Excalibur Rework

[Gr1mwlf]

I'm not going to claim that Excalibur is more in need of a rework than any number of other frames, and this should be done before them. This is just something that I believe really needs to be done at some point. Excalibur is not in a good place.

He relies aggressively on his Exalted Blade, and to a far lesser extent his Radial Howl. Neither of those abilities are particularly interesting, and this overall makes him very boring and one-dimensional compared to many other frames. He isn't "bad" simply because he can use Exalted Blade as a crutch, and this over-reliance on Exalted Blade in particular brings its own problems.

But when I say that he needs a "rework", I don't think it needs to be anything huge.

I'll go into detail below as to what is wrong with each of his abilities, and a simple suggestion on how it might be improved.

1. Slash Dash charges toward enemies, making you invulnerable until you reach them. This seems to be intended as a combination of a gap-closer, and a minor defensive tool. The defensive element is so brief, it was probably only meant to keep you safe while closing the gap, thus making it an even more effective gap-closer. This ability has two major problems, though. First, because of both the mediocre speed of the dash and the long wind-down animation, it isn't actually an effective gap-closer. The only thing it has over a simple Bullet Jump into a melee attack is that it automatically lands you on top of the enemy without any guesswork. Second, it deals a trivial amount of damage. Less so than a normal melee attack would. This ability isn't even worth the energy cost when you can get a superior effect for free. I think this entire ability is a relic from before we had as much mobility as we do today.
   
   My suggestion would be to speed up the travel time a bit, speed up the hit animation so you aren't locked down as long, and perhaps have it grant overshields on hit.
   The first two suggestions should be obvious in order to make it an effective gap-closer, but the third suggestion is a bit less obvious. It already provides a defensive benefit, and is the only real defensive tool Excalibur has, excluding crowd control as a form of defense. The problem is that the defense it provides is trivial. And even if this were a better gap-closer or dealt a bit more damage, it still wouldn't likely be worth the energy cost. Providing overshields on hit also makes it more interesting to aim for clumps of enemies for multiple hits. And it gives a very interesting form of strategy to Excalibur, because of the new Shield Gating. If the hits fully replenish your base shields, it resets the Shield Gate. And while the brief invulnerability from a Shield Gate is active, you can try to aim this at a cluster of enemies to recover it. It gives him a pretty interesting defensive tool.
    
2. Radial Howl/Blind provides a Stun/Blind in a wide area around you that opens enemies up to finishers. It can be useful when defending something, or when getting overwhelmed by large numbers of enemies. Taken on its own, I really don't think there's a problem with this ability. It isn't amazing, but it isn't bad either. If there was anything wrong with this ability, I would say that it's just too boring. But I don't think it really needs any changes.
    
3. Radial Javelin deals damage in a wide area around you without needing line of sight, and provides a brief stun. This one has a few problems, and might be Excalibur's worst ability without the augment for it. First, it has a massive animation time. Second, it deals trivial damage despite that being nearly the entire reason for using it. Third, the area stun completely overlaps with Radial Howl/Blind and is redundant.
   
   My first suggestion is to simply speed the animation way up. Ignoring how detrimental such a massive lockdown is in such a fast paced game, it just feels bad to use it. On a similar note, a while back they made ground-based abilities launch you into the ground if you used them from the air. Despite Radial Javelin having an animation of Excalibur clearly striking the ground, this one was left out inexplicably. It really should be given that same treatment. My second suggestion is to simply up the damage, obviously. My third suggestion is to remove the stun which overlaps with Radial Howl/Blind, and instead have it strip armor. On-demand armor stripping would be extremely useful to Excalibur without being overpowered, and is noticeably missing from his kit.
    
4. Exalted Blade replaces his melee weapon with a blade that has ranged attacks. This one is rough. As I mentioned, he uses this ability as a crutch, and it is by far his strongest ability. The problem I see with this ability is that it basically remains active 100% of the time and discourages the use of any other weapon, which is incredibly boring.
   
