The Things I'd Need to be Happy with Pseudo-Exalteds no Longer Using Stat-Sticks

[KitMeHarder]

This is a long and comprehensive list of the changes I'd need DE to make for me to be 100% happy with Pseudo-Exalteds no longer using stat-sticks, and instead becoming proper Exalteds (this will also include current Exalted weapons). As well as a commitment I hope DE will make afterwards.

NOTE: This list is mostly to rectify the inconsistencies between Exalted weapons and normal weapons, as well as a compensation for abilities that use stat-sticks.

• Acolyte Mods
  • All Exalteds need be able to use Acolyte mods. Mods like Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, Galvanized Crosshairs, etc.... The Lack of Acolyte mods is one of the most disparaging reasons most Exalted weapons fail to compete with just regular ol' weapons. 
• Weapon Arcanes 
  • Another massive factor in making Exalteds underwhelming. All Exalteds should have an arcane slot, no exception.
• Stance Capacity 
  • Melee Exalteds need to gain the bonus capacity from stance mods, especially with the addition of Tennokai. Losing out on 10 mod capacity makes Exalted modding very tedious and resource intensive, but now it's near impossible with Tennokai's addition.
• Bonus Damage from Combo (Melee 3.0) 
  • At current, all Pseudo-Exalteds (and Baruuk's Exalted) gain +25% multiplicative damage for each combo tier past 1x. Psuedo-Exalteds need to retain this and other Exalted melees need to have it added. Not just for consistency, but for Exalteds like Wukong's and Excalibur's that really need it.
    • (For those that don't know, in melee 3.0, normal melees got massive stat buffs in exchange for no longer gaining damage via combo (and to flatten the bell curve on "what makes a good melee"). Exalted's however got almost none of that, only the negative.) https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1136784-update-26-the-old-blood/
• Exilus Mods 
  • Melee Exalteds already have this, it just needs to be added to Primaries and Secondaries for consistency.
• Inconsistent Buffs (Warframe Augments/Helminth) 
  • Certain buffs that apply to normal weapons (like Shock Trooper or Smite Infusion) don't apply to Exalteds (at the very least when they're on the same frame) last I checked.
    • Also, all of these elemental buff types should work like Xata's Whisper. No longer combining/weakening the IPS/elements on your weapons, as well as having a separate proc chance based on your weapon's status chance. This will make them welcome buffs instead of potentially messing up the elemental spread of our teammates' weapons.
• Rauta 
  • Rauta currently can not build combo for Exalted weapons, but it can for Pseudo-Exalteds. This is just another inconsistent QoL feature that needs to be rectified.
• Rivens, Weapon Augments, and Incarnons 
  • This is probably the only truly touchy point, but it can't be denied that Pseudo-Exalteds have been able to use Rivens and Weapon Augments (i.e. Blade of Truth) for 7.5+ years. They've also been able to use Incarnon Genesis evolutions for almost 10 months now. IMO at this point they are defacto intentional after being in the game so long (especially rivens). IMO for compensation Pseudo-Exalteds should have some of their base stats increased and the below is what I feel is appropriate. Some of these stats are major increases, but remember, this is in exchange for no longer using Rivens, Augments, or Incarnons (or Magus Aggress/weapon passives) as well as any possible future addition they'd get as Pseudo-Exalteds.
    • Atlas, Excalibur, Gara, and Khora
      • +25% base crit chance (Base means the base pre-modded stat, like i.e. Landslide would go from 5% to 30%.)
      • +25% base status chance 
      • +1x base crit damage
    • Gara
      • 2x base damage (Since Shattered Lash's synergy with the rest of Gara's kit does not scale with crit. Alternatively, it can be changed to now scale with crit instead of the base damage increase I proposed.)
      • Shattered Lash needs to build combo when it damages enemies. It's the only "melee weapon" in the game that can't build combo directly in any fashion.
• If I missed anything let me know and I'll add it.

And finally a commitment from DE to never let (or to quickly resolve) Exalted weapons fall into such a state of disrepair again. Exalted weapons are cornerstone abilities that often define a frame, they should basically be the best weapon in their class in the entire game, no exceptions. Because for most Exalteds, no amount of ability scaling/exclusive mechanics can let them overcome this monolith of inconsistencies and inadequacies.

