Operation: Orphix Venom - Lavos Feedback Megathread (Read First Post)

[TPtv]

lavos' Ability Vial Rush and Transmutation Probe are too narrow. The range of Catalyze is very wide, but the range of the 2nd and 3rd abilities in the front is too narrow to achieve synergy with the Catalyze abilities properly. The range of Vial Rush and Transmutation Probe abilities need to be extended further. Even if the range of is 250m instead of 25m, the range of Catalyze Ability cannot have any meaning unless the range of Vial Rush and Transmutation Probe is appropriate.

 

This post was written in Google Translate.

[0_The_F00l]

i have 2 forma in lavos as of now (one of which was an umbra, so i was hopeful on its potential) ,

Interesting but i think it is lacking on player side usability more than as any flaw in the concept itself,

being able to have any status in the game at your disposal is nice , but since there are limited good statuses anyway i am usually just keeping my vials on either corrosive or viral for his passive imbue (rarely radiation for added cc).

Pairing with a good status priming weapon makes him borderline strong (his signature shotgun especially) but without it he feels more of a discount inaros/valkyr ( a big chunk of meat).

The "must look at 5 things at a time to be effective" is also not everyone's capability and is off putting.

General stats make him more of a tanky frame in my opinion that takes advantage of more health and armor (perfect for umbra build)

Passive:

No major issues , but i am not sure if the status duration when i use lavos is right , it feels like the enemies lose their status effects faster than normal, using primed continuity makes me feel that it is as per default values.

Imbuing:

i dont mind a little management to get more out of a kit , but Lavos needs you to constantly look at the bottom of the screen and in front of your screen- it is not very intuitive whether the 3rd skill got few enemies or many. And the awkward finger use for secondary imbue effect is also something that i am not a fan of (the imbue itself is nice but implementation and application leaves something to be desired). and you have to keep yourself aware that hold does a different thing and tap does a different thing often times i imbue the wrong element or tap and wonder why nothing is happening or need to quickly glance and check if i actually pressed long enough to register the imbue. This is think is my biggest issue.

Ophidian Bite:

his 1 is too short range and the hitbox is not hitting most enemies in front of him i thought to subsume some other heal ability there cause i find it to be rubbish but then i will lose the toxin imbue. so its gonna stay for now, not a major issue but not a great ability either. could have used a lower cool down considering how limited it is.

Vial Rush

i am using his 2 very often but it is not too reliable as it creates multiple small zones of effect some of which might miss the enemy completely , having to turn around and re target enemies you slid by is also a bit of an annoyance for me , i would have preferred if there was no dash and you just throw the vials like the voidrig mines instead, or leave an actual trail like nezha firewalker over your slide (with a much wider radius) . The animation itself is so lackluster , it could have been a cool "throws vial on ground and uses it as a skate" , but instead its a "generic slide animation" i am not normally one to nitpick on the animations but this was so poor i have to say it. Cooldown time i think is fine where it is.

Transmutation probe

his 3 has great CC and utility but it is again making me stop , drop and look at things (enemies, ammo, cooldown) before using it cause if i use it at the wrong time it feels i wasted 13 seconds (cause there is a 3 seconds casting time over the 10 second cooldown i observed). It is also very finicky on terrain with slight elevation/obstructions where it may just randomly stop. It needs to go over bodies or pass/clip through them in my opinion, being blocked by an enemy is counter intuitive. The fact that it doesnt fly straight and sticks to terrain makes it less effective on tilesets with gaps/holes. Maybe a slight pull (like zephyrs) would help? cooldown should be 10 seconds total , 3+ 7 in my opinion (even better make it 5 second active +5 cooldown).

Catalyze

his 4 looks good and does decent damage if you have procd enough effect on enemies, but i am still finding issues with elevation and the cast time is rather significant , some enemies shrug off their status effects by the time the probes get to them. I don't think the elevation issue is fixed or if it is its not good enough outside of flat tilesets. This is sounding more and more like the ability i will subsume if it stays as ineffective as it currently is. Most of the times i cannot use the 4 (cooldown/ not enough enemies to be effective)and when i do use it , it tends to not do as much damage as the probes are slow to each the enemies. which can simply jump/run away to safety. cooldown should be 25 seconds.

