Radial Javelin Rework

[AlphaRyuuxx]

16 hours ago, Lone_Dude said:

I just don't want these changes to consist of a DR-timer or an 1500 armor UI element. Too many frames have it and I already own an umbrafied Wukong. At that point you might as well just copy Furious Javelin, make it so that each enemy hit by it gives armor instead of damage, make it innate and call it a day - it will have the same amount of originality and usefulness behind it, but will require way less effort from the devs. 

The whole slamming the sword in the ground and staying immobile long enough to soak up damage feels incredibly awkward to me.

Yeah I posted in one of the posts above that another idea I had was to make it a crossover between nezha's warding halo and gara's splinter storm. Once activated go invincible for a little bit and it gives the DR x amount of health and then you have floating swords constantly circling around you dealing slash damage, and you could tap it to fire said swords in an aoe circle or hold to fire them in a straight line with increased damage.

[Yunjuwo]

23 hours ago, Lone_Dude said:

The whole slamming the sword in the ground and staying immobile long enough to soak up damage feels incredibly awkward to me.

Even though armor provides health DR, it requires exponentially more armor to receive any significant increases in DR percentages as your armor value goes higher, so while I agree that just a plain DR ability would be bland it would actually be a more noticeable improvement than an armor ability since excal already has a lot of armor (unless said armor ability would give absolutely ridiculous amount of armor). The benefit to a rework with DR is that it can be easily adjusted after release since you're literally just working with numbers, and it doesn't turn excal into a tank. As tempting as it sounds for excal to have something like Mesmer Skin, it's not for him. Right now, he's in that weird place between squishy and safe, and I'm personally against him getting the Saryn treatment of "dps is the best survivability".

Staying immobile is also a big no for me, if at all possible.

[Lone_Dude]

11 hours ago, Yun_Woo-Seok said:

Even though armor provides health DR, it requires exponentially more armor to receive any significant increases in DR percentages as your armor value goes higher, so while I agree that just a plain DR ability would be bland it would actually be a more noticeable improvement than an armor ability since excal already has a lot of armor (unless said armor ability would give absolutely ridiculous amount of armor). The benefit to a rework with DR is that it can be easily adjusted after release since you're literally just working with numbers, and it doesn't turn excal into a tank. As tempting as it sounds for excal to have something like Mesmer Skin, it's not for him. Right now, he's in that weird place between squishy and safe, and I'm personally against him getting the Saryn treatment of "dps is the best survivability".

Staying immobile is also a big no for me, if at all possible.

At this point we might as well give DR/Invulnerability/armor to every frame just to attempt to fix the actual issue - broken scaling of enemy damage and lack of things such as shield gating and grace period on damage.

Frankly, I have nothing against DR, since it will be less of a pain in the ass to play as certain frames and Warframe certainly is not a shining example of precise and thorough balancing lmao. The game will become 1% easier because it's already super easy and broken. I dislike that idea not because I think that it's bad for balance or won't work, but because I just find it extremely boring when it's just "set it and forget it" kind of DR.

18 hours ago, AlphaRyuuxx said:

Yeah I posted in one of the posts above that another idea I had was to make it a crossover between nezha's warding halo and gara's splinter storm. Once activated go invincible for a little bit and it gives the DR x amount of health and then you have floating swords constantly circling around you dealing slash damage, and you could tap it to fire said swords in an aoe circle or hold to fire them in a straight line with increased damage.

I saw your idea of giving excal some of that MOTIVATION. I'm more of a wacky-woo-hoo pizza kind of man though, but I like the direction. However, I would change a couple of things. I won't bother you with a wall of text, so I'll hide my take on the ability in the spoiler - click on it if you want to read some DR fanfiction lmao.

