Elite Lancer

Elite Lancers are the Elite counterpart of the Grineer Lancers, and are found replacing the latter in mission levels 15 and up. Unlike the typical Lancers, they wield Hinds with a much higher damage than the regular Grakatas. Their armor is not only doubled in amount, but replaced by more resilient Alloy armor compared to normal Lancer's Ferrite, the same armor heavy Grineer units often incorporate. They also have a slightly different helmet design, similar to a hoodie.

In the Grineer Forest, they wield Karaks instead.

The standard Hind-wielding variant deals -18.75% reduced damage to warframes' health before armor, further reduced by armor counting x1.1875 times, and +6.25% bonus damage to warframe shields. With 50% of their damage being Slash and a decent status chance, a large part of their threat to health comes from their occasional Slash procs (Bleeding) bypassing shield and armor.

The Karak-armed frontier variant deals -13.15% reduced damage to warframe health before armor, and armor counts x1.0509 times in this case. The bonus damage to warframe shields is +14.91%. This variant inflicts bleeding much less often, therefore has slightly higher direct damage.

Tactics

 * These Elite Lancers are treated the same way with regular Lancers, but conventional attacks are slightly tolerated.
 * They attack normally as their standard counterparts, which also includes the ability to throw grenades.
 * At Update 11, they possess significant armor values, double of regular Lancers. It is advised to use Puncture Damage to effectively dispatch the threat.
 * Their larger health pool provides greater protection overall, forcing attackers to deliver more damage to these units.
 * The Hind fires slightly slower than the Grakata despite its burst capabilities, which allows additional dodging time for the players.
 * It would seem the base damage is what the Hind has displayed for the players, 30, but the damage delivered at its weakest is around 10.
 * These normally have larger clip sizes; this, combined with the Hind's lower rate of fire and faster reload speed, makes it more difficult to avoid damage by waiting for Elite Lancers to reload.
 * Karak-wielding Frontier Elite Lancers do slightly less damage per shot than their Hind counterparts, have smaller clip size, and have a lower status chance, but are much more accurate over distance and can fire on full-auto.
 * This makes rushing Frontier Elite Lancers more risky than rushing standard ones due to the higher rate of fire and greater accuracy, however their lower status chance and trading of Slash for Impact damage offsets this so long as the player has enough health.
 * Standard Elite Lancers are likely to deal procs more often than regular Lancers, making them dangerous units even when not in swarms.
 * Elite Lancers tend to have less health after replacing the normal Lancers at level 15.

Trivia

 * Elite Lancers were first introduced in Update 9.
 * Elite Lancers originally wielded Burstons. This was changed to the Hind in Update 9.6 as the Burston was a Tenno weapon.
 * Curiously, the icon for the Frontier Elite Lancer is still wielding a Hind instead of a Karak.

Media
Elite Sturmsoldat