A Rocket Launcher Pretending to be a Bow
After a day of doing invasions and assisting the Corpus (and doing the same mission three times over), not only did I incur the wrath of Councillor Vay Hek, but I also ended up with 10 lovely fieldrons. I had a choice on my hands. I could either build myself a new Sentinel – the Helios – which would scan enemies as I fight them, helping me learn more about enemies and enabling me to spawn them in both Captura and the Simulacrum; or I could build the Lenz, a rocket launcher pretending to be a bow.
Of course I went for the explode-y thing.
And why wouldn’t I? Since the Lenz came out, I’ve been reviving people left, right and centre, picking them up off the ground after they’ve blown themselves up. But every time they don’t blow themselves up, they blow up like a bazillion enemies, so this Lenz certainly seems like a good thing.
And it’s not like I’m a stranger to self damage. After all, my most-played classes after Medic are Soldier and Pyro, with a hint of Demoman. And my favourite weapons in Saints Row are the ones that go boom.
But no. This thing is scary. Scarier than most explosions.
Before I start, I should point out that there’s already a way to make Bows in Warframe do explosive damage, using the Thunderbolt mod. This gives you a 30% or so chance of firing an explosive arrow. So people could kill themselves with bows before the Lenz came out, but the Lenz takes it to a whole new level.
When you finish building the Lenz (which takes 24 hours) and equip it, the first thing you notice is just how big it is. Normally a lot of primary weapons sit nicely in your arms, but this massive thing is everywhere. It’s even on your back. Big and mechanical and definitely something an insane Corpus engineer would build and give to a Corpus Tech. The Lenz looks scary, as it should.
The way the Lenz works is simple. You charge it up like a normal bow, then fire your single shot. A big, Frost’s Snowglobe-sized dome appears that explodes and deals a ton of damage. The downside is that you only have 6 ammo maximum, but since sniper ammo is pretty common, as is the Carrier’s Ammo Case precept, you just have to be careful. Since you’re being careful anyway, it’s not a problem.
It’s the stats though that make the Lenz amazing. The Lenz has a 50% critical chance by default. Most weapons in comparison have between 5 and 30% critical chance. The actual projectile of the Lenz that’s fired only does 10 cold damage and 50 impact damage with no mods, but it also does 660 blast damage. With a 50% chance to do double that with its base 2x critical damage multiplier. Because it’s a bow, the Lenz gets away with this shit.
I don’t really know how to build the Lenz, what mods to put on it. A single Point Strike mod, maxed, increases critical chance to 125%. On an AOE explosive weapon. Because it already has Blast and Cold on it, you could potentially build for 3 elemental types at once. Ammo is of no concern but you could throw on an ammo mod anyway if you really wanted to.
Really, the only reason we have this insane thing is because it’s so impractical. You can’t take it indoors at all. The number of people I’ve seen blow themselves up on large maps is insane, just imagine how bad it would be in the cramped, infested ships around Eris? Well, you don’t have to imagine it. I ran into someone who did and we spent more time picking him up off the ground than anything else. With some caution, the Lenz could be taken into an open defense, interception or survival mission. The cramped spaces of Corpus and Grineer ships that make up most of the game seem like a really bad place for a massive explosion though.
But that doesn’t matter. It’s a stupidly fun weapon. And stupidly dangerous. And stupidly scary.
