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Excalibur

Sword Saint | Mobile Melee Focus

by last updated 2 years ago

30

Excalibur epitomizes the warrior spirit. His master swordsmanship deals high damage. He is the embodiment of martial excellence.

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ITEM RANK

30

60 / 60

APPLY CONDITIONALS

ENERGY
150
HEALTH
370
SHIELD
370
SPRINT SPEED
1
DURATION
100%
EFFICIENCY
100%
RANGE
100%
STRENGTH
100%
ARMOR
240
Damage Reduction
44.4%
EFFECTIVE HIT POINTS
1,159
Guide
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Excalibur builds
Builds by Keyumar

Sword Saint | Mobile Melee Focus

[Overview]

This build is meant for fast paced, melee centric gameplay while providing enough survivability for scaling enemies. There is some flexibility that I'll note as the build is explained.

Core Strategy and Mods

We want to make full use of [Furious Javelin] while still being able to survive at all levels of content via shield gating abuse. Not shown here, but I do recommend equipping the decayed dragon key to make better use of shield gating since it will be easier to top off your shields that way for shield gating in quick succession. Rolling guard is our get out of jail free card to cleanse ourselves of status procs as well as get i-frames for tight situations. [Furious Javelin] will give you a major damage buff to melee weapons as long as you hit enemies with radial javelin. It's damage buff is multiplicative after all damage mods to melee weapons which is what makes it so strong, although the bonus multiplier from # of enemies hit will not go above 12. This means that we don't really need to improve ability range since we will be in melee range most of the time, if not trying to be in melee range. Excal's base range on slash dash, radial blind and radial javelin are good enough for our intended playstyle. If you want to read more about furious javelin, here is a great writeup by the warframe wiki: https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Furious_Javelin

We've already focused on why we don't need much range, although we don't want it to get into the negatives since that will kill slash dash and radial blind. We can abuse magus anomaly on our operator to pull enemies towards us for easy [Furious Javelin] procs. Step in and out of operator mode and cast 3, it is that simple. [Excalibur]'s energy pool is a bit dismal, so we include a [Primed Flow] into our build. I put [Streamline] in for personal preference, but really you an put anything you want in place of [Streamline], such as more duration or strength. [Brief Respite] is there for shield gating purposes. If you are running in a premade where someone else can provide [Brief Respite], feel free to use something else but I'm accounting for solo play more so than organized group play. Now, you could put in primed handspring into the exilus slot, but I find that between the mobility of some melee weapons/stances and slash dash, I'm out of range before a heavy gunner is able to do their knockdown for example. If you do run something like primed [Handspring], you will need to put a D polarity in the exilus slot. [Natural Talent] is also necessary for this build to really work. It does help with radial blind, but [Natural Talent] is mostly here for radial javelin. Radial javelin has a long casting animation where Excalibur will stop all movement (unless you started the cast mid-air) and can do no other actions. [Natural Talent] is here to minimize that animation time into something manageable for us to retain our mobility and survivability (less time in animation means more room to dodge or kill). Arcane energize is here for our energy economy since no energy = death for this build. We're able to play fast and loose with this build due to shield gating and tools like slash dash and radial blind for our survivability, so we need to be able to cast these abilities on demand.

Abilities

Slash Dash: Provides excellent utility. Great mobility, health immunity and shield building all for a cheap energy cost of 25. Perfect for fast paced melee.

Radial Blind: Solid source of CC. Gives us breathing room and can setup melee combos or status buildup (through weapons like the [Kuva Nukor]).

Radial Javelin: Our damage boost and focal point for the build. Try to keep uptime on the [Furious Javelin] buff as much as possible. On it's own, radial javelin is a terrible ability.

[Exalted Blade]: You may have noticed that I did not mention this build in our core strategy, that's because it's completely unnecessary and can be detrimental to our build with it's weak move set and energy drain. We are not running a [Chromatic Blade] build, so [Exalted Blade] is much less useful than a normal melee to us. If you were to subsume an ability, this would be the prime candidate.
Xata's whisper, eclipse, roar, warcry (with eternal war replacing streamline), and even shooting gallery/defy (more cc/survivability if you really needed it) are all solid choices. I've left [Exalted Blade] unaltered for this build to let you decide what is best for you.

Equipment

Gear: Decaying dragon key for shield gating. Enough said.

Operator: Magus anomaly to pull enemies in for radial javelin setup to get max multiplier on [Furious Javelin] (12x).

Arcanes: Energize is here for our energy economy so we can have uptime on radial javelin and our utility skills. I chose strike here for the attack speed buff, but the second arcane is your personal preference.

Primary/Secondary: Really up to you. I personally prefer running a status weapon like a [Kuva Nukor] to setup for [Condition Overload]. If you really don't care for your primary and are using a katana, run the [Daikyu] with it's amalgam mod to heal up and health damage you might've taken.

Melee: Personally, I run with a [Nikana Prime] and [Blind Justice] for it's mobility. Whether or not you make use of [Excalibur]'s passive is not a huge deal, since it is additive with AS (like [Fury]) and damage mods. Overall, I would recommend faster melees that can make use of their stances to enhance your mobility since more mobility will give you better survivability. Using something like a [Gram Prime] with [Cleaving Whirlwind] is going to get you killed a lot more than using a longsword with [Iron Phoenix] for example.

Gameplan

Your overall strategy will be to get into clustered enemies, pop radial javelin and start slaying. When shields go down, pop radial blind, slash dash, (radial javelin if the buff is down but this is a riskier play) or roll to make use of [Rolling Guard]. Keep your melee counter up, do your status setups as needed, etc. Make sure to group enemies up with operator mode and abuse magus anomaly. There really isn't too much to discuss with this build, it's very straightforward. Keep moving and slashing. Make use of your chose melee stance, rolling and slash dash for your mobility. Keep the [Furious Javelin] buff up as much as possible.