Excal Needs A Complete Overhaul

[Tsukinoki]

With the recent changes to make Excaliburs ultimate reliant on LOS (and even then the enemy has be 'aware' of him, which is quite buggy) I think that he just needs a complete overhaul.

Everything he can do is done better by other frames.

First his Slash Dash.
The other two charge abilities in the game are objectively better.
Rhino charge moves faster, deals a bit more damage, and knocks down enemies and will generally go through enemies in the way.
Tidal Surge moves further, has a much wide range, deals more damage, and sweeps enemies along with it to the endpoint.
Meanwhile Slash Dash deals lower damage than the other two, is stopped by enemies (and practically everything else), and offers no utility.

The biggest problem with this ability is that it can be stopped dead by the smallest things.
Rocks, enemies directly in your way, even latchers that the seekers throw out can bring it to a complete stop.
It needs to be able to pass through enemies and over small obstacles like rocks at the very least.

It damage type and low amount of damage make it more useful as a mobility tool but that is broken if a single enemy can bring you to a stop.

It also needs to last a bit longer so that you can actually get some mobility out of it.
As it stands any good copter weapon beats slash dash hands down in both damage and mobility and not being stopped by enemies.
And coptering doesn't cost energy either.

It needs a few things so that it can actually outdo coptering and make it a viable alternative to coptering.

Next is his Radial Blind.
It is a decent ability and currently his best one by miles.
The problem is that it is far to inconsistent.

Enemies behind chest high railings that are standing and shooting at you commonly dont get blinded.
Enemies behind other enemies might not get blinded.
Enemies peeking out of cover and looking directly at you while you use it dont get blinded.

This can largely be fixed by revamping the LOS mechanics so that those chest high railings dont block LOS at all (and they really shouldn't).
The other fix would be to make a minimum radius, say 10 meters (unaffected by any range mods), that it ignores LOS while outside of that it obeys LOS.
That would make it so that if you have to duck behind cover it would allow a quick usage to get enemies in the immediate area without having to stick your head out, while also stopping the original locking down of an entire tile while behind cover.

No on to his super jump.
I honestly think that this ability should be completely scrapped and replaced with something that is more useful overall.

Reasons for this is that the invisibility hardly works.  I've had tons of cases where I've super jumped and the grineer managed to shoot me through the entire jumping arc making the invisibility pointless.
The only time that the invisibility seems to work is if the enemies dont see you do the initial jump.  And even then its inconsistent.
If they would make it so that enemies would not shoot along your jump arc at all when you cast it, that would largely mitigate this problem.

The other problem with this is that any frame with a decent air melee weapon can do what super jump can do for free.  And better in most cases.

There are a few things that can be done to fix this if they insist on keeping it:
-Allow super jump to be cast one time mid air as an air jump.
That would grant him superior mobility and control with this ability that you can't get out of an air melee.
It would also allow chaining of air melee into super jump to really get places.

-Stop enemies from perfectly predicting your flight path.
This really should go without saying, but enemies can still shoot you the entire period that you are invisible, making it pointless.

-Make super jump more directional
Because how often do you really need to jump straight up?
Make it so that if you are running forwards you jump more forwards than up, if your standing still you jump like you currently do.

And now onto the recent hot button topic of Radial Javelin:
This honestly needs the most overhauls.
From its damage to its LOS mechanics it uses, to its casting time.

Right now Mags pull can out do Radial javelin.
Yes, a 1 ability can out do his 4.
Radial javelin deals 1k damage split amongst the 3 physical types evenly and has a 3.5 second casting time (1 second to deal damage, 2.5 seconds of him standing there and posing), and it stuns enemies on hit for just barely longer than the cast animation for 100 energy
Against a grineer lancer (before armor calculations) he would deal about 1117 damage.
Against a heavy grineer (before armor calculations) he would deal about 914 damage.
Has a decent range but requires enemies to be aware of him, and him of them.
Which means enemies about 5 meters directly behind him and shooting him in the back can be easily unaffected.  As can enemies 5 meters in front of him behind a chest high rail shooting him in the face.

Lets look at pull.
It deals 300 magnetic damage with a total of .75 second casting time, and it ragdolls all enemies affected for CC for 25 energy.
Against a grineer lancer (before armor calculations) it deals 300 damage
Against a heavy grineer (before armor calculations) it deals 150 damage.
Doesn't seem as good?  Well, in the time (and for the energy) it takes to cast one radial javelin mag can cast 4 (almost 5) pulls for 1200 damage against the lancer and 600 against the heavy grineer.
Sure she loses out by a small amount on the heavy grineer, but the CC is far better.

Because of this I think it needs some very important changes:
-Severely reduce the casting time.
Seriously, the next highest cast time ultimate is 2 seconds where his is 3.5.
It just needs to be able to pull this out much faster than he currently can so that he doesnt stand there posing and being shot to death.  Especially because he can't remain in cover while using this ability.

This would also allow him to take advantage of the stun the move causes.

EDIT: From testing 6.0.4 changes the "removal of dead animation at the end of Radial Javelin" was barely any change at all and hardly noticeable and no where near the speed up it desperately needs.
The casting time needs to be cut down to 1.5 to 2 seconds at the very most.
Its still far to slow.

-Change the damage type to finisher.
Make it so that his damage is finisher and therefore not reduced by enemy armor.
That would make the damage much more consistent and overall useful compared to what it is now.
-Increase the damage.
Not by much but put it at 1500 to 2000 damage per javelin.  This, combined with the previous change, would make it a decent (but still not great) damage ability
-Fix the LOS mechanics applied to this.
It shouldn't just refuse to work on an enemy 10 meters in front of him that doesn't know he's there.
It should also ignore chest high railings, and should be more of an actual LOS instead of requiring enemies and him to be aware of each other.
-Make it work with Enemy Radar/Enemy Sense out to a certain range
Should be pretty self explanatory.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Tsukinoki

[Atomic_Beam]

They broke excal with the last update, I am not using him anymore EVER until they fix him...I agree he needs a total rework...

 

Excal is now back to what I hated him for...

Edited March 23, 2015 by Atomic_Beam

[ranks21]

same  he is only good for mercury and blind ( not calling it radial anymore). just when  you had a little hope for this frame they find a way to totally muck it up. they had it right once or twice since I have been playing this game but now he is just bad.

[tris1]

they broke Excalibur in everyway

 

they nerfed radial blind in THIS update and the ONE before

radial javelin is Unusable and Unreliable

super jump brings no benefit to him

slash dash is mobility and doesn't even scale

 

I officially name him the worst warframe in the game

[Tsukinoki]

Updated OP with a quick note from U16.0.4 which did practically nothing with how small the increase in casting for RJ and RB were.

[shut]

Updated OP with a quick note from U16.0.4 which did practically nothing with how small the increase in casting for RJ and RB were.

 

I don't know about you, but Javelin feels actually bearable to cast now. Not saying that this magically makes their nerfing spree "okay" by any means, but it's not as if the dead time removal did nothing.