Excalibur Revisions Feedback [Post Update 18.13]

[Demoonic]

1 minute ago, Chaosdreamer said:

Thanks for killing Excalibur, there was to much of them , also I heard many keyboard thanking your team that have saved the E keys smashing

They didn't do anything of the sort. People are still going to use him just as often they just can't nuke enemies from across the map anymore. I still love em'

[TheAn0n]

No seriously I am all for Excalibur being an actual melee frame but the thing is he is not.

His Exalted Blade now that it absolutely NEEDS to be melee to be effective scales worse than about any and all crit melees in the game that use Blood Rush and Body Count.

When I build a frame that has an ability I expect that ability to be better than weapons that can be carried by any other frame so as to cement the frames role as THE one to go to if you want serious melee action.

There is literally no reason to use Exalted now for both range AND melee as it gets outclassed severely.

That can be as easy to remedy as simply allowing it to use Blood Rush and Body Count. Now it can still deal damage to Sortie 3 tier enemies and it is balanced by the fact that it is melee.

As it stands now EB is...bad. No scaling and piss poor damage. You've literally rendered the frame to have two useful abilities Slash Dash (for mobility) and Radial Blind.

[(PSN)Cwellann]

1 hour ago, [DE]Danielle said:

The powerful range on Exalted Blade turned Excalibur into more of a turret than a swordsman. This change means that Exalted Blade is more effective when used in close range and using Radial Blind is now a calculated choice. The ability will simply become more engaging in all encounters.

Once again, penalizing a player for using the single move in the Exalted Blade stance that actually does something is a terrible decision.  This is not an opinion, it is a fact, in light of it removing the only reason a player had to do anything other than spam E, which was the stated reason for the change.  It should be immediately reverted, or, if you as a design team are unwilling to do so, the slide attack, which is a great part of pretty much any melee style as it lets you close and do high damage, should have the blind effect, and energy cost removed, so that blinding, and paying the cost for it, are a calculated choice  at the player's discretion, instead of receiving it as an unfortunate consequence of playing melee well.

If Exalted Blade is going to be actually looked at instead of just slapped with a nerf because zomgexcaltooOP, I strongly suggest that the stance actually be made to do something.  At the moment, the hold attack, for example, features more powerful looking swings, and has always given the impression to me that energy waves are being charged up.  Perhaps a better solution, instead of a blanket nerf to EB's abilities, is to make the stance moves have different effects, up to and including the basic combo not even having any energy waves at all - the auto parry is quite a reasonable reward for the energy cost, and as a melee weapon alone, EB is a very nice one.  This, in my opinion, would also help clear the way to allowing Shadow Debt mods to be utilized on exalted weaponry.  This would be more in the nature of a rework (though a light one), that would punish the skilless play that led us to this, while maintaining Excal's identity and rewarding skill based play of the kind the patch notes recommend for our poster boy.

[ZetraThorn]

Damage fall-off on energy blades is fine and as it should have been. 
However the energy drain on slide attacks is bad. I often use them to actually hit enemies not to spread the fairy dust.
I'd rather removed the flash from the slide attack completely if you do not like it as it is. Or IDK set the range to 5 meters and the blind duration to 5 seconds on the slide attack. 

[Marvelous_A]

7 minutes ago, Chaosdreamer said:

Thanks for killing Excalibur, there was to much of them , also I heard many keyboard thanking your team that have saved the E keys smashing

LOL will you whine about players smashing left mouse button? I don't really see any problem about this and I can't see DE think it's a problem too.

[CryvernX]

im ok with the damage fall off, but spin blind costing energy is just not ok, spin blind allows him to be a little more agressive without burning energy, that was the point, its also basically single target as the ability has a very little range, it doesnt opens to finishers... and spin attacks are very intuitive to use for most people, its just not ok to force an energy cost like this..pls DE 

Edited May 28, 2016 by CryvernX

[Guest]

Terrible move DE.

First, Excalibur already has two abilities on LoS. Being a very buggy mechanism, it was DE in the first place who made Excalibur essentially a one-trick pony after nerfing slash dash's mobility. Therefore, I personally think that DE shouldn't be nerfing Exalted Blade because of both huge nerfs Exalted Blade has already received in the past and the fact that DE made his other abilities obsolete. The problem to Excalibur was never "Exalted Blade overshadows other abilities", it's just that his other abilities are borderline useless after the rework and pre-rework nerfs. Without a fully functional Exalted Blade, Excalibur would simply rot in everyone's shelves. Plus, the reduced range makes Excalibur even worse by having him engage enemies within melee distance. It sounds ridiculous, sure, but when you're getting OHKO by most enemies in higher levels, you'd think twice before even using Excalibur. If DE were to nerf Exalted Blade, then maybe they should consider buffing his other 3 abilities, not leaving him in a crypt to rot.

[Tricky5hift]

I really never understood the spin-blind part about EB.

