Will there ever be a reasonable replacement of Radial Javelin?

[Yasha-7HS]

I'm tired of the ability. Even with new players in mind, the ability means nothing. Even for low level wave clearing, there's no point in using it. It has no synergy -- no, it actually actively hampers the use of other abilities when built for.  Augmented, it's now also a waste of a slot that doesn't play nice with any of his other abilities and works on such a short duration that you could pick anything else and have a more consistent and fun playing experience. 

 

Radial Javelin has no point because everything it does is done better by his own kit.

It's main effect is damage, and Slash Dash alone can easily contest it in a single cast while also affecting more enemies and giving you survivability AT LEAST during its animation while not entirely taxing your warframe's mod economy, allowing it to mesh easily with any build that doesn't have negative range and even then it would still be more useful than radial javelin in the exact same scenario. 

The afterthought CC it applies are out classed by a single cast of radial blind which buffs melee damage a massive amount which furious javelin couldn't do well even if it had double the amount of javelins and maximum power strength, in which case you'd have effectively 5 seconds to actually utilize the buff and give up over half of your max base energy bar. Even Slash Dash can contest Radial Javelin the the CC aspect since it has forced knockdowns.

And again, its augment is worthless and only for yourself. Surging Dash, while only for yourself scales better and synergizes with both the Naramon tree and countless weapons, not to mention the amazing synergy it can have with Exalted Blade due to it being almost entirely unable to generate combo count on its own in common situations at the low or high end of the game's spectrum. Furious Javelin is kneecapped by the limit of javelins, kneecapped by the short duration, and killed entirely by the buff's base amount. Radiant Finish can only be reasonably called hampered by the base mechanic of "line of sight" being expressly inconsistent still, which is still also a factor for the Javelins. RF's buff is fine, the base ability's duration, range and cast time are all fine. The biggest thing going for it is your ability to allow teammates to also make use of this buff. Ash, Banshee, and Hydroid can all certainly take a modest 300% buff to their abilities along with 15 seconds of not having to worry about every enemy alive shooting at them. 

At this point, I want back the final iteration of Super Jump because at least that has more synergy with the rest of his kit than Radial Javelin AND Furious Javelin have now. It would actually be more consistent than Radial Blind is as keeping you alive due to not needing LoS, but turning you invisible. Even more consistent than Slash Dash since Slash Dash doen't have any invulnerability overhang and doesn't affect enemy accuracy at the end of the ability. Especially with mods such as Patagium and Pax Soar it could actually be interesting to try and min-max and actually always be a little useful for dropping aggro or surviving at a fifth the cost of Radial Blind and less than half the cost of Slash Dash as opposed to never using the ability at all because it wastes my time and more energy than any one of my abilities, or as much as two of my abilities combined while doing less than either of them would alone. 

 

Edit: Even something as simple as counting it as a finisher would suffice as synergy for both Radial Blind and Arcane Trickery.

Allowing it to scale with melee mods and combo counter, as well as adding to the former and scaling off of power strength to do so would be a... Passable buff though still outclassed by Surging Dash on similar builds, as 200% power strength and optimal conditions (hitting max enemies with no power strength javelin # scaling) is only 24 additional hits assuming base 1 per enemy, where surging dash in the same build would give 10 per enemy hitting just 3 enemies would make it better and require less effort. Even at 3 base combo additions, this brings it only to 72 hits. 8 enemies for Slash Dash is somewhat difficult in a single cast, but it would take 3 casts to equal just the energy cost of radial Javelin, and 3 enemies per cast is almost child's play. 

Edited December 31, 2018 by ShichiseitenYasha

[Fallen_Echo]

Just a question but what do you think about turning it into a duration based skill what is while active grants 5% chance of activating on an enemy with guns, 50% on a melee attack and 100% on skill use?

[Yasha-7HS]

10 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Just a question but what do you think about turning it into a duration based skill what is while active grants 5% chance of activating on an enemy with guns, 50% on a melee attack and 100% on skill use?

As in when you hit an enemy, or when an enemy hits you? I'm assuming the former because you said skill use, and not many enemies use skills.  

That could be an interesting idea, but the percentages would certainly need a lot of scaling and balancing. Like, 5% means nothing to a Baza or Supra, but could mean a LOT to shotguns and sniper rifles unless it's also based on pellet count/multishot similar to Vigilante Set bonus. It would certainly have nice synergy with Exalted Blade and Slash Dash, but another problem would be the damage. Unless we can focus the javelins to specific targets, or amounts of targets, the damage is going to still simply hold the ability back. The CC would be nice for survival and certainly make it more consistent than Radial Blind simply because it can activate multiple times though. 

