While Excalibur wasn’t my very first warframe, he still holds a special place in my heart, having been with me since Warframe’s humble beginnings back in 2013. His kit is pretty straightforward compared to more recent warframes, but he can still keep pace with the power creep using the right build.
Excalibur Build Guide
In this guide, I’ll show you how to build Excalibur to clear rooms with the best of them. The energy waves from his Exalted Blade are already great for cleaning out hallways, but he can be built to take out an entire tile’s worth of enemies. This build has been stress-tested in both Arbitrations and Steel Path, and clears both with relative ease. To follow this build to the letter, you’ll need three Forma and two Umbral Forma for Excalibur, as well as five Forma for his Exalted Blade, for a total of eight Forma and two Umbral Forma.
What To Mod For
Excalibur’s main damage dealer is his Exalted Blade, and this build focuses on maximizing that damage. Since we’re focusing on Exalted Blade, the 300% status chance increase from Chromatic Blade is essential here. Otherwise, Blind Rage and Umbral Intensify help boost your base damage considerably, although Transient Fortitude is a fine alternative if you’d rather not spend an Umbral Forma. I find it a worthwhile investment since the bonus health from Umbral Intensify helps with Excalibur’s questionable survivability, and thanks to the Umbral set bonus, it further boosts the strength of Umbral Intensify.
Of course, Brief Respite and Augur Secrets also help with Excalibur’s survival issues, and when you combine it with the invulnerability window he has during slash dash, Excalibur becomes effectively immortal so long as you have energy to spare. Thanks to Arcane Energize, though, you’ll have plenty of energy so long as there are enemies around. The remaining mod slots are somewhat flexible, although Primed Flow is useful for keeping Exalted Blade active longer and Primed Continuity helps offset the increased energy drain from Blind Rage. Adaptation is never strictly necessary, especially in a shield-gate build like this one, but it never hurts to be able to adapt to incoming damage.
The cornerstone of this build is Melee Influence, a handy little arcane that gives you a 20% chance on electricity status to get an 18s buff where all melee status effects are applied to enemies within 20 meters. Since Chromatic Blade is already giving us status based on our Emissive Energy color, setting it to purple gives us electricity without having to mod for it. It’s beneficial to build for other statuses too, since they’ll also spread when Melee Influence triggers, but gas is ideal since it leaves hazardous clouds behind that can further damage enemies. Utilizing Melee Elementalist gives a nice boost to status damage as well, and the increased heavy attack windup speed is a nice quality of life feature.
Besides status effects, you’ll also want to build for critical chance and damage. Galvanized Steel gives you a healthy boost to your base chance and a stacking increase to critical damage on melee kills, and Blood Rush provides increased critical chance per Combo Multiplier. Galvanized Reflex isn’t strictly necessary, but the initial combo increase on kill helps keep you at a steady 5x combo even if your Exalted Blade ability drops for whatever reason and you lose your combo multiplier, and the increased heavy attack efficiency is nice to have. If keeping up your combo doesn’t worry you, though, you could easily swap Galvanized Reflex out for something like Organ Shatter to boost your base critical damage.
Beyond The Mods
As far as Archon Shards go, it’s all in on violet. The +25% melee critical damage (+37% for Tauforged) is too good to pass up, especially since it doubles when our energy is over 500. Primed Flow brings us up to 641, so that gives us a staggering +125% (or +185%) with a full set of violet Archon Shards. The last piece needed to push this build into pure overkill territory is Kullervo’s Wrathful Advance, which we can subsume over one of Excalibur’s less useful abilities, allowing Excalibur to teleport while increasing his melee critical chance substantially. I personally replace Radial Javelin, since the damage doesn’t feel great, but subsuming over Slash Dash wouldn’t be a terrible idea since both abilities are movement-oriented. Personally, I like to have both options, because there’s nothing more satisfying than teleporting above the battlefield before dashing down after the enemy like a homing rocket. Warframe’s true endgame is style, after all.
Just starting Warframe, or back after a break? Check out our article on the Jade Shadows: Constellation update! Interested in more of my build-crafting? Give Follie a try! We encourage you to comment below with any questions regarding the mods, arcanes, or various tips in this guide. Keep checking GameObserver for more Warframe guides and news!
