You just said he had survivability issues, no armor strip, and weak abilities. And then you asked why people don't play him. The same reason they don't play Caliban or Banshee. See your post for some of those reasons.
Idk about you but I've seen more Banshees recently than ever before. Survivability has never been easier, and her abilities are so strong she never needed the armour strip. Now is a great time to pick her up and try her out. I can hit you up with a build if you like
I've actually got 2 for you! Because sonar and silence are so fkn strong, she's kinda kept balanced by her survivability issues. But balance went out the door a few years ago so shes just as busted without the glaring survivability issues.
so [here is the first build](https://snipboard.io/Kz0Fki.jpg). It's my 'beginners' build because it doubles down on survivability. Parasitic armour gives you more DR than adaptation, warding halo, any of those abilities or mods. It's a shit load of armour. It's a really good starting place because it gives you a chance to feel out her abilties, how she plays, get a sense for how far and long your stun is without being concerned with death. Note that I do need to make room for arcane battery, replacing augmented. Might drop constitution for some more power strength for PA. (you also have growing power, madurai and parazon finishers for more power strength)
[This is my daily driver build](https://snipboard.io/pfaExk.jpg). I use it for everything. Once you play her a bit more, you really don't need to focus on survivability as much, you have plenty of panic options. Rolling guard is broken, you've got operator to duck into, her 1 is a knockdown that affects VIPs in disruption, theres a small stun on silence too. I'm also using air burst since it can group or push away, depending on what you need.
A couple things to note. Sonar out of the box gives you x5 damage on weak spots. when 2 overlap, thats x25 damage. at 100% ability strength. And you can put that on every relevant enemy. Silence isn't just a small stun, it turns off all enemy abilities. And both of those things scale beautifully even into EDA, when some things require entire incarnon ammo pools to kill. I'm still editing the build as I play, but I've gone from "building every frame for SP" to just playing Banshee, and sometimes oberon and styanax.
Oh and for weapons, I use [this furis build](https://snipboard.io/sroIAJ.jpg). You might be thinking, wow that doesn't really maximise on damage, it's kind of a weak build. And you'd be right. But you're playing Banshee, damage doesn't matter. I sometimes kill eximus necramechs before I can charge my incarnon bar. Lethal momentum is to improve damage fall off, winds of purity is a nice heal for the PA health tank build. primed convulsion is for multishot on the furis incarnon perk
She's so busted that I'm only just now realising that arcane aegis wasn't changed after I altered my build and even with 1 arcane down essentially she's still doing absolutely fine. I don't even look at the keys in netracells, I just grab all that are remaining and you can barely tell.
Archon shards are 1 purple for equilibrium, 1 for parkour, 2 for casting and 1 flex slot. focus school is madurai but you don't need it. Aura and both arcanes are kinda free but I'm liking steadfast because spam casting sonar is very good, obviously.
If you have any questions about the builds or wanna run some missions, feel free to hit me up
Also, Silence cancels eximus abilities and the jade eximus units can really ruin your day, so it makes sense to see an uptick in Banshee play when she can directly counter a new threat.
of the 3 starters. . .excalibur has the most immediate power, but he also has the lowest Ceiling in terms of what he can do.
excalibur is Sword guy.
his passive is that he swords better
his 1 lets him close gaps to sword enemies faster,and it also swords them
his 2 blinds enemies, making them more vulnlerable to melee damage, so that he can sword them harder
his 3 is a damage ability
the augments for all 3 of these abilities make him Sword better
his 4 is his special sword. its augment makes it a more special sword.
the ceiling for excalibur's performance is how quickly can you kill enemies with melee attacks.
by contrast, Mag eventually becomes a chokepoint goddess with armor hate and fairly easy survival
while volt is an amazing utility frame that can build into melee or gunplay fairly easily. electric shield is a crit damage *multiplier* that applies *After* mods. that is absolutely disgusting
both mag and volt arguably get better any time new guns and melee weapons are released. .but not sword guy. infact, his special sword is locked out of most of the cool new sword tools.
that doesnt mean excalibur is bad. . .but when DE put the Kibosh on even something like "no, you cant use Rauta to charge combo on your exalted melee, please get bent" thats pretty rude. maybe you play excalibur as a melee focused warframe building around some OP incarnon melee, but then like. . .why not play a different melee focused warframe. maybe one whos less fragile. i mean yeah, Furious Javelin can get pretty stupidly big, but most people dont think about that, or the fact that its a Multiplier. which it is. this shit can hit like pre-nerf Eclipse, but only for melee weapons, and only in certain situations.
Repetition = funny is the first thing they taught me at clown school.
They found out the check bounced after that, so I never got to learn the second thing.
I've learned that the second thing is "the more *you* suffer, the more *they* laugh".
Not sure what lesson three is, my education was sponsored by Valve.