 

Bonus: A handful of random changes I'd like for our current Exalted/pseudo-Exalted weapons. But this isn't the point of the thread, so I'll put them in a spoiler.

Spoiler

• Mesa - I've long wished the aim button while using Regulators allowed us to shoot a precise stream of bullets in the center of the reticle (an addition to the base option of auto-aim via the fire button). Allowing us to increase Peacemaker's focus at will and so we that can aim at heads/enemies who's vulnerable points aren't their center-of-mass.
• Hildryn - Balefire needs to have it's very pitiful crit and/or status stats increased. Below is a thread I made years ago that may be a bit outdated.
  • https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1247485-kits-hildryn-retouch/
• Titania - Needs to at least have her Dex Pixia's crit chance increased. Again, below is a thread I made years ago that may be a bit outdated.
  • https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1233579-the-spotlights-on-titania/
• Baruuk - I wish his waves acted like projectiles. That way they wouldn't struggle traversing most of the vertical terrain in this game, as well as they wouldn't get destroyed by doors anymore.
• Atlas - Nothing I really need to get off my chest ATM, but I will link my old thread on him. https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1342595-the-spotlights-on-atlas/
• All Melee Line-of-Sight - All melee shouldn't have line-of-sight checks (including Khora), like they used to. It is a buggy and frustrating mechanic that punishes normal play significantly more often than potential exploitive play. We no longer have old Maiming Strike, we no longer have massive melee range, and exploiters should not be addressed by punishing everyone. If someone exploits, you punish only them or you change the farm to inherently prevent it, you don't punish the frame/weapon and you don't punish all the people that weren't exploiting.
• All Melee Combo Counter - All melees should have combo slowly decay like how snipers works, instead of losing all combo at once. It can straight up be Naramon's Power Spike and the tree can get a new passive. Or it can be a slightly worse version that stacks with Naramon. (Exalteds could also not lose all combo upon deactivation/nullification.)

Edited February 27 by KitMeHarder

[(PSN)Ragology]

Most of the time when these topics come up, people just want pseudos to be separately moldable without any compensation so I'm glad you came up with some buffs to make up for the change in status.

[Azamagon]

Good thread, i agreed with everything here.

[Aevire]

+1 why do the high energy investment capstone abilities of warframes benefit from basically none of the game’s post 2016 systems

[PollexMessier]

I fully agree with all of these points, which is a pretty rare occurrence on posts like this. But I don't think that title is doing it any favors

[KitMeHarder]

9 minutes ago, PollexMessier said:

I fully agree with all of these points, which is a pretty rare occurrence on posts like this. But I don't think that title is doing it any favors

Thanks. What'd you have in mind?

[(PSN)MYKK678]

It's a shame that "pseudo-exalted weapons" is nothing except a player-made term, otherwise any kind of change would be realistic. But they officially don't exist, so it's not.

[PollexMessier]

1 hour ago, KitMeHarder said:

Thanks. What'd you have in mind?

Hmm. It is kindof hard to come up with something less pointed that's not a bit too long-winded, without changing a lot of the post to match.
Something like "Much needed changes to Exalted weapons if stat sticks are removed" maybe

A lot of these points are just changes that exalted weapons have needed for a long time regardless of what happens to Pseudo-exalts. So the "if stat sticks were removed" qualifier feels a bit bad. But that context is needed for some of the points to make sense without re-writing some things.

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, (PSN)MYKK678 said:

It's a shame that "pseudo-exalted weapons" is nothing except a player-made term, otherwise any kind of change would be realistic.

I mean exalteds used to work the same way, they used mods from your equipped weapons instead of being modded separately.

I also forget what started the recent talk, but making pseudo-exalteds official has been a talking point both in the community and DE. Even recently Reb brought them up on a devstream or devshort, and I may be wrong, but I thought she called them psuedo-exalteds.

4 minutes ago, PollexMessier said:

Something like "Much needed changes to Exalted weapons if stat sticks are removed" maybe

Gotcha. The reason I didn't do something like this is because I already made a thread like that almost two years ago. But since the community started talking about stat-sticks recently, I "struck while the iron was hot". So I added all the new inconsistencies and added how I thought psuedo's should be incorporated/handled.

If I don't forget, I'll think it over and maybe change my title. Thanks.

[Arbitrary]

3 minutes ago, KitMeHarder said:

Even recently Reb brought them up on a devstream or devshort, and I may be wrong, but I thought she called them psuedo-exalteds.

