The alchemist, master of the elements, “HUNTER! Try another ability!” the frame - Lavos!
Release date: 2020-12-18
Passive: Purifying himself from all ailments, Lavos cleanses all active negative Status Effects and gains status immunity for 10 seconds upon collecting an Energy or Universal Orb.
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.
When I started again on Switch, Lavos carried me through whatever I couldn’t do on Zephyr. He’s got a little bit of everything a new player needs: good survivability, bypasses energy economy, extremely high damage potential, decent CC. He remains good in non-scaling Steel Path too, although you’ll have a much smoother time using more specialised or versatile frames.
Ironically, as enemies scale in damage, Lavos transitions to a glass cannon, but what a glass cannon he is! Secondary Encumber heat primers like Hystrix, Epitaph, or Incarnon Furis can push Catalyze into the millions of damage per tick.
Catalyze also has some nice options for primers nowadays. Previously you were stuck with Cedo, which somewhat limited your maximum damage range to a mostly frontal range, but Melee Influence means that a primer Xoris can easily spread Electric, Radiation and your choice of a secondary element in a wide area, although I would recommend still using a Furis, Epitaph or Cedo for focused intensive priming on hard targets.
Valence Formation is an incredible augment. Being able to extend his priming capabilities with another secondary element, or force Heat when it comes time to dump damage into a target, is incredibly powerful.
Overall, I’d say Lavos is easy to play, easy to build, and welcoming to new players. He has some of the highest damage potential in the game, and can take a beating. He has scaling issues on higher level content, but by that very late stage you should have options available to you.