Banshee Prime was the lowest used Prime of 2020 for very clear reasons.

[(PSN)FK2P]

The statistics for 2020, which comically state that the data does not act like a tier list, when clearly- it does roughly paint an image of what people use and continue to use. Aside from new players soaking up Excalibur, Players creating dissonance by levelling all warframes at least once, taking into consideration people’s desire to play something they enjoy visually and free to play players playing simply what they can get their hands on:

5 warframes sit at the top, while one squarely sits at the bottom.

Banshee is a brilliant, well designed, risky, tense, veteran friendly but ultimately “forced-to-fail where we need her” Damage warframe, which as it stands offers clear and powerful damage in exchange for being completely vunerable aside from some reactionary stuns and exclusively solo-viable mild stealth applications. 

Brozime eloquently cut her in his latest 2021 tier list, following my much earlier review of this warframe which had drawn the same conclusion.

She isn’t ~allowed~ to work.

She breaks content if she is allowed to use her damage universally.

She largely only brings damage to the table.

If anything worth damaging cannot be painted with sonar, then why am I bearing the weight of her paper thin playstyle? Why would I not play something else? 

Its infinitely more effective to buff my own weapon, than to debuff the enemy...

It doesn’t matter that banshee can allow me to do millions of damage against a group of grineer, because in the 5% of content where damage buffs are required, she’s absent. Even the most ability immune enemies can be hit by multiple buffs, making de-buffs second rate, inconsistent and- in banshee’s case, mission critical, being the only good thing left in her arsenal unless your literally walking around trying to stun everything one by one... 

The eidolon hunts changed the game. Even volt became a more viable DPS than banshee, stacking crit through his shield became more reliable than sonar, but you’ll notice that volt also has... other things going for him too! Capacitance, the fact that there’s actually also a shield present, and so on. These buff frames get to double dip, which  is the icing on the cake.

If I can buff mine and my entire team’s damage with Roar, while simultaneously having over 100.000 ehp, and this all functioning reliably against any imaginable or conceivable new target. Why would I spend time and possibly money investing in a warframe like banshee?

A simple fix for this would be to programme larger sonar points that apply to larger/boss type targets. I don’t believe banshee needs a rework, I just believe sonar should be universally applied.

Banshee is perhaps the worst victim  of this layered ability/immunity confusion, because unlike Mesa who is also often locked out of using her primary DPS ability, Mesa has an entire roster of useful buffs that are universally applied to any mission. Having 90% DR is useful anywhere, buffing allies is useful anywhere. Banshee has no such insurance for future content. 
 

If DE doesn’t want DPS warframes to make bosses easy, why design them- Banshee is an extremely early warframe. So Banshee has effectively been designed, and outdesigned by the game itself, only briefly coming back for steel path adds.

If there are any bosses coming in the new war, don’t count on debuffers to be at all effective.

[Nebu4]

The least used warframe is grendel. Banshee has only one issue, and that's her 4th ability. Also the fact tht you're basing your statements off of brozime tierlist is kinda :| 

His tier list already makes zero sense, he literally placed inaros, the worst tank out of all frames above Revenant and a lot of other frames meanwhile inaros is just a walking health bar with no abilities. She's in no way a failed dps warframe, you can reach big numbers easily with her.

Her cc is usually enough to stay alive, and even if you get hit, you still have shieldgating so you're pretty much immune to getting oneshot.

Also with the current weapons and all what we have, I don't see why it should affect bosses. I'd agree when it comes down to acolytes, but it already affects demolishers.

 

[(PSN)FK2P]

54 minutes ago, Nebu4 said:

The least used warframe is grendel. Banshee has only one issue, and that's her 4th ability. Also the fact tht you're basing your statements off of brozime tierlist is kinda :| 

His tier list already makes zero sense, he literally placed inaros, the worst tank out of all frames above Revenant and a lot of other frames meanwhile inaros is just a walking health bar with no abilities. She's in no way a failed dps warframe, you can reach big numbers easily with her.

Her cc is usually enough to stay alive, and even if you get hit, you still have shieldgating so you're pretty much immune to getting oneshot.

Also with the current weapons and all what we have, I don't see why it should affect bosses. I'd agree when it comes down to acolytes, but it already affects demolishers.