Tweet for reference.

Gonna take a moment to poke fun at the idea of "Oh you dared use community lingo (that the Devs also use)? Your suggestion is invalid."

[KitMeHarder]

3 hours ago, Arbitrary said:

Tweet for reference.

Thanks! Yeah, this was the catalyst for everything. And then she brought it up again on a stream because of the traction it got, but they all looked like they didn't even want to touch the topic with a 10-foot-pole.

[CrownOfShadows]

Well... I'd agree with all of this IF exalteds had zero power scaling.

As it stands, even in their current state, most still out-perform their counterparts. So giving all this to them would just send them to the moon. There's not a melee in the game - not even glaive prime - that can destroy as fast as a properly built Serene Storm / Baruuk. Putting Blood Rush on that would be insanity. Like NO. Why would you do that? And you seem to be focused on melee here but Mesa also - you just CANNOT give that girl anything else.

So I'll support this 100% if you reduce power scaling on exalted's to 0, otherwise, no way. A few things I do agree with regardless though:

• Rauta, and also other similar things like incarnon combo mechanics (like Innodem's) should work regardless
• Stance capacity is a real problem, yes
• Balefire needs serious help

[Raikh]

Agree with pretty much everything. Been sitting here since the introduction fo Acolyte Mods baffled as to why Exalted Weapons would be excluded from them and since then the list has only been growing longer with Melee 3.0 marking the death of Exalted Melees for me personally and even past that much has happened to only make the situation worse.

Psuedo-Exalted have been enjoying a much better life and if they were to finally become moddable themselves and we can finally do away with Stat sticks for them aswell, then the whole system definitely needs a look at. Particularly because its not something you can solve with raw numbers Buffs since there is a lot of scaling power in things Exalted Weapons do not have access to that cannot be replicated by making just a base nubmer bigger, not to any reasonable extent atleast.

8 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

As it stands, even in their current state, most still out-perform their counterparts. So giving all this to them would just send them to the moon. There's not a melee in the game - not even glaive prime - that can destroy as fast as a properly built Serene Storm / Baruuk

I see such a sentiment from time to time and I've been trying to replicate this and I can't even hope to come close. Serene Storm has great AoE, thats for sure, but in terms of raw damage it falls off and begs for Armor Strip so much faster than any good Melee Weapon and don't get me started on Incarnons. Especially now with either Melee Influence or Exposure in the mix.

Its also not fair to compare them to a melee weapon by itself. You build your entire Warframe around Serene Storm or Exalted Blade etc. A much fairer comparison would be to compare it to a Melee Weapon with a melee oriented Frame behind it, say Kullervo, and there the differences are incredibly grim.

[CrownOfShadows]

3 hours ago, Raikh said:

I see such a sentiment from time to time and I've been trying to replicate this and I can't even hope to come close. Serene Storm has great AoE, thats for sure, but in terms of raw damage it falls off and begs for Armor Strip so much faster than any good Melee Weapon and don't get me started on Incarnons. Especially now with either Melee Influence or Exposure in the mix.

For a long time I would've agreed about Serene Storm tbh, only in the last 4-5 months has it finally dawned on me how to play Baruuk correctly after years and years of thinking I was doing it right and that he just wasn't that impressive, but holy moly he is such a monster. Three keys: slide attacks. Don't rely on the waves or the actual fist hits, slide attacks are way more reliable for combo and do more damage. Primed Reach & Sacrificial Steel; absolutely essential - I dropped reach for a long time because I was relying on waves which don't benefit from it - that was a mistake. And try dropping Reactive Storm. I know that sounds crazy, it's a super super pretty number, but if you pay attention to what elements it's actually using on whom, and also if you think what is that number actually doing for you, you'll likely come to the same conclusion I did. Using an armor strip on him definitely is a good idea too though (I mean it's a good idea on everyone lol), I've mostly settled on pillage, but he shreds just fine without it - it's more for extra survival padding. Also running melee crit shards on him is a fantastic boost. By the time he's at 12x there's just nothing in the game that doesn't melt under him, you should be seeing high millions.

