As a Dojo Frame, Banshee can be obtained extremely early in the game, although she has an unfortunate reputation as being very squishy and difficult to play. Contrary to her reputation, with a very small investment, she is one of the most in-control and chill CC/debuff frames.
Executive summary for people who don’t want to watch the video and don’t need a build demonstration: per my other post on survivability strats (https://beehaw.org/post/586396), we’ll be using a Condemn build, replacing Sound Quake, and a Resonating Quake Fractured Blast HCAB (FBHCAB) build, replacing Sonic Boom.
FBHCAB build: https://overframe.gg/build/483482/banshee/tanky-lich-killer-banshee/ Swap Sonic Fracture for Resonating Quake, put FB or Lycath over Sonic Boom.
Condemnshee build: https://overframe.gg/build/483498/banshee-prime/no-brain-banshee-no-key-shield-gate/ For Duviri, swap Equilibrium for Streamline and fish for some energy economy decrees, to taste.
- Apollo SP demo of Condemn build: https://youtube.com/live/d58ij63H8C0?feature=share
- Hieracon demo of Quake build: https://youtube.com/live/_UOj-2l35yE?feature=share
Let me know in the comments if you would like demos of other nodes.
Plugging my Pillage Banshee Build.
It’s similar to the Condemn build, but relies on Silence for Soft CC instead of Condemn for Hard CC.
Because this build does not have a form of Hard CC, you need to actively move around refreshing the stun from Silence. Play around with range until you find something comfortable, an enemy needs to move out of Silence Range before it can be stunned a second time.
The reason I chose Pillage was because of how easy it is to fully refill shields along with its status cleanse. Some other differences are that Condemn is unable to CC or grant Shields from an enemy with active Overguard, but is able to gain Shields on Infested enemies. Pillage on the other hand is able to refill your shields on Eximus Grineer/Corpus as long as they still have some remaining armor or shields. Pillage also does not require you to aim it at an enemy to leach shield, only for the wave to hit an enemy that is not obscured by terrain.
As for Arcanes, Energize is helpful but not mandatory, there are lots of other sources of energy generation such as Zenurik, Energy Generator for Dethcube or Exodia Brave. If you would like a little more survivability, you can use Arcane Aegis.
Play around with range until you find something you feel comfortable with. The goal is to make it easy for Resonance (Sonar Augment) to propagate as far as possible while also having your Silence Range low enough to easily refresh the stun by jumping away (and to avoid stunning enemies too far ahead in the mission).
I’m using the Sonic Fracture Augment to fully strip certain enemies like Acolytes in one hit, and Pillage is more than enough to deal with regular enemies especially with Sonar’s weak Spots. This also avoids the downside of Sonic Fracture’s ragdolling.
Rakta Dark Dagger gets an honorable mention for its passive that converts damage it does on an enemy that is Rad Proc’d into shields, giving you another way to refill shields, useful if you try to fight Infested with this build. Pick up it’s Gleaming Blight augment for a fairly significant boost to its status chance as well.
Nice build! Pillage definitely has some nice properties for Banshee, and you’re right, Silence helps deal with its big weakness in lacking CC. I think Vaz is also good for giving you breathing room to set up your CC and refresh your shield gate.
That said, I prefer Condemn as I usually go for longer runs, so I value eliminating as much stress and room for error as possible. The pacing of Condemn is very relaxed. Also nice to have a bit of CC for Demos and Acolytes, and I think fits the idea of Banshee supporting the team very well. On that, that’s why I like to run range so I can help cover teammates with Silence from further away.
For Energize, as long as you’re not using Decaying Key strats, Steadfast is a really nice substitute.
Rakta Dark Dagger, and single Daggers in general, are really nice on Banshee due to the synergy of Savage Silence and the Dagger forced finisher mechanic. That said, vs Infested, Banshee basically has free reign as Silence reduces them entirely to melee. As long as you stay mobile, she has a very easy time with them. Low range builds can also exploit Rapiers’ amazing finisher damage with the same Savage Silence technique.