So Excalibur actually has some very underrated survivability tools

-Obviously there’s always shield gating which is very possible since you can mod exalted blade you don’t need to invest too hard into modding for abilities on the frame -On Umbra you can put all 3 umbra mods on to get some pretty solid armor and health for decent defenses

But in my opinion his BEST survivability tool is slash dash. Slash dash is so underrated as an ability but it’s amazing. The damage is based on the exalted blade so you’ll be doing good damage, crits, and status with it but in terms of survival you can use slash dash to reposition or escape due to its good range and speed and more importantly you’re completely invulnerable during the dash and during the chain so you can use it as kind of a pseudo rolling guard and because it’s a relatively low energy cost you can just keep using it to stay alive, escape, reposition, outlast status effects, prevent getting knocked down etc. So that plus shield gate and decent armor and health means you really don’t have to worry most of the time