Excalibur Rework : Press "e" To Win

[StonedMakak]

You wouldn't be shredded before very, very high level enemies from infinite missions even without shooting the waves through cover.

I don't exactly see why you wouldn't use EB even without being able to pick up orbs. It would just mean that you need to dispatch a big group of enemies in one-go, then drop off EB, pick up the energy orbs, and put EB back up for the next group. You aren't exactly losing energy this way, you're just being forced to drop the invulnerability for a while, meaning that you need to rely a bit more on team mates and positioning yourself well. Even without maximized efficiency, you can expect EB to last roughly a minute with full energy.

 

 

One gun with a potato and decent (not even great, just decent) mods is all you need, to make the star chart your personal playground. Mid to high level content is the only thing worth considering in these matters. Thank DE for lack of progression and no difficulty curve. 

 

What invulnerability? I am absolutely puzzled on how many people seem to think that an Auto-Parry mod is invulnerability, because that is all the defense EB has. Is there some god mode glitch I'm not aware of? 

 

I wouldn't use EB because it would be inefficient without max efficiency, which I don't use, because it is a crutch to me. Kill a group of strong enemies? Guns, with half the risk, and no wasted energy on Life Strike and ability upkeep, and SD to get in range and get out after. And more CC on RB which becomes even more important without the punch through. 

 

And it's not only the upkeep of the ability. Without punch through, waves are no longer viable ranged option, most of the time they just hit few enemies behind main target and dissolve on some crate, or wall, or floor etc That means that you need to use SD constantly, to reach enemies as just running at them is a bad idea and EB has no copter capability. You also need to constantly CC far away mobs, so they don't shoot your back full of bullets, as you are taking care of their buddies across the room. Without max efficiency such heavy ability use will require a lot of energy. Which means constant switching in and out of EB to gather energy, which leaves you wide open in a fancy animation with duration depending on latency.

 

See the problem yet? 

Edited July 2, 2015 by tisdfogg

[Vargras]

I've played Warframe now more than a year and I've "mained" Excalibur for a variety of reasons.

 

 More specifically, his "ultimate" Radial Javelin required line of sight and could not be spammed effectively requiring players to be strategic

Pretty sure the LOS change on RJ has been live for less than a year, sooo.

[Ergo_Voyager]

The ammount of min-maxing needed to make excalibur "press e to win" is pretty large and takes a lot of time. Even 10+ mastery rank people don't have the mods neccesary to make him powerfull enough

Even with that you are sacrificing your radial blind and javelin for more exalted power and efficiency.

Even with that , past 25 mins on a T4 you will get oneshotted from all sides the second you don't block a shot

Even with that , you still need frames supporting you


Early game even ember can be made to sound OP but her damage really falls off. Excalibur is the living proof that DE have started to understand how to make damage powers work into the endgame , opening up the possibility to revive the frames that died due to their reliance on power damage and yet there are people on this forums that want them to die again.

Like the people who want mag to loose the ONE thing that brought her back from the dead into the meta.

This game is being killed by it's community who wants to do 20 mins T1 defense wasting 3 revives every 26 hours

[HermlT]

if you think he is too strong for the content we have at the moment try to create a new account and use excal without end game mods. it feels pretty balanced, and most new players do not have the necessary mods to create a sustainable exalted blade build which means they have to use their weapons.

[tzaeru]

See the problem yet? 

 

Yes, and I still see EB regularly hogging up almost all damage dealt and having very little risk in mission levels of 0 to 50. I mean, sure, you can have a Trinity or whatever run through with minimal risk too, but they do give more room for the rest of the team to at least get the illusion of being productive. The main issue of EB is that when you run dat Pluto Mobile Defense Alert mission and see an Excalibur hop in, you can as well go AFK and after a while walk to gather up loot and hop to the evacuation. This is my experience both from playing Excalibur myself for last few dozen missions and from seeing other Excaliburs being played.

 

Yeah, sure, high-level content yadda-yadda, but those stretched-out tower survivals just aren't the only thing the game is about and are not the only thing for which the game should be balanced for.

 

What invulnerability?