   With the other abilities having been made useful, I think the right approach here would be to change it to use a unique resource similar to Serene Storm or Redline. This way it acts more like a powered up mode you have to earn, rather than his default state. Ideally it would not be active all the time, but worst case scenario it would still require you to work for it, and add some extra depth to his gameplay.
   A good way to do this might be to have the meter build when performing hits with melee weapons, and have it get depleted as you attack with Exalted Blade. Basically, just having it set up in such a way that it can only be built up while Exalted Blade is not active, and having Exalted Blade itself deplete it.
   It might work to have Slash Dash and Radial Javelin also raise the meter when hitting enemies. While this would allow the meter to be maintained indefinitely, it would still at least force a more dynamic playstyle which doesn't rely wholly on Exalted Blade.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Simply upping the damage of radial javelin isn’t going to make it better.

I’m very much not a fan of the idea of locking exalted blade behind a resource like Baruuks restraint. Excalibur is a starter frame and needs to be relatively simple to use and understand. Adding mechanics like a secondary resource to him for a new player to try and manage while they’re still trying to learn how to maintain energy in early game is honestly just too much.

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

7 minutes ago, Gr1mwlf said:

He relies aggressively on his Exalted Blade

I'm just going to prepare you for two specific Excalibur players that would tell you otherwise.

One of them even removed exalted blade and replaced it with helminth.

The truth is, normal melee weapons scale far better than exalted blade, and actually if you used radial javelin's augment, with warcry instead of exalted blade, and a powerful melee weapon you'd far outperform exalted blade.

 

It's sad but it's where we live 

[Teridax68]

I quite like the proposals in the OP. Excalibur rework threads pop up on occasion, and the critical mistake many people make is to suggest over-the-top, massively overcomplicated changes and replacements to his kit, when the frame is supposed to be among the most approachable to new players, if not the most. By contrast, this thread suggest simple, clean changes to his abilities that would largely keep the Excal we have now, while improving him in key areas. My thoughts on the criticisms and suggestions:

• I very much agree Slash Dash is too slow, and as the OP mentioned, likely because it's a relic from before Parkour 2.0. Speeding it up would at least prevent it from being a worse bullet jump, whereas having it restore shields based on some factor like enemies hit could make it a much more potent recovery tool, plus potentially teach newer players about shield gating and its strength.
• I also agree Radial Javelin is essentially useless at the moment. However, my fear with making it strip armor is that it may be too situational for a newer player to fully appreciate, while also overlapping with Radial Blind also enhancing damage via stealth damage bonuses. An alternative could be to keep it as a nuke, but then make it expend Excalibur's melee combo counter to multiply its own damage (while also boosting its base damage and/or making it scale with Exalted Blade's mods so that it stays competitive).
• I think the criticism the OP makes of Exalted Blade is unfortunately one that can be made for almost every Exalted weapon: because the ability's also a weapon, and thus takes up our weapon functionality, this puts us in an incredibly binary situation where either the Exalted weapon is better than our regular weapons, in which case it's the only thing we use, or it's not, in which case we never use it. Implementing a Serene Storm-like meter to control how often Excalibur can access his Exalted Blade, while perhaps also giving it some scaling to keep it competitive relative to other weapons at higher levels, would allow the ability to be strong without overtaking Excal's arsenal all of the time. If the drain gets shifted from Energy to its own meter, and the meter built up from melee attacks, it would also have the added bonus of making the ability much more accessible to new players, who are more strapped for Energy.

While not mentioned in the OP, nor really a problem of its own, I think the passive could be made more interesting if it built on a possible Exalted Blade meter and offered something like a melee attack speed bonus based on how much meter was built up. It could also help Excal's scaling if both Slash Dash and Radial Javelin's damage scaled off of the mods equipped for Exalted Blade. Other than that, with the changes suggested in the OP, I think Excalibur could be made significantly better to play without changing all that drastically.

[Thorham]

The way I see it, you play Excalibur exclusively for Exalted Blade (I play Excalibur Umbra as my main frame because I enjoy the way Exalted Blade plays). If you want to use weapons then just use a different frame. While regular melee weapons might be stronger then Exalted Blade, it's the waves that make Exalted Blade still effective, so it's certainly still viable if played properly.

If you don't like Exalted Blade, don't use Excalibur. There's a plethora of other frames to choose from.

[Gr1mwlf]

Quote

I also agree Radial Javelin is essentially useless at the moment. However, my fear with making it strip armor is that it may be too situational for a newer player to fully appreciate, while also overlapping with Radial Blind also enhancing damage via stealth damage bonuses. An alternative could be to keep it as a nuke, but then make it expend Excalibur's melee combo counter to multiply its own damage (while also boosting its base damage and/or making it scale with Exalted Blade's mods so that it stays competitive).

