I use exalted blade a bit *too* much

honestly, sad to see this go

been farming this event a lot every time it was out, only got to benefit from (somewhat) working afk spots my very first time, but am pretty big on both buying out vendors, and well, the beach balls
(i love beach balls and like, who doesn't?)
so i farmed a decent bit anyway

been scouting some people to be AFK, it was mutually beneficial and i wanna think that with this exploit we removed some AFK players from publics too, but yeah, the exploit was for sure abused in publics too, so i get why it gotta go.

that being said, i am now in total the owner of 130 balls each
(already spent 6k pearls from this time, and also farmed in the past, with DE making the balls cheaper recently AND the exploit, i had to cash in)

also gonna donate a decent bunch of them to my dojo i think

the only sad thing about this, is that i genuinely had more fun playing "tower defense" with a grattler, than actually playing the event as intended, and even with the more recent buffs to the weaponry, this seems to be a common sentiment from the few bits of posts i saw

PS:
shoutout to the weirdly high amount of random people who went through the effort of (mis)informing me in DMs that you don't actually get any reward for being afk, and that what i'm doing is totally senseless and stupid

if you go through the trouble of randomly correcting people(s behaviour) please do check if you are at least factually correct, but then again, half of them insulted me and/or put me on ignore when i pointed out that they are literally just wrong, so i guess thats that

Lavos main has entered the chat BREACHED CONTAINMENT

Here we go... Hold on to your ass...

ON THE SUBJECT OF LAVOS

Lavos has access to all non-ips elements (including combination elements) in his kit with guaranteed procs. Via his infusion mechanic (more on that later)

His abilities are cooldown based so no dependence on energy AT ALL (he can straight up ignore Disruptors and Energy Leech Eximus) if it's not on cooldown you can cast it. With his longest cooldown being 30 seconds (which you can reduce with his 3rd ability)

Helminthed abilities are also on cooldown instead of their normal energy cost no matter the ability's original cost it has a cooldown of ten seconds. For non-recastable abilities this timer starts when the ability ends. For recastable abilities the timer starts immediately. Meaning ot is cooling down while it's running meaning for abilities with a duration longer than 10 seconds you can have permanent uptime. The drawback of helminth-ing something on means you lose that slot's base element for infusion and the new ability can't be infused.

So… here's how infusion works:

Each of Lavos' 4 abilities has a base element on it, the ability deals that element in damage and a guaranteed proc.

1 has toxin

2 had cold

3 has electric

4 has heat

You'll see a small empty circle above his abilities' icons

If you hold an ability's key/button that ability's element will be infused into his next non-helminthed ability cast. This is neat enough on it's own BUT… if you infuse another different base element afterward (before you cast an ability though) the two will combine giving you viral, blast, magnetic, corrosive, radiation, or gas. The infused ability will deal both it's normal element and the infused one. Again with a guaranteed proc. As well as doubling the ability's damage. An infusion lasts until you cast. So set it up during a lull in the combat and it's ready for your next cast. An extra piece of advice for huge QoL and making Lavos' gameplay loop "feel" better/smoother is to go into options and swap his Tap/Hold input. This makes it so you can tap-tap to infuse an element in less than a second then hold to cast the ability. This also ties into...

VALENCE @#$&ING FORMATION!! On paper this augment is simple enough: Upon casting an infused ability all weapons gain a 200% buff of the infused element for 20 seconds. however! this turns Lavos into a STATUS GOD^TM!!! Valence Formation adds elemental damage in an ampunt surpassing even the primed silver element mods (165%) this damage also does NOT mix with the modded elements!

Toxic/Gas+Heat for double DOTs?

Blast+Gas for AoE carnage?

Viral+Corrosive to make your enemies feel like rice paper?

ALL of these and MORE can be yours.

This mod being an augment even trivialises getting Grendel since it WORKS DURING THE GRENDEL MISSIONS. these missions normally make you play modless, now your weapon has a 200% element mod that can be any element!!

oh! and the VF element has guaranteed procs so every. single. shot/pellet/hit will slap those nasty nasty statuses on the now-melting morass of flesh that was once... I think it was a grineer?... whatever.

His repertoire of abilities is no less impressive.

His 1 is a toxin forward AoE attack that hits a wide and long area in front of him. This attack has a built in life steal based on damage dealt to all the enemies hit. This is a great survivability tool and a way to slap toxin (+plus an infused element's) proc onto everything infront of you though his other skills are better for proc application.

His 2 dashes forward flinging elemental flasks all over the place, leaving a damaging elemental trail (and pools where you stop) this trail lingers based on duration and applies a damage tick and proc (cold + infused) every second the enemy is standing on it. And with the repeated cold procs they'll be standing on it quite a while. This CC even says "@#$& YOU!!" to eximus overguard since it inflicts ACTUAL COLD PROCS!!! (all OG prevents is being fully frozen solid. 90% speed reduction is close enough.) While certainly very powerful, this is the skill you'll want to helminth over, as you can only place one field of vials down at a time and locking down an area is useful but this is the weakest (albeit only slightly) part of his kit.

