Excalibur Builds - Radiant Finish

[(PSN)abbacephas]

As the thread title indicates I'm curious about how useful Radiant Finish is in any Excalibur build. The 300% finisher damage seems enticing and seeing as how EB counts as a finisher (so I've heard), I could see this as being a very useful mod to acquire. I'd just like to get other players input.

 

Thanks.

[Tobiah]

I don't believe it counts as a finisher entirely, there's large boosts when performing finishers with EB, but normal attacks don't count as finishers.

It's a fun mod when you're primarily running something like a range-duration-efficiency build to keep enemies locked, having this would help compensate for sacrificed power strength, potentially allowing you to still walk by and 1-shot enemies that are blinded.

[VKhaun]

It's very tough to call it worth a slot....

Using no power strength mods and KIlling Blow I can already one hit kill lv135 Corrupted Heavy Gunners at full armor in the sim by channeling a Radial Blind finisher, even with multiple mods on my melee weapon that don't contribute any damage like Life Strike and Fury. At 185% power strength I don't even have to channel that hit and I'll do 99.9% of it's HP and have to finish it by farting in it's general direction. In a real group with 4xCP or vs unarmored enemies? Nova going to town? Viral Procs?... nah... you're going to be one shotting them anyway.

If I were to TRY and make up a reason to use the mod I'd say a min-max build for Radial Blind that does not use Exalted Blade due to negative strength from Over Extended. You could use just this one mod to get +120% for your regular melee weapon (it's affected by the negative power strength) rather than multiple mods to get your power strength back up for EB's damage. I'd only do that if my team also got the bonus and even then I'm not sure when, where or why I'd ever use a build like that.

[(PSN)Cwellann]

It's also a really nice mod to use in a very defensive setup.  That 6 mod survivability combo (Vit/SF/QT/PF/Rage/Handspring) doesn't leave a lot of room for power strength, and with 4CP's even 100% power strength can take care of the mooks for a long time (and even with only one CP level one hundred trash mobs are still wet tissue paper), so you really only need a boost for assassinating heavies, which Radiant Finish works pretty nicely for.  Also bears mentioning that it works for everybody, so if another member of your team is also melee oriented, you're helping them out as well.  Really tough call with Energy Conversion now though - I'd say the team utility is really the only actual reason to use it besides personal preference.

[(PSN)abbacephas]

Great answers guys! I really appreciate the input. It helps seeing your reasoning on the pros and cons and how it impacts builds.

 

Keep 'em coming! Learning a lot of good stuff here.