I'm not married to the idea of armor stripping. I just think it needs to offer something the other abilities don't already do. I kinda like the idea of it expending combo counter for more damage, like a super Heavy Attack. I don't know if that might be overly complex, though.

Quote

 

The way I see it, you play Excalibur exclusively for Exalted Blade (I play Excalibur Umbra as my main frame because I enjoy the way Exalted Blade plays). If you want to use weapons then just use a different frame. While regular melee weapons might be stronger then Exalted Blade, it's the waves that make Exalted Blade still effective, so it's certainly still viable if played properly.

If you don't like Exalted Blade, don't use Excalibur. There's a plethora of other frames to choose from.

 

It's not like I'm suggesting that Exalted Blade should be removed. It's just really bad for his full focus to be on that one thing. Especially when that one thing replaces much of his base non-ability kit as well. Whether or not having it active at all times is fun is subjective, but I think that should at least be something you work toward instead of it being his default state. Aside from that, I simply want the rest of his kit brought up to par and made useful along side it.

[GREF_TM]

On 2021-03-24 at 3:29 AM, Gr1mwlf said:

it is by far his strongest ability

Not by a long shot. His strongest ability is blind (which can now be given to a better frame like wukong, for example), and EB doesn't bring anything to the table what normal melees can't do but costs energy and an ability slot that could've been occupied by a better ability, which makes it objectively worse than normal melees. Why would anyone think it's his best ability is beyond me.

As an excalibur player with 20% playrate between normal and umbra, that's what i'd like to see:

Passive: current one is pretty much irrelevant, but a frame can live without a good passive, so it can stay the same.

 

1st ability - altered Slash Dash, two options:

Option 1:  Remains similar to current targeted version, but it needs to be way faster (at least as much as half of this level of fast) and do a hit worth of damage from your exalted blade with a base multiplier of 1.25x (affected by power).

Option 2: Instead, make it something like rapid slash from DMC -  quickly charges forward by a set distance (affected by range), passing through enemies and damaging every enemy in a way and in front of a destination point. Damage is the same as above.

Both version keep invincibility for the duration.

 

2nd ability - unchanged.

 

3rd ability - original (Radial Javelin) becomes 4th, new 3rd becomes a mix between chroma's fire elemental ward and gara's splinter storm: creates a circle of blades with a set range (~6-7 meters, unaffected by range just like chroma's ward), any enemy within range takes 3 hits per second. Damage types, crit and status chance are again taken from your EB, so you're in full control of what it procs. Damage multiplier is ~0.25x base (affected by power). While active, gives excal 70% DR.

This ability will allow him to be more survivable in higher level content without relying too much on auto-parry, heavy slam knockdowns and blind.

 

4th ability - altered Radial Javelin, merged with Exalted Blade:

Holding an ability makes excal go into a current radial javelin startup animation (holding sword up), but animation "freezes" in this state until the button is released (or an ability is fully charged). While holding, a visual cone appears around excal and that starts expanding rapidly, up to a maximum range (affected by range), basically similar to Gara's 4 mechanically. Each 33% of range produce a visible flash over exalted blade's hilt and a sound que, to give you an idea how much range you currently have (should help if a cone becomes less visible due going through wall of a small room, etc.) When released (or hits 100% range), ability continues as normal (excal slams the sword into the ground), and radial javelins spawn above the head of every enemy in range (enemy count limit removed), and then immediately fall down, pinning enemies to the ground for ~ 3 sec. (instead of just staggering them), doing damage based, you guessed it, on EB stats, with a base multiplier of 2.5x.

Tapping executes "quick" version with lesser range.

After the animation plays, instead of despawning, exalted blade stays equipped for ~30 sec. Doesn't drain energy like now, just a timer. I think even this change alone will already improve ability a lot, making it way less energy hungry, especially for beginners 

Improvements to Exalted Blade i would like to see:

1) bigger waves with consistent hitboxes (current waves are really small and depend heavily on an angle of a swing) - something like 4x3 meters would be pretty good;

2) wave speed should go up to at least 40 m/s, as current speed of 15 m/s is far too slow;

3) heavy attack should produce a bigger wave;

4) base crit chance increased up to 25%.

Furious Javelin augment: change melee damage to all weapon damage, increase damage gain per hit, but give it a cap of 3 stacks max.