 

If i have to summarize, the issue i would say it is: Lavos lacks the ability to focus his abilities and is too dependent on enemy placement to be an effective caster frame. He is on the other hand an acceptable tank frame that can be used for melee focus builds for taking some advantage of CO. The poor UI and button press restrictions only add to the problems.

[(XBOX)IMABEMEOUTLAW]

When will the Xbox release be??

[PsiWarp]

17 minutes ago, (XBOX)IMABEMEOUTLAW said:

When will the Xbox release be??

Jan 2021 

[DalanorTheLlama]

Probably late to the party but here we go.

Passives:

Imbue elements: Personally i've found no problem with it but i can see that in hectic moments or for console players the current iteration can be problematic so anything that makes the whole imbue mechanic smoother is a welcomed change.

Valence block: Nice little passive but unreliable even with Transmutation probe. With enough kill per second you can work around that and get a decent uptime but by using Prime sure footed and possibly Rolling guard is a more reliable method to achive the same thing. It's there. It's fine.

Status duration scaling: I guess the general idea behind this was that you can get additional benefit from this stat but weapons can be opted for more duration anyway and your abilities doesn't really need it (Vial rush needs it because of the damaging field, the rest is for quick on demand effects). I advise to remove this.

Cooldown reduction scaling: Transmutation probe has it's own problems but restricting your efficiency to not matter at all for the other abilities is a huge yikes. Currently you don't lose much by going negative efficiency but sadly moding for more efficiency barely matters because the only skill that demands cooldown reduction is Catalyze but only because of the too high default cooldown. More about this later. I advise to remove this as well.

edit: Some clarification. Ability efficiency should affect every ability not just the CD reduction on the probe.

Ophidian bite + survival:

This skill supposed to help Lavos stay alive alongside his overall default bulkiness but after a certain point we know pure HP and healing is not enough even if you slap on all the armor and damage reduction you can find. Also the skill stops your movement, can't be used mid air, hit detection is still a bit off and damage is pretty much non-existent. Sure it heals but thats not enough. Not to mention it has 1.5x the cooldown of an overall more powerful ability Vial rush. Also since Lavos doesn't use energy he can't utilize shield gating with Augur mods or Brief respite and doesn't have any innate  invulnerability / damage reduction / invisibility so relying on bulk and cold / radiation procs for survival makes him the second worst frame for survival after Inaros at high levels. Sure core gameplay mostly stops at around lvl 100 (+ steel path) and he performs fine there but enemies are way more dangerous beyond that and Lavos lacks the options to handle it.

I suggest to make it have no cooldown or worse case make it have 1-2 second CD only. Similar to Pillage it may also can drain armor and shields for even more survival.

Vial rush + yeet or not to yeet:

First of all this skill is pure gold (pun intended), well designed, great job, chef's kiss. BUT ... Apart from not being able to control yourself while on the move the damaging fields aren't really working properly. The vials are thrown all over the place and has minuscule radius. The only reliable way i've found to damage multiple enemies is to gather them around you via Magus anomaly, double tap the ability to drop vials point blank under your feet, let the enemies body block the vials (otherwise they just fly over their heads and land behind their back), pull them again so they stay on the small damage puddle, win. This is the definition of being wonky. For escaping it's not a bad ability which i guess is the main purpose. You just yeet yourself out to the distance and leave behind some Cold fields so enemies can't catch up to you. Thats great. But for damaging purposes the ability underperforms. Not to mention the crystallines can tank your FPS so hard like there is no tomorrow.

So for both performance and gameplay purposes please remove the extra effects and make the ability leave a trail behind you and make a big explosion with a damaging field remaining behind where you stop. Also let the field scale with ability range. As an escape tool it could also give invulnerability while sliding.

Transmutation probe + flow:

As i mentioned above the whole cooldown reduction for the probe scaling with ability efficiency needs to go. Even if you go negative efficiency you can still get great results after a few additional changes. First of all the range needs to be increased to 8-10m or even more shouldn't be a big of an issue. Why? In normal star chart you barely have enemies so with extra range you can ensure whatever is in front of you it gets hit by it so you get the cooldown reduction. In steel path you get much more enemies but you need cooldowns ready even more as enemies are more dangerous. As of right now the probe sticks to the ground and floats above it (quite contradicting if you ask me) so since Catalyze already floats in a horizontal line why not makes the same changes to the probe? Also since i proposed to remove the duration scaling passive the probe can have scaling with ability duration so it can remain in the field a bit longer. With this even the base 3 seconds duration could be improved since building Lavos doesn't really let you mod for a lot of duration.