His abilities are strong and he has probably the best drip but the main reason people don't play him is he has no survivability. When a frame has no survivability, it makes them tedious to play in high level missions because of how easily they can die.
Most people don't know how powerful his slash dash is or how useful his third ability can be, 95% of excal players use umbra with a full set of umbral mods and chromatic blade leading to them getting stomped in steel path then giving up on him. He gets countered pretty hard by the corpus too which isn't fun.
he can sp but it's a pain to do so. mag or volt on the other hand has some amazing abilities while also having a solid way to survive. read your post again, you already gave all the reasons why ppl stop playing him.
He's sword guy. Sword guy is good, but other frames can cosplay as sword guy and do way better. I have a newbie build with Excalibur and mk-1 weapons to play with low-MR friends purely because it doesn't nuke a room by sneezing in the general direction. So yeah, he's not played that much because there's much better alternatives for a similar playstyle. That's not to say he's bad or you shouldn't play him, just maybe check out Kullervo
Umbra is my 2nd most used frame. I use a Tenet Cyrcon with mag, rad, viral to prime targets and gain overguard with Secondary Fortifier. After that, Exalted Chromatic Blade has served well in most SP missions I do and Slash Dash gets me out of trouble. But he’s very squishy and one wrong move puts you flat on your back.
To me, he's boring. I've been seeing him for almost 10 years EVERYWHERE. And, not only that, but his abilities are mediocre. There are better melee channeling franes, better CC frames, and frames with better mobility.
He is the definition of bland in Warframe, for me.
I guess because he struggles when built incorrectly in "hardcore modes". Most of the things you said can be bypassed with the right mods/arcanes/shards/helminth ability change combinations (there are a few builds that scale pretty well imo) but it requires a lot of work and resources.
I recently revisited him and updated my build. If you want I can share it with you. Feel free to pm me so we add each other in-game.
Excalibur is fine, pretty strong frame. He's not played a lot just because he lacks something special, that makes him a favourable choice in some type of missions.
You just said he had survivability issues, no armor strip, and weak abilities. And then you asked why people don't play him. The same reason they don't play Caliban or Banshee. See your post for some of those reasons.
Idk about you but I've seen more Banshees recently than ever before. Survivability has never been easier, and her abilities are so strong she never needed the armour strip. Now is a great time to pick her up and try her out. I can hit you up with a build if you like
i’m interested in the build!
I've actually got 2 for you! Because sonar and silence are so fkn strong, she's kinda kept balanced by her survivability issues. But balance went out the door a few years ago so shes just as busted without the glaring survivability issues. so [here is the first build](https://snipboard.io/Kz0Fki.jpg). It's my 'beginners' build because it doubles down on survivability. Parasitic armour gives you more DR than adaptation, warding halo, any of those abilities or mods. It's a shit load of armour. It's a really good starting place because it gives you a chance to feel out her abilties, how she plays, get a sense for how far and long your stun is without being concerned with death. Note that I do need to make room for arcane battery, replacing augmented. Might drop constitution for some more power strength for PA. (you also have growing power, madurai and parazon finishers for more power strength) [This is my daily driver build](https://snipboard.io/pfaExk.jpg). I use it for everything. Once you play her a bit more, you really don't need to focus on survivability as much, you have plenty of panic options. Rolling guard is broken, you've got operator to duck into, her 1 is a knockdown that affects VIPs in disruption, theres a small stun on silence too. I'm also using air burst since it can group or push away, depending on what you need. A couple things to note. Sonar out of the box gives you x5 damage on weak spots. when 2 overlap, thats x25 damage. at 100% ability strength. And you can put that on every relevant enemy. Silence isn't just a small stun, it turns off all enemy abilities. And both of those things scale beautifully even into EDA, when some things require entire incarnon ammo pools to kill. I'm still editing the build as I play, but I've gone from "building every frame for SP" to just playing Banshee, and sometimes oberon and styanax. Oh and for weapons, I use [this furis build](https://snipboard.io/sroIAJ.jpg). You might be thinking, wow that doesn't really maximise on damage, it's kind of a weak build. And you'd be right. But you're playing Banshee, damage doesn't matter. I sometimes kill eximus necramechs before I can charge my incarnon bar. Lethal momentum is to improve damage fall off, winds of purity is a nice heal for the PA health tank build. primed convulsion is for multishot on the furis incarnon perk She's so busted that I'm only just now realising that arcane aegis wasn't changed after I altered my build and even with 1 arcane down essentially she's still doing absolutely fine. I don't even look at the keys in netracells, I just grab all that are remaining and you can barely tell. Archon shards are 1 purple for equilibrium, 1 for parkour, 2 for casting and 1 flex slot. focus school is madurai but you don't need it. Aura and both arcanes are kinda free but I'm liking steadfast because spam casting sonar is very good, obviously. If you have any questions about the builds or wanna run some missions, feel free to hit me up
you’ve sold me, gonna be testing out the builds tonight !