 

I think survivability from changed 3rd and global damage boost from changed Radial Javelin augment will make him more well-rounded frame that is suited for both melee and gunplay, instead of being locked into melee, and his EB being duration-based would certainly make it look not as bad compared to normal melees that already cost none.

 

 

[Thorham]

22 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

Not by a long shot.

Exalted Blade is the only reason to play Excalibur, so it really is.

22 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

EB doesn't bring anything to the table what normal melees can't do

Except for those awesome energy waves that make EB still effective.

22 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

costs energy

Unless you're going to spam Radial Blind you don't have anything else to spend it on. I use an efficiency build and I only run out of energy when I get drained.

22 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

After the animation plays, instead of despawning, exalted blade stays equipped for ~30 sec. Doesn't drain energy like now, just a timer. I think even this change alone will already improve ability a lot, making it way less energy hungry, especially for beginners 

That's absolutely horrible. Not being able to have EB up continuously completely ruins the ability.

[GREF_TM]

  

1 hour ago, Thorham said:

Exalted Blade is the only reason to play Excalibur, so it really is.

Yet it's not a good reason, as exalted blade barely competes with normal melees and gets absolutely thrashed by the only actually good exalted melee in the game that is desert wind. And if you actually play excal for his mediocre EB, you should play Baruuk instead.

Excal's arguably best build is to run max range blind + furious javelin as a damage buff + something like stropha as a main weapon. If you want exalted blade, desert wind is much better and you should use it instead.

1 hour ago, Thorham said:

Except for those awesome energy waves that make EB still effective.

Slow-ass small waves make it effective? Really? With movement options we have in warframe, you can easily outrun them and start whacking with a normal melee, and as a ranged option they suck also. If you want good waves, again, there's Baruuk.

1 hour ago, Thorham said:

Unless you're going to spam Radial Blind you don't have anything else to spend it on. I use an efficiency build and I only run out of energy when I get drained.

Moot point. No drain is always better than drain.

1 hour ago, Thorham said:

That's absolutely horrible. Not being able to have EB up continuously completely ruins the ability.

You just press 4 again and have it for another 30 seconds (affected by duration). And over its duration, instead of losing energy, you will regenerate enough for like another five recasts of radial javelin with zenurik alone. This is miles ahead of channeling in terms of energy economy. Don't see your point.

[Thorham]

2 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

Slow-ass small waves make it effective? Really?

For how I play they're effective. Generally I get high kill counts in sorties, so for me they're certainly useful. Things only slow down on Steel Path, and that's probably because the last melee overhaul effectively nerfed EB (and that's a different issue all together).

As for Baruuk, how easy is Desert Wind to use? With Excalibur it's activate EB and there you go. Unless you get drained it just stays up the whole mission for zero effort.

2 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

Moot point. No drain is always better than drain.

Only when drain is relevant, which it isn't when playing an efficiency build. Even with just Exalibur Umbra's base energy you have more than enough (even with the occasional Radial Blind cast).

Maybe I'm just looking at things in too simple a way.

[GREF_TM]

10 hours ago, Thorham said:

For how I play they're effective

"It doesn't fit MY playstyle, therefore it's bad!"

 

Yeah, right. Explains everything.

[Lutesque]

On 2021-03-23 at 7:29 PM, Gr1mwlf said:

 

He relies aggressively on his Exalted Blade, and to a far lesser extent his Radial Howl.

LoL... So we're just going to accept that Umbra is the Official Excalibur for all of Intensive purposes ? 

Because I have no problem with that 😁...

On 2021-03-23 at 7:29 PM, Gr1mwlf said:

My suggestion would be to speed up the travel time a bit, speed up the hit animation so you aren't locked down as long, and perhaps have it grant overshields on hit.
The first two suggestions should be obvious in order to make it an effective gap-closer, but the third suggestion is a bit less obvious. It already provides a defensive benefit, and is the only real defensive tool Excalibur has, excluding crowd control as a form of defense. The problem is that the defense it provides is trivial. And even if this were a better gap-closer or dealt a bit more damage, it still wouldn't likely be worth the energy cost. Providing overshields on hit also makes it more interesting to aim for clumps of enemies for multiple hits. And it gives a very interesting form of strategy to Excalibur, because of the new Shield Gating. If the hits fully replenish your base shields, it resets the Shield Gate. And while the brief invulnerability from a Shield Gate is active, you can try to aim this at a cluster of enemies to recover it. It gives him a pretty interesting defensive tool.