 

An unthought choice of a word, but in practice in most missions of mid-level content (which, I guess, enemies of level ~40 are considered) it's very near an invulnerability when you position yourself right, which isn't exactly a high-skill thing to do.

 

 

This game is being killed by it's community who wants to do 20 mins T1 defense wasting 3 revives every 26 hours

 

This game isn't being killed by anything but if it was, it'd be the notation that jumping around T4 survival for an hour is what the game should center around and be balanced for. =P

 

 

if you think he is too strong for the content we have at the moment try to create a new account and use excal without end game mods. it feels pretty balanced, and most new players do not have the necessary mods to create a sustainable exalted blade build which means they have to use their weapons.

I, for one, don't have much any end-game mods or gear.. Geez, I'm MR 7! I don't even have Fleeting Expertise. Still, I run just fine 35-80% (depending on whether there's another Exca or Saryn or so in there) damage dealt in Kiste and the likes with EB on all the time, only ever going down if I happen to get sloppy enough to turn my back to a bombarder or have a bomb hop over me.

The game really shouldn't be balanced for what's viable in late survivals.

Edited July 2, 2015 by tzaeru

[jollter]

As far as balance goes, yes Excalibur is or was the balance frame. Now with talk of this new eclipse frame I think the DE's might have forgotten how to properly balance the Tennos. However his Exalted Blade Mode seems more like him entering a state of Inner Energy control allowing him to unleash unbelievable power unto his enemies. Although he cannot superjump while like this he can use Radial Blind infinitely. Why even have Radial Blind then? I just think the rework needs rework. We lost one move and never got anything similar to it. And we get a state of power control that does not let us do things like increased stregnth or jump.

 

I forget the other things this mode should allow us to do. Srry if anyone remembers just post it

That radial blind radius is extremely small. It requires you to launch yourself into a group of enemies to make itself effective. The regular radial blind not only hits a huge area, but enables executions on enemies should you wish to kill them with that, instead of your energy blade. Which also makes it handy for life strike, since you don't want a single channled energy wave to suck your energy down in seconds.

[jollter]

I'm pretty sure this guy is just upset that a starting frame now beats his precious Rhino prime and ash xD

[Gelkor]

So? I press "E" to win on Eternal War Valkyr too. I spam LMB on Mirage to win.

[StonedMakak]

snip

 

You mistake my intentions. I'm not saying that the ability does not need tweaks, I'm saying that the one you're suggesting would make EB unnecessarily annoying to use and I, personally, would dump it for better alternatives. If you disagree, argue in defense of your idea, I already know that Excal can dominate mid-level content, so can every damage focused frame.

 

And about that. Yes, there should be an nice difficulty curve that offers equal challenge throughout progression. There isn't one and there is no endgame. As you say, there is T4 camping for over a hour which is the current "endgame" according to the meta. There are some people however, like me, who like to go solo to T4 for as long as we can, because it is still better than pretending to be a macro for an hour with a camp squad. You're accusing us of discarding low-to-mid gameplay in favor of our solo runs, while you discard our solo runs because you happen to outdamage PUGs in relatively easy content. Why is this right for you and wrong for us?

[Vargras]

As far as balance goes, yes Excalibur is or was the balance frame.

That's a funny way to spell "Volt".

[Jinryusai]

It really doesn't.

You block all bullets from the front and do massive amounts of damage in a long line forwards. You don't need radial damage as well.

You don't block anything while attacking. And you cannot block everything.

 

Don't see why radical damage is such a big deal for a blade when other weapons can do it.

 

Honestly, Hall of Mirrors > Exalted Blade

 

can't beat 4 clones with the same firepower as you with any weapon of your choosing while enemy fire is directed at clone plus the radial damage to boot.

 

Sounds like yall are overreacting here.

Edited July 2, 2015 by Jinryusai

[tzaeru]

You mistake my intentions. I'm not saying that the ability does not need tweaks, I'm saying that the one you're suggesting would make EB unnecessarily annoying to use and I, personally, would dump it for better alternatives. If you disagree, argue in defense of your idea, I already know that Excal can dominate mid-level content, so can every damage focused frame.

