Excalibur 2.0 - We Are Almost There!

[Lagomorf]

I actually like the new Super Jump, and I can see what they intended to do with it. They turned it into a defensive ability. Excalibur now turns invisible when he jumps, allowing him to break enemy aggro and hide behind cover to wait for his shields to regen without being chased. I've used it successfully on boss fights to get the boss to attack my teammates instead. However, I think that it still needs one little tweak for people to start to use it defensively: it should instantly "jump start" (see what I did there) your shield regen when you use it. Since it only costs 10 energy, the amount of shields regenerated during your jump should be enough. Otherwise, I would increase the cost to 25 energy and make it boost your total shield capacity and regen rate temporarily, but then people would stop jumping with it.

I suggest you trying it solo, especialy against Grineer. The invisibility doesn't protect you from enemies tracking you down; Lancers would still shoot you and Scorpions will also aimbot grip you.  In the addition, it is very strict limited in direction, has small innate height and doesn't let you reload your weapon before the peak of jump.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Lagomorf

[ImNotJellyAtAll]

I wanted to make my own thread with a suggestion but this seems to be the place to be when it comes to all things Excalibur related.

 

First of all I want to make it clear that I absolutely love Excalibur and it really, really hurts me that DE would rather nerf him a dozen times over before they would even dreamception a tiny buff to him. At most our favorite posterboy gets an aesthetic upgrade which, while appreciated, is not to be considered a long overdue buff. But I understand DE's irrational fear of buffing a starter and actually making him useful in high-level play without requiring players to sit on the edge of their seats and becoming super saiyans to get the most out of their match, if you are doing better than that multi-Forma, potato'd Rhino Prime then something must have gone horribly wrong!

 

Therefore I suggest giving the Excalibur (and perhaps some other Warframes) a treatment similar to upgrading from MK-1 Braton to Braton and from Latron to Tiberon. The Excalibur Dragon with improved stats and abilities. Since I have had bad experience with suggestions I can already guess there will be many naysayers but we are a community and I accept the views of everyone. But here are my arguments to support my case.

 

Simply put the Dragon Nikana and the Tiberon are (arguably) superior to their normal counterparts in every way. They are their original in upgraded form, the MK-2 version so to speak. For me this is the best system ingame as it does not require endless farming or grinding to get a good weapon or Warframe. It allows you to keep the spirit of the thing you love and, after applying a bit of spit shine, it become that much better. 

 

Lore-wise (what little there is) the Excalibur is considered to be quite important given its nature as the original Warframe. We have the Proto-Excalibur, the Excalibur Prime (<3) and then the most recent version of the the Excalibur. It would stand to reason that the Excalibur Warframe could, would and should be used as a sort of prototype for augmentation, experimentation and upgrading seeing as he is the oldest and most trusted Warframe. His stability is comparable to Windows XP still being considered one of the best operating systems by some experts.

 

TL:DR

Give us the option to transform the Excalibur from a Starter to a Dragon Excalibur because upgrades are fun.

 

A/N

Please tell me what you think but don't be too harsh. I'm fragile ;n;

IMO Excalibur shouldn't require an upgrade to not be mediocre. Dragon Excalibur would be pretty nice looking though.

[CombatPastor]

Still waiting to see some feedback from DE concerning all this.

[OriVerda]

-snip-

 

-snip-

I admit I feel that they really need to make Excalibur work and not just evolve him but I really doubt DE would do that seeing as they have neglected him so far. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. Excal is in a seriousness need for a rework in stats and abilities. I love using him but it sucks that I have to have to fight at 110% whilst my teammates just waltz around like its a picknick.

[Kuboy]

I admit I feel that they really need to make Excalibur work and not just evolve him but I really doubt DE would do that seeing as they have neglected him so far. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. Excal is in a seriousness need for a rework in stats and abilities. I love using him but it sucks that I have to have to fight at 110% whilst my teammates just waltz around like its a picknick.

That's a great way to put it

[Deruser]

Wait seriously? Blind puncture is the next augment mod? Are you serious? I feel like chopping my head off now. Instead of creating a cool augment mod for Excalibur, something like Rhino's exploding Iron skin or Ash's Seeking Shuriken, they did this? I thought they said they did not want people to spam radial blind, and they freaking did this???

[(PSN)SilverKarasu]

Was about to make my own thread as well but you have a nice thing going here.

