by F1ameBlade — last updated 3 years ago
From the shadow of the long night emerges a new Excalibur.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
Excalibur Gameplay Guide[Excalibur] is heavily focused on melee damage and his defensive options are limited to crowd control abilities or sources outside of his kit. He gets a small bonus to certain melee weapons but the majority of his kit is focused on increasing the effectiveness of his [Exalted Blade]. With the right mod configuration and some basic knowledge of external defensive tools he can complete most missions in this melee oriented meta.
[Excalibur Umbra] is a free upgrade to the base [Excalibur] so we'll be using him for the baseline of all Excalibur guides. Additional information about this is in the notes section near the end of this guide.
📝 Build Overview 📝 [Excalibur Umbra] has a passive called Sentience that grants the frame pseudo specter qualities while you're in Operator mode. This is usually used to passively farm specific missions like The Index. This build tries to maximize the potential of the Umbra specter across multiple mission types.
🔢 Helminth Options 🔢 Slash Dash is the weakest ability in this setup and doesn't provide reasonable returns even if you're using a melee stat stick. Javelin isn't a great ability without the augment but losing out on the ability to even slot in the augment is a massive downside.
Roar is a large damage increase on most weapons that can proc damage over time effects. It's fairly expensive but the inability to be recast while active synergizes with Umbra's Sentience specter.
Eclipse is a strong buff but requires proper positioning and tilesets with large amounts of light.
Dispensary provides health, energy, and ammo which can help with resource management. The [Equilibrium] mod can be used to significantly increase your energy recovery.
Nourish provides a Toxin damage bonus with some healing potential. It can have issues with changing your element combinations on some setups. Shock and Smite have similar effects but require an augment slot.
Other abilities are decent but provide a lot of redundancy due to the existence of operator mode and the previously mentioned abilities.
📊 Ability Stats 📊 Strength and Duration are the primary stats on a buff focused build. Efficiency isn't touched and Range is intentionally kept low to keep the Umbra specter from using unnecessary abilities.
⏲️ Duration ⏲️ Duration is significantly boosted to give your buffs additional uptime. [Narrow Minded] has double synergy with the Umbral Specter since low Range decreases the chance that it will cast useless abilities. Any further investment shouldn't be necessary but Primed Continuity can be a flex mod if you're confident in your energy economy.
⛽ Efficiency ⛽ Efficiency isn't touched as the only ability that this build will use is the subsumed buff. Flex mods can be replaced with Streamline and greedy builds can use Blind Rage with little recourse.
📏 Range 📏 Range is intentionally lowered by [Narrow Minded] to keep the Umbra Specter from using abilities when enemies are within their range. It isn't suggested that you increase Range by any means which includes removing Narrow Minded unless you're confident in staying very far away from enemies.
💪 Strength 💪 Strength allows your subsumed buff to become impactful on higher level enemies. If you're using an ability that doesn't adequately scale with Strength then [Transient Fortitude] and Power Drift become flex mods. Blind Rage can be slotted over Transient Fortitude on extremely greedy setups.
↔️ Alternate Playstyles ↔️ Most builds utilize tools that can be swapped out to serve the same purpose albeit in a different manner. The following suggestions are an outline and aren't exhaustive.
🔧 Mods 🔧⚙️ Arcanes ⚙️ Arcane Energize synergizes with [Primed Flow] and keeps your energy topped off. It can be replaced if you have other strong forms of energy recovery either through abilities or other energy support frames. Offensive arcanes like Arcane Avenger or Arcane [Fury] are usually the call.
Arcane [Guardian] provides additional survivability to the Specter and synergizes with the effective health tanking provided by the Umbral set mods. Replace it if you want a different form of survivability. Tertiary defensive arcanes like Arcane Aegis or Arcane Grace are usually the call.
📋 Final Notes 📋 [Excalibur Umbra] is a direct upgrade to the base [Excalibur] as it shares all of the same abilities other than Radial Blind. It's given to all players for completing a necessary story quest so we have all [Excalibur] builds using the Umbral variant. This limits modding potential due to the existence of three Umbral polarized slots but most builds have minimal impact.
[Excalibur] has a passive that increases the damage and attack speed of some melee weapons by a small amount. Listing off every single weapon would significantly increase the size of this guide but a good rule of thumb is that it applies to most swords that can be held in one hand. This passive applies to [Excalibur Umbra] even though he also has the Sentience passive.
[Excalibur Umbra]'s passive requires a meta weapon to compete against most endgame enemies. He will prefer to use his primary weapon but he will switch to his secondary and melee weapon in certain scenarios. Tailor these weapons appropriately to the mission as a bad mod configuration can significantly hinder the Specter's ability to function.
Tau resistance from the Umbral set mods can be combined with [Adaptation] to grant you complete immunity to Sentient attacks. This has a reasonable chance of being patched if Sentient focused content is released so be wary of this interaction in future updates.
🔄 Linked Builds 🔄 📧 Contact Information 📧 Remnants of the Void / Phantom Vanguard Discord Server
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us through the Discord server. We appreciate all forms of support and welcome any criticism designed to help us improve. If you enjoyed this guide you can also support us by giving it a 👍 and sharing it with your friends!This build is part of a collection that you can either find on the builder's profile or through a special bot we have in the Discord server. We have builds for every item in the game and we're adding new ones frequently. Come check it out!
🏆 Credits 🏆 🛑 Disclaimers 🛑 This build may make certain assumptions about mechanics that can change after a patch. Multiple unnecessary forma may be used to facilitate more options across multiple builds with one polarity plan. Certain sub-optimal mods may be run to fit them into the forma polarity plan. We do not make builds that purposely attempt to abuse mechanics that aren't intended by the developers. None of these previous statements are excuses for a fundamentally incorrect build and we ask that you please contact us when we're wrong. We do not consent to anyone other than the original author of this guide posting it without permission.
