Victory vs. Bommal Hard 90 (no cheese) with relatively Mediocre stats + Guide/Tips

Bommal is a very nasty obstacle for any RAID player and a big obstacle for me was to beat Bommal Hard 90 which I managed to do = a big achievement for my account. In this blog post I share the team I used as well as various tips / learnings from the many battles and teams I tried.

Strategy

First it is important you choose which strategy you will use against Bommal.

• Majority use the various cheese strategies out of scope for this blog post. For me that's perfectly fine, I just wanted to win without it as a challenge to myself.
  
• Most non-cheese players I saw have been using the high RESIST team.
• While some others have used various no-RES teams which is what I did.

Among the non-RES there are also variations:

• Full heal/revive team - very slow battle.
• 1-3 Vogoths / 0-1 Master Butcher which also has a number of sub-variations:
• Force-creating bombs via TM reduction to have a max team heal.
• Using Vogoths / MB to heal the rest and using the rest to heal them back.

Then there are variations which use 1 damage dealer - only specific champions are possible:

• Geomancer (most popular choice) due to his passive damage reduction and massive damage
  
• Vizier due to his Block Buffs + Drop ATK + increase debuff durations
• Astralith due to irresistible bombs and boosting team TM with A1 
• etc.

My strategy was NO RESIST with Geomancer.

Absolutely critical champions

Unfortunately there are specific required champions to win with any strategy and those players who were unlucky and didn't get those champions will have to keep waiting and pulling until they do. In that respect this boss is more about luck / spenders / high gear requirements than actual strategy.

Dutchess is probably the most powerful champion for this boss due to her damage reduction, tankyness and full team revive. Unfortunately I don't have her.

Critical champions in my team (= not possible to replace):

• Godseeker Aniri
• Vogoth
• Doompriest
• lastly Geomancer was critical to win, but he could be replaced by another specific-to-Bommal damage dealer.

The last slot would ideally be Dutchess. Otherwise your best reviver who can res ideally more than 1 champion per go. I did not have any of that so I used my Raglin which is a very specific champion, but not ideal for Bommal. The heal is too slow - cannot rely on it - his main use was the fast revive of 1 ally.

My Victory Picture:

My Team / Champion stats - relatively Mediocre:

• Raglin - no special sets - Regeneration would be ideal; or Frenzy or Stalwart perhaps.
• Godseeker - Regeneration / Immortal
• Geomancer - Lifesteal - as mentioned on the picture he was not built for Bommal.
• Vogoth - Guardian set - not for the healing as his speed is low but to reduce damage on others.
• Doompriest - no special sets - Frenzy would be ideal; or Regeneration or Stalwart perhaps.

Bommal has 250 speed - ideally you want to be faster than him, but my gear did not allow that, so I did the best with what I had.

I think Doompriest is the most important for speed which is why I mentioned that Frenzy gear might be best for her, because it is very important she cleans off the Stuns and HP Burns as fast as possible. That is her main contribution - not the passive healing (which does help).

Many tips and Learnings

• I have tried many other champions and team combinations with many fails before I won.
• I also have a 2nd Vogoth and I tried to win a lot with 2 Vogoths but I did not manage, so I dropped 1 which I was sure will not work but it did, so the learning here is try many things even those you don't think might succeed.
• I tried Arbiter but failed miserably although I thought she would be amazing with full team revive, team boost and being the fastest champion for most players. It was a horrible fail because her buffs brought more bombs which ended up killing everyone while she did not help heal or damage at all.
• I tried Visix to bring more bombs (bomb healing strategy) but I needed a 3rd healer for that and I don't have the 3rd Vogoth and I did not develop my Master Butcher, so that failed simply because I was not well prepared, but it is a viable strategy.
• I tried Wythir who I built very strong and she did help extremely well with her A3 healing but her DEF up buff was actually making things worse by Bommal converting it to bombs and her passive Heal buffs just made more bombs. So what happens is that you look like your team is perfect and then suddenly everything goes wrong.
• I tried Lady Kimi as lead which I was sure would work well by boosting everyone's speed. And I tried her both by using skills and not using skills. None of it worked because her A1 also creates problems (more bombs). I also tried killing her off and going on with 4 which have higher speed from her, but 4 were just not enough.
• I tried my strong/tough Regeneration Scyl and sometimes she was indeed the last one alive, but mostly her Affinity just fails her on Hard 90. She did manage all lower Bommals though.
• I tried both Rector and also combination of Rector with Tatura. For me this failed, but this will succeed on the high resist strategy. Without RES Bommal just ends up converting everything to bombs sooner or later and the team dies.
  
• Demytha was excellent on all lower Bommals but failed on 90. Her ability to Block Damage at very critical points makes you laugh at Bommal when he does nothing with millions of bombs blowing up on your team, but she bites you at the same time as she puts the Heal Buffs which get converted into bombs so you just die later. If there was a way to cleanse your own buffs that would be great.
• Urogrim actually did good as lead. I got extra speed and his target heal was very helpful especially on Vogoth. If you use his team heal you will die. But ultimate no matter how many tries I attempted the team did not manage.
  
• Jareg was also interesting. It seems first he would be excellent for this boss because you drop HP tons of times creating many Heal Buffs, but unfortunately sooner or later Bommal catches you with many Heals and converts them into bombs and you die.
• Lastly, Apothecary I also tried both with casting Speed and without. There are successful teams which can beat Bommal with Apo but mine did not. For me he did worse than Urogrim as I didn't get any leader benefit.

I had 2 more plans if I failed.

• I was planning to re-gear my Aox to high Accuracy and high HP with 251 speed so that he keeps ATK down on the boss permanently. Although he would get bombs they would be weaker with the ATK down debuff and the rest of my healers should manage. As I won I did not invest in this anymore so I will never know if it would work or not. 
• I was planning to re-gear my Rector from high resist to Frenzy set high Accuracy high HP so that she constantly puts ATK down on Bommal and heals/revives at specific times but ideally only for emergencies. This was 2nd after Aox because I was not sure Rector could keep the ATK down at all times since it is chance based.
• Lastly I would ideally try my Vizier but he is only 5 star and has no books and it would cost me a lot to both book him fully (absolutely needed) and bring him up to 6 star.

TIP: Keep in mind

When building your champions for Bommal I suggest you target them (especially revivers) to have sufficient health to remain alive after 2 Bommal bombs (not the exploding ones). Sacrifice defense or other stats if you have to. If your reviver dies it's game over.

Bommal should be nerfed

While now I know I can win Bommal is totally unbalanced and does not compare to equal level bosses from other rotations. He should definitely be nerfed to be more in line with all Doom Tower rotations.

Other: Reference: Top 20 Best Teams

In case someone does not have access, here are the Top 20 winners at present for Bommal Hard 90:

(click to zoom it - it is a big picture)

You will notice many of the same champions as Bommal is very specific to what champions you must have. But bear in mind that Top players are usually strong spenders and have amazing gear so most of the time it does not help to look at their strategies as they simply are not possible for 99% of the players.

I hope my blog post was interesting and useful to you as I like to not only publish my RAID achievement but also help other RAID players.