Dante’s Tome would be a perfect time for an exalted overhaul

[Aruquae]

Dante, the Warframe I’ve been waiting for. A casting wizard frame that can fulfill my warlock spamming ability play style. To complete it, his name makes me motivated to farm him. The only problem is his exalted tome…

Now, I use the grimoire a lot since getting my hands on it, but if I’m being honest… it’s weak. The first of its kind made a forgettable splash. It’s a stat stick for abilities which is great for spamming, but damage wise ehh…

The fact that he was an exalted tome is questionable. If grimoire did set the tome (get it? Tone? Tome?) for how more tome weapons are going to be going further, then this might be another balefire is sad. Exalted weapons always ALWAYS have limitations. Will they put limitations on that weapon to the point where it just feels… bad to use? That brings us to exalted weapons as a whole

Excluding Garuda’s talons (seriously though, that’s just an exclusive melee), all of the exalted weapons have too much limitations for a warframe’s “signature ability.” A normal melee will always outperform an exalted melee, and those melees aren’t able to clear Steel Path content on its own (not including augments or stat sticks).

TLDR: Will they screw the exalted Tome like they screwed the other exalted weapons?

[crimsonspartan1]

That's assuming the tome can actually be used as a weapon. From the Devstream I just assumed the exalted Tome is just how he uses his abilities, but if it's a useable exalted weapon then i'd hope it's strong enough to compete with the secondaries we have.

Other exalted weapons definitely could use a buff of sorts. If they could also use combo mods outside of Gladiator Might and Gladiator Vice (for the set bonus) and Drifting Contact (the only combo duration mod that can be fitted onto exalted weapon builds for some reason) then i'd imagine exalted melees would be as broken as other melees. Most melees become busted because of combo mods like Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds so if we had access to them on stuff like the Exalted Blade, then other exalted melees would become much better. Outside of melees, you have Mesa's Regulators which are insane but unless you use the augment you're stuck in place, and Hildryn's Balefire Surge can also be quite strong but you're often just better off using literally any other weapon.

That said, certain exalted melees like Baruuk's Desert Wind are already pretty ridiculous, busted with it's augment. Sevagoth's shadow's claws can do a lot of damage as well with high crit chance, crit damage and status chance, Exalted Blade can be very strong if you use it's augment and Valkyr's talons are also pretty strong, especially with it's Enraged augment if you don't mind the cooldown. It's kinda just easier to stick to regular melees however, considering how strong a lot of them are, especially if you use combo builds.

[Aruquae]

3 minutes ago, crimsonspartan1 said:

That's assuming the tome can actually be used as a weapon. From the Devstream I just assumed the exalted Tome is just how he uses his abilities, but if it's a useable exalted weapon then i'd hope it's strong enough to compete with the secondaries we have.

That is true. They did state it was an exalted weapon, but it could be a Harrow situation. 

 

4 minutes ago, crimsonspartan1 said:

Most melees become busted because of combo mods like Blood Rush and Weeping Wounds so if we had access to them on stuff like the Exalted Blade, then other exalted melees would become much better.

That is also true, don’t forget building combo for a heavy attack on an exalted would take too much time for very weak returns. Plus… why can’t they use Arcanes?

 

5 minutes ago, crimsonspartan1 said:

Outside of melees, you have Mesa's Regulators

I agree with the regulators, those things pack a punch. The balefire though? How the hek did you make it viable? Teach me your ways, I want it to do more than ragdoll. 

 

6 minutes ago, crimsonspartan1 said:

Baruuk's Desert Wind are already pretty ridiculous, busted with it's augment. Sevagoth's shadow's claws can do a lot of damage as well with high crit chance, crit damage and status chance, Exalted Blade can be very strong if you use it's augment and Valkyr's talons are also pretty strong, especially with it's Enraged augment if you don't mind the cooldown.