Since Excal is the Number one Starter Frame I suggest that Slash Dash deal as much damage as Exhalted Blade Does....  After all he actually is using Exhalted Blade in this ability so it really should deal the damage it was Modded for.... 

Newbies would Love it...

On 2021-03-23 at 7:29 PM, Gr1mwlf said:

My first suggestion is to simply speed the animation way up. Ignoring how detrimental such a massive lockdown is in such a fast paced game, it just feels bad to use it. On a similar note, a while back they made ground-based abilities launch you into the ground if you used them from the air. Despite Radial Javelin having an animation of Excalibur clearly striking the ground, this one was left out inexplicably. It really should be given that same treatment. My second suggestion is to simply up the damage, obviously. My third suggestion is to remove the stun which overlaps with Radial Howl/Blind, and instead have it strip armor. On-demand armor stripping would be extremely useful to Excalibur without being overpowered, and is noticeably missing from his kit.

Perhaps this ability can be used as some sort of Charging Mechanic... I mean that's what all the newer frames have right.... Some kind of Gimmick that ties into their Passive... Perhaps Excal would get increased Melee and Movement speed for Each Enemy Impaled with The Javelins....

Or how about this.... Any enemy that actually Gets killed by a Javelin allows Excalibur to Retrieve that Javelin and throw it, Spartacus Style 😎 !!! Hey... Lets let our Team Mates in on the Action... They can throw Javelins too 😀 !!!

On 2021-03-23 at 7:29 PM, Gr1mwlf said:

With the other abilities having been made useful, I think the right approach here would be to change it to use a unique resource similar to Serene Storm or Redline

Now you're thinking like a True Pablo 😉 !!!

On 2021-03-23 at 7:29 PM, Gr1mwlf said:

A good way to do this might be to have the meter build when performing hits with melee weapons, and have it get depleted as you attack with Exalted Blade. Basically, just having it set up in such a way that it can only be built up while Exalted Blade is not active, and having Exalted Blade itself deplete it.
It might work to have Slash Dash and Radial Javelin also raise the meter when hitting enemies. While this would allow the meter to be maintained indefinitely, it would still at least force a more dynamic playstyle which doesn't rely wholly on Exalted Blade

LoL... Pablo Smurf Account Confirmed 😝 !!!

On 2021-03-23 at 7:33 PM, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

Simply upping the damage of radial javelin isn’t going to make it better.

I’m very much not a fan of the idea of locking exalted blade behind a resource like Baruuks restraint. Excalibur is a starter frame and needs to be relatively simple to use and understand. Adding mechanics like a secondary resource to him for a new player to try and manage while they’re still trying to learn how to maintain energy in early game is honestly just too much.

Not really ... With the new UI it won't be the massive hurdle it was like before and honestly.... They wouldn't have to understand how it works immediately.... It's something that's meant give added depth to him later on when players are ready for Real Ninjutsu 😎 !!!

On 2021-03-23 at 7:40 PM, (PSN)Hopper_Orouk said:

I'm just going to prepare you for two specific Excalibur players that would tell you otherwise.

One of them even removed exalted blade and replaced it with helminth.

The truth is, normal melee weapons scale far better than exalted blade, and actually if you used radial javelin's augment, with warcry instead of exalted blade, and a powerful melee weapon you'd far outperform exalted blade.

 

It's sad but it's where we live 

True but you're giving up the ability to shoot Energy Waves 😱 !!!  That's just Blasphemous 😱 !!!

On 2021-03-24 at 12:49 AM, Teridax68 said:

I quite like the proposals in the OP. Excalibur rework threads pop up on occasion, and the critical mistake many people make is to suggest over-the-top, massively overcomplicated changes and replacements to his kit, when the frame is supposed to be among the most approachable to new players, if not the most

I guess... But that doesn't mean he needs to be Dumb Down.... His complexity just needs to be handled abit more Carefully....

On 2021-03-24 at 12:49 AM, Teridax68 said:

. If the drain gets shifted from Energy to its own meter, and the meter built up from melee attacks, it would also have the added bonus of making the ability much more accessible to new players, who are more strapped for Energy.

