[Feedback] The Banshee Nerf.

[CerbX]

Okay, so I haven't really seen many topics about this specifically, but I have seen quite a few about rhino's iron skin.

 

I feel like with the recent patch, Banshee's Soundquake ultimate is just utterly useless. The only possible way that this skill can be useful now that you take damage while using it, is if you're covered by Frost's Snow Globe.

 

That skill lasts quite a long time, and with the squishyness of Banshee, the move just isn't worth using anymore. It doesn't completely stagger, the range has been cut, and now if you're not decently leveled above your enemies or you're not strapped to the teeth with vitality/redirection mods, you're pretty much screwed.

[Shion963]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/46148-buffin-and-nerfin/

 

My attempt at 'fixing' Banshee, hope I got it right. Here goes:

Buff Sound Quake: keep the smaller range/damage, but add a consistent Stagger/Stun.

This would avoid being ganged on (in melee anyways) while casting, and would chain well with Sonar, giving teammates the chance to take down enemies painted with it.

 

Fix Sonar getting locked up in Corpus tiles, it's the one skill I use the most, and having it get locked down by security turrets adds this "I can't use this here/yet/ever" whenever I play in affected tilesets.

 

And Silence..... I don't know what would make Silence better :/

It's highly situational, the 'situation' being only during the Stealth phase. Literally useless once every enemy has psychically locked on to my presence via ship alert, and immediately turns to shoot the moment I come out of Shade's Ghost, Silence or no. Even outside of visual range.

 

(I love Sonar, and more CC would give me more opportunity to make use of it.)

 

EDIT: Honestly I feel that both the nerfs would be 'softened' with buffs to their other abilities, if the reason for the nerf being that both 'frames had that one-trick-pony feel.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Shion963

[TerraNovaX]

I have to agree with this completely. I've been using the Banshee for quite awhile, and SoundQuake was the lifeline for the frame. If you got surrounded, or were going to die, you used soundquake to knock them bakc and heal up.

 

Ancients can still run up and deal damage during SoundQuake. Toxics marched right up to me and melted me, and Disruptors took all my shield and energy in the middle of the Soundquake.

 

In a Grineer and Corpus mission, I also got blasted from a range. Sure, the people in the range of SoundQuake got harmed and sometimes killed, but I still get taken down by the guys out of its range.

 

I also dislike the fact that Soundquake can no longer protect Cryopods from damage. Basically, the recently nerfed Nyx and Frost make better replacements for the Banshee frame. The Banshee's protection uses with its ability need to be given back.

[Solstic]

I have to agree with this completely. I've been using the Banshee for quite awhile, and SoundQuake was the lifeline for the frame. If you got surrounded, or were going to die, you used soundquake to knock them bakc and heal up.

 

Ancients can still run up and deal damage during SoundQuake. Toxics marched right up to me and melted me, and Disruptors took all my shield and energy in the middle of the Soundquake.

 

In a Grineer and Corpus mission, I also got blasted from a range. Sure, the people in the range of SoundQuake got harmed and sometimes killed, but I still get taken down by the guys out of its range.

 

I also dislike the fact that Soundquake can no longer protect Cryopods from damage. Basically, the recently nerfed Nyx and Frost make better replacements for the Banshee frame. The Banshee's protection uses with its ability need to be given back.

Yeah if only Banshee had an ability to knock back and knock down enemies. Geez. It might actually give her some time to ult!

[chimp77]

If anything this "nerf" made me use my other two powers (Sonic Boom & Sonar) way more than before.

 

I never realized how useful either was until we lost Soundquake god mode.

 

Also, it's not like SQ is totally worthless; it's just more tactical now, which is better than it being an "instant win" button imo.

[stacey69]

I thought that Soundquake had a CC to it so nothing could come near you anyway when casting it? Ember and other frames don't get immunity from their ultimate so I don't see why Banshee should but if you are dying from ancients running at you while casting it... That cant be right. Surely everything within XXX yards should be unable to move or dying. No immune would mean don't cast it while standing in or next to a Toxic ancient.

 

I like the change to Ironskin but this seems a bit weird. The range was a joke but dying while using it is... not cool.