Spoiler

Instead of making "javelins" or "Exalted Blades" rotate around excal, I would make it so that they spawn behind him. Basically, normal summoned swords, but instead of flying into the targets right away, they just float behind the user. Similar to Dantes Sin Swordmaster/Royal Guard(and I think Vergil already had that in cursed DmC)

Why? Because if they rotate around Excal it might cause some interference with normal melee(imagine running up to an enemy to keep your combo counter going, but it dies from your 3) and I'm not a fan of that. It would also mean that excal would get a lazy way to deal damage by just running past enemies - and we all know what that leads to. DE really doesn't like that.

Basically, I would make it a copy of Novas 1. But as you said - it's pretty dumb to lose it over time and having to recast it constantly whenever it decides to go off on some harmless grunt(especially because you can blind stuff as excal so its even more of a waste to spend charges on blind enemies). So instead I would make it so that it doesn't trigger on its own.

• When ability is used it spawns 6 javelins. There is no cast animation. There is no timer on them. Ability cost remains the same as it is now.
• Each javelin deals twice the damage of the Exalted Blades normal attack(1k damage, just like it does now but with EB IPS distribution) and scales with melee combo counter by 50%(basically at 12x you get 6x the damage). It doesn't double-dip power strength scaling damage-wise, since Exalted Blade already benefits from it.
• Each active javelin provides 5% DR that scales with power strength. Allowing for 60% DR at 200% strength. I don't think it needs to go higher since excal has his 2.
• On each tap of the ability button, 1 javelin is sent towards the enemy that the player is aiming at, or, to the nearest enemy if player doesn't aim at anyone(more like javelins teleport into the enemy right away the same way they currently do). When ability key is held(for less than a second, no idiotic charging for 2-5 seconds lmao) all of the javelins are released with twice the efficiency - basically, if you "charge" the ability you get 2x the amount of javelins you have left.
• When the javelin is sent out, player doesn't lose DR right away, instead 1 stack of DR(5% unmodded) decays over 15 seconds(scales with power duration). Sending out anoter javelin during that time period will add another stack of DR and refresh the timer of the first one. When ability is charged, even if there was only 1 javelin left, DR decay duration is 20 seconds.
• All DR stacks are lost when player casts RJ again.
• Enemies that survive being struck by a javelin are stunned.
• Javelins contribute to melee combo counter - 5 combo "points"(?) per javelin, doesn't scale with power strength.
• Each javelin has the same crit and status chance as Exalted Blade. It also procs same status effects as Exalted Blade.
• If Slash Dash is used while at least 2 javelins are active, it's cone is increased by 1.5m on each side of Excalibur.
• If used while Exalted Blade is active, javelins cause guaranteed bleed, puncture and impact status procs on hit. All three, simultaneously, even if player uses the Chromatic Blade and only has elemental damage.
• Furious Javelin provides the same amount of damage bonus per javelin as it does currently and uses the same duration and stack mechanic as Javelin DR. However, Furious Javelin stacks remain after the next cast of the ability.

And I suppose that's it.

• It allows the player to actively use the ability without taking away DR, by either slowly spending javelins and refreshing DR, or by using all javelins right away to nuke a room but having to spend energy to recast the ability later. Or player can just toggle the ability and have DR but no other benefits aside from Slash Dash synergy.
• it also motivates the use of melee, helps with keeping the combo counter going/regaining it after using a heavy attack.
• Javelins have decent damage and scale with EB and combo counter, so they are not all about passive effects and gameplay mechanics around them and actually have a direct use as a damage dealing ability.
• Javelins actually have a real synergy with Slash Dash and EB.
• Furious Javelin is easier to manage and greatly increases the damage of the ability itself, along with melee and EB damage.
• No more annoying movement interruption.
• I guess it's somewhat OP but it's 75 energy. And frankly, I don't care. I want the game to be fun, the combat system is not deep enough to be bothered by.

