Excalibur = Squishy

[MKDLMR]

I'm not sure how to improve Excalibur's durability, but right now he feels like a very frail melee-centric frame. I'm open to suggestions, but Exalted Blade hardly adds to his toughness. 

[Zachatoo]

Using Radial Blind significantly adds to his survivability. Since the energy cost on Exalted Blade is so low you should have no problem casting blind every once in a while.

[PsychedelicSnake]

30 minutes ago, MKDLMR said:

Curious: what's your build? I almost my never see an Excalibur any more... 

Here is my build. Since Excalibur is the lord of melee, I felt it was important to include my weapon build too. As you can see, my Excalibur is built solely for melee.

As you can see with my Excalibur, I have no defensive mods other than health or armor so I can get into the thick of it. Rage for energy helps a lot with abilities and Life Strike. Surging Dash really helps getting your combo counter up, and sprint mods let you get in and out pretty fast in addition to the standard bullet-jump. I should also note that with this build I treat Exalted Blade as a panic button ability, not as a dedicated form of melee.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[ThatOddDeer]

I would avoid using the slash elemental mods and body count and blood because they don't work on EB and elementals add significant damage to EB, since of its even 33%/33%/33% IPS spread, and not using elements on melee is a massive DPS loss. 

Take our buzz kill and jagged edge body count and blood rush and put in two 90% elementals and your EB will hit like a truck while also providing you with a constant 65% damage reduction from the front.

[PsychedelicSnake]

Excalibur is my primary warframe, and I can say I never have any issues with his durability. He is melee-centric, as you have stated, and as a result you should play to that role very aggressively.

EDIT: Slash Dashed over to Players Helping Players.

[Cytobel]

Very interesting Excalibur there.  I've never seen a build using Energy Conversion before.

Me, I'd pull that EC and then ask myself which I wanted more, Armored Agility or Surging Dash.  Forma in a - polarity, pull the loser, add a maxed Transient Fortitude and a maxed Constitution in the place of the 2 dropped mods.  Constitution + TF is a go-to for me, granting 55% power strength and faster recovery times when whipcorded from the side.

Please feel free to run WHATEVER makes you happy though.  Excal sits at about a 42% damage reduction, add in Steel Fiber and he jumps to 62%.  Use Exalted Blade as a shield to prevent the greatest density of enemies from hitting you before you close to Blind range.  Don't waste energy, close in, disable and kill.

"Squishy" is NOT what Excalibur is.  You just need to train yourself to hit 2 whenever you're being shot, face your foes, and for the love of God do NOT stand in the bad.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Cytobel

[MKDLMR]

16 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

Excalibur is my primary warframe, and I can say I never have any issues with his durability. He is melee-centric, as you have stated, and as a result you should play to that role very aggressively.

Curious: what's your build? I almost my never see an Excalibur any more... 

[(PSN)lhbuch]

As others said, it is very important to Radial Blind and be very aggressive meaning go to to the attack. I use Vitality, Steel Fiber and Unranked Life Strike to increase the survivability in higher levels. 

[chaotea]

I find hes as good as any frame for survivability on average. Put a max vitality and redirection on him and hell tank with the best of them.

[PsychedelicSnake]

2 minutes ago, Cytobel said:

-snip-

It may seem odd, but I have the Energy Conversion on there solely for the Surging Dash, since Power Strength affects the number of hits you get on the combo counter while using the Augment. I don't use the dedicated Power Strength mods because I don't really use any of the other abilities to deal damage. Radial Blind is for the duration and Exalted Blade is a panic button in case things get too heated. More or less this build is essentially a very dedicated Sword Alone build.

[Kn0xxPT]

I dont think Excal is squishy.

Leave Dragon Nikana, use a Galatine or Scindo Prime. Put some DPS and Speed Mods. go see your EB wiping everything.
at higher leves you need Radial Blind.

My Excal Build

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Scindo Prime Build

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In Draco action here:
 

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https://www.twitch.tv/fayker/v/68405329

A part of that, Excal build will need you to have some sort of getaway gameplay skill, You just can't tank like a Rhino or Press4 valkyr.

 

Edited May 25, 2016 by Kn0xxPT

[The_Mustachio]

I'm curious what your play style is with Excalibur. When I do vault runs, I normally take Excal, for his high dps and survivability. As others have said, Radial Blind is key when the mobs start to pile up. Then mow them down with EB. Plus, you get to do it in style with his prime. (yes, i'm jealous)

[(PSN)abbacephas]

I'm starting to come back to Excalibur and I've been YouTubing a lot of ways to build him. I've experimented a bit and have added 3 forma to him (so far. 2 v's and a dash). My build is as follows:

Steel Charge

Power Drift

Vitality

Narrow Minded

Primed Continuity

Streamline

Rage

Blind Rage

Transient Fortitude

Intensify

 

I'm building for strength, duration and efficiency and the optimal duration/efficiency ratio is 165%:160%. You'll find that your EB saps a meager 0.63 energy per second. I've just discovered that body count and blood rush don't do squat for EB  (but for the love of God, make sure you have a life strike) so I'm gonna have to rework my nikana prime a bit to account for it (though I already do have radiation/magnetic/corrosive depending on what faction I'm up against). I still have to max out a couple of my mods, but once that's done, I'll be looking at over 260% strength on my EB. Give it a shot and see what you think.

