used to boonthief or how the class works. Good for you if you have adopted this class for your static. Now go and play some 250 LI PUG raids and see people fail on mechanics like breakbar on Samarog. Then come back and tell us how great boonthief is given that skill level

C.) If your boonthief has 100% alacrity you are running Alacrigrade in your comp (or have great stacking and an amazing solo chrono or great duo chronos). Alacrigrades are very common and absolutely present in current raid team setups. /s

D.) Heal scourge provides barrier, tons of cc and condi remove. The only time heal scourge actually has a hard time is if he has to pickup 10-15+ people without time to attack (my record is 34 rallies on this fight with heal scourge) and thus runs low on life force. Suffice to say, any other healer would have performed way worse.

@blambidy.3216 said:snip

Literally almost everything you said fails with lack of 1 player skill: proper stacking. Now guess what many PUGs have issue with: proper stacking.

Is boonthief bad? Absolutely not.Is boonthief hard to utilize? Not at all.Is boonthief beyond what bad PUG groups can manage? You bet.

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I think part of the problem is, in a lot of groups trying boon thief, your either going single healer (if your using boon thief + alacrigade + druid) or your double healer (heal thief + alacrigade + druid) but heal thief is just so terrible at healing that your basically still a single healer. I believe most pug matthias groups use to be 2 druid + 2 chrono. So then I think a lot of the comparisons are not really comparing apples to apples.

However, if you truly compare apples to apples, a 2 druid/2 chrono group swapping to 1 max heal druid (as LadyKitty.6120 described above with lingering light etc)/ 1 other healer/ boon thief/ alacrigade. I don't think it is worse in terms of pug stability, probably better. Now, obviously a big advantage of boon thief is role compression where you are able to gain another dps player. However, even without that role compression, boon thief + alacrigade still provides more boons, in particular stability, aegis, and resistance. And, by simply running: boon thief + heal alacrigrade + max heal druid, you still obtain compression to attain an extra dps player.

Boon thief can absolutely make matthias easier. Really good uptime on stability, aegis, and resistance are very helpful (remember how easy chaos chrono use to make that fight?). The mistake is, a lot of groups who would normally run 2 druids, are accidentally running a solo healer effectively.

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