 

[CopperBezel]

Gosh I wish Nova's Null Star would get a similar rethinking. I can see Excalibur going a lot of ways, and this is a good one, a form of DR that requires buildup and can be managed a bit (though not requiring management in quite the same way as some others.) There's something wrong when the fastest way to restore my DR is to walk through a nullifier bubble so I can recast it to full strength instantly for a pittance of energy. Don't know if it makes it better or worse that there's an augment for doing exactly that. X /

[Yunjuwo]

5 hours ago, Lone_Dude said:

At this point we might as well give DR/Invulnerability/armor to every frame just to attempt to fix the actual issue - broken scaling of enemy damage and lack of things such as shield gating and grace period on damage.

I honestly wouldn't mind if we got a hard reset on enemy health/dmg scaling and our dmg. Make it so that each enemy isn't just an ant you accidentally stepped on, have the squishiest of frames be able to survive at least one hit, let 4th abilities feel like trump cards and not "spam x to win" strats. Obviously literally everything will need to be changed too for balancing reasons which is why this probably won't ever happen, unfortunately: too much work for the dev team. I'm sure that not everyone will be onboard with this either. It reeks of the old days of the game.

[AlphaRyuuxx]

7 hours ago, Lone_Dude said:

Because if they rotate around Excal it might cause some interference with normal melee(imagine running up to an enemy to keep your combo counter going, but it dies from your 3) and I'm not a fan of that. It would also mean that excal would get a lazy way to deal damage by just running past enemies - and we all know what that leads to. DE really doesn't like that.

Well similar to how slash dash adds combo. So could each hit of one of the rotating swords, maybe at a reduced rate for balancing's sake. As for just running past enemies, ff gara is able to have an ability akin to this and still be able to room clear I think it'll be okay for excal to have a similar ability. 

Also another idea for it to have an interaction with EB would be: 

When activated summon X swords that hover/rotate (vertically) around excal giving DR etc and damages and procs slash on enemies within like 1 meter. When exalted blade is activated, the swords rotate outwards (horizontal) and rotate at increased speed and the range increases to 1.5-2 meters. Tap to fire in a circle and hold to fire in a straight line. 

Also maybe have it so whenever his 3 runs out or he fires it, he gains very short invulnerability phase (like nezha) to give him time to recast it. 

 

As for your whole DR stacking idea, on one hand I do like it but on the other, we have to always keep in mind that excalibur is a starter warframe and newer players are going to be playing him. While him being a 'beginner' warframe shouldn't fully excuse him having a stupidly simple kit, I think it is something to keep in mind when redesigning him and to not make him too complicated where it alienates the player. 

As for interactions with his other abilities, I'd keep it more simple where having this activated while slash dashing just increases the slash dash damage and increases the amount of combo earned and the firing of javelins takes into consideration blind/stealth multiplier. 

[Lone_Dude]

1 hour ago, AlphaRyuuxx said:

Well similar to how slash dash adds combo. So could each hit of one of the rotating swords, maybe at a reduced rate for balancing's sake. As for just running past enemies, ff gara is able to have an ability akin to this and still be able to room clear I think it'll be okay for excal to have a similar ability. 

Also another idea for it to have an interaction with EB would be: 

When activated summon X swords that hover/rotate (vertically) around excal giving DR etc and damages and procs slash on enemies within like 1 meter. When exalted blade is activated, the swords rotate outwards (horizontal) and rotate at increased speed and the range increases to 1.5-2 meters. Tap to fire in a circle and hold to fire in a straight line. 

Also maybe have it so whenever his 3 runs out or he fires it, he gains very short invulnerability phase (like nezha) to give him time to recast it. 

 

As for your whole DR stacking idea, on one hand I do like it but on the other, we have to always keep in mind that excalibur is a starter warframe and newer players are going to be playing him. While him being a 'beginner' warframe shouldn't fully excuse him having a stupidly simple kit, I think it is something to keep in mind when redesigning him and to not make him too complicated where it alienates the player. 

As for interactions with his other abilities, I'd keep it more simple where having this activated while slash dashing just increases the slash dash damage and increases the amount of combo earned and the firing of javelins takes into consideration blind/stealth multiplier. 

