The elemental alchemist, Orokin executioner, serpent whisperer - Lavos!
Passive: Lavos cleanses all active negative Status Effects and gains status immunity for 10 seconds upon collecting an Energy or Universal Orb. Picking up an Energy or Universal Orb has a cooldown of 5 seconds.
Ophidian Bite - Lash out with a toxic serpentine strike, consuming the target to heal Lavos.
Vial Rush - Dash forward, crashing through enemies and leaving an icy trail of broken vials.
Transmutation Probe - Launch a probe that converts Health and Energy Orbs into Universal Orbs that provide both, and ammo pickups into Universal Ammo Pickups. The probe shocks enemies in close proximity. Each electrocuted foe reduces other ability cooldowns by one second.
Catalyze - Catalyst Probes erupt from Lavos and douse combatants in a fiery gel. Damage is doubled for each element afflicting an enemy.
Acquisition: Main and component blueprints are available from Father with Entrati standing.
Besides the design flaws that others have pointed out already, I can’t play Lavos since his ability chording gives me hand pain after prolonged sessions, and I can’t use my mouse buttons for them without redoing binds or creating a completely separate Lavos-only button profile.
Cooldown-based abilities are also not my thing; I’ve played enough classic MMOs to tire of the timeline optimization meta-game.
With his prime right around the corner I thought it good time to revisit Lavos. I was surprised to see no mention of any changes to him during last Devstream when they showed off his prime, I feel like he could definitely use some cooldown reduction on his 4. 30sec is way too much for what this ability does, and with how much setup it requires to actually do reasonable damage. I feel like Lavos is being held up almost entirely by how absurdly strong Valence Formation is, he doesn’t really have anything else going on for him other than his high natural tankyness.
Lavos is in a weird position, like the other armour tanks, of being unbreakable through to the end of EDA content, and then being impossibly squishy beyond it. He’s the last frame who can’t do long Circuit runs, now that Inaros has been fixed. Unlike the other armour tanks, he has to make difficult decisions about his helminth due to having to sacrifice one of his elements, and his survival helminth of choice is inherently restricted by his cooldown system…
I really hope Pablo reviews his survival tools. It feels unfair to Lavos that he’s the odd frame out who doesn’t have infinite survivability scaling.
Oh and while I’m airing my grievances about things only one in a thousand Tenno will ever encounter or care about, Valence Formation has an annoying oversight bug where you can force Electric onto finishers, but the damage transferred through Influence is pitiful. Gunblade finishers will only transfer a single hit of damage! Bleh!!! And the force procs don’t apply to death explosions from Combustion Beam, Vulkan Blitz, etc; and yet Xata and Toxin Lash do apply? BLEHHHHH!!!
Okay rant over.
Lavos is a fantastic new player frame, with easy access to elements, high survivability, and absolutely monstrous damage, especially when combining his signature Cedo with his ultimate ability. Vial Rush is an okay CC ability, and a great mobility ability. More advanced players can start to abuse Valence Formation setups to bring their arsenals to new heights or do tricky Arcane setups for various weapons.
Despite my complaints about extremely niche weaknesses with the frame, Lavos is very powerful and flexible, and I think the next three years of his Prime being available are going to bring in a new generation of Lavos Enjoyers.
The one and only railjack pilot
DE really should change Railjack’s abilities to have a cooldown instead of draining the energy of your frame, they feel so much better to use that way. Then again, nobody is playing the game mode and it’s pretty much abandonware at this point so I don’t expect it to receive any changes.
I think he’s in as good a state as he can really hope for. If you really wanna play Invoker from Dota and throw out lots of elements to get huge damage from Catalyze, there’s now a reason to do that with Impetus! If you just wanna be a big health tank weapons platform, Valence Formation is a really powerful reason to do that. Hopefully his Prime offers a lil more armor or sprint speed, since obv he can’t get any more energy. Not really sure what extra tweaks he’d need.