Like if we actually get down into where exalted weapons really fall power-wise:

• Exalted Blade (Excalibur): Extremely strong, can compete at the highest level, does not need any help
• Peacemakers (Mesa): completely OP
• Serene Storm (Baruuk): Extremely strong, can compete at the highest level, does not need any help
• Shadow Claws (Sevagoth): Strong, but can struggle sometimes, could use a little help, better than most melees
• Iron Staff (Wukong): Quite strong, somewhere near the top but not as good as some melees
• Dex Pixia (Titania): Extremely strong, can out-class most weapons, does not need any help
• Diwata Prime (Titania): Very weak, but is limited by a lot of things external to its stats as well, desperately needs help
• Valkyr Prime Talons (Valkyr): Strong, limited mostly by the stance and the weak range imo, weaker than most melee, needs help
• Artemis Bow (Ivara): Only strong with hyper-dedicated niche builds, for regular use it is very weak, needs help
• Balefire (Hildryn): Abysmally bad despite having big numbers, needs cc & cd, needs better animation

So out of all the exalted weapons, 6 are fine imo, and all the rest except Diwata just need a little push to bring them up to par. Fixing Valkyr's talons, Artemis Bow, & Balefire is a simple matter of adjustments - their numbers are mostly fine - they're just outdated in how they deliver that damage. Like by adding arcanes and acolyte mods, sure it would help a few things like Sevagoth and Valkyr, but it's not going to help Balefire really, nor will it help Artemis Bow that much - and at the same time it will skyrocket all the others that are fine so then we have to go back through and nerf everyone we just buffed.

I think these requests are born much more out of a desire for modernization of old exalteds than a complaint about their actual power, or a desire for standardization of everything - people like things in neat boxes most of the time, myself included. I mean, yes, they feel limited in the modding screen, but in reality are they really that limited in power? I don't think so. What we need is QoL on them, not more power. More power is just going to break more things than it fixes and it's not going to even fix a lot of things anyway.

[Raikh]

38 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Three keys: slide attacks. Don't rely on the waves or the actual fist hits, slide attacks are way more reliable for combo and do more damage. Primed Reach & Sacrificial Steel; absolutely essential - I dropped reach for a long time because I was relying on waves which don't benefit from it - that was a mistake.

I've heard of and seen the Slide Attacks and they definitely do good damage but its also forsaking one of the aspects that makes Serene Storm stand out. And from what I've seen myself its definitely respectable but I can also still see stronger melee weapons compare w/o even attaching any specific Warframe to them. I can just grab an Incarnon Melee on Baruuk and do basically just as well as if I was using Serene Storm, if not better.
Sure I can overinvest into Baruuk and pump him full of Archon Shards and that damage is going to be more than enough, because damage in general is vastly outscaling enemy Health in this game. But I still have to put in a LOT more effort since I'm not only building a weapon but I'm also dedicating an entire Warframe to that weapon.

Maybe there is still something I'm just plainly missing, but I really haven't felt the investment:reward ratio paying off with Exalted Melees since Melee 3.0. They can still be enough and aren't necessarily "weak" per se but long gone are the days where I'm eager to play Exalted Frames.

[KitMeHarder]

13 hours ago, CrownOfShadows said:

There's not a melee in the game - not even glaive prime - that can destroy as fast as a properly built Serene Storm / Baruuk. Putting Blood Rush on that would be insanity.

They aren't supposed to be comparable to other melees. They are supposed to be the things that make frames standout, you should be comparing them to other abilities. Splinter Storm, Desecrate, Gaze, Grasp of Lohk, Spores, Maim, Seeking Talons, Rotorswell, Blaze Artillery, Molecular Prime, Collective Curse, etc....

1 hour ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Like if we actually get down into where exalted weapons really fall power-wise:

