Going to revive this again because I’ve been playing excal for the past three weeks and will likely continue to do so, as he is the best looking melee frame imo.
I'm running him with arcane reaper, and umbral vitality, fibre and adaption for survivability, which while reaper isn’t maxed (yet) as long as I’m keeping my daikyu life steal up with nikanas I’m relatively okay, I’ve subsumed his 4 to kullervos 1, and as far as damage goes meshing that with his javelin augment I don’t have an issue with damage.
the things I do have an issue with however:
Radial blind takes too long to cast, for limited benefit which has already been covered
slash dash while I use it for survivability and a touch of mobility, is otherwise useless - pitiful damage, no crits, even the slash it procs is piss tier (I know it’s weapon dependent but still, my nikana does stupid high bleed so) and without the augment, as I switched out for adaption, doesn’t REALLY serve much of a use so it’s basically locked to survival.
radial javelin is pointless without the augment - utterly and totally. I run something stupid like %250 ability strength and it still does no damage which would be fine if you didn’t take 10 years to cast it, and it actually had a benefit outside of the augment. Giving him something like an extra %90 dr during the animation, and maybe evoking some weakness in hit targets (if not just make the augment base) then you’d be set imo. Hell you could make javelin synergise with slash dash if say once you javelined, each target is “marked” and hitting slash dash would zip between each target at a high pace (assuming slash dashes damage is also buffed) then Atleast you keep the charm of a blade master frame while giving him an option to deal with groups at ultra high level rather than just primer + con overload build.
lastly his exalted blade. Hard for me to comment as I don’t use it but still my thoughts. As an exalted weapon, I feel it completely removes the charm of having a melee frame, but this is a personal opinion. The moveset actually feels really good, but most if not all people use it exclusively for sword beams - taking away from the melee aspect. I would like to have exalted blade be THE premier exalted sword, with sword beams perhaps being grouped in with chromatic blade, with the downside of no longer being able to slot acolyte mods. Hell power fantasy here but having exalted blade be a channeled buff to your main melee similar to the old channeling system could also be a cool way of increasing synergy across his whole loadout.
It would be fantastic for the melee frame, to have some level of grouping or reliable multi target damage. Slash dash could very easily fill that roll, but personally would like the animation and speed for slash dash to be sped up rather than a slow meander over to a pitiful slash.
as it stands, kullervo is basically a straight upgrade in all aspects but visual appeal, having solid survivability, insanely good group killing, a stupidly funny gap closer / buff, and a combo building aoe which promotes heavy attack usage on top of his passive.
comparing both side by side and you’d find that kullervo just seems to be better in every regard - and even more fitting of the title blade master. But this isn’t a kullervo thread so lmao.
excal doesn’t need much, but certainly needs something to keep up I think.
