Slash Dash is now pointless

[Yasha-7HS]

Slash Dash does 3 things. It gives you health immunity, it gives mobility, and it builds combo counter. 

None of these things are not done better elsewhere. Blocking gives you 100% bullet damage reduction while still being able to build combo count at a far greater rate than Slash Dash ever will. At base range, almost all forward block combos are faster, do more damage, and build combo count faster than slash dash ever will. In terms of vertical, bullet jump doesn't have an entirely pointless vertical restriction. With just one or two mods, you can get further, faster than max range slash dash will through bullet jump. 

With melee 3.0, Excalibur officially only has one and a half abilities. Radial Blind -- his only useful ability -- and Exalted Blade which can't even use all of the mods other melees can, and can honestly be beaten by a lot of them without heavy commitments in power strength. 

[Xaero]

Slash Dash traveling speed should be much higher, almost instant (but only if an enemy is targeted). It could also open enemies for finishers.

Radial Javelin's blades could pull affected enemies towards the player.

As for Exalted Blade, I'd love it to be replaced with something similar but better. When any melee weapon is equipped, instead of summoning a sword, activating this ability would buff your equipped melee weapon's damage, speed, range and also add wave projectiles to swords and nikanas. If you don't equip a melee weapon, current Exalted Blade is used instead.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Xaero

[Endorphinz]

I disagree, I find myself using slash dash quite often. Like you said, it provides damage immunity during mobility. I'm not a player that stacks on movement speed and mobility mods on my warframe to run through levels as fast as possible, so I do enjoy the speed boost, same with rhino's charge. I wouldn't say no to some buffs to abilities, but I still find excalibur to be a powerful frame without any redundancies.

[Yasha-7HS]

4 hours ago, Endorphinz said:

I'm not a player that stacks on movement speed and mobility mods on my warframe to run through levels as fast as possible, so I do enjoy the speed boost, same with rhino's charge. 

This is being willfully ignorant that the speed it currently has is poultry even to his own Exalted Blade, as the forward block combo completely matches it without locking you into the animation or direction that slash dash was initially cast in. I don't need to stack any speed mods to be faster than Slash Dash. I don't even need a speed mod to be faster than Slash Dash. A bullet jump into slam attack provides more CC, speed, combo count and damage than Slash Dash does with additional power strength, and only gets overcome in the speed department with at least Stretch as Augur Reach is insufficient, and will only match the speed given by the original combo. 

5 hours ago, Endorphinz said:

but I still find excalibur to be a powerful frame without any redundancies.

This is false entirely, and much of his kit needs retuning as most of it is redundant within itself. 

Exalted Blade having a worse Radial Blind that costs half the energy, has 1/5th the range and 2/5ths the duration for the same cast time at 40% attack speed. 

Radial Javelin being entirely worse than Exalted Blade still, with Furious Javelin only moderately helping but doing functionally the same thing Radial Blind does without any mods with less CC capability and less damage without power strength and more cost than both radial blind and exalted blade combined. 

Slash Dash now being inferior to everything that isn't Radial Javelin, and hardly counts as survivability. 

 

Excalibur is quickly falling into the realm of frames that need yet another rework so that his gimmick isn't being a melee turret. 

[Endorphinz]

Well I mean, that's just my opinion, and how I play the game. You can't really tell me my opinion or playstyle is wrong.

[(NSW)Sk0rp1on]

Slash Dash should be aim-able like Ashes blade storm, or at least more reliable. 

[Xzorn]

Did Slash Dash eat the combo multiplier nerf or is it 25% or whatever they said?

Slash Dash hit pretty hard with combo behind it. Off the top of my head think it was hitting about 200k per target at 3x combo, 145% Power.

Problem has always been keeping that combo which requires much higher level than Sorties enemies and then he starts to struggle to stay alive.

His EB hits for the same amount in melee but getting into melee is kinda what Slash Dash does for him.

[TheArcSet]

Does Slash dash only build exalted blade combo, i couldn't tell if it was my main melee building it slowly, or if Slash dash just didn't contribute to it now?

[nooneyouknow13]

On 2019-11-08 at 11:18 AM, Xzorn said:

Did Slash Dash eat the combo multiplier nerf or is it 25% or whatever they said?