• Exalted Blade (Excalibur): Extremely strong, can compete at the highest level, does not need any help
  • Was very bad until just recently. The companion rework has made this and Excal much better, but I'd still just rate Excal as an average frame (on a relative scale).
• Peacemakers (Mesa): completely OP
  • While the aimbot is strong, especially at lower levels, this is still a single target weapon at the end of the day. If you run something like a solo SP grineer survival, you can get overrun unless you're using every trick in the book, and even then... So while Peacemakers' still is one of the best abilities in the game, that doesn't excuse inconsistency.
• Serene Storm (Baruuk): Extremely strong, can compete at the highest level, does not need any help
  • Again, it's quite good and I'm not going to list it's flaws. But it's still not a reason for inconsistency.
• Shadow Claws (Sevagoth): Strong, but can struggle sometimes, could use a little help, better than most melees
  • Powerful, but painfully awkward, slow, and has to be charged. So while stronger numbers-wise than Excal, I'd rather just use Excal and you already know my opinion of him.
• Iron Staff (Wukong): Quite strong, somewhere near the top but not as good as some melees
  • Extremely weak. The fact you think some normal melees are better than it is already telling. Again, it's competing with Spores, Collective Curse, etc... not an Orthos Prime with Melee Influence on it.
• Dex Pixia (Titania): Extremely strong, can out-class most weapons, does not need any help
  • Very single target, so already not good for mobbing. So it terms of Bossing it's not bad if you have nothing else, but it's not competitive. If it wasn't for Razorwing, most people would never us it/consider it bad.
• Diwata Prime (Titania): Very weak, but is limited by a lot of things external to its stats as well, desperately needs help
  • Agreed
• Valkyr Prime Talons (Valkyr): Strong, limited mostly by the stance and the weak range imo, weaker than most melee, needs help
  • No comment
• Artemis Bow (Ivara): Only strong with hyper-dedicated niche builds, for regular use it is very weak, needs help
  • Even then, for good mobbing you're headshot/Ivara locked just to have a worse launcher. It needs mechanical changes like some other Exalteds, but my thread is mainly just for improving consistency first.
• Balefire (Hildryn): Abysmally bad despite having big numbers, needs cc & cd, needs better animation
  • No comment

[CrownOfShadows]

1 hour ago, KitMeHarder said:

They aren't supposed to be comparable to other melees. They are supposed to be the things that make frames standout, you should be comparing them to other abilities. Splinter Storm, Desecrate, Gaze, Grasp of Lohk, Spores, Maim, Seeking Talons, Rotorswell, Blaze Artillery, Molecular Prime, Collective Curse, etc....

• Exalted Blade (Excalibur): Extremely strong, can compete at the highest level, does not need any help
  • Was very bad until just recently. The companion rework has made this and Excal much better, but I'd still just rate Excal as an average frame (on a relative scale).
• Peacemakers (Mesa): completely OP
  • While the aimbot is strong, especially at lower levels, this is still a single target weapon at the end of the day. If you run something like a solo SP grineer survival, you can get overrun unless you're using every trick in the book, and even then... So while Peacemakers' still is one of the best abilities in the game, that doesn't excuse inconsistency.
• Serene Storm (Baruuk): Extremely strong, can compete at the highest level, does not need any help
  • Again, it's quite good and I'm not going to list it's flaws. But it's still not a reason for inconsistency.
• Shadow Claws (Sevagoth): Strong, but can struggle sometimes, could use a little help, better than most melees
  • Powerful, but painfully awkward, slow, and has to be charged. So while stronger numbers-wise than Excal, I'd rather just use Excal and you already know my opinion of him.
• Iron Staff (Wukong): Quite strong, somewhere near the top but not as good as some melees
  • Extremely weak. The fact you think some normal melees are better than it is already telling. Again, it's competing with Spores, Collective Curse, etc... not an Orthos Prime with Melee Influence on it.
• Dex Pixia (Titania): Extremely strong, can out-class most weapons, does not need any help
  • Very single target, so already not good for mobbing. So it terms of Bossing it's not bad if you have nothing else, but it's not competitive. If it wasn't for Razorwing, most people would never us it/consider it bad.
• Diwata Prime (Titania): Very weak, but is limited by a lot of things external to its stats as well, desperately needs help
  • Agreed
• Valkyr Prime Talons (Valkyr): Strong, limited mostly by the stance and the weak range imo, weaker than most melee, needs help
  • No comment
• Artemis Bow (Ivara): Only strong with hyper-dedicated niche builds, for regular use it is very weak, needs help
  • Even then, for good mobbing you're headshot/Ivara locked just to have a worse launcher. It needs mechanical changes like some other Exalteds, but my thread is mainly just for improving consistency first.
• Balefire (Hildryn): Abysmally bad despite having big numbers, needs cc & cd, needs better animation
  • No comment

You can't compare exalted weapons to other abilities if you're wanting to give them all the same tools as weapons - at that point I'd say yeah - they can't have any power scaling then - they can't be abilities at that point they have to be weapons because that's what you're wanting them to be, and even if you are comparing them to abilities not all abilities are or should be equal (exalted's should be strong, yes, but they don't need to all be equally strong nor should they all wipe the map)....