 

I’m not basing it off of that tier list, my opinion on banshee has been this way since the profit taker. DE went in a clear direction which enabled self buffers to add damage universally andinadvertantly nerfed debuffers by making them more and more unreliable. Brozime was spot on with what he said about banshee, although I don’t agree with him on a lot of other things. This problem is very visible. 
 

Secondly you failed to read that she is the least used prime. Grendel is a seperate mess that relies on certain enemies being present to even be able to cast any of his abilities which actually echoes banshee’s problems further. The difference is at least DE had the foresight to give Grendel 4000 health to bandaid that kit.

[Nebu4]

I'm still wondering what you're exactly looking for, are you having issues with dealing damage just because her sonar doesn't affect all bosses? Do you really think that's why people don't use her? Considering by that logic, Mesa, wukong, limbo, loki, frost, etc... also should get buffed because they don't have their own damage buffers. Also as I said her health pool is completely fine you're not supposed to face tank with her.

She can already deal plenty of high damage against 95% of all content, do you really think her usage rate will suddenly go up if they were to let that happen tp the 5% remaining content? 

She's supposed to be played in a stealthy way, you can easily use your abilities to stay alive

[AuroraSonicBoom]

She's been consistently one of the lowest played frames. In 2015, she's also been the least played frame(was mentioned in a devstream), and I think 2 years ago she was the second to last, Trin was the least used. Though back then her prime release might have skewed the numbers a bit.

DE doesn't seem to want to change anything about her, or even give her a QoL pass. Taking into account how long the frame has been around, only Loki has had his abilities updates less. The only notable changes to her abilities were making sonar recastable before the duration is up(I think that was 2014), and the slight nerf to silence's duration, to some how "bring it in line with her other abilities", done 3 or so years ago. I don't consider the animation change where she can cast quake in mid air an improvement specifically for her, because at the time it was a change done to many frame ultimates.

People, me included, made plenty of good suggestions about improving her kit over the years, ranging from uprooting her cast animations, making certain abilities(Silence) more worth to use in general gameplay, to giving her kit synergies that encourage the use of them in situations where you wouldn't normally.

I have sort of given up on seeing them improve or even polish her kit.

[Tsuana]

I don't play her because I hate her cosmetics and her horrid boat feet. It's why I play Nyx all the time. Nyx deluxe for the wiiiiiiiin.

[Tiltskillet]

5 hours ago, Tsuana said:

horrid boat feet

This Tenno gets it.  Only those chosen few of us with superhuman fortitude, stainless steel stomachs, and low quality graphics cards can tolerate those unholy canoe shoes for more than a few excruciating seconds.

 

[Pizzarugi]

10 hours ago, Nebu4 said:

His tier list already makes zero sense, he literally placed inaros, the worst tank out of all frames above Revenant and a lot of other frames meanwhile inaros is just a walking health bar with no abilities.

Okay, that's just sad. Revenant is the absolute god of all tanks thanks to Mesmer Skin, with an ability that can let him 1shot almost any enemies in the game, but he gets a lower rank than a frame whose skills are largely worthless and is only valued for having 100k+ EHP?

I never took anything Brozime had to say seriously. It's bad enough he loves to hoist praise on press-4-to-win frames, but the fact he's exalting bare-bones health tanks like Inaros goes to show he's definitely a large contributor to why this game has been devolving into mindless "press 1 button to win" metas.

[(PSN)FK2P]

10 hours ago, Nebu4 said:

I'm still wondering what you're exactly looking for, are you having issues with dealing damage just because her sonar doesn't affect all bosses? Do you really think that's why people don't use her? Considering by that logic, Mesa, wukong, limbo, loki, frost, etc... also should get buffed because they don't have their own damage buffers. Also as I said her health pool is completely fine you're not supposed to face tank with her.

She can already deal plenty of high damage against 95% of all content, do you really think her usage rate will suddenly go up if they were to let that happen tp the 5% remaining content? 

