Trying to build Excalibur for end-game and struggling. (Also suggestions for buffs)

Things I've tried so far:

  • Energy Nexus + Nourish is good for damage, but I still find myself burning through energy and not being very tanky.
  • Lycath's Hunt + Equilibrium Shard helped survivability and energy, but for some reason the 5+ status duration refresh wouldn't work even with a primer dog and unlimited status from Exalted Blade.
  • Tharros Strike does it's job in keeping me alive and armor stripping, but once again I burn through energy due to not being able to build much duration and especially efficiency with how much strength this frame wants.
  • Shield Gating build, obviously, but I'm spending so much time keeping myself alive and so little time doing damage that it feels bad and inefficient. Also still burning through energy.
  • Slash Dash spam is immortality and at low levels its pretty good, but loses its strength pretty quickly if you don't have a perfect riven statstick. (Why does it even still use a stat stick ffs)

In general this pattern continues. I either deal a lot of damage and stay alive, but burn through energy. I deal a lot of damage and have a lot of energy, but die to a fart. I stay alive and have enough energy, but I don't deal enough damage. Some other fun details in my experimentation.

  • If you overwrite Radial Blind, it's gone from your Exalted Blade's slide-attack as well, leaving you with a literally useless attack. It's weird because it costs more and is shorter than Blind, so them going out of their way to do this seems almost petty.
  • You guessed it, damage attenuation these days make Exalted Blade like slapping a fucking noodle against a lot of new enemies and especially bosses.
  • Baruuk is just Excalibur but better. Better CC, better Single Target AND AoE damage, much tankier. The only thing he doesn't have is a dash.

I would like some suggestions to make Excal work at endgame and not just feel like I should just pick Baruuk instead.

Also some QOL I would like to see for Excalibur, please.

  1. Exalted Blade and your melee should share combo counter.
  2. Slash Dash should always be based on your Exalted Blade mods, + a slash proc based on total damage.
  3. A cool gimmick I think would be if Combo Count also gave you DR in Exalted Blade. 5% each at 60% max at 12x would already make a world of difference.
  4. Slash Dash's could do with doing AoE damage in its trajectory, but obviously the main damage should come from its actual hits.
  5. Either a new AoE attack on Sliding-Exalted Blade, or allow us to override Blind and then keep it on Exalted. It's shorter and costs more energy, it's fine to allow that neat little interaction.

Thanks for reading the ramblings of a dying Excalibur Main. Please save him from being worse Baruuk.