.....and "inconsistency" can certainly be irritating but it's hardly a good argument for dumping more multiplicative power into them. Like they're inconsistent - ok, and? Like that's just an organizational discomfort it doesn't actually address the power of these weapons. As long as they're performing well (which they are, except for the ones that need a QoL pass) then there's not really a problem except that we can't tack our shiny jewelry on them.

^{(I agree Shadow Claws are definitely a bit clunky to use, but I think you're underrating Iron Staff a bit here, it's pretty good, and idk my Mesa has no trouble at all mowing through entire crowds in the SP although I am pretty insanely invested in her too)}

[CrownOfShadows]

2 hours ago, Raikh said:

I've heard of and seen the Slide Attacks and they definitely do good damage but its also forsaking one of the aspects that makes Serene Storm stand out. And from what I've seen myself its definitely respectable but I can also still see stronger melee weapons compare w/o even attaching any specific Warframe to them. I can just grab an Incarnon Melee on Baruuk and do basically just as well as if I was using Serene Storm, if not better.
Sure I can overinvest into Baruuk and pump him full of Archon Shards and that damage is going to be more than enough, because damage in general is vastly outscaling enemy Health in this game. But I still have to put in a LOT more effort since I'm not only building a weapon but I'm also dedicating an entire Warframe to that weapon.

Maybe there is still something I'm just plainly missing, but I really haven't felt the investment:reward ratio paying off with Exalted Melees since Melee 3.0. They can still be enough and aren't necessarily "weak" per se but long gone are the days where I'm eager to play Exalted Frames.

Well, hm, idk it sounds like you may want to sit with some of them a bit longer. My Mesa and my Baruuk are both so strong that I don't even want to take them into the circuit anymore much less regular missions - they just destroy everything. I'm honestly shocked Elude got that augment - that feels like a mistake to me, Baruuk does not need more damage. And that's not 1/10th what Blood Rush and arcanes would do to him. I actually feel bad running my Mesa because my team doesn't have anything left to kill. Putting arcanes into peacemakers is just mind-blowing insanity, there's no way, not without massive nerfs to them first.

And excal is not far behind these two, he just doesn't have the range they do.

All of this does take heavy investment, and lots of build fiddling and theorycrafting and research, no denying that, but the payoff is worth it.

[Raikh]

23 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

I don't even want to take them into the circuit anymore much less regular missions - they just destroy everything

I don't really take Circuit as a measuring stick because by the time you face off against enemies of noteworthy level you should have enough Decrees to kill things with a plastic fork. And on that end, if I take Kullervo out with a plastic fork I'm not noticing a meaningful difference whether an enemy is level 20 or level 200 SP. The game has so many things that scale out of hand that I don't think it would blow anything out of proportion if Exalted Weapons dealt 3 times as much damage as they do now.

If I have to take a ton more investment to get Exalted Weapons to a spot where a regular Melee weapon can bring me with 3-5 Forma on any Frame, much less ones that actually buffs melee weapons and w/o needing to chunk Archon Shards at the issue on top given how limited they are.

Smth like Peacemaker can simply be an exception because its an incredibly convenient ability, but once I look at the prospect of spamming slides with Serene Storm when the convenient AoE waves do not cut it anymore I start feeling like I'm wasting both my time and resources.

[CrownOfShadows]

2 minutes ago, Raikh said:

I don't really take Circuit as a measuring stick because by the time you face off against enemies of noteworthy level you should have enough Decrees to kill things with a plastic fork. And on that end, if I take Kullervo out with a plastic fork I'm not noticing a meaningful difference whether an enemy is level 20 or level 200 SP. The game has so many things that scale out of hand that I don't think it would blow anything out of proportion if Exalted Weapons dealt 3 times as much damage as they do now.

If I have to take a ton more investment to get Exalted Weapons to a spot where a regular Melee weapon can bring me with 3-5 Forma on any Frame, much less ones that actually buffs melee weapons and w/o needing to chunk Archon Shards at the issue on top given how limited they are.

Smth like Peacemaker can simply be an exception because its an incredibly convenient ability, but once I look at the prospect of spamming slides with Serene Storm when the convenient AoE waves do not cut it anymore I start feeling like I'm wasting both my time and resources.

