Excalibur Revisions Feedback [Post Update 18.13]

[Marvelous_A]

10 minutes ago, Xylyssa said:

Look at everyone upset in here. You should be thanking DE for sparing your E key. Excalibur is officially not a no-brain spam crutch now.

 

Now they need to remove the ability for the waves to pass through solid objects and Excalibur will be in a good spot and require skill and timing for once.

 

Awful lots of Excalibur profile icons in here...

I don't see any other frames are "superior" than Excalibur on this problem. Maybe you are just spamming other things, tonkor and simulor or whatever. While other frames have their own "spam this key to win", I can't understand the reasoning of Excalibur nerf given he is not THAT powerful at all. Not to mention the some part of this nerf is not justified (the energy cost of spin blind).

Edited May 28, 2016 by Marvelous_A

[Issxi]

His mini RB was a freebie that combined with the mobility of the spin attack you could spam it in a wide area with no drawbacks. It needed a cost or to be removed entirely from EB.

[Inmemoratus]

7 minutes ago, Xylyssa said:

His mini RB was a freebie that combined with the mobility of the spin attack you could spam it in a wide area with no drawbacks. It needed a cost or to be removed entirely from EB.

It has 4% of the area coverage of Radial Blind and a shorter duration. 50% of the energy cost is ridiculous. It also doesn't add give you mobility. Coptering was removed ages ago.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Inmemoratus

[Issxi]

Still stands that it was a freebie that had no energy cost which functioned same as the normal RB, even with reduced effectiveness. You guys just don't understand.

[Marvelous_A]

2 minutes ago, Xylyssa said:

His mini RB was a freebie that combined with the mobility of the spin attack you could spam it in a wide area with no drawbacks. It needed a cost or to be removed entirely from EB.

Only when you realise how small the range and how short the duration is, this mini RB gives only 1/5 range and 2/5 duration compared to RB, does not make enemies open to finisher, and it actually requires halved energy cost now. It can require some cost but definitely not half of RB, maybe 5 energy. I prefer remove the spin blind completely tho.

[Inmemoratus]

1 minute ago, Xylyssa said:

Still stands that it was a freebie that had no energy cost which functioned same as the normal RB, even with reduced effectiveness. You guys just don't understand.

It has 4% of the area coverage. It's not worth the energy to ever use it with the current numbers.

[Phezzan]

Please give me back my favorite melee attack. I'll gladly return the mini-blind. It is tiny and useless while #2 is easy, fast, and cheap enough.

Slide slash is the most ninja (Kurosawa) move in the game: you don't stop moving, you don't look back, the targets all fall dead.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SingleStrokeBattle

Charging Excal energy for it is just terrible.

Other Options:

- mini blind only occurs when channeling (and counts as a 'hit'  ~5 energy)

- extend the range of the sword for the spin attack (ala WuKong)

 

 

[Sealgaire]

I thought the community consensus was that Excalibur was in a good place and was a mark to shoot for in terms of fun, usefulness and player engagement when balancing other frames, but I guess I've been gone for a while and that may have changed. Anyway, this opinion seems almost universal, but I'll state it anyway. Range nerf to EB is okay and makes sense, energy cost to mini blind is unnecessary and crippling. Forcing Excalibur to get closer to high level enemies while at the same time effectively removing the only tool he had to stay alive against them makes him pretty much unusable in high level content.

Excalibur's been my boy since choosing him as my starting frame in early closed beta, and when he got EB I was overjoyed because I could play him effectively while having a blast without having to resort to boring gimmicks. Was planning on coming back to game for U19. Not sure I will if I can't use Excalibur in high level content anymore.

[FedorHooch]

Robbing Excalibur of middle range attack power is a very bad decision. Forcing the player to get into melee range without any resistances to CC is a suicide - one knockdown and it's game over.

Sliding RB costing energy is also a very bad decision. It punishes the player for using mobility options. The cost is also too high - slide RB has range of 5 m, normal RB has 25 m, which means it has 1/5th of the range and 1/25th of area of effect for 1/2 of the price.

Edited May 28, 2016 by FedorHooch

[BeKorni]

His kit is quite contradicting now.

The range nerf is ok, it was spamming the e button.

But forcing him to close melee yet punishing players for using melee slide attack does not make sense. Get rid of the blind and the energy cost. We have 2 for it. Slide attack is an essential part of melee play. Punishing players for doing it is taking away all the fun.

 

[shut]

20 hours ago, (PS4)Jennison99 said:

    With Excalibur needing to get close to do more damage, I feel that improving his combos on His Exalted Blade should be the next step to making Excalibur's Exalted Blade more fun and skill based, rather than just a "mash melee attack button to win because all of the combos are less useful". I'm not saying make them more powerful, but rather give me a reason to use them other than doing a cool animation that ends up doing similar on hit damage, but much less DPS. Maybe some cool spins that send you forward or some sweet jumps.