I really dislike abilities that allow you to just run past stuff and have it die, I find it boring. When the game does everything for you, what's the purpose in playing it? I don't like Gara for that very reason. So I suppose that's where we are at a disagreement.

As for "too complicated" for newbies - we have a dedicated "tips" ui element in-game. Pretty sure most people that play video games can at the very least read. If someone doesn't have enough brains to understand it - too bad, they wont have ALL benefits of it. It's as if you have to think and apply effort in order to master something - who would've thought it works that way lmao. Games shouldn't be dumbed down because Johnny can't shake the dust off of his tiny brain. Anyway, it's not any more difficult than stuff that already exists in the game, hell, in a way it's easier to use than Garas kit(aside from the running past stuff part).

I suppose it depends on what kind of mentality you have when playing video games - if I start a game and find out that even the starting "class" has the same depth as stuff that comes later, IF you bother to learn it, I feel invested. I'm more disappointed to find out that something is simple and stupid, than to learn that I can't get 100% use out of something because of my lack of understanding.

Edited December 29, 2019 by Lone_Dude

[Xzorn]

I made this a while back when that trailer came out trying to improve the starter frames a little.

This was also before all the recent melee changes so might need some stat changes but the concept is easy enough.

I feel it does a decent job of adding some scaling performance to the ability along with synergy to both Blind and Exalted Blade.

If only he had mod space there would be even better synergy with some of his augments. Oh well.

 

---

	ENERGY 75 KEY 3	Radial Javelin Launches javelins towards enemies, dealing high damage and impaling them to walls.	Strength:500 / 650 / 800 / 1000 (damage)
			Duration:N/A
			Range:15 / 18 / 22 / 25 m
			Misc:5 / 7 / 10 / 12 (javelins)

 

• Damage is distributed evenly between Puncture and Slash.
• Damage is affected by the Melee Combo Counter
• Has Innate enemy Punch-Through
• Each Javelin has a 200% critical multiplier with a 15% critical chance and a 10% status chance
• Crit Multiplier, Crit Chance and Status chance are affected by equipped melee mods.
• Casting while Airborne causes Radial Javelin to perform a targeted slam attack before launching Javelins.
• Targeted Slam attack counts as part of Radial Javelin's 1s casting time which can result in an instant cast after landing.
• Each Javelin will produce an energy wave if Exalted Blade is currently active.
• The waves behave identically to those of Exalted Blade.

[AlphaRyuuxx]

2 hours ago, Lone_Dude said:

I really dislike abilities that allow you to just run past stuff and have it die, I find it boring. When the game does everything for you, what's the purpose in playing it? I don't like Gara for that very reason. So I suppose that's where we are at a disagreement.

I mean it could be changed to where it doesn't do the rotating aoe damage until exalted blades activated. But it can still at least apply slash and possibly build combo. 

And the only reason i brought up the whole newbie thing was because it's the most common argument against excal being reworked to have much more intricacies/just being more complicated

 

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

I made this a while back when that trailer came out trying to improve the starter frames a little.

This was also before all the recent melee changes so might need some stat changes but the concept is easy enough.

I feel it does a decent job of adding some scaling performance to the ability along with synergy to both Blind and Exalted Blade.

If only he had mod space there would be even better synergy with some of his augments. Oh well.

 

---

	ENERGY 75 KEY 3	Radial Javelin Launches javelins towards enemies, dealing high damage and impaling them to walls.	Strength:500 / 650 / 800 / 1000 (damage)
			Duration:N/A
			Range:15 / 18 / 22 / 25 m
			Misc:5 / 7 / 10 / 12 (javelins)

 

• Damage is distributed evenly between Puncture and Slash.
• Damage is affected by the Melee Combo Counter
• Has Innate enemy Punch-Through
• Each Javelin has a 200% critical multiplier with a 15% critical chance and a 10% status chance
• Crit Multiplier, Crit Chance and Status chance are affected by equipped melee mods.
• Casting while Airborne causes Radial Javelin to perform a targeted slam attack before launching Javelins.
• Targeted Slam attack counts as part of Radial Javelin's 1s casting time which can result in an instant cast after landing.
• Each Javelin will produce an energy wave if Exalted Blade is currently active.
• The waves behave identically to those of Exalted Blade.