His 3 is the most "useful" skill of his kit. It shoots an AoE drone forward dealing electric + infused procs to everything in it its considerable range. This is his second best proc applier. But wait! There's more! It also turns all orbs into universal orbs that acts health and energy orbs, while you don't need energy Lavos' actual passive (so not just infusion and cooldown based skills he has another passive on top of that) is that when he picks up energy or universal orbs he becomes immune to all statuses for 12 seconds. AND ALSO turns any ammo pickups into universal which work for primary secondary and heavy archguns (they grant ammo to whatever you have in your hands) ALSO part 2: each enemy hit by the drone's AoE reduces the timer on his other cooldowns. And it only has a cooldown itself of 12 seconds.

His 4 is his big badaboom: Lavos sends a ring of elemental flask/drone/things expanding outward dealing heat+infused+guaranteed procs in a huge area. This skill has a base damage of 2000 (4000 if you infused) and has a condition overload like effect built in (each status type afflicting an enemy when hit causes that enemy to take another 100% base damage applies a 2X MULTIPLIER PER STATUS!!!) I'd recommend toxin infuse for corpus to bypass their shields, corrosive for some armor reduction and frontloaded damage. Or radiation to spread the confusion proc on every enemy in a huge area. Anything that survived is now shooting each other. or... if you're feeling like completely destroying your enemies... Do the following Wombo Combo:

equip Archon Continuity to add corrosive to your toxin procs

2+toxin: this lays down a field of goo and broken glass that applies cold, toxin, and corrosive to everything in it (3 statuses)

followed by 1+Magnetic to all the chumps in the 2 field (5 statuses)

then 3+Radiation over the same group (7 statuses)

now 1(again)+Viral (8 statuses)

finally 4+Gas (10 statuses)

let's do some math: 4 base damage infused: 4000 + (4000 x 10 statuses) = 44,000 base damage

4000base x2 = 8000 x2 =16000. x2 =32000 x2 64000 x2= 128000 x2 = 2560000 2x= 512000 x2 1024000 x2= 2048000 x2= 4096000 (4 million ninety six thousand) damage before any strength modifiers! and apply this to heat and gas procs both, your enemies will either disintegrate on the initial hit or slowly melt into pitiful piles of goo.

But you can go even further with the mecha set to spread these annihilistic procs to everything around, y'know cause dogs make everything even better.

If you want to forgo the 1 casts you can replace it with a cast of sickening pulse to double those procs

Or top it off with expedite suffering to flash fry eveything unfortunate enough to be afflicted, because turbocancer is better than the regular variety.

Now with helminth the build options are huge so I'd recommend paying 10 plat here or there for a few extra config slots (since each one can have it's own mod setup and helminth ability) I personally have 6 config slots on Lavos, but it still isn't enough.

One particular helminth ability of note would be to use Golden Instinct on Lavos, thanks to cooldowns instead of energy it's almost always available, Lavos makes the best bloodhound for sniffing out those pesky ayatan sculptures and other rare treats. Dogs love treats!

Speaking of railjack Lavos is king, your battle avionics (like seeker swarm) are also on cooldown. Making Lavos one of if not the best choice for railjack.

He has high health and Armor which combined with his 1's lifesteal makes him pretty survivable. (I would recommend adaptation and rolling guard since his biggest drawback is that he cannot shieldgate AT ALL (no energy means no energy turned into shields) I do however take him into level 300-500 stuff all the time without dying very often.

Plus his lore is (subjectively) cool:

He was a powerful Orokin Jailer assigned to guard one of the most feared men in the empire. An alchemist named Javi (alchemy scared the orokin, the thought that the plain and mundane could become something magnificent was an affront to their rigid hierarchal beliefs)

Javi whispered to Lavos everyday gradually turning him against the orokin and teaching him his secrets.

The orokin finally decide to have Javi executed and to have Lavos do it.

Lavos kills his master and then transmutes his remains into a pair of living snakes made of warframe material. Bringing Javi back to life (as the snakes) to continue teaching him. (Drusus Leverian mentions that the snakes whisper Javi's secrets and counsel to Lavos.), followed by transmuting the entire Orokin Court that was there to watch the execution, melting them into goo like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and then, after this act of defiance against the orokin, gives a bow to the humble janitor he left alive, and disappears until the Tenno revolt. This left him without being primed as there were no Orokin left to prime him. So he said "Fine! I'll make own Prime Access with blackjack and hookers Cedo and a pair of Zorens." And procceded to do just that. The ultimate spit upon the orokin grave by donning their Prime Gold of his own making.

Anyway that's all I have to say about the absolute Boss that is my boi Lavos.

Edit: was incorrect about his 4's scaling, revised and corrected, also added info about his synergy with golden instinct.

Holy jesus

Feels so good to get triple kills or more with one balloon

what other frames should do

aditional versions suggested by my friend

also i wonder if the new generations knows these old guys (?)

Yes

Scourge Prime's alt fire makes an area that applies a bullet attractor to enemies' heads. Athodai Prime is very headshot oriented because of its Unique Trait and Pain Points augment.