Well, I did argue for the defense of it above. I do believe that being forced to drop EB every now and then and then restart it, due to whatever reason, be it lack of energy or a timer or anything, would mean that you are more dependant on cover from your teammates and do need to move yourself off harm's way in a more active manner. This would be good, as it makes the other people in the squad feel more useful.

Now, it might be a valid point that the combination of removing the no-clip and making continous EB impossible would be too much. Is this the sentiment, then one or the other should be put in first and feedback be gained from that. I do really believe that either change would drastically increase Excalibur's dependency on team mates in mid-tier-to-early-end-game content and give more chances to team mates to feel like they're contributing.

 

You're accusing us of discarding low-to-mid gameplay in favor of our solo runs, while you discard our solo runs because you happen to outdamage PUGs in relatively easy content. Why is this right for you and wrong for us?

Because 4 guys is more than 1 guy and the game has been designed with team-play in a central role. You can't please everyone and in this case, I do not believe that T4 soloers are the intended target audience of the game and henceforth, they're the first to suffer from any nerfs (or buffs).

But well, obviously any final thoughts on whom the game should be balanced for and so on are up to DE, but from my perspective, it's difficult to see how the priorization of T4 solo play could make Warframe widely more appealing to the current playerbase over the priorization of mid-tier team-game content. Are there really large amounts of of content-generating or directly paying customers who habitually run T4 solo and want frames and weapons that make this possible?

Edited July 2, 2015 by tzaeru

[Jinryusai]

To consistently out-damage and out-speed EB, hitscan and projectile weapons need proper set-ups and passable aiming skills though. In my experience thus far from a few dozen games, EB (not always mine, often a teammate's as Excas are pretty common a sight at the moment) has only come second in total damage dealt in Ceres missions when a Saryn was Miasma'ing every room. Every single other time, Exca has had the top damage. So obviously things are different in practice from theory.

Sounds like they modded him right.

 

I bet your friends killcount with their EB shall fall dramatically the second a Mirage or Saryn step into the fray.

 

Even the Ignis looks greta in her hands or even better, the Torrid or Ogris or Penta or beam weapons.

 

Face it, Exalted blade is nothing compared to Hall of Mirrors or Miasma.

 

That radial damage barely does anything to keep up with Mirrors.

 

So 

 

Exalted Blade < Hall of Mirrors.

 

No one can say otherwise especially if the Mirage has both Shred and the other punchthrough mod equipped plus the radial damage..

 

And especially with 300% power strength and eclipse and the Mirrors augment mod.

 

Why use Exalted Blade when Hall of Mirrors is the obvious better choice?

 

​Mirage is also simple for new players to acquire.

Edited July 2, 2015 by Jinryusai

[tzaeru]

Sounds like they modded him right.

 

I bet your friends killcount with their EB shall fall dramatically the second a Mirage or Saryn step into the fray.

Um, it was usually me on the EB and I lack many mods and am not particularly awesome in this game. And like I said above, a good Saryn (or a Mirage) in squad lowered my (or the other excaliburs') damage dealt to ~1/3 from the ~1/2 to ~3/4 of the squad damage.

 

Face it, Exalted blade is nothing compared to Hall of Mirrors or Miasma.

 

So you are suggesting that Hall of Mirrors and Miasma should be nerfed too? I can support that, in fact, have been bringing the latter up every so-often. ^^;

Now really, saying that "..but this thing X is better than Y!" doesn't mean that Y wasn't still too powerful and saying that "..but this thing Z is worse than W!" doesn't mean that W was good enough. It's just not a solid argument.

Edited July 2, 2015 by tzaeru

[StonedMakak]

Well, I did argue for the defense of it above. I do believe that being forced to drop EB every now and then and then restart it, due to whatever reason, be it lack of energy or a timer or anything, would mean that you are more dependant on cover from your teammates and do need to move yourself off harm's way in a more active manner. This would be good, as it makes the other people in the squad feel more useful.

Now, it might be a valid point that the combination of removing the no-clip and making continous EB impossible would be too much. Is this the sentiment, then one or the other should be put in first and feedback be gained from that. I do really believe that either change would drastically increase Excalibur's dependency on team mates in mid-tier-to-early-end-game content and give more chances to team mates to feel like they're contributing.

