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Fixing Radial Javelin with just one change


Teridax68
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Radial Javelin's been a topic of discussion for quite some time: once Excalibur's 4, the effect was relegated to his 3 after his Super Jump got removed, and his 4 slot was instead given to Exalted Blade. Since then, the ability has aged terribly with the advent of power creep: whereas it was once a sizeable nuke, the ability now has virtually no effect against enemies past level 50, and even its stagger is itself blown out of the water by Radial Blind's much more powerful crowd control. It is, for all intents and purposes, a dead ability, and sticks out like a sore thumb on Excal, arguably one of the best-designed frames in the game otherwise. Because of this, many players have suggested replacing the ability entirely. I, however, believe it could very well be possible to not only keep Radial Javelin, but to make it awesome with just one change:

Make Radial Javelin act as an AoE, Melee 3.0 heavy attack.

What this means entails two main subcomponents:

  • Each strike of Radial Javelin would count as a melee attack, and thus benefit from melee / Exalted Blade mods and multipliers: Right off the bat, this would make Excalibur far more self-synergistic, because his 3 would combo off of his 2 and the mini-Radial Blind on his 4. Additionally, though, it would also add to his versatility, as he'd be able to clear a room of enemies via a stealth-enhanced RJ if undetected, and could pair well with other blinding or knockdown effects for the resulting damage multiplier. Benefiting from the mods on either his melee weapon or Exalted Blade (probably the latter) would allow Radial Javelin to scale much more smoothly as the player progresses through the game as well. However, this should also imply that Radial Javelin's base damage should be reduced in compensation, though it could perhaps also change to Exalted Blade's damage distribution, crit chance, crit damage, and status chance.
  • Radial Javelin would consume Excalibur's melee combo counter for bonus damage: One of the main changes Digital Extremes announced to Melee 3.0 is its reworking of the melee combo counter. Instead of providing a persistent melee damage multiplier, each light attack would generate a resource of sorts via the combo counter, that would be fully expended through heavy attacks for massively enhanced effects. Were Radial Javelin to have this effect, it would allow Excalibur to build up towards a powerful nuke in the midst of combat, particularly thanks to his very melee-oriented kit, then release it for a room clear that could scale infinitely, depending on how many hits were accumulated. Because this effect would consume a resource that would itself take time to build up, Excal could finally be allowed to have an AoE nuke that would scale, without him being able to spam room clears at high levels either.

The idea here is that Excalibur would retain the simple, direct effects of Radial Javelin, which he'd easily be able to put to use when just starting out, but which would scale and offer far more depth of gameplay as the player progresses throughout the game, while still remaining balanceable. He is, by no means, the frame in most urgent need of changes, but with four fully usable abilities, he really would be able to set the gold standard for frame design in Warframe. With the above, as a melee frame he'd be brought up to modern standards of melee gameplay, and could also be the flagship frame for Melee 3.0.

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2 hours ago, (XB1)Skippy575 said:

Question: would the Furious Javelin augment still add to the combo counter? If I'm understanding your second point using RJ would use up the combo counter hits accumulated. Using the augment adds to the combo counter.

I could see a potential ability spam here.

The augment doesn't actually increase Excalibur's combo counter, it simply gives him a temporary increase to his melee damage. Technically, you could still "spam" RJ as it'd benefit from its own melee increase, but that would likely be inferior to simply casting RJ and getting more Exalted Blade damage. If it were a problem, though, the fix could be to have Furious Javelin increase melee attack speed instead of bonus melee damage, which could grant him a similar bonus with regular melee and Exalted Blade attacks, but wouldn't influence his Radial Javelin damage.

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  • 1 month later...

Your thoughts about Excal's Radial Javelin and how to improve it are almost the same as mine. Being able to build up and release a devastating attack at the cost of melee multiplier.

He really needs to be looked at because that's the only thing that keeps Excalibur from being a perfect, balanced Warframe that has mobility, crowd control (defensive and offensive) and DPS abilities that have some limitations, but don't make him overpowered.

Overall, I support your idea. Hope DE takes notice of this.

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