To begin, I'm a stubborn aestheticism nut. I refuse to use anything I don't find visually appealing and regularly ignore all prime gear because GOLD too strong T_T

Now that that's out of the way, Excalibur is the only male frame I like but I avoided him till recently because he portrayed one thing but didn't do it at all. He's supposed to be the Sword Melee frame. All his skills, every trailer he's in, they all have him being a beast with a sword. But he sucks at it in practice. And I'd to go over what I believe makes a good melee frame, why Excalibur fails at it, and what I hope will fix it.

First off, what is a melee frame? When I say melee frame I mean a frame that feels at home in the thick of it. Just him, the enemy, and a sword. Sure he can use a gun when the situation calls for it. But when a sword is in his hand, Skankfunk's Snapped track starts up in the background. But what does Excalibur need for him to fit the bill?
- Survive-ability. A melee frame is a frame that is right in front of an enemy all the time. Excalibur needs some way to make that ok for him.
- Sustain: The combos must flow seamlessly from enemy to enemy as long as there are enemies. The combo counter is the thing that keeps the damage going. So Excalibur needs to be able to keep it going.

That's really it. Short list I know. But melee frames don't need much. They need to be able to withstand that playstyle, and be able to make the most out of it continuously as necessary.

So now let's move on to the long area. What Excalibur does wrong.

- Survive-ability. It's not there. At least not in a way that makes melee his home.
- Before it was radial blind which was actually ok. Was exploited to hell. But at the Normal level it was great as far as I could tell. Wide, decent lasting AOE blind and stun so that he was free to hack and slash as he pleased without being shot at which is my next point. Then that was nerfed to hell. I agree it was logical. A light flash shouldn't go through walls. But in situations where your in a room with enemies refreshing continuously and your trying to manually travel from enemy to enemy to keep your combo going (basically survival) one cast is not going to cut it. Every time a new enemy/enemies come in you've got to pop it again. Because your not durable AT ALL in actuality. And even that lancer can shred you in T4 (30+ min or so with 740/740 in my experience). But your not built to keep that up. Your not a caster frame. You're a really bad melee frame. So unless you build like a caster just to make the now spam necessary blind to work, your up a creak.
- As mentioned before, your natural durability is crap. at with most frames not saryn, valkyr, etc. With frames like that they rely on defensive abilities to keep them going. Which is ok for excalibur to have. But he doesn't as expressed above. At least not one that isn't basically him being a caster. If it's not abilities then it's durability. If you have neither, that a problem.
- Melee defenses. Failure. First off the parry system drains your stamina the harder your hit. So like Rhino's Iron skin, after a point it's basically nothing. It also only blocks in front of you. How often in an endless mission are we lucky enough have every neatly in front of us? Reflex Guard is nice. But it's glitchy and really only works well with guns since your character is facing directly at the enemy to fire as you aim. While running with a sword, your not really able to work it like that easily. And again, only blocks in front of you. And the kicker, you can't block and melee attack at the same time! So that little amount of defense you had, you've got to give it up while you attack this one guy while 20+ more are all around you just poppin' caps in your frame cause hey, you can't do anything to stop them or the 10 more about to walk in as you cast that blind for the 4th time for the same room of enemies.

- Sustain. Again. Not there. This is both because of the nature of the combo counters and Excalibur's lack of natural chaining of enemies.
- The counter completely wipes once it's time is up. effectively nullifying the build up you've worked for. Another issue with the caster ability set up. Time spent trying to cast another blind or javelin to stay alive should be being used to get to the next enemy and focus on your combos. But you can't.
- Excalibur is not a fast frame. His base walk speed is cringing and his sprint is meh. Also, your melee. the stamina to be used for sprinting is being drained by your melee attacks. That combined with your unforgiving counter timer makes things impossible for him with his caster needs.

So we see where we're having trouble but how do we solve it? How do we get a sword back into Excalibur's hand and make him want it? I have some suggestions. It's a combination of skill changes and innate passives. Pretty much a rework.