She's supposed to be played in a stealthy way, you can easily use your abilities to stay alive

No, not by that logic, they aren’t damage frames. Banshee is unique because she is barebones damage. This may not be where she was designed to be, but that’s where she has ended up. It’s sonar or go home. She has some active evasion and stuns, and whatever that 4 is meant to be, nerfed to the ground. The defined damage role is patched out of where it’s useful. It’s less of a frame problem more of a game problem. As I said this could be fixed by making sonar universally applicable. No rework needed. Whatever I fight- I want to see weak points, or I’ll just use a self buffer. This thought process is obvious, where on earth would you need an ability like sonar unless the content is challenging? People take banshee once on these missions, cannot apply the damage, and choose something which is compatible. Rhino, will always be a good warframe- why? Because aside from being nullified, he’s a well rounded team member, who actively asserts many roles within a team, providing damage in any scenario.

I also referenced why Mesa is exempt, not that it’s an excuse to not enable her to target things. 

[(PSN)FK2P]

7 hours ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

She's been consistently one of the lowest played frames. In 2015, she's also been the least played frame(was mentioned in a devstream), and I think 2 years ago she was the second to last, Trin was the least used. Though back then her prime release might have skewed the numbers a bit.

DE doesn't seem to want to change anything about her, or even give her a QoL pass. Taking into account how long the frame has been around, only Loki has had his abilities updates less. The only notable changes to her abilities were making sonar recastable before the duration is up(I think that was 2014), and the slight nerf to silence's duration, to some how "bring it in line with her other abilities", done 3 or so years ago. I don't consider the animation change where she can cast quake in mid air an improvement specifically for her, because at the time it was a change done to many frame ultimates.

People, me included, made plenty of good suggestions about improving her kit over the years, ranging from uprooting her cast animations, making certain abilities(Silence) more worth to use in general gameplay, to giving her kit synergies that encourage the use of them in situations where you wouldn't normally.

I have sort of given up on seeing them improve or even polish her kit.

This kind of delusion shown kept ember at the bottom all that time too, people actually used to defend ember’s old 2, and tried to apply fire and then use healing mods on melee to stay alive... What a sorry existence that was. Just glad someone finally realised the videos of ember taking 5 full minutes to kill a single 160 bombard with her 4 took root somewhere, now there’s a clear bottom to the pile once again, Zephyr’s failed CC, half useful DR. hydroid’s slow, gimmicky playstyle. banshee’s inconsistent damage. It’s all too clear to see. 

[(PSN)FK2P]

11 hours ago, Nebu4 said:

The least used warframe is grendel. Banshee has only one issue, and that's her 4th ability. Also the fact tht you're basing your statements off of brozime tierlist is kinda :| 

His tier list already makes zero sense, he literally placed inaros, the worst tank out of all frames above Revenant and a lot of other frames meanwhile inaros is just a walking health bar with no abilities. She's in no way a failed dps warframe, you can reach big numbers easily with her.

Her cc is usually enough to stay alive, and even if you get hit, you still have shieldgating so you're pretty much immune to getting oneshot.

Also with the current weapons and all what we have, I don't see why it should affect bosses. I'd agree when it comes down to acolytes, but it already affects demolishers.

 

If you don’t see why abilities should affect bosses, then I don’t see the point of having damage abilities full stop in your vision of the game. The larger point that I’m trying to make, is the damage role at large. Why would I not play a tank warframe with a good weapon today? Where is there space for anything else? Max EHP, red crit melee, spin and range. For health bars out of melee range, buff abilities are the only applicable advantage outside arcanes. Banshee is a unique warframe that fit perfectly back in the early years but was displaced quickly after eidolons were released. As someone else said, dead and buried after 2015. 

[Tiltskillet]

My opinion's that Banshee is deeply flawed (Sound Quake! Boat shoes!) but still pretty damn good, and her popularity just doesn't reflect that.  I mean, has nobody else ever noticed that popular things are so often utterly horrible?  For instance, slow jams and a fair amount of politicians.  And meanwhile delicious treats like peanut butter & pickle sandwiches are  unaccountably shunned?

But all that seems beside the point.  

15 hours ago, (PSN)FK2P said:

I just believe sonar should be universally applied.

Yeah, seems  reasonable, as long as it doesn't circumvent invulnerabilities, weak points, or cleansing. 

(But still, I don't think it would make much difference in her popularity.)

