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, as well as a high chance of Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. procing targets. 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, appearing to have a hood.
Frontier variants wield Karaks instead, and Drekar variants wield Harpaks.
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 Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. procs (Bleeding) bypassing shields and armor. They also have a good fire rate, further increasing their Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. proc capabilities
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 and fire rate.
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 11.0 (2013-11-20), they possess significant armor values, double of regular Lancers. It is advised to use Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage weapons 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 fire, 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 Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. 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 due to standard Lancers being affected by level scaling while the Elite Lancer is not (as they have a base level of 15).
- It is important to have weapons that can inflict elemental or physical damage that the Elite Lancer is weak against due to their much higher base armor and health, combined with their tendency to appear in large groups.
- They are the most likely enemies to carry a Blunt pack, a device that provides the Grineer units additional cover whenever the environment is too open to hide from attacks.
- The Blunt pack spawning is shared along with the Lancer.
Variants
| Arid Elite Lancer | General | Drops | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Introduced | Undetermined | Mod Drops: Quickdraw 0.625% Redirection 0.625% Revenge 0.625% Fusion Core 0.281% Razor Shot 0.281% Crossing Snakes 0.021% Thunderbolt 0.021% Undying Will 0.021% | |
| Tileset | Grineer Settlement | |||
| Weapon | Hind | |||
| Codex Scans | 20 | |||
| Statistics | ||||
| Cloned Flesh | 150 | |||
 +  +  +++  ‐  ‐‐
| ||||
| Alloy Armor | 200 | |||
 + + +++ ‐‐ ‐‐ ‐‐
| ||||
| Affinity | 150 | |||
| Base Level | 10 | |||
| Frontier Elite Lancer | General | Drops | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Introduced | Undetermined | Mod Drops: Quickdraw 0.625% Redirection 0.625% Revenge 0.625% Fusion Core 0.281% Razor Shot 0.281% Crossing Snakes 0.021% Thunderbolt 0.021% Undying Will 0.021% | |
| Tileset | Grineer Forest | |||
| Weapon | Karak | |||
| Codex Scans | 20 | |||
| Statistics | ||||
| Cloned Flesh | 150 | |||
| + + +++ ‐ ‐‐
| ||||
| Alloy Armor | 200 | |||
| + + +++ ‐‐ ‐‐ ‐‐
| ||||
| Affinity | 150 | |||
| Base Level | 15 | |||
| Drekar Elite Lancer | General | Drops | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Introduced | Undetermined | Mod Drops: Pressure Point 0.938% Vitality 0.938% Diamond Skin 0.188% Heated Charge 0.188% Mobilize 0.188% Fusion Core 0.021% Heavy Trauma 0.021% Streamline 0.021% | |
| Tileset | Grineer Sealab | |||
| Weapon | Harpak | |||
| Codex Scans | 5 | |||
| Statistics | ||||
| Cloned Flesh | 150 | |||
| + + +++ ‐ ‐‐
| ||||
| Alloy Armor | 200 | |||
| + + +++ ‐‐ ‐‐ ‐‐
| ||||
| Affinity | 150 | |||
| Base Level | 15 | |||
Trivia
- Elite Lancers were first introduced in Update 9.0 (2013-07-13).
- Elite Lancers originally wielded Burstons as a placeholder. This was changed to the Hind in Update 9.6 (2013-08-16) as the Burston was a Tenno weapon.
- The Drekar Elite Lancer seems to wear much less armor than the other variants, looking very similar to Drekar Butchers.
Media