I suggest to make the probe float similar to Catalyze, make the radius larger and let it scaling with ability duration.

Catalyze + nuke:

So far i didn't managed to get too far in endurance but i've seen crazy damage numbers with it so in that regards i assume the ability is fine. However for hitting enemies it could still use some really really minor adjustments vertically. Adding 5m was a nice touch but it doesn't feel enough. Emphasis on feel.
The other main issue is obviously is the cooldown which only starts after the initial duration expires so technically it has 35 seconds cooldown which is way too much even with the probe in your arsenal. Casting it is also really slow and since the other abilities are more than fine in that regards it would be a shame to be forced to use Natural talent only because of this single ability.

Make the cooldown 20 seconds and cut down the casting time to 1 second.

[Lint]

Lavos feels really fun so far. I only have two pieces of feedback:

1. Please fix Vial Rush so that it does not toggle sprinting off. Having to manually toggle sprint every few seconds is frustrating. (Relatedly, please fix every Warframe ability that un-toggles sprint such as Revenant's Danse Macabre, Grendel's Pulverize, and Inaros's Devour.)

2. I understand why Lavos and his syandana's glass and metal parts are affected by the same Accent tint, but what looks good for one material tends not to look good for the latter in my opinion. If they can't be given separate tints, I think I would prefer if the glass color couldn't be tinted at all.

[TPtv]

lavos' Ability Vial Rush and Transmutation Probe need to be extended.

Vial Rush and Transmutation Probe are too narrow. The range of Catalyze is very wide, but the range of the 2nd and 3rd abilities in the front is too narrow to achieve synergy with the Catalyze abilities properly. The range of Vial Rush and Transmutation Probe abilities need to be extended further. Even if the range of is 250m instead of 25m, the range of Catalyze Ability cannot have any meaning unless the range of Vial Rush and Transmutation Probe is appropriate.

 

This post was written in Google Translate.

[ConsumerJTC]

From current gameplay, the only thing i could think of that would make Lavos significantly more comfortable to use is his passive elemental infusions lasting for at least 2-3 casts. So as to avoid breaking my fingers.

[(XBOX)IMABEMEOUTLAW]

1 hour ago, PsiWarp said:

Jan 2021 

That sucks wish it was sooner

[KaffeRausch]

Lavos is actually what was wanted in the fan concepts, just a rough mixture of all of them.

 

First: One wanted a magician / world painter who masters all elements and mixes them. This Warframe can provide anything with 4 basic elements.

 

Secondly: They wanted a snake Warframe. This Warframe at least has snakes on its amen.

 

Third: One wished for an alchemist who could throw a Warframe with bottles. We have that on the second Ability.

 

Fourth: You wanted a real conjurer. This Warframe always has drones that unfortunately do not have any form of automated target search.

 

So I'm so half happy with the Warframe, but I had two different Warframes in mind for what it does.

[Lone_Dude]

It would be great if we could get magnetize/larva effects by using Magnetic on Transmutation Probe.

[Scroll_of_Wisdom]

WIP post. will edit later

 

6 forma Lavos build (including aura forma) tested in solo steel path survival.

General thoughts:

I love the concept of Lavos. Really fun idea that promotes a dynamic playstyle. Heavy synergy between both his abilities and with weapons.

In perfect scenarios the gameplay loop works really well.

Can he survive in the later stages of the game? Sadly no. He does not have access to replenishing shields. This is a BIG red flag for veteran players.

Very often you dont have enough enemies to get the most out of Transmutation Probe, or have a hard time dealing with too many enemies when everythign is on cooldown. This feels punishing for no apparent reason.

The cooldowns on his 4, currently, is ever so slightly too long.

No way of reducing cooldown on 3 feels like missing potential.

1st ability is lackluster.

How I built and play him

High life with Adaptation. Natural Talent and Primed Sure Footed. Arcane Strike and Grace.

Duration: 133%

Range: 175%

Strength: 200%

Efficiency: 100%

Playstyle loop: Group up a bunch of enemies -> cast Probe to get Catalyze off cooldown -> infuse an element into Catalyze -> prime with Cedo -> nuke 

While waiting for Probe to come off cool down, use 2 to position, and 1 to heal.

That's how I think the kit wants me to play him.