- Slash Dash: Change to a auto dash to the nearest target within a certain range. This gives a reason for that augment as well as give him melee sustain. Quickly chaining melee targets not in the bunch you started with in this corner of the room, sprint a bit, spin, Slash dash, boom new target. get that annoying osprey just above your head without having to fumble your jump or pull out your gun breaking combo counter. Also scale it too your weapon for godsake. And while your at it scale it to the combo counter as well. And keep it's current super armor (Shields can be damaged during the skill but not health) as it has that feature already.
- Radial Blind: This is the defensive skill. The thing that will give him the durability needed for life with the sword. It needs be duration based and persistent like Shattershield or Turbulence. Something Excalibur can use efficiently and quickly. Cast times mean death in high level survivals. And as I've seen, even the cast time of a radial blind with natural talent is enough time for a room to burst you down. Excalibur should be able to pop it and go/continue to take enemies to town.
- Super Jump: I personally like Super right now. The only thing I can suggest is make it a directional leap instead of straight up. I could just be bad with it, or spoiled by Zephyr, but if I'm in the middle of everything, an invisible straight up jump doesn't help me all that much. not at all really. I only use it to supplement the cast of radial blind so I can do it safely without getting merc'd. A directional jump would help if this skill was meant to be a disengage as it seems.
- Radial Javelin: Have it scale to your weapon and that's about it. I like the augment. I just never use the skill. Never liked Nuk builds or frames, or one skill wonders. I love frames like Excalibur (tries to be) and Zephyr who regularly use all 4 skills to worthwhile effect.
- Passive: "Honor Drawn" (Excalibur the sword refused to be drawn from the stone until Arthur had come to claim it, holding the power of itself in check, not withering until that day. This steadfast nature of the Sword was the inspiration for the passives name). Excalibur's Combo counter degrades slowly, at 3 strike counts per second, instead of disappearing all at once. This gives Excalibur some more innate sustain not dependent upon ability usage. Excalibur is not a caster and that needs to be avoided. I don't think he needs a melee increase passive. With the new sustain, he'll be rewarded with hefty damage increases for effective play and use of all his tools.

Edited January 1, 2015 by (PS4)SilverKarasu

[Lagomorf]

huge snip

Your suggestion is good, though I could argue about Slash Dash auto-lock on the nearest enemy. whith Warframe's targeting AI you will mostly find yourself dashing into wall this way or not dashing at all if target died milisecond before cast animation started.

I think that more simple sollution to Slash Dash effectiveness would be better. For example, it would hit bigger area around the line Excalibur dashes and also let's you go through the enemies you dash and bash into.

However, I don't think Super Jump could have any viable modification. We need something completely new instead of it. People leave thousands of intresting ideas here.

[MDRLOz]

I just want to say there is a few people just posting "Will DE say anything about Excalibur...", its not really good to post asking or demanding changes. Instead 

 

Wait seriously? Blind puncture is the next augment mod? 

*Cough* To my knowledge that is still design council only info. (Could be wrong). Best not mention things encase we get shut down. 

 

 

- Passive: "Honor Drawn" (Excalibur the sword refused to be drawn from the stone until Arthur had come to claim it, holding the power of itself in check, not withering until that day. This steadfast nature of the Sword was the inspiration for the passives name). Excalibur's Combo counter degrades slowly, at 3 strike counts per second, instead of disappearing all at once. This gives Excalibur some more innate sustain not dependent upon ability usage. Excalibur is not a caster and that needs to be avoided. I don't think he needs a melee increase passive. With the new sustain, he'll be rewarded with hefty damage increases for effective play and use of all his tools.

Either Excalibur needs this or we need a mod for all frames that enable this or even one that simply extends the combo stack fall off by a few seconds. 

 

Also I have been trying out the new slash dash mod and I think I have come to the same conclusion as everyone that you cant use in a max duration build. You end up slash dashing into a wall 3 miles away I think some kind of low level fleeting expertise would be useful in getting the dash distance to a controllable and use able level. 

[RahuHordika]

I really do hope DE takes notice of this thread an actually does something. At this point there have been many good suggestions that focus on making all of his powers viable.

And to be honest the changes to his powers don't even need to be too big, for instance something as simple as making Slash Dash behave like melee (meaning it'd be affected by melee modifiers such as combos, invis, blind effect, etc.) would be an acceptable change in my opinion (with perhaps a little streght buff or a bit of melee scaling).

To be honest the only power I feel needs to be modified somewhat to make it better at an all-around use, rather than it's current heavy situationality, is Super Jump.

[r0ckwolf]

\**From Patch Notes:

 

Warframe Changes:

 

• Added Melee Combo Counter to Excalibur’s Slash Dash.
  

We achieved a big win! :D Our Message got heard, keep it going guys, there is still more to achieve! 

[Kuboy]

unless the combo counters apply to slash dash's damage, it did nothing more than the augment that already did nothing

[Void_Vis_Vires]

 

\**From Patch Notes:

 

Warframe Changes:

 

• Added Melee Combo Counter to Excalibur’s Slash Dash.

We achieved a big win! :D Our Message got heard, keep it going guys, there is still more to achieve! 