It always boils down to Energy... 🙂

On 2021-03-24 at 3:49 PM, Thorham said:

The way I see it, you play Excalibur exclusively for Exalted Blade (I play Excalibur Umbra as my main frame because I enjoy the way Exalted Blade plays). If you want to use weapons then just use a different frame. While regular melee weapons might be stronger then Exalted Blade, it's the waves that make Exalted Blade still effective, so it's certainly still viable if played properly.

If you don't like Exalted Blade, don't use Excalibur. There's a plethora of other frames to choose from.

It's not in DE's Best Interest to keep 1 Button Frames the way they are... Even if they are effective most players are not going to have the same Standards you have so they have to appeal to players on Multiple Levels....

On 2021-03-24 at 10:15 PM, Gr1mwlf said:

I'm not married to the idea of armor stripping. I just think it needs to offer something the other abilities don't already do. I kinda like the idea of it expending combo counter for more damage, like a super Heavy Attack. I don't know if that might be overly complex, though.

Nope... It just needs Actual Javelins that you can pick up and Throw.... Spartacus Style 😎 !!!

On 2021-03-27 at 1:44 PM, GREF_TM said:

Not by a long shot. His strongest ability is blind (which can now be given to a better frame like wukong, for example), and EB doesn't bring anything to the table what normal melees can't do but costs energy and an ability slot that could've been occupied by a better ability, which makes it objectively worse than normal melees. Why would anyone think it's his best ability is beyond me

Because Energy Waves 😛 !!!

On 2021-03-27 at 1:44 PM, GREF_TM said:

new 3rd becomes a mix between chroma's fire elemental ward and gara's splinter storm: creates a circle of blades with a set range (~6-7 meters, unaffected by range just like chroma's ward), any enemy within range takes 3 hits per second

Summoned Swords 🤔....

Is Excalibur Vergil now ? 😱

On 2021-03-27 at 1:44 PM, GREF_TM said:

 

Holding an ability makes excal go into a current radial javelin startup animation (holding sword up), but animation "freezes" in this state until the button is released (or an ability is fully charged). While holding, a visual cone appears around excal and that starts expanding rapidly, up to a maximum range (affected by range), basically similar to Gara's 4 mechanically. Each 33% of range produce a visible flash over exalted blade's hilt and a sound que, to give you an idea how much range you currently have (should help if a cone becomes less visible due going through wall of a small room, etc.) When released (or hits 100% range), ability continues as normal (excal slams the sword into the ground), and radial javelins spawn above the head of every enemy in range (enemy count limit removed), and then immediately fall down, pinning enemies to the ground for ~ 3 sec. (instead of just staggering them), doing damage based, you guessed it, on EB stats, with a base multiplier of 2.5x.

Sounds like an even slower version of Ash's Blade Storm 😱 !!!

18 hours ago, Thorham said:

That's absolutely horrible. Not being able to have EB up continuously completely ruins the ability.

Only if you are one of those people who can do the same thing for hours and never get tired of it...

Since this isn't default human behaviour.... I think it's Fair to have EB turned off from time to time.

17 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

Slow-ass small waves make it effective? Really?

I don't know... But they do look cool....

😉.

15 hours ago, Thorham said:

 

As for Baruuk, how easy is Desert Wind to use?

It pretty much just as Easy.... But slightly more Finicky to manage....

17 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

Moot point. No drain is always better than drain.

They both Drain... One just drains from a Different Source 😝 !!!

 

[GREF_TM]

2 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Sounds like an even slower version of Ash's Blade Storm 😱 !!!

As I said, it will expand rapidly. We can make it expand from min to max range (40m with stretch, for example) in ~1 sec. Or if even that is to slow, we can make it expand even faster - for example, like judgement cut in dmc5, which expands faster than 1/10th or maybe even 1/20th of a second. 
 

In other words, all written above is just a concept. Numbers can always be tweaked.

[Lutesque]

1 hour ago, GREF_TM said:

As I said, it will expand rapidly. We can make it expand from min to max range (40m with stretch, for example) in ~1 sec. Or if even that is to slow, we can make it expand even faster - for example, like judgement cut in dmc5, which expands faster than 1/10th or maybe even 1/20th of a second. 
 

In other words, all written above is just a concept. Numbers can always be tweaked.

Okay fair enough... 🙂

[GREF_TM]

Here's expansion speed example (mod Vergil because playable Vergil doesn't have a visible cone as it's a boss feature that serves the purpose of showing you the range so you can actually avoid it). It's like 5-6 frames or something, which is ~1/10th - 1/12th.

