by ninjase — last updated 12 days ago
Some Warframes were Prime from the start. Others ascended. Lavos, the master of transmutation, bowed to no one as he forged his own path to valor.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
Utilise the power of the Mecha Set, Archon Mods and Heat + Gas Catalyze to nuke enemies as [Lavos], the Full Mecha Alchemist. [Lavos]'s Catalyze is a strong through the wall nuke that applies elemental damage and a forced status effect, applying heat damage at base and a second element that you can 'infuse'. We infuse Gas into catalyze because Gas procs linger across the map dealing damage in a small AOE, lasting longer than usual due to [Lavos]' passive, and works well with both grouping and optionally the Sickening Pulse helminth.
Update May 2025
[Valence Formation] is now additive to regular elemental mods on weapons rather than status damage, and is no longer double dipped by Sickening Pulse. Blast infusion can no longer buff blast status. Gas infusion still buffs Gas Catalyze status at least so we can continue using Sickening pulse + Gas Catalyze (just with a final 30x multiplier rather than 90x)
Update April 2025
[Valence Formation] is now fixed but is additive to elementalist mods on weapons. [Valence Formation] is also double dipped by Sickening Pulse DoTs (meaning gas or blast procs generated Catalyze then hit with Sickening Pulse receive a 3 x 3 x 10 = 90x final multiplier).
Update Feb 2025
Since the armor changes (armor capped at 2700 for 90% damage reduction), we no longer really require full strip for good damage which means the focus on corrosive procs and emerald shards is now optional.
Arcane Impetus is a new arcane that is great on [Lavos], you just need to cast one of each of the 10 possible elements at least once in the mission then it will constantly refresh to get 10 stacks for 60% strength and 30% efficiency. Arcane [Ice Storm] also gives both duration and strength both of which are useful on [Lavos], but can be difficult to stack in certain missions.
Update April 2024
[Valence Formation] is a new augment that applies a +200% elemental bonus to weapons, BUT, seems to also apply to statuses created by abilities including Catalyze. This means infusing Gas into Catalyze will allow subsequent Gas procs to benefit from a 3x multiplier.
Video demonstrating gameplay and levelcap use (build slightly varies in a few mods):
HOW TO BE EFFECTIVELY IMMORTAL WITH [Lavos]
Why are we running multiple shield recharge mods and arcane aegis?
Currently, there is a special bug that occurs when you run a combination of Catalyzing Shield + [Fast Deflection] + [Vigilante Vigor] + Arcane Aegis and trigger [Fass Canticle] from the [Grimoire]. Whenever [Fass Canticle] is active (for 15s each time), you will have an arcane aegis like effect which renders you effectively immortal to all NON-TOXIN damage. In order to activate [Fass Canticle] however, you must be HOLDING [Grimoire] as your currently equipped weapon AND kill an enemy that is currently being damaged by [Grimoire]. However the source of damage that KILLS the enemy does not need to come from [Grimoire] it self and can be an ability or even from status from another weapon so long as you swap to [Grimoire] the moment they die. Luckily [Lavos] specialises in killing enemies with abilities and can very easily and consistent proc Fass Canticle. So all you need to do is just spam Grimoire alt-fire everywhere once every 15s which also gives your choice of bonus 60% of duration, efficiency or strength (personally would set this to duration at default OR efficiency if you don't have arcane impetus).
NON-HELMINTH PLAYSTYLE
1. Try to group enemies with Magus Anomaly/Ensnare/Nautilus Cordon/Melee Vortex.
2. Infuse Corrosive (hold 1 and 3) and cast Vial [Rush] (Tap 2) to charge through groups of enemies, dropping vials that rapidly stack corrosive status for full strip on enemies standing in the pools (14 procs in 3-4s).
3. Shoot your primer (e.g. Cedo altfire, Grimoire Alt-fire) to inflict more unique statuses, especially viral and heat, then hold 1 and 4 to infuse GAS, before immediately casting Catalyze (4).