Best of luck, enjoy
Excellent writeup, i'mma cop this build thank you very much
People play Banshee tho way more than Excalibur because sonar hella strong
Also, Silence cancels eximus abilities and the jade eximus units can really ruin your day, so it makes sense to see an uptick in Banshee play when she can directly counter a new threat.
of the 3 starters. . .excalibur has the most immediate power, but he also has the lowest Ceiling in terms of what he can do. excalibur is Sword guy. his passive is that he swords better his 1 lets him close gaps to sword enemies faster,and it also swords them his 2 blinds enemies, making them more vulnlerable to melee damage, so that he can sword them harder his 3 is a damage ability the augments for all 3 of these abilities make him Sword better his 4 is his special sword. its augment makes it a more special sword. the ceiling for excalibur's performance is how quickly can you kill enemies with melee attacks. by contrast, Mag eventually becomes a chokepoint goddess with armor hate and fairly easy survival while volt is an amazing utility frame that can build into melee or gunplay fairly easily. electric shield is a crit damage *multiplier* that applies *After* mods. that is absolutely disgusting both mag and volt arguably get better any time new guns and melee weapons are released. .but not sword guy. infact, his special sword is locked out of most of the cool new sword tools. that doesnt mean excalibur is bad. . .but when DE put the Kibosh on even something like "no, you cant use Rauta to charge combo on your exalted melee, please get bent" thats pretty rude. maybe you play excalibur as a melee focused warframe building around some OP incarnon melee, but then like. . .why not play a different melee focused warframe. maybe one whos less fragile. i mean yeah, Furious Javelin can get pretty stupidly big, but most people dont think about that, or the fact that its a Multiplier. which it is. this shit can hit like pre-nerf Eclipse, but only for melee weapons, and only in certain situations.
swords
Repetition = funny is the first thing they taught me at clown school. They found out the check bounced after that, so I never got to learn the second thing.
I've learned that the second thing is "the more *you* suffer, the more *they* laugh". Not sure what lesson three is, my education was sponsored by Valve.
His abilities are strong and he has probably the best drip but the main reason people don't play him is he has no survivability. When a frame has no survivability, it makes them tedious to play in high level missions because of how easily they can die.
Most people don't know how powerful his slash dash is or how useful his third ability can be, 95% of excal players use umbra with a full set of umbral mods and chromatic blade leading to them getting stomped in steel path then giving up on him. He gets countered pretty hard by the corpus too which isn't fun.
>He suffers from having no way to heal or armor strip and radial javelin feels extremely weak you answered your own question
Some reason ya don't see alot of Valkyrs, they're outclassed by other frames. However that is irrelevant if your goal is having fun.
Preach.
like picking charmander in a pokemon game.
he can sp but it's a pain to do so. mag or volt on the other hand has some amazing abilities while also having a solid way to survive. read your post again, you already gave all the reasons why ppl stop playing him.
sword go swish swish , others can swish swish better
He is the poster boy for warframe....lol
He's sword guy. Sword guy is good, but other frames can cosplay as sword guy and do way better. I have a newbie build with Excalibur and mk-1 weapons to play with low-MR friends purely because it doesn't nuke a room by sneezing in the general direction. So yeah, he's not played that much because there's much better alternatives for a similar playstyle. That's not to say he's bad or you shouldn't play him, just maybe check out Kullervo
Kullervo was gifted to me early on and that’s why I’m revisiting Excalibur now.
I love Excalibur too! His melee combos are so satisfying, just wish he had more utility.
Because Excalibutt isnt really good at anything other than fashion frame 😅
I prefer using Umbra because of his scarfs and skin, but I used Excalibur for a long time, he is still top 3 of my most used warframes
Umbra is my 2nd most used frame. I use a Tenet Cyrcon with mag, rad, viral to prime targets and gain overguard with Secondary Fortifier. After that, Exalted Chromatic Blade has served well in most SP missions I do and Slash Dash gets me out of trouble. But he’s very squishy and one wrong move puts you flat on your back.
Why Excal when Kullervo is a Duviri grind away? You'll also get Acrothane in the process and sword with bigger sword
Sorry, too busy being the Most Significant Fuck (harrow prime as Gabriel from ultrakill)
To me, he's boring. I've been seeing him for almost 10 years EVERYWHERE. And, not only that, but his abilities are mediocre. There are better melee channeling franes, better CC frames, and frames with better mobility. He is the definition of bland in Warframe, for me.
I guess because he struggles when built incorrectly in "hardcore modes". Most of the things you said can be bypassed with the right mods/arcanes/shards/helminth ability change combinations (there are a few builds that scale pretty well imo) but it requires a lot of work and resources. I recently revisited him and updated my build. If you want I can share it with you. Feel free to pm me so we add each other in-game.
Excalibur is fine, pretty strong frame. He's not played a lot just because he lacks something special, that makes him a favourable choice in some type of missions.