 

 

Wait does that mean the standard slash dash will now scale with the melee combo counter multiplier?

[r0ckwolf]

Wait does that mean the standard slash dash will now scale with the melee combo counter multiplier?

i asked the exact same thing in the Update post, will update on the answer... if i get one...

[Kuboy]

Wait does that mean the standard slash dash will now scale with the melee combo counter multiplier?

 

Not at all, it just adds melee counters on top of that S#&amp;&#036;ty augment, while applying no extra damage and disappearing before you can turn around and slash a single person just once. This begs to be asked, but why would you want to when he's so squish in mid to high level content? He's not a melee frame, he's just a frame.

[r0ckwolf]

unless the combo counters apply to slash dash's damage, it did nothing more than the augment that already did nothing

i wouldn´t say nothing, but yes this needs to happen as well! Still it´s a change we wanted itßs a first step at least!

[Kuboy]

i wouldn´t say nothing, but yes this needs to happen as well! Still it´s a change we wanted itßs a first step at least!

 

Gamma=1/sqrt(1-ß)

[RahuHordika]

To me Slash Dash needs to benefit from external melee bonuses (blind, invisibility, combo counter, etc.) otherwise these additions (alongside the augment, as already stated) is pointless for it.

Most of the times the enemies either soread out to quickly or you end up too far away from them before the combo counter dies off.

[V0LK]

DE realised "Melee 2.0" with flashy combos.

Players ask DE for Slash Dash to add to combo.

MONTH later DE released this as an optional mod.

DE finally makes it a passive ability next update.

 

I wonder what's the story behind this. Is there a huge miscommunication between departments? What happens to an obsolete mod next?

[MDRLOz]

OK some pretty negative views from this update.

 

Can we all just take a moment to reflect on this achievement.

 

We all asked for a change to slash dash and melee combo counter was one of the things we wanted.

This has been added in as base and as a mod to increase it.

 

Now I know people say that this is useless because you slash dash 3 miles and cant reach enemies in time but I have seen a few people say this while running their maximum duration build to make radial blind work better. I think this is a tad silly thing to say. If it worked with the best radial blind build then you would only have one possible build for Excalibur.

 

This means DE has listened to player feedback and the game has been improved because of it.

 

I for one think this is a good thing.

Do I think this will make Excalibur a top tier frame? No.

Will I make use this to make slash dash builds and improve my melee play? Yes.

Am I going to ask DE to now make slash dash damage scale off the combo counter? No.

 

I think for now we can leave it. There has been improvement. We should all take some time and try it out. Otherwise we all just look like we are clamoring for buff after buff. Say DE does scale that damage, next we will be saying it should take status affects from your melee. Then after that we will want the duration of the status affects to scale from the combo counter. Then we will want a bleed proc as well and lastly probably a % armour debuff.

 

For now lets take some time to appreciate what we have.

[Burnthesteak87]

The new function on Slash Dash seems to work properly without the Augment. It seems to give 1 combo point for every enemy hit.
Now we just need to get a more durable Combo Counter System.

Follow this thread if interested.
https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/373974-rethoughts-on-melee-20-combo-counter-system/page-3#entry4213107

[RahuHordika]

Am I going to ask DE to now make slash dash damage scale off the combo counter? No.

I think for now we can leave it. There has been improvement. We should all take some time and try it out. Otherwise we all just look like we are clamoring for buff after buff. Say DE does scale that damage, next we will be saying it should take status affects from your melee. Then after that we will want the duration of the status affects to scale from the combo counter. Then we will want a bleed proc as well and lastly probably a % armour debuff.

For now lets take some time to appreciate what we have.

Why not? Slash Dash's damage is sad past mid game so being affected by the combo counter won't make it OP, but still give it some better damage viability.

Yes, believe it or not more often than not one ends up far away from a group of enemies after you dash, either that or they spread out to quickly for what is the pitiful durarion of the combo counter and the weird targetting of the melee system. Besides in your second to last paragraph, you're exaggerating quite a bit, I personally just want SD to have a decent use by itself without the need of specific builds (because to me that's the proper way to balance a power) and besides all those 'probabilities' you mentioned are just different suggestions people have given Slash Dash, and the with the combo counter idea the concept power itself being affected by it was either not too far off or it was assumed those two came together; so in short do not start exaggerating things because some people not satisfied with the one and only change the ability has received.