Slash Dash hit pretty hard with combo behind it. Off the top of my head think it was hitting about 200k per target at 3x combo, 145% Power.

Problem has always been keeping that combo which requires much higher level than Sorties enemies and then he starts to struggle to stay alive.

His EB hits for the same amount in melee but getting into melee is kinda what Slash Dash does for him.

Slash Dash scales at 25% of the combo counter now, yes. The real kicker though is the waves from EB - those also used to scale with the combo counter, and now don't. Since Slash Dash never did any meaningful damage, it's ability to kill came entirely from those waves, which now basically deal 33% of the damage they used to.

[(XBOX)Rez090]

On 2019-11-06 at 6:55 PM, ShichiseitenYasha said:

This is being willfully ignorant that the speed it currently has is poultry even to his own Exalted Blade, as the forward block combo completely matches it without locking you into the animation or direction that slash dash was initially cast in. 

I think you forgot to use Grammarly there.

[Xzorn]

2 hours ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

Slash Dash scales at 25% of the combo counter now, yes. The real kicker though is the waves from EB - those also used to scale with the combo counter, and now don't. Since Slash Dash never did any meaningful damage, it's ability to kill came entirely from those waves, which now basically deal 33% of the damage they used to.

 

So same as 3x combo from before. That's not awful. Not good as 4x of course but Excal did more DPS than he could handle anyways.

I'm almost certain the waves didn't scale with combo meter on EB or Slash Dash. Melee hits scaled and Waves can head-crit.

They were nerfed due to the CO changes though. Personally I think Excal is in the least of trouble for the Exalted melee frames. Mostly Wukong since I don't think anyone in their right mind was using Baruuk's 4th and Valkyr is still perma immortal. Lot of stuff is screwed up right now.

Edited November 9, 2019 by Xzorn

[nooneyouknow13]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

 

So same as 3x combo from before. That's not awful. Not good as 4x of course but Excal did more DPS than he could handle anyways.

I'm almost certain the waves didn't scale with combo meter on EB or Slash Dash. Melee hits scaled and Waves can head-crit.

They were nerfed due to the CO changes though. Personally I think Excal is in the least of trouble for the Exalted melee frames. Mostly Wukong since I don't think anyone in their right mind was using Baruuk's 4th and Valkyr is still perma immortal. Lot of stuff is screwed up right now.

All of EB scaled with the combo meter before, including the waves. It's why Surging Dash was an amazing augment, you could easily hit 3.5x combo and sustain it with Naramon. Now the forward combo with EB and the waves from it or slash dash only deal 100%.

[DrBorris]

On 2019-11-06 at 4:23 AM, Xaero said:

Radial Javelin's blades could pull affected enemies towards the player.

This, I like this.

[Quintinw]

4 hours ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

All of EB scaled with the combo meter before, including the waves. It's why Surging Dash was an amazing augment, you could easily hit 3.5x combo and sustain it with Naramon. Now the forward combo with EB and the waves from it or slash dash only deal 100%.

And this is EXACTLY why Exalted Blade is super weak now.

 

Naramon is't very useful anymore, CO got nerfed and the Combo Counter doesn't do anything for regular swings or his waves. Life Strike is also not very useful anymore.

 

I can't believe when I called this out last year that I would be 100% right as to what the changes would do to him, and the fact that they would not be thought about or put into consideration beforehand.

[nooneyouknow13]

20 minutes ago, Quintinw said:

And this is EXACTLY why Exalted Blade is super weak now.

 

Naramon is't very useful anymore, CO got nerfed and the Combo Counter doesn't do anything for regular swings or his waves. Life Strike is also not very useful anymore.

 

I can't believe when I called this out last year that I would be 100% right as to what the changes would do to him, and the fact that they would not be thought about or put into consideration beforehand.

On standing combos and block combos, the combo mult is high enough EB does more damage than before on average, but if you're not standing still, it's weaker.

 

Also, from all my tests so far, it looks like the Umbral Polarities on EUB are a liability, even with Arcane Avenger pushing it to 61.5% crit. Pure CO builds keep outperforming crit builds for me in testing EB, to the point where my base Excal deals more damage and has easier survival than my Umbra right now because of how much better Healing Return works on a CO build, than it does on a crit build, or life strike overall right now. EUB has in general performed better in pure heat builds that heat/corrosive, but still not better than builds just ignoring the Sacrifical mods. And I really don't want to remove those polarities.

