Genshin Impact Thoma trailer shows the pyro shielder in action

The Genshin Impact Thoma trailer has arrived a few days ahead of the new four-star pyro shielder's impending release.

Thoma will be available on the upcoming rerun banner for Hu Tao as one of her supporting four-stars. We first met Thoma when we set foot in Inazuma, and he's become a central character in the region's story through subsequent interactions with Raiden Shogun and Ayaka.

We've technically gotten a chance to play Thoma through his newly released Hangout quest, but it's nice to have a detailed breakdown of his skills. The official Genshin Impact blog describes him "a support character that can attack and protect at the same time," highlighting his sturdy pyro shield.

Thoma's elemental skill deals a chunk of pyro damage and summons a blazing barrier. The damage absorption of this barrier scales on Thoma's max HP, so you'll likely want to run an HP sands artifact for most builds. Blazing barriers can stack up to a certain damage threshold, and earning another will refresh the duration of the shield, which is key to Thoma's elemental burst: Crimson Ooyoroi. This aura causes the normal attacks of your current character to summon small infernos while also summoning new blazing barriers on each attack.

We don't know how durable Thoma's shield is in practice, but on paper he sounds like a powerful mix of characters like Xinyan and Xingqiu, creating elemental shields while also adding off-field elemental damage to your main carry's attacks. It's likely no coincidence that he's on Hu Tao's banner, either, as he may be a decent shielder for her, in part because running the two together would grant you the powerful pyro party resonance.