4. Tap 3 immediately after to reduce the cooldown of 4, and ideally before enemies all die
5. Tap 1 ideally into the group of enemies. This will reduce cooldowns of both 3 and 4 further
HELMINTH COMBOS
Sickening Sublimation (Gas and Sickening Pulse)
.
Primed Combustion (Heat Inherit Catalyze)
Duration
Duration provides status duration to all of the statuses created by [Lavos]'s abilities. At 155% duration, every proc is increased to approximately 9s increasing the overall damage potential of a status. We can add [Grimoire] [Ris Invocation] (up to 60%) and three tauforged duration shards to help boost this up to a maximum of 260% final which makes statuses last 15s. [Archon Continuity] can be used because Toxin procs created by Ophidian [Bite] can then proc corrosive which boosts Catalyze in two ways, due to both minor armor strip (up to 80% at 10 corrosive) and because Catalyze scales with number of elemental statuses (2^status).
Efficiency
While efficiency technically has no effect on [Lavos]'s base cooldowns, efficiency is still very important because it affects the amount of cooldown reduction granted by both Transmutation probe and [Swift Bite] per enemy hit. If you only run 45% efficiency, the cooldown gained from [Swift Bite] will only be 1.8s and the cooldown gained from Transmutation Probe will be 0.7s per enemy hit. This means hitting 15 enemies with Transmutation probe then [Swift Bite]
At 100% efficiency however, Transmutation probe reduces cooldown by 1.5s per enemy hit and [Swift Bite] reduces cooldown by 4s when at least 4 enemies are hit. This means casting a combination of [Swift Bite] (4s) followed by Transmutation probe hitting at least 15 enemies, allows you to reset [Swift Bite] for immediate recast. In total this combo reduces total cooldown by at least 30s, which allows Catalyze to be recast almost immediately after an initial catalyze cast. The second [Swift Bite] cast also reduces Transmutation probes cooldown so it is basically available for recast as soon as Catalyze finishes casting so you should be able to do the combination almost immediately again, provided there are enough enemies nearby and not dead.
Arcane Impetus with 10 statuses gives a bonus of 30% efficiency which is very easy to upkeep as you only need to cast a single ability once every 20s after you have performed every elemental combo at least once. [Seismic Bond] also procs whenever your companion damages an enemy while you are casting Vial [Rush] meaning you could potentially have another free 30% efficiency, bringing you back to 105% final efficiency.
Range
Range is essential for all of [Lavos]'s abilities as it increases the range at which Ophidian [Bite] can hit, the travel and explosion of Vial [Rush], the radius of Transmutation Probe which affects how quickly you can reduce cooldowns and the range of Catalyze, including certain helminth options such as grouping abilities and Sickening Pulse.
Strength
Strength mainly is needed for the damage of Catalyze so we can benefit alot from [Precision Intensify]. WIth [Blind Rage], Precision Intensify and Arcane Impetus ( or Molt Augmented) we can hit 289% final strength for Catalyze damage.
Exilus
Flexible:
Arcanes
For shield gating:
For health tanking:
For Catalyze damage
MECHA SET
The mecha set provides many benefits:
ARCHON MODS
Archon mods work well with Lavos, but are NOT compulsory (the regular versions work fine too):
[Archon Stretch] and [Archon Flow] are NOT usable on [Lavos] since he has NO energy and does not benefit from energy orbs.
ONE Amber Cast Speed Shard to speed up cast animations
THREE to FOUR Crimson Duration Shards helps increase the duration of gas procs from catalyze and all other statuses
ONE Tauforged Emerald archon shard is OPTIONAL for 13 corrosive stacks which improves armor strip from 80% to 98% which is roughly a 1.5x dmg buff to Catalyze damage
Health Tanking
Since Lavos does not spend energy, he is unable to reset shield gate with the normal methods using Brief Respite/Augur mods. For non-endurance content, you can commit to full eHP tanking using a combination of armor, health and adaptation and using Ophidian bite to heal.