[Yasha-7HS]

On 2019-11-07 at 3:22 PM, Endorphinz said:

Well I mean, that's just my opinion, and how I play the game. You can't really tell me my opinion or playstyle is wrong.

Then it has no place in disagreement with this issue. I'm not arguing opinion, but simple fact. There is not enough benefit in Slash Dash that isn't obtained elsewhere in the same kit, or with many weapons. 

7 hours ago, (XB1)Rez090 said:

I think you forgot to use Grammarly there.

Hilarious, I didn't even catch it. 

On 2019-11-07 at 6:02 PM, (NSW)Sk0rp1on said:

Slash Dash should be aim-able like Ashes blade storm, or at least more reliable. 

I'm not entirely a fan of how Ash's latest iteration works. Also, it wouldn't really work with how terribly the ability performs in general. At most, it knocks down some enemies, but the more enemies you have targeted the less functional CC you actually get out of it, since they just... Get up. At worst, you end up right in-front of knockdown immune enemies and die instantly because your i-frames run out before you actually gain control of your character. The amount of times I've made a Surging Dash build to find something different to do with excalibur and get sniped in-between macro casts is more than should ever happen, especially when there are other frames with perfect overlap. This is a frame meant to be in the middle of combat, and acts more like a glass cannon. 

29 minutes ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

On standing combos and block combos, the combo mult is high enough EB does more damage than before on average, but if you're not standing still, it's weaker.

That same combo was always optimal DPS, it's just that it didn't matter when everything under 200 melted to the old base combo. Now that the waves were hit almost twice as hard, it's far more noticeable just how much that combo outpaces the base. 

 

[nooneyouknow13]

1 minute ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

That same combo was always optimal DPS, it's just that it didn't matter when everything under 200 melted to the old base combo. Now that the waves were hit almost twice as hard, it's far more noticeable just how much that combo outpaces the base. 

 

The waves from those combos always would have done significantly more damage. The issue is, that standing combos basically absorbed the damage a combo granted before, while moving combos are just always base damage.

 

Exalted Blade itself is still honestly in a great place, since actually using it as a melee weapon still hits twice. But the waves from Slash Dash no longer combo scaling, really, really hurt it. Also, they didn't even rewrite his ability screen tip about the waves scaling with combo count.

[Yasha-7HS]

1 minute ago, nooneyouknow13 said:

Exalted Blade itself is still honestly in a great place, since actually using it as a melee weapon still hits twice. But the waves from Slash Dash no longer combo scaling, really, really hurt it. Also, they didn't even rewrite his ability screen tip about the waves scaling with combo count.

I honestly wouldn't say great just considering Nikanas, Dual Swords and Daggers now. I find the best use for it has been keeping a second melee weapon with, say, different elements for when I'm expecting a Lich. Hitting twice is not making up for the  absolute sheer speed that Nikanas and Dual Swords have (I'm pretty sure Blind Justice and Swirling Tiger standing combos hit 10+ times in a single second on some weapons) or the sheer CC that some of the combos have with lift mechanics. A lot of these melee weapons just remind me that they entirely forgot to add lift into parts of EBs combos where it would fit, which is also a hit for CO since it does count. 

And I think we all forgot to mention Surging Dash, since its values afaik weren't changed at all. When most every hit on a melee weapon counts for 2-3 hits, some slow stances even getting up to 5-7, +5 for a very, very slow melee strike is just not enough at all, and it's extremely bad considering that slow melee strike costs energy. 

[nooneyouknow13]

1 minute ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

I honestly wouldn't say great just considering Nikanas, Dual Swords and Daggers now. I find the best use for it has been keeping a second melee weapon with, say, different elements for when I'm expecting a Lich. Hitting twice is not making up for the  absolute sheer speed that Nikanas and Dual Swords have (I'm pretty sure Blind Justice and Swirling Tiger standing combos hit 10+ times in a single second on some weapons) or the sheer CC that some of the combos have with lift mechanics. A lot of these melee weapons just remind me that they entirely forgot to add lift into parts of EBs combos where it would fit, which is also a hit for CO since it does count. 