[(PSN)robotwars7]

to be hoenst, I don't think there's all that many problems with her. her 1 and 4 need looking at, but her 2 and 3 work fine, and being squishy is suppsoed to be a trade off for the insane damage you can do with her, which is also less of a problem now with Shield Gating. there are other frames like Valkyr that need looking at more IMO. Banshee isn't perfect, but she does work. 

[IceColdHawk]

Banshee got made redundant through DE basically killing endless EHP enemy scaling where sonar could've been very useful on top of having weapons that are strong enough on their own to kill even lvl 150 enemies. And well yea, she's not tanky and requires a lot of key input and awareness in order to survive. Kinda sad but it is what it is i guess.

[Duality52]

7 hours ago, Pizzarugi said:

I never took anything Brozime had to say seriously. It's bad enough he loves to hoist praise on press-4-to-win frames, but the fact he's exalting bare-bones health tanks like Inaros goes to show he's definitely a large contributor to why this game has been devolving into mindless "press 1 button to win" metas.

I feel that too, as I'm beginning to feel how Public matches are becoming stale after seeing the following for 90% of my matches:

• Wukong Prime
• Mesa Prime
• Inaros (Prime)
• Khora
• Ignis Wraith
• Kuva Bramma
• Kuva Nukor
• Kronen Prime (surprisingly)

Banshee can hold her own, but it's just Sound Quake and Sonic Boom that are flawed. Sonar still grants an insane damage multiplier, while also allowing players and Banshee to keep track of enemies on the mini-map. Silence does more than a stun and making enemies oblivious in stealth runs, but it negates and nullifies enemy abilities such as Ancient/Scorpion whips and even the Stalker's Acolytes.

It's just that people want to go down the path of least resistance, along with the path of the least amount of effort for the sake of rewards and efficiency.

[kgabor]

Your point about Sonar not applying to bosses is something i also brought up before, so we're on the same page about that.

I don't think this inconsistency is the main factor affecting those statistics, but then again i play Banshee a lot more than most other frames, it's more like people prefer easier frames, like said above.

I had ideas for a sort of rework as well, with slight changes to the first three abilities as well for a more fluid playstyle, also building some of the augments into the main abilities and changing Sound Quake, maybe entirely.

Not sure about DE's plans with those, how the devs see Banshee fit in the game and about their opinion on how the abilities reflect that.

Maybe they would have a better idea than changing Sound Quake into something else entirely?

It definitely needs some improvements and if they decide to improve it, the idea should not be lazy.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Casual and average players are path of least resistance, low effort players.

Frames that require more awareness and active play will naturally be a turn off to most players. 

She, like basically every frame, is viable against very high level enemies.

[_Anise_]

part of the problem, I made a thread criticizing that Banshee didn't get a rework for her unvaulting like most other frames do. only to be argued at by white knights relentlessly telling me "she is fine" "she is HANDS DOWN THE BEST support frame in the game!!!!!!!!"

you know what ? in my experience mag and wisp are better or as good in terms of bringing stuff to the team with the added bonus they don't need any extra arcane operator switching etc they just survive because its built into their kits, banshee has no mobility or suitability skills and her soft cc AOE is a hard self CC

but no noo the white knights got that beat.. ."banshee can buff damage by 1600% so she is better than wisp and mag" ¬_¬ people are stoopid its just insane amounts of overkill that does not work on bosses anyway!

I wanted to love banshee but she is just banshee~t, now a mag convert who I actually enjoy a little more than wisp since her last minor changes

tldr banshee just feels old compared to the design of some of the newer frames

[Lokanahta]

I don't have a ton of meaningful feedback to this thread, and I'm sure whatever I write here will get shot down, and that's ok...

...but I will say I really REALLY enjoy Banshee, and the only issue I have with her is her survivability. Even with healing mods on weapons, healing buffs, and the occasional operator heal arcane pop, I still find myself going down more often than I'd like.

With a squad, I'm usually fine -- but solo, it can be a struggle. 

Maybe an augment mod that adds a survivability buff would help? I'm not sure if that's a good route but it would be something I'd seriously consider using. 

I may just need to "git gud," but I thought I'd throw in my two cents here since she is one of my favorites in my arsenal.