IMO its better to just cast RB and kill everything within several meters around you.

And now that it actually costs energy to use the spin-blind I distaste it even more.

Change it to a regular spin attack or revert it to the way it was before this update.

[KA7HERYNE]

Please remove the mini-blind and let me do a normal spin attack.

[mayhemzen]

I'm a melee oriented player so i don't need incentive to get close.  i'm willing to bet all the players whining about e-blade nuking at range play saryn or ember.  you have to aim exalted blade at least!  And while I'm not into turreting excalibur, what choice do you have when facing an enemy like kela de thayme?  if i can't use the energy waves then why have them? if i should have to switch to my primary every time i'm not in melee, then what makes exalted blade unique and useful(and a classic anime reference) is gone.  im not saying the waves damage out put shouldn't be adjusted, just consider their use, and why they should be fairly powerful, and they are slow and pretty easy to dodge.  i'm an excalibro obviously, and E spamming gets on my nerves sometimes even when i'm the guy doing it, but what other OP press 4 to win character is as interactive and fun as excal?  None.  and on many high level missions it was absolutely necessary to get through hallways choked with enemies, and sometimes still not enough.

 

But mostly GET RID OF 25 ENERGY COST ON SPIN ATTACK!

[ashrah]

i am ok with this changes....dont must be all for dmg to be good....more utility..... is way better

[Cpl_Facehugger]

2 minutes ago, ashrah said:

i am ok with this changes....dont must be all for dmg to be good....more utility..... is way better

We have less utility here because spin attacks now take 25e.

[ashrah]

1 minute ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

We have less utility here because spin attacks now take 25e.

maybe only energy cost to reduce on 5 energy......25 is bit to much..

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Just now, ashrah said:

maybe only energy cost to reduce on 5 energy......25 is bit to much..

How about spin attacks don't take any e and we keep the nerf to wave range because that's at least understandable balancewise?

Like, I can think of literally no reason why a spin attack should cost energy when you're already bleeding energy like a sieve with exalted blade to begin with. The blind on spin attacks is short range and doesn't give you the benefits (finishers, melee stealth bonus) of radial blind. It's so weak that it shouldn't cost any energy at all, considering how it only comes into play when using EB, which itself takes energy.

[Drufo]

I'm happy that you finally addressed the problem of Excalibur being used as a living Fluctus. The change on energy waves is welcomed (even though I think they could be strong, but tied to channeling or charged attacks or specific combos).

But the addition of energy cost on the mini-Radial Blind is wrong for me. You spend 25 energy for a blind that has 1/5 of the range and 2/5 of the duration, plus it doesn't enable finishers. Considering then that slide attacks are manly used for the extra damage and for mobility... energy cost should be 10-5, or else I'd rather use the standard Radial Blind which is way more efficient, regretting everytime I use a slide attack for mobility (which after all this time is become an habit when going full melee). 

If you think a mini-blind on slide attacks is OP, then remove it, I won't actually miss it.

 

PS since you're on tweaking Excal, maybe you can make Slash Dash more reliable with the targeting? Most of the times it hits only one enemy even though there are many in the "cone of effect"

Edited May 28, 2016 by Drufo

[Prince90000]

Won't have to ever spam E anymore yay!

[Obiyer]

What did I ever do to you?! :O

[shyguyk]

Change was appropriate.

But there needs to be more ease of getting in the enemy's face. The parry should reduce more damage than it does now.

And the slide blind shouldn't cost energy because its range is so short.

[Nitresco]

You push Excalibur towards using Exalted Blade at closer ranges yet you don't realize the problem with this. Excalibur is not incredibly tanky. Valkyr can tank via Hysteria or armor, Chroma can tank via armor and Vex armor, Wukong can tank via Defy, the list goes on. Excalibur has no real survival abilities and mediocre armor. At most he can blind or stun with Radial Javelin, and that's highly unreliable because line-of-sight can be so stupidly finicky at times and said abilities must be spammed constantly. This is the main reason why people used his long-range energy waves as his main damage dealer before; they had to play him safe and away from enemy exposure.

Now you've nerfed his main means of survivability with no compensation whatsoever. You're attempting to force him into the range where he gets easily destroyed and downed on appropriately-leveled content while doing nothing to help him survive in that scenario. In addition, you've nerfed one of his only means of close-range survival for seemingly no reason; Exalted Blade's slide attack was already terrible in terms of range and duration. I thought those limits were already there to make up for the lack of an energy cost. I guess not, as you've suddenly felt the need to slap an energy cost on something that already puts Excalibur at risk to use correctly.

Long-range Exalted Blade nerfed? Close-range Exalted Blind nerfed? I'm getting mixed messages here.

