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Hey Tenno!
As first mentioned in Devstream #184, we’ve been hard at work overhauling our “Pseudo” Exalted weapons while also giving current Exalted weapons a boost. This Dev Workshop is a deep dive into these upcoming changes! Also included are details for our changes to Ash — he will receive some light adjustments, similar to the changes Nyx and Trinity received in the Warframe: 1999 Update.
History lesson time! In Update 23 we introduced moddable Exalted weapons for six Warframes. Exalted Weapons are unique weapons summoned by a Warframe’s ability — giving them access to an additional separately moddable weapon in the Arsenal. Exalted Weapons benefit both from its own equipped Mods and the Mods on the Warframe itself!
In addition to Exalted Weapons, certain Warframes Abilities summoned weapons that did not have the Exalted treatment (i.e. be separately moddable in the Arsenal), but received bonuses from other moddable sources: your equipped Melee weapon! These are what we call “Pseudo-Exalted” weapons.
With these changes, we want to officially make “Pseudo-Exalted” weapons into Exalted Weapons! This ensures parity with how players interact with summoned weapons on Warframes. For fans of affected Warframes (Ash, Atlas, Khora, and Gara), your Arsenal may look a little different to accommodate these new Exalted Weapons, but our hope is to keep the end-result relatively unchanged on the battlefield.
As always, everything listed below is subject to change before release. Please refer to the patch notes for official implementation of these changes in our upcoming Techrot Encore update!
Changes to Current Exalted Weapons:
Before we go over what is happening to “Pseudo-Exalted” weapons, Exalted Weapons as a whole are getting some changes — let’s dive into the three major adjustments shipping with Techrot Encore:
- Arcane slots on Exalted Weapons.
- Exilus Mod Slot on Primary & Secondary Exalted weapons.
- Acolyte, Amalgam, and Melee Combo Counter Mods enabled for Exalted Weapons.
Arcane Slots on Exalted Weapons
Our first major change is the addition of Arcane slots to all Exalted weapons!
*While Garuda’s Talons are part of her passive ability, and therefore not an Exalted Weapon, we are adding an Arcane slot to them nonetheless!
“Pseudo-Exalted” could achieve the effects of certain Arcanes on Exalted weapons by equipping them on corresponding regular weapons. With the changes above, these interactions have been removed.
- Specific Warframes that benefitted from these effects will be receiving a new Exalted Weapon, which is outlined later in this Dev Workshop!
Exilus Mod Slot on Primary & Secondary Exalted Weapons
Additionally, we have introduced Exilus slots to all Primary and Secondary Exalted weapons. This now matches functionality with existing melee Exalted weapons.
Acolyte, Amalgam, and Melee Combo Counter Mods Enabled for Exalted Weapons
Next, we are re-enabling mods that were previously disabled for Exalted Weapons. This means Acolyte, Amalgam and Melee Combo Counter mods can now be equipped on all Exalted weapons:
- Primary:
- Amalgam Serration
- Argon Scope (Galvanized Scope)
- Bladed Rounds
- Catalyzer Link
- Secondary:
- Amalgam Barrel Diffusion
- Embedded Catalyzer
- Hydraulic Crosshairs
- Pressurized Magazine
- Sharpened Bullets
- Targeting Subsystem
- Melee:
- Amalgam Organ Shatter
- Blood Rush
- Body Count
- Dispatch Overdrive
- Gladiator Rush
- Maiming Strike
- Weeping Wounds
Note: If the Exalted weapon is unable to trigger the requirements for the mod, such as “when aiming”, “for Slide Attack” etc, you will not be able to equip that mod for that specific Exalted weapon. Example: Hydraulic Crosshairs on Mesa’s Regulators.
Other changes to Exalted Weapons include:
- All Exalted Stances now grant Mod Capacity just like regular Stances. Additionally, we have applied the Zenurik Polarity to all Exalted Stances and their corresponding Melee Stance slots, providing a +10 capacity boost.
- Removed the restriction preventing Set Mods equipped on Exalted weapons from contributing to or benefiting from Set Bonuses.
- With this change, Set Bonuses are now calculated based on the Active Weapon. This means that if you have three Set Mods equipped on your Warframe, three on your Melee weapon, and none on your Exalted Melee, then you will only benefit from the three Set mods on your Warframe while your Exalted Melee weapon is active.
- Removed the interaction that caused the Combo Counter to reset when using the Xoris, Tenet Livia, or Tenet Grigori alongside an Exalted weapon.
- This interaction was added in Update 28.1.0 due to it being an overly dominant mechanic that offered infinite Combo on Exalted Weapons when used with Gladiator Mods. Now that Set Mods only apply to the current Active Weapon, this restriction is no longer needed.
- Excalibur’s Exalted Blade and Baruuk’s Serene Storm abilities can now gain Melee Combo Counter and trigger Tennokai from their Exalted weapon’s wind/energy waves, instead of only from direct hits.
- For balance reasons, Desert Wind’s Critical Chance has been reduced from 50% to 35% to accommodate the above buff. In testing, Serene Storm was overperforming when used with Blood Rush.
- Excalibur's Slash Dash now scales with Mods equipped on his Exalted Blade instead of Mods equipped on his regular melee weapon.
- Removed the interaction of Razorflies scaling with Melee Mods equipped on Diwata. This interaction was never intended, alongside only a few mods working with it.
New Exalted Weapons:
As mentioned above, we are adding new Exalted Weapons to the following Warframes:
- Atlas
- Gara
- Khora
- Ash (more details in the Ash Changes section!)