Lavos has a high base health so Archon Vitality/[Vitality] boosts health to 1480. Transmutation Probe converts all orbs into universal orbs which activate Arcane Blessing so you can gain an additional 1200 health very quickly for a total of 2680 health.
[Lavos] also has a high base armor of 675, meaning [Mecha Pulse] after affecting just 10 enemies in a 30m radius gives a 600% armor boost for 3150 extra armor for 20s. Compare this to [Steel Fiber] which only gives +100% for another 675 armor. Since Mecha set has a cooldown of only 15s you should be able to upkeep a large armor buff permanently provided you kill dense crowds consistently. If you affect 20 enemies, you can get 1200% armor or 5850 armor for 95.6% DR. This multiplied with [Adaptation] gives 99.56% DR and applied to 2680 health gives an effective HP of 609,090. Additional useful sources of ehp include Arcane Reaper, Melee Fortification, Arcane [Guardian], [Health Conversion], Arcane Doubleback.
Shield Gating
Active Gating
You can subsume a shield regenerating ability like Pillage or Condemn, and swap [Adaptation] for [Rolling Guard]. Pillage gives armor strip which is very beneficial to [Lavos]'s damaging abilities, while Condemn gives crowd control which is very useful in Endurance and preventing you from getting hit in the first place. You will also want to run Vazarin protective sling for additional i-frames as well as [Huras Kubrow] or [Shade] for invisibility. [Shade] has the added bonus of having [Guardian] + [Manifold Bond] which allows it to constantly refill your shields passively whenever you get kills on enemies affected by multiple statuses, which is Lavos's specialty. An Endurance oriented variant using Pillage: https://overframe.gg/build/459333/lavos/pillage-lavos/
Passive Gating/Recharge
Another niche method is to use multiple sources of shield recharge delay reduction mods like [Fast Deflection] and [Vigilante Vigor] to reduce the recharge delay to approximately 1s (4s down 75%). [Catalyzing Shields] is currently bugged to force a 1.33s gate on any amount of shield regenerated, which means if you DON'T GET HIT during the shield gate you will regenerate shields before the iframes end. However, if you get hit during the 1.33s gate the delay timer will be reset meaning after the end of i-frames you may have anywhere between 0s to 1s of delay before you start getting shields again. If you stay mobile and continue killing things, and try not to get hit during the gate time it is possible to passively maintain your shield gate indefinitely. You can add additional sources of invulnerability such as Vazarin Protective Sling, [Rolling Guard] or Omamori helminth if you prefer. When you combine this setup with Arcane Aegis and [Fass Canticle] you become completely immortal for 15s (see near the beggining for explanation)
In most cases we subsume over Vial [Rush], unless you really enjoy the mobility of vial rush or are doing weapon platform, you could subsume over 1 or 4 instead.
Ensnare/Grouping
Grouping is ideal on [Lavos] as it lets Gas procs from Gas infused Catalyze overlap and create exponential damage on groups of enemies, and also allows more enemies to get hit at once for both [Swift Bite] and Transmutation Probe in order to reduce cooldowns more efficiently.
Ensnare is a bit slower than the other grouping abilities but provides longer crowd control by keeping enemies locked in place for longer durations. This is ideal on [Lavos] as you often need to perform an ability rotation before you can nuke with catalyze, so you need to keep enemies in place for at least a few seconds. Coil Horizon is a good alternative as it provides electric status procs in case you didnt cast 3.
Sickening Pulse
This sends a spreading wave that basically doubles heat DoT, doubles toxin DoT, adds 10 stacks of corrosive (to help with full strip from 2 green archon shards) but multiplies gas and electic DoT by 10x. This is the best subsume for smaller maps with tight corridors or where you can force enemies to naturally group up as they come in, or if you have an alternate form of grouping like Magus Anomaly, Vazarin Snare, [Telos Boltace], [Nautilus] [Cordon], Melee Vortex etc. This also double dips [Valence Formation] meaning you can multiply the single Gas proc created by catalyze effectively by 90x.
