Pizzarugi

First of all, Excalibur Prime doesn't even have the ability to function on its own while you're in Operator form. This plus implicit umbra polarities and their blind resetting Sentient resistances makes Excalibur Umbra superior to Prime. The issue that Umbra doesn't use subsumed abilities doesn't take away from the fact that at least it can fight on its own. It's not like you die if your umbra bot loses all HP. Just consider the subsumed abilities are meant for yourself rather than your bot. Try Revenant then, he's literally indestructible. If you have energy problems, subsume Dispensary or use Protea specters. There's also Arcane Energize if you have the platinum.

What weapon are you using? You have a lot of options for weapons that are capable of scaling all of the way to level cap in steel path. Archon disruption would be a cake walk by comparison. The trick is to prime your target with another weapon then use your DPS of choice to take them down. Armor strip is also extremely useful. For me, I start by using operator CC to lock them down and use unairu armor strip, hit them several times with my viral primer, then finish them off with Phenmor which I specced into bleed procs.

Being colossal health sponges doesn't equate to difficulty. That's effectively what they were before the update which made them easier to kill. You bring an incarnon weapon and you have infinite ammo so long as you remember to land headshots to keep it charged. They weren't ever dangerous as far as their damage is concerned either, but you could've also taken Revenant or an invisibility frame if you wanted to shut down their ability to be a direct threat to you. That meant the only thing that made them "challenging" was their ridiculous damage attenuation where you spent a grossly unnecessary amount of time just shooting it in the face while you chip away its HP. Unless, of course, you take one of the real meta weapons which just let you 1shot the stupid things right at the start of the encounter. Honestly I'm glad Archon fights were changed to the way they are now. I'm no longer incentivized to take a meta shotgun weapon to 1shot them and can instead use my Phenmor or Incarnon Furis without fights taking 10-20+ minutes holding the mouse button down and doing not much else.

He's fine if you're willing to use his Disarm. Irradiating Disarm is a very fun augment.

If we're talking ingame stats: Revenant. He's so tanky that he's literally unkillable. Remember how Omni-Man took an orbital space laser and walked off with a bloody nose? Revenant can stand in ground zero of a nuclear explosion (Profit-Taker/Exploiter death detonation) and suffer no damage, not even flinch. He has the power to instantly kill any enemy he fights by enthralling them first.

Just use tank frames with it. Rhino, Nezha, and Revenant would all benefit from it the most since they don't rely on their health/shield pools to stay alive. There's also lesser tank frames like Mesa or Zephyr. Barring that, try taking Loki, Ash, Octavia for invisibility to avoid getting shot so you can use the aura without putting yourself in harm's way. Not everything has to be equally usable on every frame.

It's a spicier version of Nyx's Chaos which has the same problem. I still think bonus radiation damage is fine as an ability. Saryn has a toxin version which is terrible unless you're fighting Corpus. Assuming you don't kill everything in an instant, turning them into aggro sponges for other enemies isn't bad as it means taking eximus attention off of you.

Pretty much this. DE has not given players any real incentive to fight enemies past the first C rotation in endless mission. The one and only exception to this rule has been the Index, but all you get is a meme decoration. Personally I wish DE would do more to encourage endurance runs rather than bailing every 5-20 minutes. All that being said, I don't think an instant access to level cap is that big of an ask so I don't see why DE can't include it somehow.

All I can suggest to the OP is that you need stronger weapons and mods. If you're struggling against level 80 eximus, that's a sign you need to re-evaluate your loadout before you find yourself running Steel Path which will only compound your problems further. I strongly recommend considering Kuva or Tenet weapons. Additionally, given that you're in the Zariman, the Incarnon weapons there would be most ideal. Phenmor and Laetum are powerhouses and will wreck eximus enemies very easily. Another thing you should evaluate are your mods and arcanes. Do you have any Galvanized mods? If not, you should complete all star chart missions and run some Arbitrations for Vitus Essence in order to purchase the mods. They provide a massive damage boost and pairing them with Kuva/Tenet/Incarnon weapons will let you obliterate Eximus enemies with ease. For warframe arcanes, I suggest anything that buffs your main weapon. For weapon arcanes, get Merciless or Deadhead for your main gun. How far along are you with subsuming frames using Helminth? If you want to minmax your damage to overguard, try taking Xata's Whisper. It gives bonus void damage which scales on ability strength. Overguard is weak to void damage, so it's a terrific ability for shredding it.

Strange, I'm LR1 and I managed to make it work.

The biggest problem I have with Nidus is that his ability kit is perfect, so perfect in fact that replacing any of them with a subsumed ability is actually detrimental. First ability is critical for any of the others to work so it can't be replaced. Larva is important to build stacks quickly so you'd hurt yourself by removing it. Link is essential for tanking damage and not dying. Ravenous helps build stacks faster plus the maggots apply CC and also pulls aggro off of you as well as infested ground providing additional healing for you and some defense objectives.