3 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Is Excalibur Vergil now ?

Yes, it's a Vergil ripoff.

[Lutesque]

25 minutes ago, GREF_TM said:

Here's expansion speed example (mod Vergil because playable Vergil doesn't have a visible cone as it's a boss feature that serves the purpose of showing you the range so you can actually avoid it). It's like 5-6 frames or something, which is ~1/10th - 1/12th.

Yes, it's a Vergil ripoff.

LOL... Why didn't you just say it was Judgement Cut End ? 😆 I had a Hard time picturing it all this Time 😝 ?!!

Also cool.... I didn't know the Special Edition was out yet.... Is Vergil easier to play than Nero and Dante ?

[GREF_TM]

He is overpowered in every game he appeared in.

[Lutesque]

25 minutes ago, GREF_TM said:

He is overpowered in every game he appeared in.

Yeah sure I get that but is he Practical to Control.... ? This has always been my gripe with Capcom's iteration of DMC Design.... Dante and Nero are like Fighting Game Characters.... Require Insane Dexterity and unrealistically Precise Timing for the Simplest of Actions.... Which makes sense since Capcom also developed Street Fighter IV.... Which Is borderline unplayable....

but when they Released DMC4 Special Edition with 3 New Characters.... All three of those Characters were easier to Control than Dante and Nero....

Soooo.... Is that the case for DMC 5 Special Edition aswell ? 😮....

 

 

[Thorham]

Exalted Blade just needs a damage buff. It's fine as it is otherwise.

[Veilor]

 

Being a main Excalibur myself, my most used non-excal warframe is 3,1% usage, so I spend countless hours playing with Excalibur first and Umbra since it came out.

I'm against a full rework of Excalibur(s), and here is why:

The only real issue with my Umbra atm (March 2021), is the Exalted Blade, being no better than good melee weapons due to the low 15% crit, therefore relying somewhat in its projected waves to have something unique, sadly the damage drops way too much while traveling. Some warframes nuke the whole map, is it too much for Excalibur to nuke a single corridor? Also the speed of the wave is extremely lame.

Thus, in order to make Excalibur fun, some easy changes should be made:

1- Make proyected waves moves faster, twice the speed seems reasonable, three times will be awesome.

2- Damage drop with distance is way too severe it needs to be drastically reduce, 1/3 of the actual reduction its more than enought, remove it completely would be a nice buff.

3- Make the wave wider, like 50% wider, c'mon didn't u saw that comming? make it 100% wider for a Pablo© rework.

4- Raise the critical chance of exalted blade from 15 to 20 %, 25 if Scott is high on scotch.

 

I've been suggested by a friend that this changes should be made only to the Umbra due to progression incentives, the standard Excalibur could be your first wf, so room for improvement is desirable.

I must say that I wrote down all these ideas I was sharing with my friends to the point of repeat them again and again, before reading this thread. I'm amaze, not to see that others thought the same, but the actual numbers, if you do the math:

On 2021-03-27 at 12:44 PM, GREF_TM said:

1) bigger waves with consistent hitboxes (...) - something like 4x3 meters would be pretty good;   ➡️ Not sure if its between 50% and 100% wider but think it is. ✅

2) wave speed should go up to at least 40 m/s, as current speed of 15 m/s is far too slow;   ➡️  2,7  , just between 2 and 3. ✅

3) heavy attack should produce a bigger wave;   ➡️ Genius! I never thought about this, now seems obbious.

4) base crit chance increased up to 25%.   ➡️ Thats exactly the same, jokes appart. ✅

 

Imo, if two or more people see the same thing from different sides, and came with the same conclusions, thats the way to follow.

Kudos to GREF_TM for his deep understanding of how Excalibur works and his ideas on how to make sensible changes without ruining it. I doubledown on the idea of changing de 4th ability only tho.

Thank you @ll, and please keep this thread alive.

[Faylis_Altier]

On 2021-03-29 at 12:54 AM, Lutesque said:

Intensive purposes

 Intents and purposes

 

 

[SmokinDice]

On 2021-03-23 at 6:29 PM, Gr1mwlf said:

Second, it deals trivial damage despite that being nearly the entire reason for using it.

as mentioned before many times, why not make javelin actually scale with exalted blade when its out. dealing exalted blade's damage instead. this would give synergy, and HUGE aoe clear to excalibur..

