How should I play as Banshee?

[Peacemuser]

Banshee does a really good job with fighting off scaling enemies with her sonar and sonic fracture. However, I'm struggling as to how to stay survivable with her, especially in solo. This is the build I mostly use.

I have posted a forum mentioning all the re-work suggestions that can come to mind for this frame:

Regardless, post your suggestions as to what weapons, play-style, or builds should I use. 

 

[Multicom-EN-]

Banshee is a fairly difficult warframe to play with, but when you first figure her out, you will love her. I guarantee it!.

1st ability: Sonic Boom.
Sonic boom is a very good at CC (crowd control). It doesn't do a lot of damage, but it will push all enemies within a 180-degree angle and knock them down for a few seconds. For this power you need a lot of range. Putting strength mods on will affect it, but not enough to kill enemies on mid-high lvl. the augment mod will decrease enemy armour by 70% for 8 seconds, and is affected by strength and duration. If you want to strip their armour completely off, you should aim for a minimum of +43% strength.

2nd ability: Sonar.
Sonar is going to be one of your most used abilities. Sonar, by default (100% strength) has a 5x damage multiplier in the weak spot it reveals (a spot on the enemy with your energy colour). For this ability, you want a lot of range, duration and strength as well. Range will increase the area you will affect enemies, duration will affect how long they are affected and strength increases the damage multiplier up to 14.2x. The augment mod is fantastic. I use it all the time. What it does is, that every time you hit an enemy in the weak spot and kill it, it will cast another sonar wave with 100% of the remaining duration of your ability, so all the new enemies within your range will be affected, and those who were affected the first time, will be affected again, and have two weak spots. Ultimately the enemies will be totally covered with weak spots, so no matter where you shoot them, you will deal between 5-14.2x more damage to them, depending on the strength on you build.

3rd ability: Silence.
Silence is going to be used in tandem with sonar. Silence will immobilize the enemies for a few seconds once in a while (when cast and a few times while the ability is active) Other than that, it will basically make the deaf, so unalerted enemies will not respond to gunfire, so the chance of unalerted kills with any weapon is a lot higher. Alerted enemies will remain so, even if affected by silence. The enemies tend to have a lower accuracy when affected but can't confirm it 100%. But a very, very good CC ability. For this power, you want either no duration or a lot of duration. With a low duration silence, you can spam it, and keep them immobilized, but it takes a lot of spamming, and pretty much makes sonar useless, so using a lot of duration is the way I prefer it. You don't want too much range on silence though, since if you have too much range, they will be affected too far away for you to shoot, so they won't be stunned while you shoot them. This does mean that sonar won't have as much range, so it's kind of an ultimatum. Using maximum range for silence doesn't make it bad at all, but just don't expect them to be stunned when you encounter them. Strength has no effect to this ability unless you use the augment mod, which will increase the finisher damage with 300% by default.

4th ability: Sound Quake
Sound quake is an energy draining ability, so efficiency is very important, but you'll loose more than you gain if you go for efficiency. This ability is mainly for when you can see you simply cannot escape the huge amount of enemies around you. All ground enemies will be immobilized and pushed back slowly. Range is very important here as well since it will increase the area of effect.
Basically, you'll just spam silence and sonar all the time. if enemies come too close, sonic boom to push them away and if you're surrounded by a lot of high Lvl enemies, sound quake.

Sound quakes augment will increase the damage by 100, the range by 1 meter and the energy drain by 1 second for every second it is active. This will be quite useful in low-mid tier, but pretty much useless in high-tier and end-game. Augmented sound quake in low-mid tier will kill the enemies quite fast, but on higher levels it simply won't do enough damage, so it will solely be a CC ability. Also, the extra energy drain will be a huge downside of using it on high levels, since you want to keep it active for as long as possible.

 

Hope this is useful :):):):)=

 

 

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[MillbrookWest]

Pair your Banshee with a Huras Kubrow, or Shade, and equip a life strike mod. I use a Huras Kubrow, i think it is an invaluable addition to Banshee's kit.

If i take damage, Banshee has enough 'oh snap' abilities that can prolong her life enough for the huras to cloak me - Off the top of my head, none of her abilities break the cloak timer, or the cloak itself (jury's out on SB, the other three i know don't break cloaking). Meaning you can cast any of her abilities at any time and remain cloaked by your kubrow, which is useful for planning your exit from said cloaking. Use the cloak to close to melee range, then pop off a silence, and get in a few hits with Life Strike. SB if needed, Then retreat.  

As for going end-game solo. Use Naramon, with a decent crit melee. You can't go end game without cheesing something. Naramon, with Banshee's Sonar, works quite well.

[FLSH_BNG]

For survival I do a duration and reduced range build with the savage silence augment, enemies are opened to finishers for easy kills... automatic kills with a dagger modded with covert lethality.

The short range on the savage silence has the enemies doubled over and vulnerable each time they enter it, so you can always dart back and forth to keep them harmless in between kills.

A few more mods on to ensure survivability, and she's good to go! It's always easier with at least one friend, but that's the kind of build I use. It requires a fair bit of active concentration to work, but it's pretty rewarding, and you'll always have your sonic boom as an additional escape button.

Edited July 1, 2016 by FLSH_BNG