I want Excalibur to be more fun, but not necessarily stronger after his incredibly recent and well deserved, other than the not so well thought out slide attack energy cost, nerf.

 

This is exactly how I feel. I think that what needs to happen right now is to improve the usefulness of his combos and to remove the 25 energy drain on performing a single slide attack. I understand why the waves needed to be nerfed, but the only players whom I have ever seen complain about mini-Blind being OP were players who didn't play enough Excal to realize that it really wasn't all that great.

My biggest gripe with this update is that it was trying to change the fact that he's "more of a turret than a swordsman" (direct quote)-- yet all that the devs did was lower the turret's effective range, and give an unnecessary nerf to the one part of EB gameplay that wasn't turretlike. Exalted Blade has four different combo branches-- it's time they each did different things.

 

These are just my initial thoughts from reading the patch notes, anyways (I haven't played the update yet). Hopefully these changes aren't actually as bad as they look to be right now.

 

 

EDIT:

After playing Excal for a while, my thoughts are pretty much the same as what I said yesterday. I never found myself using anything other than the stock combo (of course), and the energy drain on every slide attack is just poop.

One graphical change that I'd like to see, though-- Now that EB waves diminish harshly with distance, it would be great if the waves' visuals become thinner and wispier as the damage diminishes. So instead of seeing this bright powerful wave traveling across a map, we should see a wave that slowly fades away as its damage falls off.

This reduces visual noise and makes "you should use EB at close- to mid-range" far more intuitive to the player.

Edited May 28, 2016 by SortaRandom

[Achromatic.]

I'd rather have a real slide attack than a terrible blind that costs energy. The range and duration on it has always been terrible, the only reason to use it was that it was free. 

If the energy waves are going to fade then maybe the actual physical portion of the blade should get a damage buff if you want to force us to a close up style. EB was strong but not that strong. The range was always the main benefit since Excalibur is pretty fragile for a supposed melee frame. Speaking of that, if you want us to be more up close and personal then something should be done to his defensive capabilities to compensate. 

[xiaodenden]

I don't mind the Exaulted Blade's decrease in range and the drop off in damage the further the wave travels, but I agree with others that the mini blind's cost is way too much. Either remove the mini blind from the slide all together or lower the energy cost.  I agree with others that mods like Blood Rush and Body Count should have an effect on EB because if Ash and Valkyr's ultimates use those mods, why isn't Excal's?  I like the change to EB will get people to try his other abilities and make him more melee oriented, but I worry about his survivability in melee range.  Yes, he has his Radial Blind for crowd control and he's fairly agile, but I feel like he needs more damage mitigation in his kit/stats to compensate the changes to EB.  He seems less tanky (not that I do or want to face tank) than other melee frames. 

I use his RB and his other powers a lot more than EB so the changes to EB won't change how I play Excalibur, but I feel like he needs a few more changes to make him even better/fun.

[T1BillionX]

I'm going to echo the sentiments of many about the excal changes. First, the cost the mini blind is a bad idea through and through, to be honest the mini blind should changed to be done on command or removed and replaced with high range spin attack . Second the damage fall off at range and on enemy hit is understandable but it should be tweeked for less damage fall off. Third, why not an increase in damage for actual contact with the exalted blade on attack since the there is damage fall off for the waves. That would be a nice offset.

[hammerheathen]

*shrug Though I used to main him, I have binned excalibur since radial blind got bad-touched by Line of Sight. Sure, some people abused it,but I (and others) used it tacticaly....now the LoS mechanics are very poor, an enemy can be shooting me, I can see the enemy, and the enemy will not be affected by radial blind.... not exactly having anything to do with "sight".

That said, welcome to the club mirage. I hope you enjoy the limits. Of course, mirage might not be as hurt by it as he is.

[Hortonman]

While I'm totally fine with the range changes on EB, the energy drain on spin attacks is frankly unacceptable.

Even when it was free, I hardly ever used the mini-blinds because they had such a minimal effect, and they honestly felt pretty awkward to use. Asking half the energy of a full radial blind is absurd.

If I want to blind things, I'm just going to use the full blind, as it's dramatically more effective then the spin attack. I'd honestly much rather just lose the mini-blind entirely and replace it with a regular spin attack. I'd actually have reason to use a normal spin attack, unlike this overpriced knockoff radial blind.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Hortonman

[Bdkay]

2 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

I don't see any other frames are "superior" than Excalibur on this problem. Maybe you are just spamming other things, tonkor and simulor or whatever. While other frames have their own "spam this key to win", I can't understand the reasoning of Excalibur nerf given he is not THAT powerful at all. Not to mention the some part of this nerf is not justified (the energy cost of spin blind).