If you're satisfied by this latest change then good for you, but I am not satisfied because this is still not where I think SD should be, and others will agree with me as well. Now don't get me wrong, it's good they made a change and I appreciate it, but it's nothing special and DE has listened plenty of times before. Besides, just because they made one change doesn't meant the power (or the entire frame, on ocassions) is fine all of the sudden, people are still asking to changes for frames such as Frost and Ember who already received changes more than once.

TL DR: If you are satisfied with those changes then fine, but don't tell those who aren't that they should just 'appreciate what we have', I mean we should be thankful indeed, but basically you're saying "They made a change, stop giving feedback", even if they made a change the ability is not there yet for others. I am not satisfied with the changes and I will express myself on that, and give my feedback, as will others and there's no reason why we shouldn't be doing that.

Edited January 9, 2015 by RahuStalker

[(PSN)SilverKarasu]

I think the linear dash concept should be scrapped altogether. Unless you take time to gauge your distances you'll either go too short, or too far from an enemy.

 

It's a first skill. A weak dash that will go through your enemy instead of setting them up for follow through melee damage is pointless as far as I can see. If it was like a high damaging skill that would most likely kill what you hit then it would be alright. Like a hit and run skill. Which is skill a bit bad because is saps your momentum once the skill ends.

[oinkah]

Nice to see DE listen to feedback.

I personally don't find this useful, as combo counter is too finicky for me. And besides, if enemies are weak enough to be meleed safely, then they are probably soft enough to go down to regular slash dash. Mixing in radial blind could help, but again, it takes time and combo counter does not last long. Maybe I just don't see Excalibur as an melee frame. Perhaps with natural talent, optimal slash dash length and tons of multitasking he can become a killing machine.

Anyway, it's an often requested feature, so if it makes someone happy, I can't complain.

[MDRLOz]

-Snip-

TL DR: If you are satisfied with those changes then fine, but don't tell those who aren't that they should just 'appreciate what we have', I mean we should be thankful indeed, but basically you're saying "They made a change, stop giving feedback", even if they made a change the ability is not there yet for others. I am not satisfied with the changes and I will express myself on that, and give my feedback, as will others and there's no reason why we shouldn't be doing that.

Sorry if I came off to satisfied with the change. I was mainly trying to recommend time to reflect and process rather than move on to the next requests. Balance changes and feedback should be a continual thing. However I wonder if the change is no longer just with slash dash but also with the melee system now. Now that all Excalibur's can use slash dash to boost their melee play I hope more people try out combo stacking and see what are the problems. 

 

I had a quick go with my melee build on a Ceres exterminate. Use of the slash dash, or additionally using the augment, allowed me to stack up some good combo values and also to jump between mobs to keep the combo up better. However the problem I found was more, as stated by others to be that the multipliers drops off far to quickly. 

 

Also a general problem I found at that level was defending myself. Being in melee with mobs meant soaking a lot of damage and blocking was not an effective deterrent for damage. 

 

Now as you want to discuss now, I was thinking about changes to slash dash. What role should SD play in mid to late game? Should it be used as a damaging ability?

Obviously for low (very low these days) players it is fun skill that can kill the off Grineer lancer while looking cool. However as people point out the damage falls off and become negligible later game. Now according to the wiki (at max rank) slash dash does 500 slash damage. This is not very effective against Grineer but good against infested. 

 

Now if it was a solid damaging ability and took damage from the combo counter it would mean we should be expected to slash dash repeatedly back and forth through the enemies keeping the counter high and stacking more damage till they are all dead.  Also how much damage should it do? Should it take the X? from the combo counter. So it could do 500, 750, 1000, 1250, 1500.. damage? However then what role should radial javelin serve in Excalibur's tool set? At base cost I could do 4 slash dashes to every javelin and unless radially spread would not be that hard to hit several. 

 

As a movement ability? A lot of people rightly pointed out that with air melee attacks added in the ability to move fast is ridiculous. So slash dash would need to be reworked to aid in movement anywhere but straight forward. However changing an ability just to add mobility seems against DEs method of keeping the melee weapon = movement mentality (personally I want coptering removed as it limits frames in development options). 

 

As a enabler to use the melee system better? Excalibur now is a bit more of a melee frame with two augments and a base ability all boosting melee damage. Slash dash can be used to move towards or through groups to boost and maintain the combo counter. This does mean he does have more options "sword alone" than most frames. However I do agree that there is some problem here to do with hitting the wall on the far side. This I feel should be the focus of future change (if in indeed there is to be any). Now possibly some way to cancel a slash dash so you stop at the point you want?