Kit Feedback:

passive:

status immunity on orb pickup is a neat little perk, but it's unreliable. I feel like there is missing potential here to help his kit further. Energy orbs should have direct influence on the cool downs, along the same line as energy orbs affecting other frames.

Energy pickups should for a duration give you double passive cool down reduction. So 2 seconds off the clock for every second waited.

Infusing elements should not be consumed on ability cast but rather stay untill another element is selected. It's clunky having to redo it over and over. Having the control mid mission is awesome though.

Ophidian Bite:

Seems like it has targeting issues. 

Increasing its hitbox would do alot. Or give it aim-assist.

Add the ability to stun, blind or disarm and make it a one handed ability (meaning you can cast while running, jumping etc) much like Khora's Whipclaw.

The absolute best change I want for this ability tho, is if you add a %shield steal as well. This will make late game players very happy. Right now we feel like we are forced into building him into an inferior "tank" way that simply doesn't hold up later in the game where focusing on shield gating is much to prefer.

If you choose to do this make sure it is paired with some sort of change to how often it comes off cooldown or it will be completely useless anyway.

1 or 2 second base cool down should do it.

Vial Rush: 

Could you make it better? sure. But it's fine as is, mobility wise. I enjoy that you gave Lavos a mobility skill and this one does the job.

Transmutation Probe:

#1 priority is to get a way to reduces it's cool down directly. 

Let non ability kills reduce its cool down by 1 second each.

Or let it have no cool down at all but let it cost health instead, promoting use of 1.

Make it last for way longer and have a larger base area would make it absolutely fantastic.

Add ability to aim vertically please. 

Make it less likely to get stuck on environment. Not sure if this is easy to do. I would be happy with it not colliding at all, effectively making it able to go through walls.

Catalyse

Fantastic Ability. It just needs to hit everything you'd expect an AoE ability to hit.

It still has targeting issues while cast in the air

Another change I would love to see is that you should be able to cast 4 and THEN proc additional status on the affected enemies boosting the damage of the 4's damage. I know viral stacks work, but that's not what I am suggesting.

I often find myself casting 4 asap to get the cc affect of it

[alseltas]

Lavos is the long awaited frame to me as he is the true elemental master(bye Chroma!)

And he is cool! However, as usual as new frame, he needs some tweak to compete with other frames.

Feedback's below

 

PASSIVE

Imbuing elements are really cool gimmick! This something I wanted since I started the game. It's free and flexible. 

The downside it is annoying to imbue elements again and again. As we know, we love to spam cool abilities. However, the imbued elements are lost every time you cast an ability, and you need to hold 1sec each time. The extra effort for casting one ability is a huge. It needs your key control more than 2x compared to frames. 

Measures: Make imbued elements permanent until you imbue other elements. 

How it works: Your imbued element does not lose after casting abilities. And to change imbued element, considering you have already imbued viral, holding any element key will overwrite viral to other elements. Holding keys whose elements are already imbued do nothing.  There is no "non-imbued mode" and the default element should be toxin. 

 

OPHIDIAN BITE
I like snake. and using snake is fun. but... it cannot used in airborne as it has Khora's 4 slam gimmick. The range is too small, and the cool down is too long for the 1st ability which should be spammable. 

 

VIAL RUSH
Skating is enjoyable. The damage and status effects are decent. The downside is you can't turn while sliding and you lose toggled sprint after sliding. I want to use this as mobility option like Gauss. And again, Cool down is too short. 

 

TRANSMUTATION PROBE
Very good effects. CC and enforcing drops are very usable. On the other hand, the cool down reduction is bit unreliable. When you need this ability, you might have casted Catalyze. However, catalyze nuke everyone and there is no one left for cool down reduction. Moreover, again, cool down of this ability is too long, considering the ability is to help spam the other abilities. In addition to that, the 3 seconds base duration is of course too short. 10 seconds duration should be good for this type of ability. 

 

CATALYZE

Insane damage output. Good Old Condition Overload came back as an ability.  The negative point is it's not practical thanks to 30 seconds cool down with insufficient cool down reduction synergy, and the inflexibility to vertical direction. The inflexibility was patched bit, but it is not enough still. You can't kill who's flying or on higher floor with this ability.