I agree, he wasnt that powerful to begin with, being forced to run into crowds of enemies when you are already squishy and lose your only ability to stay alive... you're donezo

[RiouHotaru]

The damage fallout was necessary, since, like Rebecca said, it turned Excal into a turret rather than a swordsman, especially since EB was viable well into end-endgame with the right mods.  Utterly ridiculous in terms of raw killing power.

The mini-blind costing energy does make sense though.  It was a free blind, and even if you couldn't do finishers you still got the stealth-hidden melee multiplier.  Which was stupid strong on top of EB's already ridiculous damage.

Also lmao, if enemies are dropping you that fast when you're closing to melee range, then you're at a point where you shouldn't be trying to close at all, basically end-endgame.

[Faeduin]

I was always of the mind to remove the beams from his normal attacks completely, add them to the last wave of a combo while in EB with full penetration and no damage fall off, this encourages you to actually use the combo's while in EB rather then just spamming the attack, best of both worlds. However as others have said, he is quite squishy even with the EB deflection and not addressing this while forcing him into a shorter engagement range is more punishing then it needs to be.

 I'm also of the opinion that the blind effect from his slide attack should just be removed, it's clunky and rather redundant. I'd like to see it replaced with a 360* short radial burst that does minimal damage but knocks down enemies close to you, it fits with the EB theme, still gives you your spin attack and can increase survivability while advancing to melee range.

[Marvelous_A]

51 minutes ago, RiouHotaru said:

The damage fallout was necessary, since, like Rebecca said, it turned Excal into a turret rather than a swordsman, especially since EB was viable well into end-endgame with the right mods.  Utterly ridiculous in terms of raw killing power.

The mini-blind costing energy does make sense though.  It was a free blind, and even if you couldn't do finishers you still got the stealth-hidden melee multiplier.  Which was stupid strong on top of EB's already ridiculous damage.

Also lmao, if enemies are dropping you that fast when you're closing to melee range, then you're at a point where you shouldn't be trying to close at all, basically end-endgame.

And that's the problem. They want you to fight in close range, and nerf your long range combat agility, yet they penalize you for using your survival kit by adding extra cost (EB blind). And they don't improve your survivability in close range. And they say it is a melee-themed frame and ask you to get close to your enemies. All of these are contradicting to each other.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Marvelous_A

[Faeduin]

6 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

And that's the problem. They want you to fight in close range, and nerf your long range combat agility, yet they penalize you for using your survival kit by adding extra cost (EB blind). And they don't improve your survivability in close range. And they say it is a melee-themed frame and ask you to get close to your enemies. All of these are contradicting to each other.

Exactly this! Well said!

[Ithloniel]

9 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

•  and Exalted Blade’s built-in Radial Blind on spin will now cost ½ the Energy of a regular Radial Blind.

I think this is a huge mistake, and it would be better to completely remove this Blind mechanic on spin attacks.  With the change mentioned above, a player would need to decide whether to kill an enemy with a spin attack, or waste precious energy in the process.  This actually motivates players to avoid exalted blade, due to a deficiency in the skill's mechanics compared to regular melee.  This is compounded on by the tendency players still have to use spin attacks for mobility, particularly when pivoting in mid-air.  While the blind on the spin attack is meant to serve as a bonus to excal's arsenal, it can very easily be viewed as a penalty, due to this energy drain.  After all, if someone wants to blind targets, they can do so manually with the Radial Blind skill.

With 1/2 the regular Radial Blind cost, we are still looking at 25 energy.  Reduced by 75% efficiency, that becomes 6.25.  In late-game content, when you'll want to use more spin attacks for bigger damage, you'll start eating into energy quickly.  3 spin attacks will already drain more energy than a single blind, at a fraction of the range/duration.  This feature was already redundant, but useful because it was free.  Adding any cost whatsoever makes Excalibur even worse than not having the blind to begin with.  Alternatively, I suggest removing it and adding something else instead.  In fact, with the upcoming changes to energy waves, I suggest adding a small radius energy wave in that 5 meter radius previously used for the mini-radial blind.

Also, on a complete tangent, adding slightly larger energy waves than normal attacks onto the end of a combo chain would provide incentive to use combos (similar to the current energy wave, but that might still have too much range).

Thanks for reading. :)

Edited May 28, 2016 by Ithloniel

[Feuershark]

Excal being a turret of slashing damage was ridiculous I agree, but the cost on the slide-blind is ridiculous.

[Trekiros]

I think this change is completely miguided.

It makes two assumptions:

A) We only use EB, not the rest of Excal's kit

B) When we use EB, we only use it from a distance

 

Here are a couple reasons why this is completely wrong in my opinion:

-There are a bunch of things which simply don't work while EB is active, such as Trinity's energy restore ability.

-From up close, both the blade and the wave hit enemies, effectively multiplying your damage by 2. The incentive to go CQC is already there, and it is already strong.