I mean we don't need radial javelin to be a nuke ability again. While having it scale better would certainly make it not useless, its not what excal Needs. Which is a good solid defensive ability. 

[Lone_Dude]

31 minutes ago, AlphaRyuuxx said:

I mean it could be changed to where it doesn't do the rotating aoe damage until exalted blades activated. But it can still at least apply slash and possibly build combo. 

And the only reason i brought up the whole newbie thing was because it's the most common argument against excal being reworked to have much more intricacies/just being more complicated

Well, as I said, our concepts are different at their core, but yeah it sounds better that way.

And I'm not directing any of the "if you dont want things to be more complex than 2+2 you're dumb and should stop playing video games" at you. I'm just sharing my opinion on that whole thing.

[Xzorn]

24 minutes ago, AlphaRyuuxx said:

I mean we don't need radial javelin to be a nuke ability again. While having it scale better would certainly make it not useless, its not what excal Needs. Which is a good solid defensive ability. 

 

Yea, he has Blind.

If Blind isn't working out because everything is immune then tell DE to stop designing like derps.

45k eHP from the front is hardly something I would consider in dire need of a defensive ability either.

Now that Exalted weapons can't benefit from combo meter I think Defense is just one of many problems. They gave every frame auto-parry and most melee get higher mitigation values. Even if they gave him more Defense; He's just not good by comparison. I feel he needs far more than just changing Rad Javs at this point. He does about 1/4 the damage he used to making use of combo meter including his Slash Dash which still doesn't work well and his main Defense ability gets ignored constantly.

[AlphaRyuuxx]

11 minutes ago, Lone_Dude said:

Well, as I said, our concepts are different at their core, but yeah it sounds better that way.

And I'm not directing any of the "if you dont want things to be more complex than 2+2 you're dumb and should stop playing video games" at you. I'm just sharing my opinion on that whole thing.

yeah I know that, but I brought it up because its something that developers have to keep in mind when reworking beginner characters. One thought process is that they don't want to I guess overwhelm newer places with all these intricacies and would want to ease players into warframe and leave the harder to play stuff for when they get further into the game and a better understanding. 

 

8 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

Yea, he has Blind.

If Blind isn't working out because everything is immune then tell DE to stop designing like derps.

45k eHP from the front is hardly something I would consider in dire need of a defensive ability either.

Now that Exalted weapons can't benefit from combo meter I think Defense is just one of many problems. They gave every frame auto-parry and most melee get higher mitigation values. Even if they gave him more Defense; He's just not good by comparison. I feel he needs far more than just changing Rad Javs at this point. He does about 1/4 the damage he used to making use of combo meter including his Slash Dash which still doesn't work well and his main Defense ability gets ignored constantly.

I mean spamming blind can only get you so far, and all it takes if for one enemy(lvl 5 kuva lich level) to be behind terrain or to be out of range and fire a bullet at excal to drop him dead.

45k ehp sounds like a decent amount on paper but raw armor can only take a frame so far (unless they have stupid amounts of it). Many squishier frames are able to out tank umbra due to damage reduction just being better. And yes you can chalk this up to bad enemy scaling from DE's part, unless they choose to rework it, which I highly doubt they will because then all of the frames who are surviving well and above now will be unkillable. 

And yes I agree that all exalted weapons got pretty shafted after the update. But if they gave excal a defensive tool that isn't cc, he'd be able to run the plethora of good melees we have now. Slash dash is really only used for mobility and even that doesn't work very well sometimes with its super jank targeting system. Yes hes not good in comparison to a lot of other frames, even his fellow exalted users for 2 reasons. Wukong has clone and defy, valkyr has warcry, and baruuk has DR out the ass and an aoe sleep too and the reason they aren't in the predicament that Excal is in is because they have reliable tools to keep themselves alive and applify their damage. 