[MKDLMR]

2 minutes ago, The_Mustachio said:

I'm curious what your play style is with Excalibur. When I do vault runs, I normally take Excal, for his high dps and survivability. As others have said, Radial Blind is key when the mobs start to pile up. Then mow them down with EB. Plus, you get to do it in style with his prime. (yes, i'm jealous)

My builds and play style are very similar to what's already posted, sans-primed-continuity. /cry

It's too bad blood rush body count don't work on eb... I like those melee builds.

[SteelBlade17x]

 

[PsychedelicSnake]

2 minutes ago, MKDLMR said:

My builds and play style are very similar to what's already posted, sans-primed-continuity. /cry

It's too bad blood rush body count don't work on eb... I like those melee builds.

As you can see, there are several ways to build Excalibur. He can go pure melee (like I do), ability-based (as others have posted), and even a few other ways. He's very versatile.

[MKDLMR]

24 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

As you can see, there are several ways to build Excalibur. He can go pure melee (like I do), ability-based (as others have posted), and even a few other ways. He's very versatile.

He's no Valkyr though. Heck, with prolonged paralysis you can do a single ground finisher on a bunch of enemies. Nikana Prime for example does 1600% on ground finishers. That kinda puts radial blind to shame... 

[jinxeverything]

Not the perfect build but here you go (i wasted 2 forma on aura):

Spoiler

 

[Dark5eiD]

Excal is my main, i do not have too much of a problem surviving almost anywhere. until over lvl 100 and with a bad team. Excal is the chuck norris of warframe end of story...   :)

i use all of his abilities, exalted blade being a last resort for me. i do not like just having that on all the time. this build gives me the versatility i need to make him fun to use.

[AM-Bunny]

1 hour ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

Here is my build.

Er, how do you have Excal Prime if you're not a Founder? Sorry if I'm missing something.

[residente]

12 minutes ago, AM-Bunny said:

Er, how do you have Excal Prime if you're not a Founder? Sorry if I'm missing something.

My guess is that when he was chosen as Community Moderator he had to make a new account just for that role. His original account (the one he doesn't use on forums) is a founder account.

[AM-Bunny]

Just now, residente said:

My guess is that when he was chosen as Community Moderator he had to make a new account just for that role. His original account (the one he doesn't use on forums) is a founder account.

Well, it's definitely the same account, but I guess the badge doesn't display for Comm Mods. Never noticed that. That sucks.

[(PSN)Cwellann]

42 minutes ago, PsychedelicSnake said:

but I have the Energy Conversion on there solely for the Surging Dash

This seems completely counterintuitive to me, as a spammier setup like a Surging Dash build seems kind of strange to run Energy Conversion on.  Your description also sounds very different from my playstyle, I'd love to see some video of it if you happen to have any handy, I've been quite curious how viable Surging Dash is on a non EB Excal with the advent of Body Count.

I'd also like to note the use of Steel Charge is kinda silly on, really, anything except Ash.  Corrosive Projection is going to do more effective damage when armor is present at any level where the question "How do I kill it faster?" needs to be asked, along with being more useful to the team.  While Coaction Drift can solve the armor problem, forcing the other three to run Coaction Drift is, um, kinda rude.  On the off chance you don't need armor reduction, Naramon auras are still, overall, vastly more useful to the team than any other polarity in my experience.  Anyway, stepping off the soapbox.

This is my tanky build OP.  Easily gets through an hour in T4S, without Naramon.  With Naramon, it's as much of a joke as you would expect.  This is pretty much a pure EB build.  The extra Madurai polarity is there for my RJ build, and it also allows the use of Energy Conversion in place of Radiant Finish.  They'll both get it done, and Energy Conversion will in fact get it done better from what I've seen, I just like using augments.  The slight negative duration on blind isn't a problem, as it's usually being used just to assassinate one heavy.  Handspring is essential, at least for my playstyle, as I like to slide attack into a big pile of enemies, and as such tend to get knockdown slammed quite a bit.  For reference, this is my EB stick, with Viral and Heat for Void if 4 CP's are present.  Build also works quite well without Exalted Blade up to about 50 minutes into T3S going sword alone.  I don't recommend this build for anything less than 40 minutes in T4 to be honest though.  It's so unkillable it gets really boring, really fast.