-EB's slide attack blind has reduced range. If we want to make any use of it, we absolutely have to go CQC.

-Slash Dash: an invincible movement skill that sets up ground finishers. This gets you into CQC range reliably, and rewards you heavily for doing so. As far as CQC skills go, this is pretty much perfection.

-Radial Blind: Perhaps you forgot the part where it multiplies your melee damage by 16, and only multiplies your ranged damage by 2 ? My build is range/duration, not strength/duration, precisely because Radial Blind is so damn good.

-Radial Javelin: Exalted Blade is not the reason we do not use RJ. The reason we don't use RJ is that RJ blows. It's the only ability on Excal which doesn't scale with melee mods (eve Radial Blind does, in a sense). It can't kill anything past lvl 50, and feels really, really bad to use in high level content. Is that how you want all of Excal's kit to feel ? Extremely underwhelming and mechanically out of theme ? Instead of bringing the rest of his kit down to RJ's level, bring RJ's level up to par with the rest of Excal's kit.

 

My whole strategy in high level maps is to spam Radial Blind a lot to increase my survivability and DPS (with EB or weapons, because Radial Blind is awesome enough that you don't need EB if you spam it often enough), and go CQC with Slash Dash against tough enemies to deal with them as quickly as possible. That's why I think those assumptions are so wrong, on so many levels. I do go CQC a lot, and I do use Excal's other abilities (except for Radial Javelin).

 

Now, that's just my feedback about the reasoning behind the changes. Did EB need changes in my opinion ? Yeah probably. Not for those reasons though. It currently deals significantly higher damage than most of my main weapons, including a 5-forma Amprex. When a 2-forma Excal with a 0-forma melee weapon can be more optimal than a 5-forma top-tier primary, I do think a nerf is probably warranted. The ratio of effort to reward is pretty huge compared to the rest of what Warframe typically offers.

Here's my feedback about the actual changes that have been made :

-The fact that slide attack now costs energy:

• You kinda trapped yourselves into a corner last update by making waves shoot where you aim rather than where you go, not gonna lie. That's extremely counteproductive since we can now retreat-slide attack, or retreat-jump attack and still deal damage. Previously, if you were using a spin attack, you were moving forward - getting closer to CQC.
• I think another reason you came up with this change is that you wanted to increase EB's energy cost, but because you thought we only ever use EB and that the rest of Excal's kit sucks, if you just increased the energy drain we'd have become even less willing to spend energy on Excal's three other abilities. Kinda like how new Rhino players don't ever use any ability because they don't want to ever be unable to cast Iron Skin due to a lack of energy, right ? Well, as I've said, that assumption is wrong. Slash Dash and Radial Blind are both extremely powerful. Radial Javelin kinda sucks, but the solution to that problem is to buff Radial Javelin, isn't it ?
• Again, the slide attack's blind is mostly effective in CQC because of its poor range. If the whole purpose of this change was to provide an incentive for going CQC, well, I think it was a counterproductive change. If anything, I will now be much more hesitant to go close range if it costs me that much energy. Because, and let's be honest here, with its reduced range, duration, and effect, and the fact that regular Radial Blind is so damn good, two EB spin attacks are definitely not worth as much as one regular Radial Blind.

-The reduced damage with distance is redundant imo: as I've said up above, EB's damage already was a lot higher in CQC due to the fact that you'd hit with blade+wave rather than just wave.

-The reduced damage with the amount of enemies hit I am fine with, honestly. I can't find anything bad to say about it right now, so I guess I'd be okay if you kept it.

 

That was a fairly long post, eh. Just for the record, before this update, here was my one suggestion for Excalibro:

I believe the reason you made it so Radial Javelin doesn't scale with melee mods is that you don't want it to be a nuke. You don't want nukes in the game anymore, as shown by Saryn's rework. However, there is another way to make an ability fit Excalibur's playstyle: make it support his melee mods, rather than benefit from it. That's what Radial Blind does: it doesn't deal damage, doesn't scale with melee mods, but because it buffs your melee DPS, it still interacts with your melee mods indirectly, and thanks to this it fits Excal's theme perfectly.

Now, before I make my suggestion, the one thing you have to understand is that I'm a software dev, and as such my instinct always goes towards the path of least resistance. But if you want to invest resource into a full fledged overhaul, I won't be the one to shun you for this !

Here is my suggestion: make Radial Javelin's current augment mod a default effect of the ability, and come up with a new augment mod to replace it.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Trekiros

[alfaomega04]

Thanks for the nerf. (No, seriously, that was not sarcastic) 

Excal's EB had needed a that nerf since it's release. People abused it and made what was supposed to be a melee frame into simply a kind of OP "primary" that shot out blades instead of bullets. 

As for the mini blind, other have said it better already so there's nothing for me to add. Either remove the cost, or remove the mini blind as I always found it a bit useless anyway.