If you want my suggestion on how to fix this nonsense, consider giving Excalibur a hefty armor increase. I'm talking Atlas or Valkyr level. Or just undo these changes altogether and leave Excalibur alone. I never found him a problem before, personally. He had a perfectly fine "striker" role before where he had to kill first or be killed. All the people who complained about E spam didn't realize that half the meta stuff in this game is spammed anyway. Speaking of which, this change does not lessen Exalted E-spam at longer ranges. People are still going to do it. All you've done is make it so more E-spam is required. Once again, mixed messages.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Nitresco

[Kastrel717]

3 hours ago, ThatOddDeer said:

Secondly, by not allowing body count or blood rush, and even just body count would suffice, and having combos with almost non-existant multipliers, exalted blade  only incentivises E spam rather than combos and does 15-20% the damage of a melee using the shadowdebt mod combination. If the ability is to drain energy, it should be more powerful than the cost-less alternative.

Edit:After doing some basic math, a full power strength excal that sacrifices everything to pump up EB, if shadowdebt mods were enabled on it, only deals about 60%~ more damage than a nikana prime using blind justice combos. That is an acceptable power difference considering the very weak nature of the stance, and the other exalted melee stances, because of how  expensive a super high strength EB can be.

  This i agree just allow EB to work with Blood Rush and body count.Not waves just his sword attacks that would make people to chose if they want to stay in range and kill some weak enemies or get close and start staking blood rush and do some high dmg.

[Michelozzo]

While it was not touched in this update, I'd like to mention I am NOT the biggest fan of how Slash Dash works these days prior to the update that gave us Exalted Blade in the first place. It feels a bit to random in how often it actually hits things versus the old Slash Dash just being nail everything in the way. If it maybe worked the way the spammable combo abilities do (Landlside, Rhino Charge, Rip Line and such) and each use was one Dash instead of the weird sometimes chains sometimes doesn't nature it has now.

As for actually happened in this patch, the energy drain on the spin attack of EB is a very bad way to work that ability. Mostly because it punishes reflexive spinning people used to use for mobility (and still do to some degree, even if it isn't as effective). The Blind is also hella weak and just not worth the Energy Cost compared to spending it on other abilities, or just keeping Exalted Blade going. Particularly because Excalibur is one of the 'only 150 base energy' Warframes.

I'm okay with the EB waves being reduced damage at longer ranges, it was kinda silly that he fired energy waves that were better ranged weapons than any gun we could get. I've not tested the range personally, but even just conceptually it's solid.

However, a little compensation could be given. A way to make the game play a bit more involved too and beyond 'hit 4, mash e'. Make the Charge Attack of Exalted Blade fire one, very fast, Radial Javelin that has no damage falloff and has the properties of the pre 18.13 waves. Letting you focus up and stick single priority targets while still in EB mode while still maintaining the usual melee focus one would expect of a swordsman. Yet a frame also stated to be versatile.

[TheBrsrkr]

The spin attack draining energy at an increased rate is...... Odd. I don't get the reasoning behind it. It wasn't that big in the first place, and now it costs way too much for what little effect it has. Otherwise it's fine, though. 

[ThatOddDeer]

7 minutes ago, Michelozzo said:

-snip-

However, a little compensation could be given. A way to make the game play a bit more involved too and beyond 'hit 4, mash e'. Make the Charge Attack of Exalted Blade fire one, very fast, Radial Javelin that has no damage falloff and has the properties of the pre 18.13 waves. Letting you focus up and stick single priority targets while still in EB mode while still maintaining the usual melee focus one would expect of a swordsman. Yet a frame also stated to be versatile.

Except exalted blade has no charge attack :b

And that still wouldn't fix the fact that it's pretty much worse than an orthos prime in every conceivable way right now.

[Michelozzo]

Obviously they'd GIVE it a charge attack if they implemented that change.

[Marvelous_A]

38 minutes ago, Nitresco said:

You push Excalibur towards using Exalted Blade at closer ranges yet you don't realize the problem with this. Excalibur is not incredibly tanky. Valkyr can tank via Hysteria or armor, Chroma can tank via armor and Vex armor, Wukong can tank via Defy, the list goes on. Excalibur has no real survival abilities and mediocre armor. At most he can blind or stun with Radial Javelin, and that's highly unreliable because line-of-sight can be so stupidly finicky at times and said abilities must be spammed constantly. This is the main reason why people used his long-range energy waves as his main damage dealer before; they had to play him safe and away from enemy exposure.

-snip-

True. Personally I couldn't see any problem with the pre-nerf Excalibur, but the wave change is acceptable balance-wise (it doesn't mean I like it, it's not necessary IMO). If DE wants player to fight in close-range, gives him better ability to survive. Charging into the higher level enemies with the current Excalibur is nothing more than a suicidal move with his average health, 225 armor and 0 tank ability. For the change in spin blind, it's beyond my understanding, the energy cost is ridiculously high but the blind effect is just meh. Remove the energy cost or simply remove the whole spin blind.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Marvelous_A