 

[Mu_Gera]

vial rush needs more radius on the puddles and faster time to start proc'ing, but transmutation probe absolutely needs more base duration, or atleast a cooldown equal to vial rush.

they both absolutely need the ults extra damage per status effect mechanic, even when you use proper elemental matching they fall off pretty hard.

[Timothy_Mark]

like for one his first ability ophidian bite seems pretty good for healing, but bloody hell it needs to scale up in damage similar to how vaubans flechette orbs scale up for it to have some better use

 

for his second ability vile rush, it seems pretty good but i do feel like it can need a slight damage increase like each vile does 300 damage than 250, not that much but it can do well

 

but his transmutation probe does need some changes, i feel like it needs to have a 8 second cooldown than 10 seconds, and maybe add a new ability that killing enemies affected by the probe in a 4 second period have a 40% chance to drop energy orbs so it has some crazy good use, besides that its basically the best thing for anyone who wants to use arch-guns without always needing a mech due to the ammo conversion

 

but his fourth ability catalyze needs some changes, for one the heckin 30 second cooldown is just a bit too much, reduce the cooldown from 30 seconds down to 20 or maybe 25, secondly make it that the cooldown is affected by ability efficiency mods, that would be something alot of people will like because right now it feels pretty sluggish, especially that theres those things called chroma with a archgun, saryn, mesa, and a couple of others that can deal way more damage and have some slight better utility than him with a single button press which i hate

 

like he has an amazing kit, but since hes going to have cooldowns make it more potent than abilities that require energy so it shows hes a little sluggish but very potent, similar to building rhino purely on ironskin, he has some serious potential to have over 100K ironskin which can out tank most warframes easily, but his other abilities cost way too much energy and which results in not being as frequent to other warframes like protea or mag which casting their abilities is consistent, its weird but these are my thoughts and i do wish lavos can get those tweaks. 

[greiff]

Just put fire walker on Lavos to replace his 3... Kind of fun. Now i have fire and cold proc on vial rush without needing to imbue before hand, as i find his current 3 is a little clunky to use.

I do wish that disregard whatever ability is put on him via the Helminth system, his imbue mechanics remain. Having it taken away due to a system in the game that encourage alternative build is... limiting and defeat its purpose?

Also agree that perhaps an improvement of the imbue mechanics is needed... Warframe in general is a fairly fast space game, having to long press to imbue means you are no longer moving, kind of off putting (at least to me)

Ohhh and please makes his imbued element staying until you replace it, not a single use

 

[Hexidextrous]

Figured I'd put this there. Why hasn't anyone made this connection yet?

[krrysis.]

I just got my frame yesterday, one little tweak i'd like to suggest is, retain the elements you Imbue, for example if i'm doing a grineer mission, i'd like all my attacks to have radiation damage, so imbuing after every single ability seems pointless and unnecessary, even if i launch a transmutation probe that element is gone now i'd to hold 3,4 again to get radiation. my suggestion is once i make an element, say radiation, keep radiation damage, until the user decides to imbue another element and continue with it. 

also, once you imbue something it can't be changed until you use that ability. you should be able to overwrite it

[XaoGarrent]

1 hour ago, Hexidextrous said:

Figured I'd put this there. Why hasn't anyone made this connection yet?

People were making Chrono Trigger jokes as far back as the reveal.

[DLOArceus]

All my issues with Lavos have to do with his Transmutation Probe:

1)It doesn't last long enough to either do damage or go through a corridor of enemies. 3 Seconds is nothing and directly influences my next point.

2)Even at high range, the travel distance is shorter than it needs to be. I won't say double it, but it definitely needs way more so maybe it's the best idea. Also it shouldn't be stopped by enemies, while surfaces and objects doing it is fine.

3)Sometimes it feel like it doesn't reduce anything at all. Maybe it's a bug, i dunno. After 3 forma of Lavos i tested this in the simulacrum and even there where enemies are grouped it happens more often than i'd want.

4)Finally the main issue. The zapping range. This is the worst thing about the ability. I can throw it into a room full of enemies and i'm 100% sure that i will barely hit half of them. I won't say make it 20 meters or 50+ like Catalyze since it's a move that needs to be used "strategically", but 6 is nothing.

Other than these, i'm completely fine with the frame.