 

[Fallen_Echo]

11 hours ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

As in when you hit an enemy, or when an enemy hits you? I'm assuming the former because you said skill use, and not many enemies use skills.  

That could be an interesting idea, but the percentages would certainly need a lot of scaling and balancing. Like, 5% means nothing to a Baza or Supra, but could mean a LOT to shotguns and sniper rifles unless it's also based on pellet count/multishot similar to Vigilante Set bonus. It would certainly have nice synergy with Exalted Blade and Slash Dash, but another problem would be the damage. Unless we can focus the javelins to specific targets, or amounts of targets, the damage is going to still simply hold the ability back. The CC would be nice for survival and certainly make it more consistent than Radial Blind simply because it can activate multiple times though. 

 

As in when you hit any enemy.

As for the percentages i was trying to keep up Excaliburs melee theme. You have the lowest proc chance with guns because of this theme, an 50/50 on melee weapons because you are now moving on your theme and 100% os skills.

All of the percentages should apply on individual hits so multishot and punchthrought all can proc it every time they hit, if they hit 10 times thats 10 chances to proc.

Also i didnt mean to change this ability to give us good damage or long cc but more like a support skill what you turn on and for the next minute you can javelin everything you hit with radial/slash/exalted for getting a little extra.

[Autongnosis]

il y a 19 minutes, Fallen_Echo a dit :

As in when you hit any enemy.

As for the percentages i was trying to keep up Excaliburs melee theme. You have the lowest proc chance with guns because of this theme, an 50/50 on melee weapons because you are now moving on your theme and 100% os skills.

All of the percentages should apply on individual hits so multishot and punchthrought all can proc it every time they hit, if they hit 10 times thats 10 chances to proc.

Also i didnt mean to change this ability to give us good damage or long cc but more like a support skill what you turn on and for the next minute you can javelin everything you hit with radial/slash/exalted for getting a little extra.

That's actually a very interesting idea, and would sorta make furious javelin at least not be completely useless. 

Also, letting it accumulate combo counter would make it pretty nice. 

Edited January 1, 2019 by Autongnosis

[Yasha-7HS]

9 hours ago, Autongnosis said:

would sorta make furious javelin at least not be completely useless. 

Also, letting it accumulate combo counter would make it pretty nice. 

Furious Javelin would still not be useful sadly outside of the situation where you're always hitting max enemies to get the max buff. FJ overrides your previous buff.

Edited January 1, 2019 by ShichiseitenYasha

[TKDancer]

making it a apply a good debuff(with a good duration) would be a way to make it work and be relevant in higher level play

 

either removing a % of armor, making enemies take extra dmg, making enemies affected by radial javeling experience exalted blade hits twitch

[Tyreaus]

Buzzsaw of javelins surrounding Excalibur and acting like passive, radial melee strikes for a duration. And a tweak to the augment such that the augment duration only counts down after RJ deactivates. </random thoughts>

[Arcira]

It doesn´t need to be removed, reworked or whatever. Just close the gap between ability- and weapon damage and it becomes usefull. Don´t ask me how it´s magic.

They can create more augment or a new ability mod category for those who want alternatives. This restriction to 4 spells per warframe is silly anyway.

[Yasha-7HS]

19 minutes ago, Arcira said:

It doesn´t need to be removed, reworked or whatever. Just close the gap between ability- and weapon damage and it becomes usefull. Don´t ask me how it´s magic.

They can create more augment or a new ability mod category for those who want alternatives. This restriction to 4 spells per warframe is silly anyway.

So, don't address it's abysmal cast time, don't address either its LoS limitations or it's attack limitations, just add more damage?

In your scenario: we have the exact same reason RJ is what it is now, and even then RJ had the problem of scaling -- the ability was only useful up until about Draco to nuke EXP. Now it's only useful up until Draco, and basically can't hit anything.

Just adding more damage solves nothing. The ability is currently a relic that needs to be adjusted for how Excalibur plays now and the way the game has changed.

Edited January 1, 2019 by ShichiseitenYasha

[Arcira]

30 minutes ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

So, don't address it's abysmal cast time, don't address either its LoS limitations or it's attack limitations, just add more damage?

Pretty much. See, I´m not saying there don´t need to be tweakes in any way but the core mechanic should be preserved. Nonetheless powerful aoe cc/damage abilities should reflect this nature in there cast time. LoS restriction should be the standard for everthing in my opinion. I´m fine with limited mechanics like pucture though.