[Wriith]

Ember and other frames don't get immunity from their ultimate so I don't see why Banshee should

 

Most frames are immune to damage while casting their ultimates (see Mag, Volt, Saryn, Ash, etc); what's worse is that Banshee has a much longer animation time than the other frames, making her especially vulnerable during Sound Quake.  If they want to remove the immunity they should greatly speed up the cast time.  If they want to keep the cast time as is, I believe she should have either full or partial damage immunity, you know, like the other frames.

[finaLfrontier]

One thing that's really great about Sound Quake right now is how great it works in a Snow Globe or backed up by a Trinity Heal.

 

Just saying

[SetAbominae]

I thought that Soundquake had a CC to it so nothing could come near you anyway when casting it? Ember and other frames don't get immunity from their ultimate so I don't see why Banshee should but if you are dying from ancients running at you while casting it... That cant be right. Surely everything within XXX yards should be unable to move or dying. No immune would mean don't cast it while standing in or next to a Toxic ancient.

 

I like the change to Ironskin but this seems a bit weird. The range was a joke but dying while using it is... not cool.

Ember has either the ability to get 90% damage reduction prior to casting her ult, or can just cast and move, coupled with a shade you won't get thrown off stealth until things are burning down, so there is no point of comparison really, WoF has many ways to make it safe to cast, and even without those two ways it is still way safer than "stand in place for X seconds and have everything maul you",

[xenapan]

I totally agree. now the +duration % on a banshee is a drawback more than it is a benefit. Between the decreased range AND removal of the shield, you are more likely to get shot and killed from long range. Please at least change it so the banshee isnt channeling 100% of the duration or put some damage prevention/reduction on it. It does tiny amounts of damage vs ancients and lets toxics close right in on you. talk about suicide. now it's more likely to get you killed during use.

[Vabla]

Seems shade is now mandatory for a banshee. Still funny to pray to RNGod every time you hit 4 though.

 

As it is, grineer barely take damage from quake and ancients will utterly destroy you during it. So banshee is now a corpus-only frame (so long as there are no rail MOAs)? :/

[Rhega]

Throughout playing Warframe, I liked the niche's that the warframes had. Where Banshee had the longest range ult, which makes her awesome, but now placing her down on "intended" level she feels under-powered compared to her other counter-parts. I understand that the Dev's do not want a warframe/weapon/skill to be The wareframe, weapon, or skill, but nerfing it is not always the answer. They could change game mechanics to change the way it is played. For example the Gorgon, instead of nerfing the accuracy they could have either ramped up its wind-up to where it was harder to single shot (IMO would remove the uniqueness of the Gorgon) but that would allow the Gorgon not to be used as a sniper and a machine-gun and/or increase the decline of accuracy the longer the fire is sustained. Also this nerf feels like the fumble the Devs did with the Gorgon and Hek though this is where I stop discussing these old nerf's. Hopefully they will fix it or make the other wareframes ult down to the now lowered banshee level, where they do not have invincibility either and increase the casting time of sound quake significantly so it is balanced.

 

Yet throughout this all in my opinion these nerfs just seem to detract more than improve Warframe I may understand the developers reasons behind it, trying to level the playing field, but in doing so I feel they are slowly chipping away at what makes Warframe unique. Where there is not a "cookie-cutter" feeling between warframes. As it stands right now the caster warframes are becoming . . . well more like a generic caster warframe if a warframe has to be balanced with the others. Another thing is that players will always find that "go-to" item/warframe, maybe its because of the kind of players that play warframe and that each of them share a same idea of what is the "better" equipment. Sure this does not mean that their has to be a win-button equipment, but it also does not mean to completely destabilize anything either. I remember a quote from the Livestream 5 update 8 video, where one of the developers was responding to a question and "baby steps" was said. I think maybe the developers should use this advice and when introducing nerfs, use baby steps.

For our banshee nerf, instead of reducing damage, range, and removing invincibility while casting. Split up the nerf and see how it works, instead of throwing the nerf bat at it and hitting it into space, instead of just to your friend to catch. They maybe doing play testing with these patches before sending them out to us, but maybe it works on their end is because the people they have testing the patches are different than the public players and this gap should be kept in mind.

 

Hopefully I haven't stepped on too many toes.

[Kinare]

Man, I just completed my Banshee Warframe today and I'm really sad about this. Luckily my Shade is pretty leveled, but waiting around for him to cloak me in a huge mob is kind of annoying and I seem to have issues with it cancelling at random vs. Grineer mobs. Shade does die on occasion and that pretty much cripples me. Once he dies I have to start corner hugging or hiding on top of things and pray something doesn't come up behind me/jump on me, which has been the cause of quite a few fails today... sigh...