 

Because 4 guys is more than 1 guy and the game has been designed with team-play in a central role. You can't please everyone and in this case, I do not believe that T4 soloers are the intended target audience of the game and henceforth, they're the first to suffer from any nerfs (or buffs).

But well, obviously any final thoughts on whom the game should be balanced for and so on are up to DE, but from my perspective, it's difficult to see how the priorization of T4 solo play could make Warframe widely more appealing to the current playerbase over the priorization of mid-tier team-game content. Are there really large amounts of of content-generating or directly paying customers who habitually run T4 solo and want frames and weapons that make this possible?

 

Not really, no. The fact that you think it wouldn't be a problem, doesn't change the fact that the animation is too long and buggy for a quick on/off type of usage. Like I said, I don't run max efficiency (130%-140% usually), so I'm not one of the E spammers (it's plain boring) and I often eat a lot of damage if I try to turn it on/off in the middle of the battle. And that would be constant necessity without the orbs.

 

Other teammates? Useful? In something like Kiste? Sure, provided there is no Saryn, Mirage, Mesa, Ash, Nova, even Frost if we're talking mid-tier nuking. Hell, one potatoed gun with Serration is enough to make teammates redundant in those missions (ah, I remember all the flame wars about Rhinos with Boltor Prime rolf-coptering through the mission... good times).

 

So, we should basically piss off?

 

Perhaps a more diplomatic approach is in order? Ya know, like coming up with a solution that will make EB less facerollish and more skill-based across the board, without gimping anyone in the process? I know it is easier to just settle on the first idea that solves your part of the issue, and then rationalize your indifference to the problems it will cause to others, but maybe give it a shot?

[Pro3Display]

Ok, after thread-lock suggestion thread went completely nuts.......

and as dedicated valkyr user i'll tell ya:

eb is as boring as hysteria,

and you still can't have an op/not-op discussion with that enemy progression we have now

so there is nothing to talk about really

"excal is op for newbs" so is braton that is actually useful for up to 30lvl at minimum and with good luck for 35 with no forma's included, maybe catalyst(i dont remember if i have one in but i probably do) and its not like catalyst is ultra rare

 

edit. i also don't know what i just said and why - i need sleep

Edited July 2, 2015 by Pro3Display

[Jinryusai]

Um, it was usually me on the EB and I lack many mods and am not particularly awesome in this game. And like I said above, a good Saryn (or a Mirage) in squad lowered my (or the other excaliburs') damage dealt to ~1/3 from the ~1/2 to ~3/4 of the squad damage.

 

 

So you are suggesting that Hall of Mirrors and Miasma should be nerfed too? I can support that, in fact, have been bringing the latter up every so-often. ^^;

Now really, saying that "..but this thing X is better than Y!" doesn't mean that Y wasn't still too powerful and saying that "..but this thing Z is worse than W!" doesn't mean that W was good enough. It's just not a solid argument.

Well, it'll take a year before they come to a conclusion, enjoy your Blade and remember whenever punchthrough or radial damage come to mind, think of all the other 4 powers and how they can be abused.

 

Especially absorb and remember...

 

Exalted Blade is merely a energy blade, a ranged blade that shoots energy waves like a conventional gun. There is no punchthrough mod for melee. And think of it as a syndicate weapon. think of it as a gun.

 

Oh and do you or anyone else use punchthrough mods?

[Somi_xD]

Looks like someone isn't playing much high level content if he thinks it's OP.

What's  high lvl content in your opinion ?

Some days ago me (with necros), a random mag, and an excalibruuh did a Derelict Surv ....

Mobs at lvl 150, i need a full magazin of my weapon to take down 1 enemy .... the mag pull and Ulti (not much dmg) .... Excalibruuuh butters his bread with them ... i mean the rework is great  but  EB scales with warframe mods AND weapon mods (nearly all) + skana bonus dmg etc.  this skill has a damn (much to) great efficiency ..... the most annoying is most tenno only spam the waves and thats the only problem i see

I mean ppl will allways complain about things, like Mesa who is a auto-turret  but it's ok to shoot energy waves like a machingun (40 m range, no dmg drop-off at distance, stacs with mods to and no punchthroug cap, they are unaffectet by range mods ) .... *@##$ please ppl complain much more about Ash and his bladestorm then excalibur , calling him 4toWin etc. !!! why!? 

