Excalibur High End Build

[MichaelSD]

As title says, with the new "changes" the Radial Blind became unreliable and more or less useless at high levels.

 

I tested several setups, but I did not find any usable configuration for my Excalibur in which I would not be a liability to the team. Now that Radial Blind is negated by a simple pillar or box I did find anything how I can could contribute to the team at higher levels.

 

Any has suggestions with other builds maybe?

[willis936]

Max power so you can super jump something like 30m.  You should get much better line of sight with radial blind and hit more enemies that way.

[Jahadaya]

It's bad when you know a supposed "buff" has players creating threads like this.

[MichaelSD]

Yes, I tried that but with max. power I weaken Radial Blind so it not much of  an improvement. Besides Super Jump is not viable at high level, it takes to long.

 

And I refuse to do jumping just because I want to use my ability.

[MichaelSD]

It's bad when you know a supposed "buff" has players creating threads like this.

 

Who said it was a buff??? :) :) :)

 

My problem is that Excalibur is (or better was my main) I really would like to use my Excalibur, but I do not want to hinder my team, Yet with the new Radial Blind and I did not find any build which could contribute significantly to the team.

[Sumarbrandr]

I didn't test, but I think that a melee build with Dakra Dervish with Furious Javelin would be more or less viable. 

[MichaelSD]

I tested it with Dragon Nikana. You can not kill the downed enemy fast enough, because it takes only one finishing animation and you use up your precious seconds.

And, again, Excalibur should jump up and down to be useful? ;)

[willis936]

I don't see why having to jump and use terrain is an issue.  Yes it's a nerf and no you can't just stand in one spot and hit a button to stun lock every enemy.  You can use the power without jumping but it won't be as effective.  What is the issue?

[MichaelSD]

I assume your main is not an Excalibur. Please try it out, because it is not viable at high levels, I tried it.

 

Because most of the time you can not jump high.

Because if I can jump high enough the mods that enable me nerf the Radial Stun.

Because jumping takes long and you can not help your team that time.

Because while I land I use up 2 seconds of the stun.

Because even with Super Jump, boxes pillars, etc. do block the stun.

Because you never know how many enemies you effected, who may reappear from doorways, etc, making most of RBs effect are naught, especially for the team.

 

I do not think 5 second stun + blind was so much more powerful than the Nova's, Rhino's, Oberon's and other frames CC ability.  But even if you think so it was, there were other ways to nerf it (limit duration of stun and / or blind, make range smaller, use more energy, etc). This was one of the worst way to change it.

 

And most importantly, it can not be honestly expecting me to believe that the Excalibur should be jumping around just to be usable?

Edited October 30, 2014 by MichaelSD

[WizardRubic]

Hello. Instead of using radial blind, you could use radial javelin. It has approximately the same range. The issue is the increase in energy cost and a severely reduced duration. This means you'll have to cast it near constantly. If you're gonna eat energy like that, you'd be better off with a banshee or rhino.

 

Edit: Been thinking. What you could do is cast radial javelin before entering a room or hall, then going in and casting blind to keep em stunned. This way they won't shoot you to shreds since they'll still be under javelin's stun when you enter and under blind's stun after.

 

Maybe there's a different technique I'm not seeing. I'm not actually too sure how long Javelin's stun last. On top of that, if you stun with javelin outside the current room and you don't cast javelin again, the enemies are free to barge in once the javelins wear off. I'd much rather have the old blind

Edited October 30, 2014 by WizardRubic

[Evanescent]

Run a basics build, with no corrupted mods. Max survivability. I've had no problems with any of his powers after the update, and I main excal.

[HollowExistence]

with the new melee directional system in play his ability is not useful. There are maybe a handful of map ROOMS that could utilise this properly.
The invisibility and little stun are cute but realy neither useful for low level nor high level gameplay.

 

[Erusa]

Hello. Instead of using radial blind, you could use radial javelin. It has approximately the same range. The issue is the increase in energy cost and a severely reduced duration. This means you'll have to cast it near constantly. If you're gonna eat energy like that, you'd be better off with a banshee or rhino.

 

Edit: Been thinking. What you could do is cast radial javelin before entering a room or hall, then going in and casting blind to keep em stunned. This way they won't shoot you to shreds since they'll still be under javelin's stun when you enter and under blind's stun after.