[Azamagon]

I must say, this Warframe took me by surprise by how fun he is to play! Kudos for that! However, he's not without issues:

Elemental buff choice
Considering you are supposed to change the buffing elements often, but how it's also quite tedious when wanting to use the same elemental buff, I tried to come up with a "best of both worlds" kind of idea:

1) Charging up an elemental remains the same; hold the element(s) of your choice, and this will last indefinitely until your next cast (no change there)

2) Upon casting an ability, the element now becomes a duration-based buff, say lasting 3 to 5 seconds - continuing to buff your next ability casts as well within that timeframe. Unless...

3) Charging up a new element will cancel the duration-based elemental buff, going back to step 1.

This could easily have a "Passive Augment" to it, where the duration of the elemental buff is unlimited, only changing if altering the elements after at least one cast. I'd certainly use that myself.

Ophidian Bite

• Verticality - Needs more verticality, since you can't aim it. Alternatively, let us simply aim it up and down as we wish.
• Cooldown - I'd maybe shave off a second (so 7, instead of 8), as it feels SLIGHTLY too lengthy overall.
• Air casting - Maybe allow us to cast it midair without slamming us down? This ties in a lot to the verticality issue - making it aimable + non-grounding would not only make it better to utilize, but also more fun and flexible.
• Healing - I'd suggest to maybe make the healing distributed like this: 40% is healed immediately, the remaining 60% is healed over 3 seconds (unmoddable duration). You know, considering the ability has a cooldown, as a pure instant heal is far less valuable if it doesn't have some spammability. Casting another Ophidian Bite while the previous duration is running could stack their durations (to avoid anti-synergy with Transmutation Probe)
• EDIT: As @Scroll_of_Wisdomsuggested, adding some kind of CC (Blind or Stun) would also be mighty useful to improve it further.

Vial Rush

• Lingering residue radius - The radius of the residue which the vials leave behind is, frankly, pitiful. I'd double the base radius (at least) and maybe also make it scale with Ability Radius. Most of the time due to the pitiful range on the residue, only the final explosion really hits enemies.
• Residue on the dash - Alternative to the radius boost, if the dash itself also left residue in its wake, it'd be a lot more reliable.
• Aimglide - Could we please be allowed to aimglide during the dash? That would improve its mobility-flexibility a bit

Transmutation Probe

• Duration - Imo, the duration needs to be buffed to maybe 5 seconds or so. 3 seconds makes it really hard to use.
• Radius - Even when highly modded for radius, the effect radius of this ability is quite tiny. I'd suggest to double the radius.
• Collision - Stopping due to hitting environment is fine. Stopping due to hitting an enemy is NOT fine.
• Pre-cooldowning - If the probe hits enemies when the other abilities are ready to use, I feel the Probe should "store" cooldown-reductions on each ability (up to max a full reduction of said ability, not more). That way, there is some leeway on how to use this ability, and some tactical use to it (rather then being best used only as the last ability to cast). If used well enough this way, you could do doublecasts, in rare cases even a triple back-to-back cast of the other abilities (most likely just for Vial Rush and Ophidian Bite).
  • This is particularly prelavent with Catalyze (the main ability it helps to reduce cooldown for) -> If you have used Catalyze, it's likely the enemies are now scarce/dead, which means the Transmutation Probe has few (if any) enemies to hit. If it could pre-cooldowm, however, you could cast this BEFORE Catalyze instead, aiding it more synergetically.
• EDIT: As @Scroll_of_Wisdomsuggested, having little to no cooldown, but instead costing health would be a nice alternative to the "pre-cooldown" effect, along with synergizing very nicely (in a natural way to boot!) with Ophidian Bite.

Catalyze

• Cooldown - Even as the "main nuke" of the kit, the cooldown is WAAAY too lengthy. Yes, I know that the Transmutation Probe helps with the cooldown - but not enough. I'd suggest to tone it down to at most 20 seconds.
• Radius - The gel-spread from each drone is really small and REQUIRES you to build radius to hit anything, at least vertically. I wouldn't oppose increasing the base radius a bit, mainly to help its verticality. But I think a bette option would be to release more drones, these being angled upwards and downwards (maybe even one straight up and one straight down), so it has a more spherical effect to it.

TL;DR - Mechanically, this Warframe is surprisingly solid. Numbers need tweaking, and some QoL is needed - but otherwise not too shabby!

EDIT:

Energy orbs

A missed opportunity, imo, would be that energy orbs reduced the cooldown of all current abilities by 1 second (and working with the pre-cooldown effect of Transmutation Probe), including for Transmutation Probe.

