It’s time for the original sound based frame, the main cause of integer overflow damage numbers - Banshee!
Release date: 2013-03-18
Passive:All of Banshee’s equipped weapons, including Gunblades such as Redeemer, and weapons equipped on Sentinels should they be present, are treated as silent.
Sonic Boom - Banshee emits a sonic shockwave that pushes targets in range with enough force to incapacitate or kill attackers.
Sonar - Using acoustic location, Banshee’s Sonar power finds and tracks enemies, and exposes critical weak spots to everyone in your squad.
Silence - Using Silence surrounds Banshee in an aura that stuns enemies and will limit their perceptions and tactical response to gunfire and Warframe attacks.
Sound Quake - Channeling all of her acoustic energy into the environment, Banshee uses ultrasonic reverberations to violently shake the ground.
Acquisition: Banshee’s blueprints can be researched from the Tenno Lab in the Dojo.
I’m pretty sure Banshee (and Saryn) were the newest frames when I first started playing the game. I played as her a decent amount back then, but I mostly used her for her Sound Quake (which used to be a duration based ability with a flat 100 energy cost, that also made you immune while using it). Nowadays her role is making silly numbers happen with Sonar and using Silence with Gloom to CC everything to stay alive (it’s augment makes subsuming it onto Ash a decent choice as well). Her 1 can strip armor with it’s augment as well, but I don’t think many people run Banshee for that.
Some of the most fun I had in Warframe was running a 34% range Savage Silence Banshee. 34% is about 6m, so Silence only hit enemies as I approached them, and then they died. It required fast, economical movement and a weapon with a very fast finisher animation. Surprisingly this was NOT a dagger. After extensive testing, the fastest finishers turned out to be… SWORDS. Probably because their animations were done early and they aren’t fancy.
But the Eximius rework killed off 34% Range Banshee for me. With no reliable albeit momentary CC for Eximus, she gets downed almost regularly. However, 34% range Savage Silence lives on with Savagely Invisible Loki!
Nowadays it’s Resonance Eximus Deleter Banshee I run most, with just 100% range. She’s still excellent at Rescue since she just runs right past every enemy as they clutch their heads from Silence. The Eximus get their auras deleted at enough range to keep her safe.
Banshee’s main problem is the inability to take a hit, though this has been helped recently with the changes to Shields and their damage reduction. Even so, I have several blue archon shards in her to get armor up to some decent number. Also, Condemn to replace Sonic Boom is a godsend, plus Augur mods and Brief Respite.
Euphona Prime as Banshee’s signature weapon makes no sense to me. It has no unique buff when she uses it, and its stats and nature don’t synergize with Banshee in any unusual way.
If a syndicate weapon could be a signature weapon, Banshee’s would be the Rakta Dark Dagger. Its syndicate proc is yet another way to help her keep her shields up.
Sound Quake—-yeah yeah once it was great, though that predates me and I’m on day 1839. It’s extra problematic because it wants ALL the range, ALL the efficiency and ALL the strength, three things that all her other abilities either don’t need at all or only need one of. So you’re either building for Quake, or for the other stuff. And the other stuff is actually fun, as opposed to Quake. In one build, I’ve replaced it with Defy.
You are a treasure for doing these each week.
Thanks! It means a lot to see that. I like revisiting and discussing some of these old frames I haven’t touched in a while and seeing other people’s perspectives on them. And with the pace we’re going at, we’ll be having these weekly for almost a year! Turns out Warframe has a lot of warframes!
Banshee is one of the warframes I tend to use pretty often, usually for Survival or Disruption.
Sonic Boom + Sonic Fracture
On it’s own, Sonic Boom isn’t very useful but combined with Sonic Fracture, it becomes a very cheap Armor Strip ability with some minor CC properties, although the effectiveness of CC has been reduced with the addition of Overguard. While the CC this ability provides does not “lockdown” enemies, it is able to interact with Demolysts to keep them away from conduits, and does not become less effective overtime the same way an ability like Ensnare would versus certain enemies.Sonar + Resonance
This ability marks an enemy with weak points greatly increasing the damage your weapons do to enemies. With the Resonance augment, Sonar becomes even more powerful by allowing it to spread to new enemies, and marking existing enemies in range with additional weak points. The Resonance Augment also makes this ability extremely strong in crowds, where enemies can easily be primed by this debuff multiple times. You will need to find a good balance for Range between this ability and Silence, too much range prevents you from stunning enemies while too little range makes this ability less effective.Silence + Savage Silence
This ability allows you to briefly stun nearby enemies. The Savage Silence Augment will open enemies not protected by Overguard to finishers during the stun animation, and will boost finisher damage to enemies. It pairs well with weapons that can force enemies to being opened to finishers such as a Dagger’s Heavy attack, Dizzying Rounds, or the Zakti. Using this ability with Arcane Ultimatum and Trickery was a great way to make Banshee less fragile before Helminth/Shield gating was added to warframe. This ability has been indirectly nerfed over the years unfortunately, self-stagger being added to Zakti with the changes AOE weapons made it very likely that you would stagger yourself when going for finishers, and more recently the addition of Overguard preventing enemies from being opened to finishers in the first place.Sound Quake/Resonating Quake
Generally the ability that you replace with something else to increase Banshee’s survivability like Pillage or Condemn as the damage is very low. The Resonating Quake augment does make this ability usable for quick low level exterminate missions or some fun in fissure missions if you get the fissure buff more power strength + range.