 

Maybe there's a different technique I'm not seeing. I'm not actually too sure how long Javelin's stun last. On top of that, if you stun with javelin outside the current room and you don't cast javelin again, the enemies are free to barge in once the javelins wear off. I'd much rather have the old blind

Radial Jav's stun lasts just barely 0.5s than its animation without Natural Talent. I would not rely on RJ as a CC tool at all. (I actually died trying to use it as a stun but a Corpus headmaster thingy escaped the stun animation by summoning a drone, bypassing the stun animation and piling hot plasma on my stomach at point blank)

Excal now might be good with what Evanes suggested, but mine went for efficiency, enough duration to slightly offset fleeting (with a surplus of +15% duration, my fleeting was maxed, an error in my part, but 60% seems okay anyway as 75% feels overkill.), enough range to offset Narrow Minded (surplus of +15%), foregoing any sort of power mod. Radial Blind seems to count is distance on a 3-D plane rather than the usual 2-D plane, meaning it's a 25m radius all around you, top, side, bottom...A Super Jump that's powered by anything more than Intensify will just put you in a precarious situation upon landing as you won't be able to maximize your Blind on ground level. (Fleeting maxed, Narrow R...5? 10 cost, forgot the rank, Continuity, and Stretch, this gives 60% efficiency, 15% duration, 15% range)

Excal now seems to almost require Furious Javelin if you want something beyond Radial Blind, and this also makes Excal more of a melee combatant than a mobile jack-of-all-trades...It's kinda sad really, I certainly hope Furious Jav would be worth the grind by it becoming a real substantial boost in melee damage (like +5%/enemy hit for 3*enemy hit seconds...)...

Edited October 30, 2014 by Erusa

[Grayphilosopher]

Not sure how useful this is at high-end, but I'm having a lot of fun with the heavy impact mod for excalibur.

 

Leap into big groups with a directional air melee attack, use radial blind at the peak of the jump in mid-air, follow up with a knockdown as you land. If necessary, do a super jump after that while in the group (it stuns briefly) and follow that up with another knockdown once you land again. Limited range, but super fun. 

 

If you have enough energy for it, spamming super jump with a heavy impact mod can become a chain stun for enemies within proximity.

[MichaelSD]

Thank you for the suggestions.

 

@WizardRubic

Radial Javelin's damage is too low on high level and the stun barely last longer that the casting animation. I do not know why the DE felt the old Radial Blind was too powerful.

 

@EvanScent

I tried that and I agree it is a nice solo build. But it does not help the team much, like other frames.

 

@Hollow

Yes, the current Radial Blind is useless. The old one was useful on the other hand for melee build and for ranged build

 

@Erusa

Again, I am not sure Furious Javelin will have enough utility on high levels, but we will see.

 

@Gray

At high level I found have no time, or it is not time efficient, to jump around with heavies around. But I may try again thanks.

[LazyKnight]

Radial blind is still the only real power Excalibur has, even as limited as it currently is. R-blind is still usable for a solo-build because of how the NPC that are acclivity targeting can still be hit by blind if they briefly go around corners or objects. It is still usable with builds that focus on having the cheapest casting, core mods: fleeting expertise, continuity, streamline, stretch.  I still find radial blind usable, but it requires a far greater deal of running around to catch stray NPC that are behind objects.

 

 

I mainly play Excalibur as my main (or close 2nd), i have not found javelin to be worth bothering with. I am not a fan of the rework that Excalibur received, and I hope DE takes a second look at improving him.

Edited October 30, 2014 by LazyKnight

[MichaelSD]

@LazyKnight

 

That is exactly the same conclusion I come to.

 

I did some high level missions and all Excalibur players are either woefully weak as team members (and they do complain), but the most simply change frames for high level missions. While this not a statistically relevant, but I think it shows the problem quite nicely.

[Janzer]

It would be very helpful if you put a bit of definition on "at high levels". That would help us gain some context of what you are struggling with, and better assist you.

 

Are we talking in planetary system Grineer 35+ level? Are we talking after an hour of T4 Survival? Are we talking Infested survival solo with melee only? Context would help! Thank :D

Edited October 30, 2014 by Janzer

[HollowExistence]

Lvl 35+ greenier aint high level that's mid level at best.

High level starts slowly at 30 minutes t4 survival or defense

[MichaelSD]

The answer is simple, both. Even at 35+ the Excalibur is woefully weak to play it in a team. But I am open to suggestions.

 

In T4 20 min do not burden your teammates with Excalibur as it is now.