Furis Incarnon's 100% fire damage and high status chance has entered the chat.

That's fine? DE has said before that Steel Path is meant to be a challenge mode. As far as they're concerned, base star chart is their main focus so they don't care how balanced Steel Path is. And with that context, Thermal Sunder was absolutely busted in non-Steel Path content. Now if they would just do something about Saryn and Mesa next.

Imagine grinding 12 hours for prime junk just so you can buy 1 arcane energize and thinking that's reasonable.

I hate eidolon hunting and was glad to be done with it after I finished maxing out my chosen focus schools. The only reason the cycles are the way they are is to limit their access so players can't pump out tons of arcanes. Personally, I'd rather have more reliable means of farming those arcanes that doesn't involve grinding these bullet sponge bosses with incredibly meta-adherent teams. Let us buy them off Teshin using Steel Essence, but limit the weekly number to prevent AFK abuse or something.

They had to suffer through X content they no longer need to do, so you have to suffer. Crabs in a bucket mentality.

Neither of the examples you provided also have run-ending bugs tied to them, though. Plague Star is having issues right now which neither Acolytes nor steel essence farming are suffering from. It's not a fair comparison to make.

Bugs absolutely are a good excuse. You didn't have control over the situation leading you to forfeit the run, why should you be punished for it? Don't make exploiters everyone else's problem.

I just value the combo pause on holster. Yes the hate is stronger, but its projectile gimmick as you pointed out doesn't scale with mods, making it a simply stronger scythe with not much else going for it. I like not having to worry about finding another enemy to hit before the combo duration expires, or stacking mods/arcanes to extend it for as long as possible. As far as I can tell after comparing damage values, Anku is the strongest incarnon among the others with a combo pause too. This is before factoring in forced slash procs.

Yeah, this is why I stick to incarnon melees with combo duration pause on holster, because that's kinda the only good thing going for them right now. It's either that or I go back to using Tenet weapons, and Livia is the best one of those melees which is saying a lot. Anku with incarnon feels a lot better to use than a 2h nikana, plus I like the forced bleed procs after slide attack. That's pretty cool.

I've been wanting to suggest this for ages, but the only thing that's ever stopped my hand is: Everyone is going to want to host if given the opportunity, thus nobody is going to be joining anybody, inadvertently putting yourself in solo. We're all aware of how shoddy host migration can be, where it's a flip of a coin whether you'll be put into another mission with you or someone else as the host, or you get booted back to orbiter with nothing to show for it. Not to mention subjecting yourself to connecting to a host who had a low ping, but it turns out their internet spiked low enough for you to join before becoming outrageously high. Everyone's gonna host to avoid the headache of being a client, which is probably why DE never allowed it.

Sorry, I hadn't realized you weren't doing Circuit and instead took one of the challenge portals in Duviri. The best solution I can give if you wanna do those is to juice yourself hard before running them. Getting a TON of decrees centered around damage will turn you into a powerhouse and should let you obliterate eximus before they can swarm and take out your defense target. This isn't a guarantee for a win, because your success will still hinge on how good your weapons are. Having Revenant means not worrying about dying, but if your guns are poorly modded, that could mean spending more time than you might like stacking decrees. In that case, for the future, you should determine how much you're willing to stack decrees depending on how strong your weapon naturally is and deciding whether or not its worth doing one of those challenge portals in this run. I tend to play cautiously so when I'm told ahead of time that challenge portals are going to be difficult when DE announced them, I took necessary measures and ran them with overwhelming force.

Speaking as a Revenant main, I can throw you some advice if you happen to roll him again! Try subsuming Nyx's Mind Control into your kit, replacing Danse Macabre. One of Revenant's greatest gimmicks since the eximus rework is that he has a form of CC they're still vulnerable to: Distraction. His thralls can draw aggro. It's not a surefire way to peel enemies off your defense target, but they're extra meatshields you otherwise wouldn't have. The reason you want Mind Control is, if you're either playing with other people or you have a habit of just blasting wildly without a care about what you're shooting at, your mind controlled thrall will be immune to damage so they can keep creating more thralls for you. To make a mind controlled thrall, first you use Mind Control on the target then follow up with the Enthrall ability. Bonus points if you can bring an eximus overguard down so you can mind control them, giving you some extra benefits. Try and focus your damage on eximus enemies first since you can't enthrall them due to overguard. High duration builds are especially good here. Alternative options, if you have enough ability range, is to subsume Octavia's Resonator instead. This is great on other frames, especially ones you built for high range and duration such as Zephyr.

People upset they have to double dip on lootable corpses when they want to triple dip.

You shouldn't have to look up something outside of the game to understand how something works. That's the devs responsibility to make sure the information is clear and concise, it shouldn't be shouldered onto the players.