Yeah no I agree, Circuit is a bad measuring stick for damage and survival, I was just saying they dominate so hard in there I feel like I shouldn't even use them. While Mesa does fall off once you get into enemy levels too high in regular content (hm idk somewhere over level 500) I'm pretty sure I could go all the way to level cap with Baruuk (not that that's a great measuring stick either - but he hits so hard and has so much DR it's crazy).

Dumping multipliers into already insanely powerful weapons WILL make a big difference - it will push them into OMG HERE COMES THE NERF HAMMER territory. Right now they are in WE'RE WATCHING YOU territory. We tend to think DE doesn't care about balance but then the nerf hammer comes out and we're reminded that they don't want their game to be completely busted either. Like dropping a 10x multiplier on glaive prime would be insane wouldn't it? Why would we do that? And it would get nerfed immediately. That's exactly what would happen if we gave all these tools to exalted.

(On Baruuk, use the slide attacks to build your combo, once you're at 12x the waves are sufficient to kill everything but eximus & gunners. The waves aren't useless, they just don't do anything but ragdoll enemies until they're juiced enough, and they actually prevent you from building combo by knocking enemies away, trust me it's a better way to play him, and even more satisfying than endlessly pushing waves over people. I'm speaking from a place of real experience on this one, I spent YEARS playing him relying on those waves and gladiator and negative combo, that stuff is ok, its definitely not bad, but to really feel the CLICK, the AHA, the WOW - slide attacks)

[(PSN)MYKK678]

Weird isnt it, thread has switched over to folks discussing actual Exalted Weapons, as opposed to the "Pseudo-Exalted Weapons". Almost as if....

[Raikh]

1 hour ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Right now they are in WE'RE WATCHING YOU territory

Are they though? Usually DE has been balancing around popularity and nerfing things that allow for AFK farming and similar things that provide excessive convenience. Unless Baruuks popularity would suddenly sky rocket I don't see them care. Mesa might be a bit of a different topic because she is already very popular but idk if it would be enough to push her further up enough simply because she has less to gain than Exalted Melees.

1 hour ago, CrownOfShadows said:

we're reminded that they don't want their game to be completely busted either

Its well beyond that stage if you ask me. Atleast what numbers are concerned.

1 hour ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Like dropping a 10x multiplier on glaive prime would be insane wouldn't it?

I mean, thats what happens if you give Glaive Prime to Kullervo over a random Warframe. So that kinda already happened. Is it drastically overkill and silly as hell? Absolutely. Should it be in the game for balance's sake? Probably not. But now that so many silly things are in the game I'd rather have some parity on that atleast. And if everything is nigh equally silly it would also be much easier to find a new baseline to work with if they ever made a real attempt at balance.

1 hour ago, CrownOfShadows said:

trust me it's a better way to play him

Having a more diverse moveset to use is definitely more engaging, if a good mix of waves and slides are optimal that should be a good dynamic.
I may explore him a bit more when I have the time. Currently working on updating my roster and fleshing out more Warframe builds anyway. But I'm most definitely not convinced any Exalted Melee now goes for being a Top Tier Melee once you consider the Warframes you can put behind them.

4 minutes ago, (PSN)MYKK678 said:

Weird isnt it, thread has switched over to folks discussing actual Exalted Weapons, as opposed to the "Pseudo-Exalted Weapons". Almost as if....

Certainly went on a bit of a tangent here. But I guess its inevitable to talk about the state of full Exalted Weapons when talking about making Pseudo-Exalteds individually moddable like them. I'm highly curious where changes to Pseudo-Exalted modding will take us should they happen.

Edited February 28 by Raikh

[CrownOfShadows]

1 minute ago, (PSN)MYKK678 said:

Weird isnt it, thread has switched over to folks discussing actual Exalted Weapons, as opposed to the "Pseudo-Exalted Weapons". Almost as if....

Sorry, we can definitely talk about those too - he kinda lumped both together

 

[(PSN)MYKK678]

5 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Sorry, we can definitely talk about those too - he kinda lumped both together

 

You don't owe any apologies.

[Arbitrary]

6 minutes ago, CrownOfShadows said:

Sorry, we can definitely talk about those too - he kinda lumped both together

They're just mad cause people use well established community-generated terms (which the devs use too). Weird thing to take issue with but kinda w/e