Also I don't understand what you're trying to imply by saying "his main defense ability gets ignored constantly", how? That's literally Excal's only saving grace, you have to spam that against high level enemies to have even a single chance at surviving their damage. Ask/talk to any excalibur main and they'll tell you that the only way to keep excal alive at higher levels is to spam blind and life strike/healing return. 

 

[Xzorn]

1 hour ago, AlphaRyuuxx said:

I mean spamming blind can only get you so far, and all it takes if for one enemy(lvl 5 kuva lich level) to be behind terrain or to be out of range and fire a bullet at excal to drop him dead.

 

That's kinda the point of my jab though. It's not really the frame's fault. It's the new design of enemies and the result of this design is only a select few tactics will work ie eHP rocks with Damage. Enemy damage scaling specifically is at fault but that was so many years ago it's impossible to fix at this point.

Blind has been Excal's main defense ability for 7 years. It only stopped working because of DE's enemy designs. In fact the best CC ability in the game long ago when it wasn't subject to line of sight and before Nullifiers. It's no longer reliable due to enemy designs and thus Excal has no reliable defense.

Only generic DR / Barrier effects work now as reliable defense. Not even invisibility is very reliable anymore and DE has made it that way.
I don't play new content personally because if I did I'd only use 2-3 frames total and that's quite boring to me but that's Warframe now.

[Ender140]

I just want excal to have innate damage reduction and life steal. He'll be able to resume to his previous spot on the meta. Remove his sword buff passive and maybe rework javelin.

[Yunjuwo]

4 hours ago, Ender140 said:

I just want excal to have innate damage reduction and life steal. He'll be able to resume to his previous spot on the meta. Remove his sword buff passive and maybe rework javelin.

lol. No frame just comes with innate DR. At best that would be armor which everyone technically does in fact already have. DR and health won't push him into meta though because those are things that serve him alone, whereas people hire Saryns and Mesas because of what they provide to the team: mass genocide.

His passive would be good even as the small +10% that it is right now if 1) it applied to all melee and not a select few for some odd reason(which honestly makes no sense) and 2) it was a multiplicative bonus that applied after all other calculations, instead of the additive bonus that it is now. That's an easy one-man-one-day job that could make excal's passive actually noteworthy while also not game-breaking, which I think is actually a good/healthy thing.

As for reworking radial javelin lmao that's literally what we're all here to discuss...

[NuclearCoffeePot]

Here is an idea for a radial javelin change, If we want him to keep a swordsman theme while giving survivability then here

New 3-Parry- Enter a counter state, reflecting attacks coming from an angle in front of you while slightly reducing movement speed- 100% chance to parry melee attacks, perform finisher against enemies who do this- acts as a toggle, can be used with exalted blade active-with exalted blade, parrying attacks releases an aoe ring all around you, knocking back enemies and restoring a small amount of energy for each enemy hit- Return damage can scale with your equipped melee, if none or if using 4 scales with exalted blade stats- can use other abilities which will stop the drain for the casting animation and switch back- IN counter state you cannot attack with ranged weapons

[Yunjuwo]

5 hours ago, NuclearCoffeePot said:

reflecting attacks coming from an angle in front of you

Even being affected by mods, enemy scaling will have this damage fall off pretty quickly. Only instance of reflected dmg I've seen work is Octavia, which is fine imo since that's the only way she can kill via abilities.

Excal already has his 4 for dmg, he just needs better defense to take his 4 into high level content. We know his 3 summons skanas to attack, so summoning them to protect him instead sounds like a plausible change while still keeping their aesthetic value.

[NuclearCoffeePot]

14 minutes ago, Yun_Woo-Seok said:

Even being affected by mods, enemy scaling will have this damage fall off pretty quickly. Only instance of reflected dmg I've seen work is Octavia, which is fine imo since that's the only way she can kill via abilities.