 

I'm really getting frustrated with the infested ancients draining all of my energy. That has got to be my biggest issue because SQ is so costly (which is to be expected, not complaining about that). Otherwise I find SQ a very useless skill against Grineer and Corpus, since I pop it and end up dead if Shade hasn't cloaked me. Those 2 factions being primarily ranged means I can't exactly pin them all down. There will always be some out of range.

 

I got Banshee so that I could take on mobs yet still have a stealthy feel to my warframe. I did not want to end up hiding around a corner or running away from mobs like I had to sometimes with Loki. I like the stealth gameplay, but the mobs don't always keep to just a few. Loki at least had an "ohcrapI'mdying" button with his invisibility... Not so much with Banshee. Not ANY of her skills give her a chance to escape, you have to rely on a sentinel who may already be dead by the time you need to run for the hills.

 

So now I have to go out and try to get Ember or Frost now because Banshee isn't at all what I was hoping for and go back to Loki until then. Blah. Kind of getting tired of him, but at least I rarely failed missions.

[CerbX]

Throughout playing Warframe, I liked the niche's that the warframes had. Where Banshee had the longest range ult, which makes her awesome, but now placing her down on "intended" level she feels under-powered compared to her other counter-parts. I understand that the Dev's do not want a warframe/weapon/skill to be The wareframe, weapon, or skill, but nerfing it is not always the answer. They could change game mechanics to change the way it is played. For example the Gorgon, instead of nerfing the accuracy they could have either ramped up its wind-up to where it was harder to single shot (IMO would remove the uniqueness of the Gorgon) but that would allow the Gorgon not to be used as a sniper and a machine-gun and/or increase the decline of accuracy the longer the fire is sustained. Also this nerf feels like the fumble the Devs did with the Gorgon and Hek though this is where I stop discussing these old nerf's. Hopefully they will fix it or make the other wareframes ult down to the now lowered banshee level, where they do not have invincibility either and increase the casting time of sound quake significantly so it is balanced.

 

Yet throughout this all in my opinion these nerfs just seem to detract more than improve Warframe I may understand the developers reasons behind it, trying to level the playing field, but in doing so I feel they are slowly chipping away at what makes Warframe unique. Where there is not a "cookie-cutter" feeling between warframes. As it stands right now the caster warframes are becoming . . . well more like a generic caster warframe if a warframe has to be balanced with the others. Another thing is that players will always find that "go-to" item/warframe, maybe its because of the kind of players that play warframe and that each of them share a same idea of what is the "better" equipment. Sure this does not mean that their has to be a win-button equipment, but it also does not mean to completely destabilize anything either. I remember a quote from the Livestream 5 update 8 video, where one of the developers was responding to a question and "baby steps" was said. I think maybe the developers should use this advice and when introducing nerfs, use baby steps.

For our banshee nerf, instead of reducing damage, range, and removing invincibility while casting. Split up the nerf and see how it works, instead of throwing the nerf bat at it and hitting it into space, instead of just to your friend to catch. They maybe doing play testing with these patches before sending them out to us, but maybe it works on their end is because the people they have testing the patches are different than the public players and this gap should be kept in mind.

 

Hopefully I haven't stepped on too many toes.

 

I agree with you completely. I understand that Digital Extremes is very in-touch with their community, and that's partly because of the great effort Rebecca puts in, but at the rate it's going, it feels like DE is going to be a company that just nerfs everything; I understand completely that the game is in BETA, and it's free to play (I wish it wasn't, I would definitely shell out $20-$60 for Warframe), but at the rate this is going, the nerfs aren't balancing the frames, it's breaking useful ones and putting others on a pedestal that have the ability to outclass them.

 

My biggest gripe is the loss of invincibility. I wasted three revives due to being oblivious to the lack of it, even after reading the patch notes (The patch notes even kind of inferred a damage buff!), so I went out, continued on my way as usual, until I kept going down in a mobile defense mission, I realized that I could now completely be ganked by anything with a gun that was just out of my now meager radius.

 

Seriously, unless you've got back-up, soundquake is pretty much suicide at this point.