Ash has 300 energy (without primed flow ...missed to purchase one v.v), best efficieny on ash is 70% (in my opinion) that means 1 bladestorm = 30 energy, Cast Range 50m Attack Radius 25 (around target enemy) (BOTH r affected by range)

in the 25m radius bladstorm max. hits 18 targets( but in real it means it only attacks 18 times) that means if u hit 18 targets and 10 of them are not one hit they stay alive) if i hit 10 targets 2 r heavy and need 4 hits to die the hit counter is at 16 hits  .... but in the most cases u kill maybe 8-14 targets with it + u stay for 2-6 sec in the animation can't help any teammate in this time  ... (not to mention the BS buggs ...)

The base dmg is really good but to spam bladestorm u need a good efficiency, with 70% u can add intensify (30%) without negativ eff., Trasient Fortitude (55%) but with a lose of duration,  with this i can spam it up to lvl 70 (not one shot heavy )  ->  DMG with 70+ eff. and 85% dmg :  3700 finisher dmg + 9065 (bleed in 6 sec) so a max output of 12065

the problem with this is u smoke screen (which is the most important) lasts for 3 sec and thats nothing ... without Smokescreen Ash will not stay long alive.

EB is noooot OP it's ok to kill 2500 enemies in surv without any effort (BTW Excalibruuh also deals finisher DMG in combination with radial blind = igoring Armor AND adds stealth mult.)   ~ and still i don't care about excalibruuuh

ps. bladestorm has a good dmg but if u want to max. it xD

• Maximized Power Strength increases the damage to 5680 per attack.
  • Increases the cost to 155 energy.
  • Increases the total bleed damage to 13916 per attack.

     

Edited July 2, 2015 by Somi_xD

[Monster-T]

 

(BTW Excalibruuh also deals finisher DMG in combination with radial blind = igoring Armor AND adds stealth mult.)

• •  

 

Not entirely true. I does only armor ignoring finisher damage when you are in melee range. Otherwise its the 4x stealth multiplier.

[Dragazer]

Not entirely true. I does only armor ignoring finisher damage when you are in melee range. Otherwise its the 4x stealth multiplier.

Also lets not forget if you're just spamming blade waves, your melee combo counter doesn't go up. Meaning going up close still deals better damage than at range especially at higher levels.  

Edited July 2, 2015 by Dragazer

[Somi_xD]

Not entirely true. I does only armor ignoring finisher damage when you are in melee range. Otherwise its the 4x stealth multiplier.

 

 

Also lets not forget if you're just spamming blade waves, your melee combo counter doesn't go up. Meaning going up close still deals better damage than at range especially at higher levels.  

yeah forgot to mention this :) thx guys

[S7ORM]

You don't block anything while attacking. And you cannot block everything.

 

Don't see why radical damage is such a big deal for a blade when other weapons can do it.

 

Honestly, Hall of Mirrors > Exalted Blade

 

can't beat 4 clones with the same firepower as you with any weapon of your choosing while enemy fire is directed at clone plus the radial damage to boot.

 

Sounds like yall are overreacting here.

It still blocks when attacking. You can't block explosions and grappling, but I said bullets.

Honestly, I don't mind keeping the syndicate effect -- I use it all the time. The reason I'd say no, is because it kind of narrows the choice of weapons down to only those that can use the syndicate mods (who wouldn't want a free 1000 damage in an AoE every few seconds?)

 

Clones deal significantly less damage than you.

[KoinDuo]

excalibur is great, but still pretty squishy at end game. anyone shoots at you from the back and you'll drop dead in seconds. at least make the auto parry cost no stamina >.<

[achromos]

This game is being killed by it's community who wants to do 20 mins T1 defense wasting 3 revives every 26 hours

 

 

This game is being killed by it's growing camper community that wants to do 40+ minute survivals wasting time on netflix while not actually playing the game.  AmIdoinitrite?

[Dirty_H4rr1]

excalibur is great, but still pretty squishy at end game. anyone shoots at you from the back and you'll drop dead in seconds. at least make the auto parry cost no stamina >.<

 

*whispers* stamina is going away...