Make Exalted Blade Great Again

[Ryden]

At the very least, allow EB's heavy to also send out an energy wave, so that it would be worth even using the damn ability. With Lifestrike being a heavy attack mod, I find myself putting EB away more often than actually making any use of it, and spamming my dragon nikana's heavy swing. High level enemies are just too painful to not have a reliable healing mechanic saving you from impending death. 

And is it just me, or does Healing Return just not work at all? Or at least only when it wants to? With 100% status chance, should I not be seeing health returned on literally every swipe? Even if this were to be the case, it's still not enough when you're surrounded.

Ideally, I'd love for Channeling to make a return, and for Lifestrike to be a Channeling mod. I can barely justify ever using EB anymore; it does far less damage than my nikana, and I can't even use it long enough to take advantage of it's range and speed before my health drops too low to recover from.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Exalted blade is actually the only exalted melee who’s performance is pretty much unchanged.

Serene Storm got a little boost from the true steel buff

Hysteria got worse with the loss of the combo multiplier.

Wukongs staff is now as bad as it was (maybe even worse) than it was before Wukong got reworked.

[DeMonkey]

18 minutes ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Wukongs staff is now as bad as it was (maybe even worse) than it was before Wukong got reworked.

It has a couple of metres of range over pre-rework.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

9 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

It has a couple of metres of range over pre-rework.

That literally means nothing with its lack of damage.

[Ryden]

6 hours ago, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Exalted blade is actually the only exalted melee who’s performance is pretty much unchanged.

It's far too weak compared to regular melee's to even be able to justify its energy waves gimmick. The only value it had before was being able to heal yourself during your onslaught with lifestrike.

And before you say "just use heavy attacks", literally no one uses exalted blade for charged attacks; that's obviously not what it was designed for. That was tacked on and imposed due to this new direction they've decided was worth implementing.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

32 minutes ago, Ryden said:

It's far too weak compared to regular melee's to even be able to justify its energy waves gimmick. The only value it had before was being able to heal yourself during your onslaught with lifestrike.

And before you say "just use heavy attacks", literally no one uses exalted blade for charged attacks; that's obviously not what it was designed for. That was tacked on and imposed due to this new direction they've decided was worth implementing.

I would never say “just use heavy attacks”. Exalted weapons should have high performance without needing to rely on them.

I found using healing return in place of life strike to be a suitable replacement.

I’ve found Exalted blades performance pretty much unchanged when you switch out CO with heat damage.

[NuclearCoffeePot]

13 hours ago, Ryden said:

And is it just me, or does Healing Return just not work at all? Or at least only when it wants to? With 100% status chance, should I not be seeing health returned on literally every swipe? Even if this were to be the case, it's still not enough when you're surrounded.

A lot of mods don't work the same with projections like ex waves and serene storm- it might be that it only works when you hit them with the blade itself- or that you are only applying a few status effects since it is 11 per hit per status effect applied- but it doesn't stack with repeated instances of the same damage type like multiple slash procs- 

[NuclearCoffeePot]

Ok- Played around a bit with life strike compared to healing return- Lifestreak heal is definetly greater and with a 720 hp exalted umbra even without killing blow I could heal from 200 to max against a group of 8 lvl 100 heavy gunners in one hit- my advise for you since you don't want to get fked in close range by having to heavy attack is to use heavy ground slam- at least in the simulacrum you still recieve the heals but it has a much faster cast and will apply lifted to all the enemies for you- if you still don't like that use a status application weapon like cyanex ahead of time before striking with eb for healing- it still won't heal as much though- If you are really worried about getting screwed using heavy attacks perform a slide attack first with eb to blind enemies before you start the charge- ultimately I would just channel ground slam though- it can travel a distance, cc's enemies on landing, and heals you a bunch

[Ryden]

1 hour ago, NuclearCoffeePot said:

Ok- Played around a bit with life strike compared to healing return- Lifestreak heal is definetly greater and with a 720 hp exalted umbra even without killing blow I could heal from 200 to max against a group of 8 lvl 100 heavy gunners in one hit- my advise for you since you don't want to get fked in close range by having to heavy attack is to use heavy ground slam- at least in the simulacrum you still recieve the heals but it has a much faster cast and will apply lifted to all the enemies for you- if you still don't like that use a status application weapon like cyanex ahead of time before striking with eb for healing- it still won't heal as much though- If you are really worried about getting screwed using heavy attacks perform a slide attack first with eb to blind enemies before you start the charge- ultimately I would just channel ground slam though- it can travel a distance, cc's enemies on landing, and heals you a bunch

Sighh.. not much choice currently

[NuclearCoffeePot]

42 minutes ago, Ryden said:

Sighh.. not much choice currently

Unfortunantly but in high levels there are always other options for frame's, if you really want to use excal we just have to wait and make suggestions till something is changed- mabye we can change 3 for something defensive based- draining hp from enemies struck or other things

Edited December 30, 2019 by NuclearCoffeePot

[KroneVanguard]

I hate that I have to move forward to slash enemies. Every time I come back to this game there is some unpleasant change.(🖕) I still haven't found the courage to try Valkyr, I already know I won't like it. 🙄

 

[CopperBezel]

20 hours ago, Ryden said:

And is it just me, or does Healing Return just not work at all? Or at least only when it wants to? With 100% status chance, should I not be seeing health returned on literally every swipe? Even if this were to be the case, it's still not enough when you're surrounded.

