[Lavos] is a priming incarnate who is free of the energy economy. See the full slideshow guide.

Lavos is very strong if you are fresh to the game. His abilities do abnormally high damage that will one-shot almost everything in the standard star chart. He is also free of energy, which new players suffer from. He is mechanically advanced to play, however.

Mods

[Natural Talent] not needed, as skills already have cooldowns that prevent their frequent casting, and imbuing further increases the delay between casts, greatly reducing the value of [Natural Talent].

EHP and lifesteal is high enough to survive up to ~level 500. Restart the mission after that, relying on shield gate is not viable for [Lavos] and it will slow down general efficiency just to last longer. Not worth.

[Adaptation] is the difference maker that lets Lavos play in Steel Path, even though his EHP is well above average (4x to 5x). If it's not needed, I prefer a half-ranked [Narrow Minded] to increase duration.

Efficiency is not needed, you do not need to spam catalyze like an energy frame would.

Range is high because ability coverage is vital.

Strength is high because damage helps, but it also has double value for lifestealing.

[Swift Bite] is a minor cooldown reduction with very specific requirements that aren't worth the setup. If it just worked per enemy like the Probe instead of needing 4 enemies, it might be slottable.

Status duration is effectively status damage, this is more important on [Lavos] because he is not a frame of continuous bursts but of methodical casts.

Arcanes are very flexible. Augmented is easy, consequence is useful, weapon arcanes are nice for CO weapons.

How to Play

[Lavos] Supplements his weapons with status procs. He can cover crowds in the entire elemental spectrum given time, but he mostly offloads Magnetic, Viral and Corrosive from your weapons so they can focus on damaging elements such as electric, heat or slash.

Memorize the elemental combinations.

• Viral = Toxin + Cold
• Corrosive = Toxin + Electric
• Magnetic = Cold + Electric
• Gas = Toxin + Heat
• Blast = Cold + Heat
• Radiation = Electric + heat

It can be tolling on your fingers to constantly hold keys to imbue elements. It's slightly slower, but I suggest inverting tap-hold on [Lavos] so imbues are tapped and ability casts are held.

Ophidian [Bite] is a key survival skill that can fully heal [Lavos] in a single cast. It can be easily forgotten in a rotation. It does very high damage for a standard ability. This ability is also a stun. Note that the stun is replaced by Heat's or Electric's stun if they are imbued, which have shorter stuns. The stun briefly opens enemies for finishers! Stun is extended with cold. If health is desperately needed, prime a target using another skill imbued with Viral, and then counter a unit's health x armor type with the best element. Memorizing health type weaknesses can be a lifesaver for this ability:

• Alloy Armor (Most grineer and corpus) - Radiation (1.75x, ignores 75% of armor)
• Ferrite Armor (Some Grineer and corpus, all Sentients) - Corrosive (1.75x, ignores 75% of armor)
• Cloned Flesh (Stripped Grineer) - Viral (1.75x)
• Shield/Proto (All Corpus) - Magnetic (1.75x)
• Flesh (Living Corpus) - Toxin (1.5x)
• Robotic (Corpus Robots, All Sentients) - Electric (1.5x)
• Machine (Some rare grineer robots) - Blast (1.75x)
• Infested/Infested Flesh (Small, young, trash Infested) - Gas (1.75x/1.5x)
• Fossilized (Important Infested) - Corrosive (1.75x)
• Infested Sinew (Armored Deimos infested) - Radiation (1.5x, ignores 50% of armor)
  • Note that Armored Fossilized are 75% resistant to radiation, which makes corrosive more ideal.

Countering elements are not necessary on other abilities. Since status procs are guaranteed, Damage-over-time elements will always do more damage.

Vial [Rush] is almost always the first ability cast in a rotation. It has the lowest cooldown and very high utility for being so fast. Explosion can proc headshot effects. Initial damage is low, but puddle damage is continuous and can stack very high. Imbued with Heat or Electric can turn the puddles into a stun-locking cage. Remember that heat stacks indefinitely. Note that puddles expire when recast.

Transmutation Probe is an excellent combo skill. It's central to casting combos like Rush -> Probe -> Rush, or Bite - > Rush -> Probe -> Rush -> [Bite]. It helps a little with reducing Catalyze's cooldown, but Catalyze is too situation to make use of it. Don't hold on to this skill for the cooldown reduction!! It is an extremely wide-area priming skill first and foremost. Jamming it into walls can let the probe apply 2 or 3 stacks of procs. Great with corrosive, which sees the most value in the last few procs.

Catalyze is something you save for when your radar is covered in red targets, or when you want something to die.

• Very high base damage to wipe most maps up to sortie level, even without priming.
• Since your priming area is limited, large-area proccing weapons are ideal to utilize this skill in higher levels. [Ogris] with Nightwatch Napalm is one of the most diverse weapons. Cedo is also good. Epitaph is okay but not quite as diverse, and slower.
• Priming a target with all 10 elements will kill any target at any level in the game, with the exception of high DR enemies like Sisters and Liches.
• Gas is a logical element to imbue to make it linger, but if targets die immediately to the heat portion of Catalyze, gas will not proc. You almost always want to imbue with a DoT element (Toxin, Electric, Heat, Gas), but it can affordably buff itself if imbued with Viral at lower levels.
• Catalyze is sometimes used defensively. Because its coverage is so large, using a defensive element like Cold, Blast or Radiation can help get thing under control.

Helminth

Not advised. Replacing an ability also replaces the imbue option that the ability was associated with. You also cannot imbue helminthed abilities.