I agree with Desert Wind being powerful, but it requires a proper stat stick along with an augment just to make it strong. You waste a melee and a mod slot for a weapon. Sevagoth’s shadow… aight you got me there. That thing is perfect with or without combo. 
Exalted blade and Valkyr’s talons both need you to waste a mod slot for abilities that should already perform decently. I know Valkyr’s Talons suffer greatly from the stance. 
Don’t forget all scenarios require heavy strength, so that’s even more mod slots taken just to make them on par with any mediocre melee. What I’m trying to say is you pointed out all of the exalted melees performing great, but forgot the fact that you need a heavy setup just to make them viable. 

[crimsonspartan1]

17 minutes ago, Aruquae said:

That is true. They did state it was an exalted weapon, but it could be a Harrow situation. 

 

That is also true, don’t forget building combo for a heavy attack on an exalted would take too much time for very weak returns. Plus… why can’t they use Arcanes?

 

I agree with the regulators, those things pack a punch. The balefire though? How the hek did you make it viable? Teach me your ways, I want it to do more than ragdoll. 

 

I agree with Desert Wind being powerful, but it requires a proper stat stick along with an augment just to make it strong. You waste a melee and a mod slot for a weapon. Sevagoth’s shadow… aight you got me there. That thing is perfect with or without combo. 
Exalted blade and Valkyr’s talons both need you to waste a mod slot for abilities that should already perform decently. I know Valkyr’s Talons suffer greatly from the stance. 
Don’t forget all scenarios require heavy strength, so that’s even more mod slots taken just to make them on par with any mediocre melee. What I’m trying to say is you pointed out all of the exalted melees performing great, but forgot the fact that you need a heavy setup just to make them viable. 

Exalted Melees can actually use Tennokai, as you can equip the Tennokai mods on them, so it would be nice to be able to make use of combo builds on Exalted weapons, if only it was easier to generate combos on them since Desert wind's shockwaves cannot add combo and neither can Exalted Blade's waves unless you don't use the augment and use Relentless Combination on your Exalted which adds combo when slash procs do damage so you can not only generate combo on the waves via slash procs, but can actually generate combo kinda quickly, but ofc that takes up a mod slot.

Balefire isn't that op actually, the ragdoll effect makes it very annoying, although it can work well if you just use pillage to armor strip, but basically anything becomes viable once you strip off armor and shields. 

I don't actually use a stat stick with Desert Wind. I just have a lot of power strength on Baruuk and his augment and a viral + heat build and his exalted has over 100% status chance and crit chance and then I just go ham. Arcane Fury and Strike also helps out with melee damage + attack speed for just about any exalted melee. 

You're right about exalted weapons needing a heavy setup to make viable though. Regular melees can just run a combo build and melt enemies while Exalted weapons can't do that so you need to mod them further to make them viable. Not to mention you need stat sticks to make some of them actually work, like Khora's whipclaw which isn't a proper exalted weapon, but you get the idea? It's just way easier using regular melees but most frames with exalted weapons you'd usually build for the exalted weapon anyway unless you're experimenting with different builds? 

[Aruquae]

7 minutes ago, crimsonspartan1 said:

don't actually use a stat stick with Desert Wind. I just have a lot of power strength on Baruuk and his augment and a viral + heat build and his exalted has over 100% status chance and crit chance and then I just go ham. Arcane Fury and Strike also helps out with melee damage + attack speed for just about any exalted melee

I’ll try those Arcanes for my Desert Wind. Stat sticks get boring after a while. 

 

7 minutes ago, crimsonspartan1 said:

Balefire isn't that op actually, the ragdoll effect makes it very annoying, although it can work well if you just use pillage to armor strip, but basically anything becomes viable once you strip off armor and shields. 

Dang it, I thought you discovered the true power of balefire or something. 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

No I think it’s fine as it is tbh. Rather, I’d want them to focus on frames that need to be updated. Frost, Loki, Chroma, and I’m sure there are a bunch more. 