 

although my biggest problem with excal right now is how fragile he is.. EB deals okay damage, but even with healing return, adaptation, vitality, he is still way to squishy to rely on any generic defenses.. so you either need to shieldgate or do some crazy stuff wit minimum range nullstar helminth..

so what I would like to see is a major raise in his stats, maybe giving him much more BASE armor after using radial javelin, or doring exalted blade(basically also adding some magical exalted armor) or just flat damage reduction in some way.

[GREF_TM]

1 hour ago, SmokinDice said:

dealing exalted blade's damage instead

Just dealing EB damage would't be that great actually. Unless you're using knukor/cedo to get CO stacks upfront, EB does relatively low damage on the first strike, and only after you proc viral and heat, you start to do actual damage (viral boost + heat armor strip + CO stacks). Also, EB gets a huge chunk of its damage from stance damage multipliers (for example, every attack in standing combo has either 2x or 3x damage mul) - something that javelin won’t be able to benefit from under any circumstances. "Stealth" damage boost from radial blind also goes out the window - RJ isn't considered a melee strike. 

It will also need to inherit crit/status stats, a separate damage multiplier based on power, and probably even an enemy scaling multiplier on top of EB stats to do reasonable damage against even normal high level fodder, not to mention steel path fodder. 

[GREF_TM]

On 2021-04-01 at 4:01 AM, Veilor said:

3- Make the wave wider, like 50% wider, c'mon didn't u saw that comming? make it 100% wider for a Pablo© rework.

Just "wider" wouldn't quite cut it.

Current EB wave has base width of ~2m. This already small number goes even further down with distance, reducing to like ~0.5m if not less. But that's not even the worst part. The actual worst part is that EB wave hitbox is actually pretty accurate to a wave's visual representation, meaning that vertical hitbox size of a horizontal wave is almost non-existent - it's just a thin line. And on top of that, the angle of a wave launched is currently determened by an angle of a sword swing that produces it - meaning that, for example, a diagonal top right to bottom left swipe spawns accoriding diagonal waves. Here's the kicker - since it's diagonal, said wave covers less than 2m of horizontal space because of that. This combined with a fact that more than half of EB attacks produce diagonal waves means that about half of the time you won't even have 2 meters of horizontal area coverage - you'll have something like 1.5m, in some extreme examples (almost a vertical wave) you'll have even less.

For comparison, Baruuk's waves, while having less range (20m vs ~38m of EB), are ~10x10m wide, which is HUMONGOUS compared to EB waves, and have no damage falloff whatsoever, nor they shrink at size with distance (in fact, they aren't even actual waves - attack itself functions like hitscan I.e. hits instantly, and a wave is just a visual effect detached from an actual attack). 10 whooping meters consistently vs 2m max only half ot the time  - what kind of sick joke is that? Why would i ever play excal over baruuk when his waves are so much worse?

My idea is to have the exact same X-shaped 4x3m or 5x3m wave launched for every single EB attack, instead of every attack having a specifically angled wave like now. This will make their area coverage consistent across the board. Baruuk should keep bigger waves because of meter management, but having his waves to be 5 times larger like now is just ridiculous.

[Veilor]

 

8 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

Current EB wave has base width of ~2m. This already small number goes even further down with distance

Baruuk's waves, while having less range (20m vs ~38m of EB), are ~10x10m wide, which is HUMONGOUS compared to EB waves, and have no damage falloff whatsoever, nor they shrink at size with distance (in fact, they aren't even actual waves - attack itself functions like hitscan I.e. hits instantly, and a wave is just a visual effect

Yeah, pretty useless beyond melee range, a sad waste of one of the coolest abilities in wf.

So true, Excalibur can't compete with Baruuk's kills per second no wonder why is so praised in steelpath.

8 hours ago, GREF_TM said:

My idea is to have the exact same X-shaped 4x3m or 5x3m wave launched for every single EB attack, instead of every attack having a specifically angled wave like now. This will make their area coverage consistent across the board. Baruuk should keep bigger waves because of meter management, but having his waves to be 5 times larger like now is just ridiculous.

You need to adjust the animations too, I think using that base x-shape it could alternate between / and \ like  /  \  /  \  /  and make your idea of an even bigger wave as heavy attack being the horizontal wave -  A dream come true.

 

Oh Sh1t!

I need this changes so badly right now,

please Shy do your magik somehow ❣️