Roar
Boosts all DoT status effects and double dips the roar bonus. Less spammy and applies passively to all damage from both your weapons and abilities.
Expedite Suffering
Compresses the total duration of slash and toxin procs and deals it in one instance, then applies a multiplier. This is a great tool for disruption when paired with a good natural slash weapon such as [Flux Rifle], [Convectrix], Spectral Vandal or any decent slash Melee weapon (e.g. nikana prime, dual ether, kronen prime etc).
For a specific Expedite build, use this: https://overframe.gg/build/458639/lavos/endurance-disruption-lavos-expedite-suffering/
Pillage
Pillage lets [Lavos] shield gate more effectively and also strips armor which allows status effects to scale more effectively against armor.
Omamori
Good option of lazy survivability and pairs well with passive gate because it gives a 50% chance to basically ignore damage and restore shields but has a cooldown.
Evade
Another good option for survivability since it makes you invisible but requires a headshot chaining weapon to upkeep ideally (e.g. [Dual Toxocyst], [Vadarya Prime]). [Lavos] can reduce the innate cooldown of Evade with transmutation probe in case you come out of invisibility early and reenter evade instantly after using 3.
MECHA SET KUBROWS
The mecha set requires a kubrow, ideally Huras kubrow which will allow you stay invisible as long as you don't shoot:
https://overframe.gg/build/268129/huras-kubrow/huras-mecha-synth-stealth-doggo/
Pharoah Predasite is a reasonable alternative:
https://overframe.gg/build/268098/pharaoh-predasite/pharoah-predasite-mecha-synth-doggo/
SENTINELS/OTHER
Sentinels are capable of using [Guardian] and [Manifold Bond], which is highly effective at keeping Lavos alive via shield gating.
Nautilus can be a useful passive grouping tool: https://overframe.gg/build/540870/
Helios can provide passive armor strip if you don't use emerald shards or pillage: https://overframe.gg/build/542050/
Hounds can perform the widest AOE priming for Catalyze: https://overframe.gg/build/540825
PRIMER
An AOE primer can spread status procs to enable Catalyze even further (the missing status procs are viral, magnetic, blast, cold, because corrosive is provided by [Archon Continuity]):
Bubonico allows you to prime for both Viral AND Corrosive, which allows green shards to full strip much quicker: https://overframe.gg/build/379795/bubonico/corro-viral-heat-primer/
Cedo is able to proc the most unique status effects in an AOE to boost Catalyze: https://overframe.gg/build/320186/
Kuva Ogris is also able to proc alot of unique status effects in an AOE: https://overframe.gg/build/235335/
The [Grimoire] is a useful utility weapon that can triple as an encumber primer, stat buffer from Invocation mods and even immortality source ([Fass Canticle]) or armor strip ([Jahu Canticle])
HEAT INHERIT PRIMER
A heat secondary Inherit primer can significantly boost the heat procs created by Catalyze or heat infused catalye:
Bubonico/Cedo : https://overframe.gg/build/440064/bubonico/heat-inherit-primer-alt-fire-nuke-for-citrine/
Epitaph/Nukor : https://overframe.gg/build/376162/epitaph/heat-inherit-primer-epitaph/
Dex Furis Encumber: https://overframe.gg/build/460202/
MELEE WEAPONS
Telos Boltace - this weapon has a special ability where slide attacks group enemies with a 14m radius and 6s cooldown. [Telos Boltace] is also a Tonfa meaning it deals significant damage due to neutral combo on Sovereign Outcast and has very high status chance meaning it is a very strong user of Melee Influence.