Excal already has his 4 for dmg, he just needs better defense to take his 4 into high level content. We know his 3 summons skanas to attack, so summoning them to protect him instead sounds like a plausible change while still keeping their aesthetic value.

The point in my mind isn't to deal damage, it;s as a way to avoid damage to increase survivability, the reason i include damage scaling with melee is because without it ppl would probbaly complain it deals no damage- YOu can tweak it however you want but having a way to avoid damage is really great and thematically the ability fits for a swordsman

[AlphaRyuuxx]

16 minutes ago, NuclearCoffeePot said:

The point in my mind isn't to deal damage, it;s as a way to avoid damage to increase survivability, the reason i include damage scaling with melee is because without it ppl would probbaly complain it deals no damage- YOu can tweak it however you want but having a way to avoid damage is really great and thematically the ability fits for a swordsman

no one would complain about it doing no damage if it served its purpose of providing Excal with good defense. The reason we complain about current radial javelin is because not only does its damage suck but its second function (the stun) is outclassed by his blind. Even if a hypothetical reworked 3 did no damage, providing Excal with something that he desperately needs would be appreciated regardless. Also EB is suppose to be Excal's pillar ability, the ability that his first 3 help support and interact with. Granted EB isn't in a very good spot either, pretty much no exalted is good right now, but hopefully DE notices all of the exalted weapon complains in the forums and buff them

[Dunha]

 Maybe a passive that gives 5, maybe even 10 armour per body count or something. His name being Excalibur, his third skill could be "Avalon," giving him block in all directions, without actually blocking, so you could keep hitting people. 

[LascarCapable]

On 2019-10-21 at 2:31 AM, Uhkretor said:

... Or, or, or...

 

... Make the Radial Javelin's damage be affected by Exalted Blade... And, if we're going to mention Radial Javelin, I suppose Slash Dash requires the same Synergy... After all, EB is used on those two skills, otherwise it would use our Melee weapon instead.

If you do this, people will just spam Radial Javelin over and over to nuke stuff. Not the greatest idea IMO : we don't want to encourage a "press 4 to win" playstyle again like it used to be for many frames (though in this case it's more of a press 3 to win issue).

Just turning Radial Javelin into a survival based ability would be enough. Giving to Radial Javelin lifesteal properties would go a mile forward. It was sort of suggested in the OP.

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, whatever it does, it can't be a nuke without making EB less interesting and it can't be a radial stun without making Blind less interesting. Life steal of some form could do wonders, especially with Excalibur's biggest endgame build hurting a bit from the changes to Life Strike, as long as it scales well and doesn't make Excalibur immortal in the early game.

[Yunjuwo]

I think this is as good a time as any.

Who else remembers when exalted blade auto-blocked even while attacking? And then one day it just poofed...

[Uhkretor]

1 hour ago, Yun_Woo-Seok said:

Who else remembers when exalted blade auto-blocked even while attacking? And then one day it just poofed...

You mean, the autoblock that still happens when its selected with Quick Melee, and the manual block that still happens when you manually switch to your Melee weapon?

You should try those two out.

[Dunha]

13 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Yeah, whatever it does, it can't be a nuke without making EB less interesting and it can't be a radial stun without making Blind less interesting. Life steal of some form could do wonders, especially with Excalibur's biggest endgame build hurting a bit from the changes to Life Strike, as long as it scales well and doesn't make Excalibur immortal in the early game.

Life steal means nothing when you're getting one shooted, it doesn't solve the problem if you need to keep spamming to keep yourself alive, radial blind already do that. And every melee is hurted with the new life strike, equip reflex coil and call it a day. He needs damage reduction, even ember has one now.

Now that thing about making EB less interesting; is that a bad thing? What is wrong about making his whole kit interesting? I don't think people use EB because is cool or interesting, they just can't do anything else.