30 minutes ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

Then we have the exact same reason RJ is what it is now, and even then RJ had the problem of scaling -- the ability was only useful up until about Draco to nuke EXP. Now it's only useful up until Draco, and basically can't hit anything.

Agreed the scaling (whether it´s ability, weapon or enemy scaling) is terrible and the main problem why certain things are useless or overpowered in my opinion.

30 minutes ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

Just adding more damage solves nothing. The ability is currently a relic that needs to be adjusted for how Excalibur plays now and the way the game has changed.

Probably correct but I didn´t say add more damage I said reduce the discrepancy between weapon and ability damage. That´s different. You could just add more damage sure and by doing so they might be balance on a certain level. But that doesn´t solve the problem because they would be vastly unbalanced in any other stage of the game. The only thing that influences ability damage is power strenght but weapon damage is affected by a lot of factors.

As I said one of the core problem is how scaling works. Fix this one and a lot of these symptomes are cured as well

Edited January 1, 2019 by Arcira

[Elementalos]

I think Arcia has a good point that rate at which weapons and abilities scale relative to each other is a big part of the problem... not just with Excal but with a lot of frames with damage oriented skills.

But I'm not sure that that's the solution for Javelin either though. The problem is its role in his kit. As a damage skill it's slow and makes you lose a lot of uptime for your other skills. As a CC skill it's... slow and Excalibur already has an AoE CC skill on his 2. It just doesn't feel like it really adds anything to his kit. Buffing it significantly would in turn just run the risk of infringing on one of his other already existing skills in the same fashion.

[(XBOX)MisterMooseMann]

How about we replace Radial Javelin with an AoE Melee damage buff that can be upgraded via Ability strength and duration. Blind in my opinion is more useful and sees a hell of a lot more usage than Radial Javelin does. I think this change could work because it compliments what he is good at: Melee.

Edited January 4, 2019 by (XB1)MisterMooseMann
More reasoning

[Teridax68]

On one hand, I completely agree that Radial Javelin as it currently exists is a badly dated ability, a relic from an era where warframe design was completely different, and where higher-level enemies were still weak enough to die to that effect. In its current state, the ability is completely redundant, as its damage is inferior to Exalted Blade, and its stagger vastly inferior to Radial Blind, and overall the effect adds little real gameplay to Excalibur's kit.

On the other hand, though, I also do think the ability can be salvaged: while the implementation is bad, I think the idea of being able to murder a whole room of enemies with a flurry of summoned swords is amazing. In practice, what's wrong with Radial Javelin isn't that the idea itself is bad, but that players who use it expect something awesome to happen, and get disappointed when the ability does next to nothing.

While I may be wrong, I think Radial Javelin could become a perfectly fun and viable part of Excalibur's kit with just two changes:

1. Make each strike from Radial Javelin count as a melee attack. What this would mean is that the ability would benefit from stealth damage multipliers: with this change, not only would Excalibur be able to stealth-kill a whole crowd of enemies if he's undetected (which would add to his versatility), the ability would also have direct synergy with Radial Blind, which opens enemies to stealth multipliers. With this, Radial Javelin would go from an ability that's currently completely out of place in Excal's kit, to one with at least some degree of synergy.
2. Have Radial Javelin consume Excalibur's melee combo counter for a damage multiplier. The idea here would be to have Excal build up his melee counter, which he should naturally be doing thanks to a very melee-focused kit, and then release it for a massive nuke that could scale into much higher levels. As such, Radial Javelin would be able to deal massive damage, but because it would rely on a resource that would need to be built up first, that amount of damage wouldn't be spammable. Considering how Melee 3.0 will apparently rework the melee combo counter, and turn it into an expendable resource for heavy attacks, this could fit perfectly within that system, and bring Excalibur up to date with modern melee standards.

TL;DR: have Radial Javelin behave like a massive, AoE heavy melee 3.0 attack, so that the ability would synergize with the rest of Excalibur's kit, and scale up to high levels in a healthy way. The ability would remain simple (and I think all of Excal's abilities should be very simple to grasp), but would have a lot more depth and higher-level scaling to its use, as well as an actual place in his kit.

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

38 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

 

1. Make each strike from Radial Javelin count as a melee attack. 
2. Have Radial Javelin consume Excalibur's melee combo counter for a damage multiplier. 

Honestly, these are the best ideas I've seen for a RJ rework, and as you pointed out it would fit well with his theme. 

Upvote from me.

[Yasha-7HS]

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

-snip-

I would recommend making this idea a thread to stand on its own, to get more visibility as it is a great idea.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

On 2019-01-04 at 10:26 AM, Teridax68 said:

 

That. Do that...