[crimsonspartan1]

3 minutes ago, Aruquae said:

I’ll try those Arcanes for my Desert Wind. Stat sticks get boring after a while. 

 

Dang it, I thought you discovered the true power of balefire or something. 

For exalted melee builds I always use Fury + Strike because it's just bonus damage on crit and bonus attack speed on hit and it's easy to trigger them.

It probably does very well on low armored enemies like butchers at high levels since with a lot of damage and strength the base damage of Balefire can hit over 100k, but low crit and status as well as low fire-rate does reduce it's effectiveness, as well as low fire-rate. I just slap on Lethal Torrent and Accelerate Isotope to double it's fire-rate and charge speed and then either build it for Corrosive + Heat + Radiation (from Isotope), or Viral + Radiation + Electric which is probably the better build if you use pillage first.

Exalted melees can also become a lot stronger if you make use of other frame's abilities, but that requires you to use helminth. Like you can subsume Valkyr's war-cry on a build for extra attack speed, slap on eternal war so you can keep the buff up longer if you get more kills and you get a pretty good speed boost from it, or you can subsume just about any damage buffing ability. Kullervo's Wrathful advance is also neat as that ramps your crit chance up by 100% base and it's increases by strength so with a lot of strength you can make Baruuk's and Valkyr's exalted melees into red-critting monsters. OFC Subsuming abilities onto frames is just a way to make their weapons more viable, but it doesn't exactly fix them in terms of their effectiveness. It'd be nice seeing weapon arcanes be put on exalted weapons, but I could see some insane possibilities like Exalted Blade and Desert wind being status spreading monsters with their augments with Melee Influence or Mesa's regulators being even more op with Cascadia Flare, but it could definitely help out Balefire.

[RyllusPurple]

imagine if the tome was one of Dante's skill slots and you couldn't actually use Tome mods on it. Wouldn't that be wacky?

[Aruquae]

1 hour ago, (XBOX)YoungGunn82 said:

No I think it’s fine as it is tbh. Rather, I’d want them to focus on frames that need to be updated. Frost, Loki, Chroma, and I’m sure there are a bunch more. 

With that Strat we’ll have more frames that want more reworks. I’d rather them come out semi-polished then a buggy mess for a rework later on. 

 

21 minutes ago, RyllusPurple said:

imagine if the tome was one of Dante's skill slots and you couldn't actually use Tome mods on it. Wouldn't that be wacky?

Don’t give DE ideas now

[(PSN)robotwars7]

11 hours ago, Aruquae said:

To complete it, his name makes me motivated to farm him.

I see what you did there. Vergil approves:

to be honest, I don't have any clue where DE wants to go with regards to exalted weapons: right now it IS possible to build them to be good-ish, but they are still less effective than regular melees and they also drain your energy, which regular melees don't ofc. therein lies the issue; if a melee wants to take energy over time, then it needs to be worth the energy cost, because that energy is for other abilities too. sure, we can subsume War Cry, Wrathful Advance etc. but those are still band-aid fixes, not something that addresses the root cause of the issue.

my ideal version of exalted melees would be something akin to supers from destiny: they'd be short lived and costly, but the damage would be nuts. like, Arquebex crit levels of insanely high, they could be as gloriously broken strong as possible, at the cost of possibly running out of energy, though given the current energy economy with Energize/Zenurik, I don't think it'd be a major headache now like it would've been, had it been implemented in the past. to bring it back to DMC briefly, you could think of this mode as a "Devil Trigger", but obviously the name would be different. Tennokai Unleashed? I dunno, DE would think of something.

the downside is you wouldn't be able to spam exalted blade for an entire mission anymore, but you would be able to cut down anyone at the right moment, by knowing when to use regular melee and when to get serious bring out the exalted melee. I know not everybody will agree with me on this one, and that's absolutely fine, but I think it's the best solution if you just.. need... more... POWER!