As to Excal isn't tanky:
With my setup, some math:
740+(425*2.4)=1760 Base Health, with full energy, which Rage is pretty good at guaranteeing.
1760(1+(472/300))=4529 Effective Health, 4829 with full shields (which a Raksa kubrow does a rather nice job at maintaining, along with providing very nice CC)
4529/(1-0.6)=12072 combined total, when damage received from the front, taking into account EB's 60% damage reduction

12k life isn't quite Chroma, but it's certainly not what I'd refer to as squishy.  Granted, you have to be positioned such that enemies aren't behind you for that number to be applicable, but that's not overly difficult, especially with Blind to help you out of bad situations.

[(XBOX)Twinna25]

Excalibur is actually a Warframe with quite average survivability, to be honest...

 

But if you want to make him a sort of tank. Use Naramon with exalted blade. As long as you keep up a melee crit every twenty seconds, you'll stay invisable even with nullifiers.

[MKDLMR]

43 minutes ago, (PS4)Cwellann said:

This seems completely counterintuitive to me, as a spammier setup like a Surging Dash build seems kind of strange to run Energy Conversion on.  Your description also sounds very different from my playstyle, I'd love to see some video of it if you happen to have any handy, I've been quite curious how viable Surging Dash is on a non EB Excal with the advent of Body Count.

I'd also like to note the use of Steel Charge is kinda silly on, really, anything except Ash.  Corrosive Projection is going to do more effective damage when armor is present at any level where the question "How do I kill it faster?" needs to be asked, along with being more useful to the team.  While Coaction Drift can solve the armor problem, forcing the other three to run Coaction Drift is, um, kinda rude.  On the off chance you don't need armor reduction, Naramon auras are still, overall, vastly more useful to the team than any other polarity in my experience.  Anyway, stepping off the soapbox.

This is my tanky build OP.  Easily gets through an hour in T4S, without Naramon.  With Naramon, it's as much of a joke as you would expect.  This is pretty much a pure EB build.  The extra Madurai polarity is there for my RJ build, and it also allows the use of Energy Conversion in place of Radiant Finish.  They'll both get it done, and Energy Conversion will in fact get it done better from what I've seen, I just like using augments.  The slight negative duration on blind isn't a problem, as it's usually being used just to assassinate one heavy.  Handspring is essential, at least for my playstyle, as I like to slide attack into a big pile of enemies, and as such tend to get knockdown slammed quite a bit.  For reference, this is my EB stick, with Viral and Heat for Void if 4 CP's are present.  Build also works quite well without Exalted Blade up to about 50 minutes into T3S going sword alone.  I don't recommend this build for anything less than 40 minutes in T4 to be honest though.  It's so unkillable it gets really boring, really fast.

As to Excal isn't tanky:
With my setup, some math:
740+(425*2.4)=1760 Base Health, with full energy, which Rage is pretty good at guaranteeing.
1760(1+(472/300))=4529 Effective Health, 4829 with full shields (which a Raksa kubrow does a rather nice job at maintaining, along with providing very nice CC)
4529/(1-0.6)=12072 combined total, when damage received from the front, taking into account EB's 60% damage reduction

12k life isn't quite Chroma, but it's certainly not what I'd refer to as squishy.  Granted, you have to be positioned such that enemies aren't behind you for that number to be applicable, but that's not overly difficult, especially with Blind to help you out of bad situations.

Thanks for the reply! How did you obtain and level two primed mods? That seems like an insane amount of time and effort.... I think I have a couple rooms in my house that could stand painting instead.  :-P

[-CdG-Zilchy]

Some interesting builds here, if you want to survive in super late game, meaning hours of T4 Survival you might try building around using Radial Blind with some range and mostly defensive mods for your frame. I leave Power Strength at 100% because later on you don't bother using Exalted blade for damage, you use it for the passive blocking bonus, removing nullifier bubbles and gaining health through lifestrike. Your damage will come from Covert Lethality on Radial Blinded targets.

Aura: Corrosive Projection, Exilus: Handspring

Primed Continuity, Primed Flow, Fleeting Expertise, Stretch, Vitality, Steel Fibre, Rage, Quick Thinking.

With EB's passive blocking and the combination of Primed Flow, Quick Thinking and both SF and Vital negating damage to that defensive combo, you can tank hits for a long time if you keep on life striking. This also triggers Rage and keeps your energy topped off. Try to let weaker enemies like Lancers shoot you, not for example a Bombard. If you get hit in the back by a Bombard rocket a few hours in, you're dead so stay alert. With the added range of Stretch, Radial Blind will keep you alive for a long time and Covert Lethality will allow you to make use of this late into the game. Have fun.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Zilchy