Telos Boltace: https://overframe.gg/build/602481/
Dual Ichor Incarnon - this is currently the strongest light spam melee weapon in the game. You can pair this with Melee Vortex for grouping (use magnetic primer such as kuva nukor or infuse magnetic into abilities) or Melee Influence for AOE nuking.
Dual Ichor: https://overframe.gg/build/580783/
Using a [Cedo] Primer giving blast, viral, rad, tox, electric, cold with heat and gas from catalyze gives about 8 unique status effects. If you apply this to a mecha marked enemy with 10 viral statuses, the highest gas proc that can be spread is
2000 x 1.45 x 0.5 x 2^8 x 4.25 x 6.25 = 9,860,000 gas damage per second
If you then apply this to 10 enemies ensnared together within 3m, each enemy will deal this amount of damage per second to each other enemy in a 3m radius, meaning each enemy actually takes about 99 million gas damage per second.
If you apply Sickening Pulse and use another form of grouping, we can max this to 10 gas procs which deals 99 million damage/s per enemy but in a 6m radius i.e. 990 million damage/s if 10 enemies grouped or about 2 billion damage/s at 20 enemies.
Without Mecha Empowered active, we deal about 1.6 million gas dmg/s per enemy, or 32 million gas dmg/s in 6m area if 20 enemies are ensnared.
Heat Inherit is a special characteristics of heat procs that causes heat proc damage to inherit the +heat% mods and +faction% mods from the very first heat stack applied to an enemy. This means you can give Catalyze heat procs an additional 5x damage multiplier from weapon mods even though it is not a weapon but priming enemies with a heat primer first.
Catalyze has a base heat damage of 2000 per cast and creates a guaranted heat status proc.
Self infusion with heat basically creates an additional instance of heat damage and a second guaranteed heat status proc per cast.
After casting all abilities and priming with a viral rad heat inherit nukor - you could get magnetic, radiation, viral, heat, elec, tox and possibly cold statuses for a maximum of 7 non-physical status effects to a small group of enemies, which magnifies Catalyze damage by a special multiplier of 2^7 = 128x. If you could swap primers or use secondary encumber to apply all 10 non-physical statuses, then you will get a multiplier of 2^10 = 1024x.
The viral applied by the primer gives a multiplier of 4.25x
On an enemy affected by mecha set mark, the bonus damage of [Mecha Empowered] (2.5x) actually applies twice to status effects for a final multiplier of 2.5x2.5 = 6.25x
Using a heat inherit primer, we can give allow catalyze to inherit the +heat% mods giving 1+1.65+0.6 ([Primed Heated Charge] + [Scorch] with no riven) = 3.25x as well as one faction mod of +55% giving a total of 3.25 x 1.55 = 5.03x
Finally Grineer enemies with cloned flesh and many Infested enemies take +25% increased damage to heat giving 1.25x multiplier.
Therefore, the final possible heat proc damage per second inflicted by one cast of Catalyze on a FULLY heat primed enemy (with 10 statuses and max viral) and affected by [Mecha Empowered] is:
2000 (base dmg) x 1.45 (strength) x 0.5 (DoT modifier) x 3 ([Archon Vitality] + self infused heat) x 2^7 (status modifier) x 4.25 (10 viral stacks) x 6.25 ([Mecha Empowered]) x 5.03 (heat inherit) x 1.25 (cloned flesh bonus) = approximately 92 million damage per second. With 10 statuses, this becomes 740 million damage per second.
Assuming the enemy doesn't die INSTANTLY (which would probably only be possible against levelcap armored grineer/corrupted enemies - for example a level 9999 corrupted heavy gunner has about 3.2 billion EHP), each cast of sickening pulse would double this allowing it to hit damage cap 2.14 billion dmg/s procs after 3 casts (not really practical due to cooldown).
In comparison, a single cast of cold sunder would compress the 9 seconds of heat procs into a single 8 billion damage instance of blast damage.