Healing Return is weird as hell. You have to inflict a status proc with the weapon it's installed on, then hit that same enemy without killing them, to activate the healing. Since the return is per status type per hit, a weapon that can throw out a lot of quick strikes without initially dealing a lot of damage is best. It's unfortunately a very poor substitute for what Life Strike used to do.

What I don't know without trying is how if at all it would interact with EB's blade beams. It wouldn't surprise me if they're actually weirdly circumventing it the way they do the combo counter. = /

8 hours ago, Ryden said:

It's far too weak compared to regular melee's to even be able to justify its energy waves gimmick.

The energy waves do have a separate status proc (at that 100% chance when built well) and all that punchthrough, which can mean waves of stacking corrosive procs before your sword actually connects with a particular enemy. So I kinda think it's more a calculus of whether the wall of armor strip you're putting out is enough to justify the nerf bat it requires you to use to land the killing blows. With very high-level armored enemies, it seems to start to make up for itself, but I don't think it's going to outperform the really top-tier melee weapons even then.

[NuclearCoffeePot]

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Healing Return is weird as hell. You have to inflict a status proc with the weapon it's installed on, then hit that same enemy without killing them, to activate the healing. Since the return is per status type per hit, a weapon that can throw out a lot of quick strikes without initially dealing a lot of damage is best. It's unfortunately a very poor substitute for what Life Strike used to do.

What I don't know without trying is how if at all it would interact with EB's blade beams. It wouldn't surprise me if they're actually weirdly circumventing it the way they do the combo counter. = /

I checked while testing lifestrike andhealing return for OP- wave's work with healing return

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

The energy waves do have a separate status proc (at that 100% chance when built well) and all that punchthrough, which can mean waves of stacking corrosive procs before your sword actually connects with a particular enemy. So I kinda think it's more a calculus of whether the wall of armor strip you're putting out is enough to justify the nerf bat it requires you to use to land the killing blows. With very high-level armored enemies, it seems to start to make up for itself, but I don't think it's going to outperform the really top-tier melee weapons even then.

Without building for lifestrike you can deal a lot of damage, I don't find myself falling off much in damage at higher levels, only in survivability, which could be circumvented by changing radial javelin to be more useful- if we really wanted to make lifestrike work well for him then just have slash dash count as a heavy attack and scale off eb mods, this won't be glamorous and it will need a range boost, but it could work well enough- If we really want to talk about exalted weapons that need buffs, let's look at wukong and valc not excal- his damage is fine, his survivability could increase by changing his third ability since it has no place- they are in far more trouble 

[CopperBezel]

Sorry if I seemed overly pessimistic - after dumping everything I could into Wukong and still having no reason to press 4, I was pleasantly surprised that Excalibur's Exalted Blade still serves a distinct purpose in rapid armor strip over multiple targets. I don't want to say that any exalted melee is "fine" right now, but EB comes very close. 

[MysticDragonMage]

it would be cool if exalted blade's heavy melee were to cast the original slash dash and heavy slam would cast radial javalin. then exalted blade would be able to utilize new heavy attack system.

[Ryden]

20 hours ago, NuclearCoffeePot said:

I checked while testing lifestrike andhealing return for OP- wave's work with healing return

Without building for lifestrike you can deal a lot of damage, I don't find myself falling off much in damage at higher levels, only in survivability, which could be circumvented by changing radial javelin to be more useful- if we really wanted to make lifestrike work well for him then just have slash dash count as a heavy attack and scale off eb mods, this won't be glamorous and it will need a range boost, but it could work well enough- If we really want to talk about exalted weapons that need buffs, let's look at wukong and valc not excal- his damage is fine, his survivability could increase by changing his third ability since it has no place- they are in far more trouble 

Healing Return works indefinitely in the simulacrum, not so much in the actual missions for some reason. At least that's been my experience

[Ryden]

16 hours ago, MysticDragonMage said:

it would be cool if exalted blade's heavy melee were to cast the original slash dash and heavy slam would cast radial javalin. then exalted blade would be able to utilize new heavy attack system.

now there's a thought

[Ryden]

On 2019-12-30 at 3:39 AM, CopperBezel said:

Healing Return is weird as hell. You have to inflict a status proc with the weapon it's installed on, then hit that same enemy without killing them, to activate the healing. Since the return is per status type per hit, a weapon that can throw out a lot of quick strikes without initially dealing a lot of damage is best. It's unfortunately a very poor substitute for what Life Strike used to do.

shh, that might make some sense, actually..