[Cr4p]

I agree with most of the above sentiments. I could see a range/damage nerf or damage falloff on range for soundquake being fair, but with the longgggggg casting time and no invulnerability during casting, with a lower level/modded banshee or even a higher level/modded banshee on high levels, you are basically pushing a "stand still and get shot to death" button now.

 

tl;dr: soundquake needs either a shorter casting time or the invulnerability put back in, at the very least some kind of damage reduction during casting.

 

And for the record, I don't play banshee main or anything, just started leveling mine today, so this isn't me crying about my favorite frame or anything (that would be saryn and my crying about that will be in other threads ;) )

Edited May 18, 2013 by Cr4p

[Nyxilis]

I think the most aggrivating part was the patch notes. That is not how you describe a nerf. In a dubious almost sounds like a buff statement. It said something about damage that was not obvious if it was up or down. It said nothing on range or invulnerability. Devs, at least be honest. Subterfuge does not suit you.

 

Damage nerf on it? Fine. Range nerf? Fine. It was as really strong ability, perhaps to strong. The invincibility removal on it though? Why play it? It has a huge animation stuck point where you get mauled for doing it. There has to be a cost vs reward and right now there isn't a reward worth it. For folks saying be tactical? The cast time is so long on it that even if you use the knock back, which is unreliable as it doesn't always knock enemies down, they still have time to get up and shoot you. The cast time is far longer than the 'get up timer' for enemies if they even get knocked down. There are other frames that now do more damage in a smaller cast time where they are still vulnerable or at least kill everything. So the tactical thing to do? Switch warframes.

 

The banshee's only niche now is for bosses with the dmg ramp she can give, but any warframe with a Hek & a nice aoe damage will be better for the rest of the level.

[Judopunch]

Yeah if only Banshee had an ability to knock back and knock down enemies. Geez. It might actually give her some time to ult!

I know right, and shes so useless now. If only she had some kind of damage boosting ability that could help kill tougher units and bosses.

[mogamu]

Ember and other frames don't get immunity from their ultimate

 

Ember can move immediately after she casts, banshee just stands there for like 5 seconds for the duration of its use making her a huge target.

When you make statements like that without "thinking" the devs could read it and make a change in the game "thinking" that you actually "thought" about what you said before you said it.  Blanket general statements like that are the reason the community is in uproar.

 

Banshee needed a nerf, but she was not overpowered and she ended up "over nerfed".

[Rhega]

The only reason I could see them keeping the invincibility removal on it would be to change the entirety of Sound Quake. Think of this, does sound quake need to be a 360 degree AOE? How about instead of nerfing range, keep it the way it was, or increase it and have it attack in a cone, so it is more of an offensive ultimate which would not be used as a crowd dispersal like the rest of the AoE's.

 

Edit: Also this could be also used to change the animation of Sound Quake where banshee does not lay flat on the ground but stands and claps her hands together or having her hands out facing towards the direction of the cone. Though the current animation works as well.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Snake2150

[CerbX]

The only reason I could see them keeping the invincibility removal on it would be to change the entirety of Sound Quake. Think of this, does sound quake need to be a 360 degree AOE? How about instead of nerfing range, keep it the way it was, or increase it and have it attack in a cone, so it is more of an offensive ultimate which would not be used as a crowd dispersal like the rest of the AoE's.

 

Edit: Also this could be also used to change the animation of Sound Quake where banshee does not lay flat on the ground but stands and claps her hands together or having her hands out facing towards the direction of the cone. Though the current animation works as well.

 

Yeah, but think about it, making it a cone would make no sense, it's an earthquake, shaking the entirety of a range around her.

[Rhega]

Yeah, but think about it, making it a cone would make no sense, it's an earthquake, shaking the entirety of a range around her.

 

This is true, but it is a way to make the loss of invulnerability viable and where you do not lose the effectiveness of the ability. The developers can always change the description of sound quake from "Channelling all of her acoustic energy into the ground and surrounding environment structures, BANSHEE uses ultrasonic reverberations to violently shake the environment with lethal results." -Wiki To "Channeling all of her acoustic energy outwards from herself onto the ground and environment structures, Banshee uses ultrasonic reverberations to violently shake the environment with lethal results." Though this would also conflict with Sonic Boom, as it would be a stronger and longer version. Then again maybe that would be its saving grace for sonic boom, that its a one hit knock back for 75% the cost of sound quake.

 

Edit: Bolded the changed text.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Snake2150