[(PSN)GingyGreen]

19 hours ago, Nebu4 said:

The least used warframe is grendel. Banshee has only one issue, and that's her 4th ability. Also the fact tht you're basing your statements off of brozime tierlist is kinda :| 

His tier list already makes zero sense, he literally placed inaros, the worst tank out of all frames above Revenant and a lot of other frames meanwhile inaros is just a walking health bar with no abilities. She's in no way a failed dps warframe, you can reach big numbers easily with her.

Her cc is usually enough to stay alive, and even if you get hit, you still have shieldgating so you're pretty much immune to getting oneshot.

Also with the current weapons and all what we have, I don't see why it should affect bosses. I'd agree when it comes down to acolytes, but it already affects demolishers.

 

Here's her problem.

 

The only enemies worth using her powers on are completely immune to all of it.

 

 

Who the f cares if you can over-kill a lancer by a kajillion damage. She's useless against enemies that poses actual threats to her, like Profit Taker, etc Her 1 is only marginally useful after being modded, and even then proper modding bypasses that.

 

[(XBOX)DShinShoryuken]

44 frames to choose from

24 hours in a day

Players in the age from 6-56

Some frame will be at the bottom. If you play that frame, keep playing it. If you do not play that frame, keep playin whatever frames you are into.

You are not gonna hurt Banshees feelings and those who play her are not gonna abandon in droves to pick up Excal..

Its a video game and its got different things for different players and styles. 

[ReddyDisco]

when you can't clear a room by pressing 4 is when most pub players turn away from a frame and call it trash. 

mentioning tierlists as a means to judge a frame is nonsense, all those lists are subjective and based on the creator's playstyle 

[vanaukas]

20 hours ago, (PSN)FK2P said:

Brozime eloquently cut her in his latest 2021 tier list....

[Tiltskillet]

26 minutes ago, Lokanahta said:

I don't have a ton of meaningful feedback to this thread, and I'm sure whatever I write here will get shot down, and that's ok...

...but I will say I really REALLY enjoy Banshee, and the only issue I have with her is her survivability. Even with healing mods on weapons, healing buffs, and the occasional operator heal arcane pop, I still find myself going down more often than I'd like.

With a squad, I'm usually fine -- but solo, it can be a struggle. 

Maybe an augment mod that adds a survivability buff would help? I'm not sure if that's a good route but it would be something I'd seriously consider using. 

I may just need to "git gud," but I thought I'd throw in my two cents here since she is one of my favorites in my arsenal.

Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way about Banshee, even though shield gating and an armor buff have made her a lot  more durable than she was.

Personally though, I like how risky it feels playing her compared to my other favorites.  And most of the time when I die, I can trace it clearly to a mistake or carelessness...or alcohol... on my part. 

Your idea of an augment might be an elegant solution, since it's optional.

In the meantime, if you're looking for advice from somebody whose got a lot of experience dying while playing Banshee...  😋 I think the number one keys to survival are moving constantly, and keeping Silence up while being aware of where enemies are in relation to you and to its border.  She's the only frame where I think about cover much at all.  Which honestly, is fun, and has made me a slightly less terrible player.

Oh, and killing stuff fast helps a lot.  She's quite proficient at that actually, and can do it with some weapons that are just awful on almost any other frame.

[ReddyDisco]

19 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way about Banshee, even though shield gating and an armor buff have made her a lot  more durable than she was.

Personally though, I like how risky it feels playing her compared to my other favorites.  And most of the time when I die, I can trace it clearly to a mistake or carelessness...or alcohol... on my part. 

Your idea of an augment might be an elegant solution, since it's optional.

In the meantime, if you're looking for advice from somebody whose got a lot of experience dying while playing Banshee...  😋 I think the number one keys to survival are moving constantly, and keeping Silence up while being aware of where enemies are in relation to you and to its border.  She's the only frame where I think about cover much at all.  Which honestly, is fun, and has made me a slightly less terrible player.

Oh, and killing stuff fast helps a lot.  She's quite proficient at that actually, and can do it with some weapons that are just awful on almost any other frame.

i sometimes enjoy playing banshee, she has a great damage buff in sonar and with resonance augment energy isn't much of an issue.

subsuming harrow's condemn fits well as a sort of shield restore and cc, and as you said killing stuff quickly helps a ton. i found having no range mods on banshee fits as you can keep moving and reapply the stun and rinse repeat.

banshee is far from the worst frame, just needs couple more brain cells than other frames