And I think we all forgot to mention Surging Dash, since its values afaik weren't changed at all. When most every hit on a melee weapon counts for 2-3 hits, some slow stances even getting up to 5-7, +5 for a very, very slow melee strike is just not enough at all, and it's extremely bad considering that slow melee strike costs energy. 

I mean, I still routinely do 30-60k damage a hit with EB on non crits from standing combos, upwards of 90k on crits if I'm using it from actual melee range. More if I'm utilizing Furious Javelin. I haven't seen a single other weapon do that without being at red crit level from 12x combo, or with a 155% Roar. 

Heat damage is insanely good on EB the way heat procs roll their damage now. It's easily competitive with Slash procs on higher end targets.

I wouldn't mind more lift from EB's stance though, right now it's only on heavy attacks sadly.

[Xzorn]

2 hours ago, Quintinw said:

And this is EXACTLY why Exalted Blade is super weak now.

Naramon is't very useful anymore, CO got nerfed and the Combo Counter doesn't do anything for regular swings or his waves. Life Strike is also not very useful anymore.

 

The only thing that really saved Exalted melee in the first place was the "Unintended" interaction with Drifting Contact.

It was officially stated on a Forum post as not intended. Then of course they made Naramon 2.0 work with it. Without that unintended interaction they fell behind normal melee weapons years ago but I'm sure DE would have "fixed" that bug anyways if at any point Exalted weapons became inconvenient.

Which I guess is what they did intentionally or not since Blood Rush still scales with combo and Weeping Wounds became x4 stronger.

[nooneyouknow13]

6 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

 

The only thing that really saved Exalted melee in the first place was the "Unintended" interaction with Drifting Contact.

It was officially stated on a Forum post as not intended. Then of course they made Naramon 2.0 work with it. Without that unintended interaction they fell behind normal melee weapons years ago but I'm sure DE would have "fixed" that bug anyways if at any point Exalted weapons became inconvenient.

Which I guess is what they did intentionally or not since Blood Rush still scales with combo and Weeping Wounds became x4 stronger.

 EB still benefits from the Gladiator set too. It's just not really worth the effort to stat stick it, unless you can also find room on Excal himself the warframe mods. I really wish the Gladiator set would get the Umbral treatment, but that's a pipe dream.

[Quintinw]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

 

The only thing that really saved Exalted melee in the first place was the "Unintended" interaction with Drifting Contact.

It was officially stated on a Forum post as not intended. Then of course they made Naramon 2.0 work with it. Without that unintended interaction they fell behind normal melee weapons years ago but I'm sure DE would have "fixed" that bug anyways if at any point Exalted weapons became inconvenient.

Which I guess is what they did intentionally or not since Blood Rush still scales with combo and Weeping Wounds became x4 stronger.

This is actually exactly right, and I remember doing research on that a while ago.

 

Though, even without Drifting Contact, Naramon + Slash Dash alone could've gotten you far.

Not saying it's practical, but doable.

[T04STR]

not sure if its just me, do you guys like the fact that Slash Dash tracks enemies? Would rather have higher speed and pass through enemies if you ask me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aside from that, slash dash still kinda works as a get out of jail card with the invulnerability frames

[Endorphinz]

22 hours ago, ShichiseitenYasha said:

Then it has no place in disagreement with this issue. I'm not arguing opinion, but simple fact. There is not enough benefit in Slash Dash that isn't obtained elsewhere in the same kit, or with many weapons.

Toting your opinions as fact? Alright sure.

[Yasha-7HS]

Instead of creating a new thread, I'm returning to this thread to say that since this ability on Excalibur is replaced nearly as much as Radial Javelin, and in the top 15 most replaced Helminth abilities that no one cares about this ability, it's nearly never relevant on Excalibur's kit and should be buffed. 

Excalibur still has only one and one half abilities that are worthwhile to use in gameplay. The simple buffs needed are the combo system available to other frames like Atlas, Rhino and Valkyr, longer invulnerability so that it can be chained for proper 100% invulnerability up-time much like Atlas, and faster animation speed -- not necessarily distance -- so that it's not entirely slower than simply using forward combos on other melee weapons.