 

Of course there are exception, like the ODD map, where there is only the pod in the middle. Both RJ and RS are nice there, but let's face it, it is a niche thing.

[Latronico]

Max power so you can super jump something like 30m.  You should get much better line of sight with radial blind and hit more enemies that way.

 

Yes, jump 30m high. The only bad thing is that a max Power Strenght build takes 3 slots, 55% Efficiency and 27.5 Duration.

That means you'll able to do nothing.

Plus, Radial Blind at its max level can reach something like 50-60 meters circa. If you jump 30m high, and you can reach 50m of diameter.... use the Pythagorean theorem to know the effective range on the ground. Not that much.

 

And, however, as I wrote, Efficiency and Duration drops, so it'll be very hard to reach and kill enemies you blind thiks way. PLUS the fact that it costs really a lot of Energy.

 

 

However, to answer to Michael, I'm using Excalibur Prime right now.

Considering that 3/4 abilities are still trash, I decided to use a Radial Blind build, based especially on Duration instead of Range. In this way, you'll able to hit less enemies, but blind them for a more long time. Of course power Efficiency included.

[azour]

I have the same problem

I used to be very helpful to the team with my radial blind, especially when we hit wave 30 where damage start to fall 

Enemies could still hit you if you were using noisy weapons, you were not invincible 

That's why i used to have a Bow+Dread build going on.

 

Now thanks to DE spitting in the face of an already handicapped frame, i get laughed at if i want to go to the void with an Excalibur

There is little to no reason to bring an Excal to a high level game

 

Balance my &#!

 

The only thing i can do is max out efficiency mods and bring a ton of energy restores to keep spamming RB at the center of the map while others are doing the killing

 

How fun

[MichaelSD]

@Latronico

Thanks I will try that. Ironically, the usual compliant was that Radial Blind is used too often (spamed), this build will cause even more spam! :) Yeah, the devs fixed it, sigh!

 

What is beyond me why they thought Radial Blind needed to be changed? It was by far not the most powerful CC around and there way more broken things in this game than Radial Blind.

Edited October 30, 2014 by MichaelSD

[shut]

As title says, with the new "changes" the Radial Blind became unreliable and more or less useless at high levels.

lol

 

I tested several setups, but I did not find any usable configuration for my Excalibur in which I would not be a liability to the team. Now that Radial Blind is negated by a simple pillar or box I did find anything how I can could contribute to the team at higher levels.

 

Any has suggestions with other builds maybe?

 

 

1. Move away from the simple pillar or box.

 

 

Seriously, not hard.

Excal main here; this update hardly changed my effectiveness at all. Just spend half a second getting a line of sight (cloak yourself with Super Jump if you don't want to get shot) and press 2, then you can use whatever build you had prior to the update.

If your Radial Blind isn't effective right now, then, frankly, it's not your build that's the problem.

Edited October 30, 2014 by SortaRandom

[MichaelSD]

The cut in effectiveness is a fact both for melee and ranged builts.

 

Most levels do not have one pillar and one box, and they have corridors and doors, yeah move away from them. Besides at high levels getting in line of sight (which you can not) and jumping up takes all precious time, which makes you highly inefficient. What you described works well bellow level 25, maybe 30, but does not work with high level enemies. Most frames are more efficient on every level.

 

But I am happy that you can manage well, congratulations.

Edited October 30, 2014 by MichaelSD

[shut]

The cut in effectiveness is a fact both for melee and ranged builts.

 

Most levels do not have one pillar and one box, and they have corridors and doors, yeah move away from them. Besides at high levels getting in line of sight (which you can not) and jumping up takes all precious time, which makes you highly inefficient. What you described works well bellow level 25, maybe 30, but does not work with high level enemies. Most frames are more efficient on every level.

 

But I am happy that you can manage well, congratulations.

 

I don't see why the delay while getting a good LoS would make you effective at low levels but less effective at high levels. It's the other way around; enemies are noticeably more tanky at high levels, meaning that it takes longer to kill them and that a brief delay has a smaller overall impact on your performance. On lower levels, on the other hand, your teammates could have one-shotted the entire room with a lower-tier ult in the time that it took you to Super Jump onto a pile of crates.

 

But that aside, no build will take away from the fact that you need a line of sight to use Radial Blind effectively now, and it's not as if Radial Javelin is any better at crowd control. If you want CC, you need RB, and if you want RB, you need to get used to getting a line of sight instead of doing a Rhino and AoE'ing enemies through solid walls.