Cooldown visuals

Having to keep an eye in the lower right corner to see the cooldowns is really annoying. So, you know those 4 dots you have under your crosshair (which represent each ability already)? How about having those dots showing the cooldown (in a clock-type circular fill-up, not with numbers) of each respective ability?

 

[JackHargreav]

Lavos is really nice. I like him a lot. There are only some little things I'd change.

Ophidian Bite

This ability has a really small and unreliable hitbox. And it could drain more health from the enemy.

Vial Rush

The vials have really small range. It should be doubled or the vials should follow the targets within a certain range.

Catalyze

I found the drones really slow. They should move with twice the speed imo.

The passive 

It's really nice. But it would be better if the enhancement would last until it's changed. Or it should apply to x number of casts.

[Major_Crash]

Will probably repeat what everyone is saying. The concept is interesting but there are several issues.

1) Too many button presses. You perform a lot of actions to achieve effectively not a lot. In MMO terms you are GCD starved. And by the time you finish setting up your combo(s) Mesa and the crew already demolishes entire room with one button press. It would be great to keep the elemental affinity for significant amount of time at least.

2) Misfirings. Sometimes you do not keep the long press enough and the actual wrong ability misfires in the wrong time with the wrong element etc. This happens a lot and is a problem. In general long/short presses bound to one button need to go. Let me rebind the long press to a different key or add a modifier! E.g. 1 is short and Alt-1 is long press.

Do not see myself playing Lavos. The kit might be functional and he is pretty tanky and mobile, but the entire long presses setup thing breaks him for me.

[Tehcaro]

PASSIVE
No real way to see status immunity quickly for it to be noticeable. Hold to Embue is by far the main event.

Could the Embued elementals be made overrideable (double press to reset to single element?). So if I fumble the key presses I can correct it without needing to cast something.

OPHIDIAN BITE

Like most of his abilities this is not a damage ability but for the utility of healing the range is too short and 8 seconds cool-down twice what it needs to be for it to be acceptable rightnow, I find myself aiming at enemies only to end up with nothing and a cooldown. Greater range, lower-cooldown and maybe have a cool-down only take effect if it hits something. If this ability could be made more useable it could completely remove the need for another source of healing, why use this when either the operator or grace would always work. I have lost more health finding out I'm out of range.

VIAL RUSH
Just about spam-able but seems worthless for damage. Ended up using it for mobility and because everything else was on cool down. Needs damage increased significantly. Cool down could scale of how long you used the ability for. If you exit early, then cool down could be less.

TRANSMUTATION PROBE
The core element of his kit but it has a major issues. The range is far too short - I keep trying to get a corridor of enemies and just getting the first few. Upping the range to match Catalyze and halving the cool down. If transmutation probe could be used more often his kit could feel more fluid. Unlike the other abilities you cannot even really use it for adding status or CC (electric), the impending cool-downs force you not to use it. I find there are too many times I feel like an E.V Trinity out of energy.

CATALYZE
His main DPS ability with a massive cooldown. I keep trying to use this in the air to get it level with enemies a level above but Lavos always drops down abit before firing, leaving it lower than I want it. Can the ability Icon be changed to RED or some indicator added, so I don't cast transmutation probe too early - or have it accumulate the cool down reduction in the ability underway. Initial damage as it hits enemies seems viable but it leaves no lasting effect meaning as an area based ability it has limited use for defending objectives. I had to compromise on status duration due to fleeting expertise being very usefull for transmutation probe which then gimps this ability, not sure how I feel about the slow moving element. It also seems very restricted to the plane its cast at, would be nice if the terrain could be followed until there is a gap then it could carry on in the plane.

 

Alternative to/tweak to cooldowns -

Instead of putting the abilities on either an on or off cool-down state, what about them having a charge that overtime tops up but which transmutation probe can top to max immediately. That way the first few abilities can have several charges and frequently cast with catalyse being kept in check somewhat with 1 charge.

[Mu_Gera]

been using him even more and gotta say that to really justify his cooldowns and time it takes to imbue all of his abilities should not only gain extra damage per status effect but also  longer and larger lasting areas of effect. practically all of lavos abilities don't feel like you're fumigating an area with status because they don't really have enough area coverage (1, 2, ult), lasting coverage (1, 3, ult), or damage (1, 2 , 3).