These four new Exalted weapons will have a base range of 2.8 meters, which adds directly to the Modded Ability Range on your Warframe, and can also be enhanced with Melee mods like Reach.
With their new Exalted status, these weapons are now separately Moddable and will benefit from Mods that were unavailable to them previously (namely Condition Overload, Melee Elementalist, and Smite Faction Mods). These new Exalted weapons will receive the same treatment as the changes mentioned above, and should function like all other Exalted Weapons — with a few exceptions we’ll go over below.
- Note: these new Exalted Weapons will not include an Exilus slot, as the relevant abilities can not perform Heavy Attacks, Tennokai, Parry or Block.
Atlas:
Atlas now wields a Moddable Exalted weapon — Landslide.
Landslide has a pre-installed Orokin Catalyst, along with two Madurai polarities.
- Landslide's Critical Chance has increased from 5% to 35%, and its Status Chance from 5% to 15%.
- Landslide retains its unique Combo Counter mechanic instead of using traditional Melee Combo — learn more about this in the Ability Combo Counter Changes section.
Gara:
Gara has received an upgradeable Exalted weapon called Shattered Lash.
Shattered Lash has a pre-installed Orokin Catalyst, along with one Madurai and one Naramon polarity
- Shattered Lash now has a Critical Chance of 20% and a status chance of 30%, while its base damage was reduced from 800 to 400 damage.*
- Unlike traditional Exalted Melee Weapons, Shattered Lash uses the same Combo Counter mechanic as Landslide. Learn more about this in the Ability Combo Counter Changes section below.
*These are balancing adjustments for added strength with new Combo changes. More about this in the Ability Combo Counter Changes section below.
Khora:
Khora’s new Exalted weapon is aptly named Whipclaw!
It comes with a pre-installed Orokin Catalyst, along with one Madurai and one Vazarin polarity.
- Whipclaw’s base damage has been reduced from from 300 to 150 damage.*
- Unlike traditional Exalted Melee Weapons, Whipclaw uses the same Combo Counter mechanic as Landslide. Learn more about this in the Ability Combo Counter Changes section below.
*These are balancing adjustments for added strength with new Combo changes. More about this in the Ability Combo Counter Changes section below.
Ability Combo Counter Changes:
Since Bladestorm, Landslide, Shattered Lash, and Whipclaw are not channelled Exalted Melee Weapons, we have devised a new Ability Combo System specific to these weapons, based off of Altas’ existing Combo mechanic. Recasting their respective Abilities within 1 second of the previous cast will grant you 20 combo points which will increase the Combo Multiplier by 1x.
We’ve also increased the Ability Combo Counter cap from 4x to 12x to align with the Melee Combo Counter — meaning subsequent casts can be buffed up to 12x the damage! By increasing your Ability Combo Counter, your Exalted Weapon will receive increased Damage based on the Ability Combo Multiplier.
Ability Damage now scales 1:1 with this new Ability Combo Counter, instead of 0.25x the Melee Combo Multiplier with “Pseudo-exalted” weapons. As a result, we have reduced the base damage of Shatter Lash and Whipclaw to balance with the ability to scale higher with the new Combo system. These balance adjustments increase the overall damage output when combined with the new Combo changes.
Mods like Blood Rush, Weeping Wounds, and Body Count as well as Focus abilities like Naramon’s Power Spike now work with this new system.
Ash Changes:
We felt Ash needed a boost to compete with stronger choices. Below are changes that retain the core theme of Ash, but should help to bring him up to speed.
To start, there are no changes to Ash’s Passive ability.
Ability 1 - Shuriken:
- Base damage increased from 500 to 750.
- The number of thrown projectiles increased from 2 to 5 Shurikens, which release in an arc in front of Ash, and home toward enemies.
- Enemies hit with Shuriken now contribute towards the Melee Combo Counter.
Ability 2: Smoke Screen:
- Increased the base duration from 8s to 12s.
We’ve also increased the max base duration of the “Smoke Shadow” Augment from 8s to 12s.
Ability 3: Teleport:
- The ‘Fatal Teleport’ Augment is now a part of Teleport, and automatically performs finisher on cast with a 200% finisher bonus.
The “Fatal Teleport: Augment has now changed to “Quickend Teleport”:
- Executing a target with Teleport increases Parkour Velocity by 30% for 12s. The duration is doubled with a Mercy Kill.
- Finisher kills performed by Ash will extend Smoke Screens duration. Mercy kills will reset Smoke Screen duration.
Ability 4: Bladestorm:
- Bladestorm is now an Exalted Weapon with a pre-installed Orokin Catalyst, along with two Madurai polarities.
- Bladestorm is now considered a Dagger, allowing you to equip weapon-specific mods like Covert Lethality.
- Bladestorm has a Critical Chance of 5%, a Critical Multiplier of 1x and a Status Chance of 5%
- Before Bladestorm could neither crit nor apply statuses (outside of the forced slash proc), since finisher damage is already very strong, Bladestorm received a nominal increase for balance.
Additional Bladestorm changes include:
- Ash can mark targets with an increased radius around the reticle.
- Bladestorm now marks each target only once. Clones will no longer perform three Finisher attacks on enemies; instead, they will execute a single attack, allowing the ability to resolve faster.
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Again, everything listed above is subject to change before release. Please refer to the patch notes for official implementation of these changes in our upcoming Techrot Encore update on March 19th!
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