Possible Banshee Rework.

[KrazyKubrowLady]

NOTICE:

The intention of this rework is to keep the idea of a caster in mind without buffing her health or shields which would make her more of a brawler than a caster. This also makes her more interactive and useful. This isn't meant to be a "1 ability to win". It's meant to make her a frame that can hold her own, on her own in higher levels like the rest of the caster frames. Saying she doesn't need on doesn't void the evidence that she needs work. Evidence is below.

 

Ok we all know that Banshee needs a rework.... She's the least used warframe according to Warframe Devstream #65 sited here and admitted by scott live:

• Least Used Warframe: Banshee
• Second Place: (PC/XB1): Limbo
• Second Place: (PS4): Zephyr
• Third Place (PC/XB1): Zephyr 
• Third Place (PS4): Limbo

https://warframe.com/news/devstream-65-overview

 

After playing her again extensively, I found her to be super underwelming and not coming up to standards... she's just stale and hasn't been touched since before damage 2.0 besides for a small buff here and a few augments there. So I made a google doc with the ideas I have for her. Some of my allience mates also partook and gave me a few suggestions on what to do as well. I didn't want to put it here on the forums until it was complete and finalized. 

There isn't a TL;DR so bare with me here... it's about 3 pages of stuff via google docs.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

THIS IS ONLY A SUGGESTION ON WHAT TO DO WITH HER. NOT A “MUST DO” NOR IS IT AN OFFICIAL REWORK. ONLY A FAN EXPRESSING FEEDBACK AND SUGGESTIONS.

 

I joined the day Oberon came out but while I was installing warframe for the first time I did my research on the game to get a feel for who I wanted to play as. (I did not understand that you could only choose from excal, mag and loki [at the time]) Banshee was who attracted me into the game. To me, she was perfect for me. Now, nearly 3 years later, there have been many updates, many enemy scale improvements, and many changes to warframe’s damages and multipliers. She feels old… outdated…. Unkept…

 

So I had the motivation to think up changes for a rework.

 

Banshee is a Sound frame, so we need to look at sound as a whole. What is it? Sound is a series of vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear. So why are her abilities not based on vibrations(in terms of the first 3 abilities.)

 

My proposed rework would focus more on vibrations rather than what they do now. In fact 3 would do so instead of just one.

 

Sonic Boom:

Sonic boom definition: a loud explosive noise caused by the shock wave from an aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound.

What it is now: Banshee emits a sonic shockwave that pushes targets in range with enough force to incapacitate or kill attackers.

Rename: Screech (based off of the scream of a banshee. Not to be confused with ME3’s banshee)

This ability is more focused on pushing attackers away. I like this, but i think it needs an overhaul. Instead of just tapping the button, a moveable toggle (see atlas's 3rd) would be more useful here. While the sonic boom would still push enemies, It would be a continuous push in a cone, pinning an enemy unless the range was exeeded and increasing in damage and energy cost as the sonic boom is held. This would also deal Slash damage as the vibrations would become more and more prominant. The ability would come out of her hand or helmet.

 

The Augment for Sonic boom would still work the same way as it already does.

Sound and visual overhaul

 

Sonar:

sonar definition: the method of echolocation used in air or water by animals such as bats or whales.

What it is now: Using acoustic location, Banshee's Sonar power finds and tracks enemies, and exposes critical weak spots to everyone in your squad.

Rename: None. doesn't need it.

This ability would stay the same overall. It would still mark enemies' weak points and buff damage done to that localized area. However, I believe it should resonate reguardless of augment.

Augment change: Resonance renamed to Deafening Howl

 

The augment: gives a deafened status to enemies in the initial cast radius, basically silencing teamate's weapons from them. This would not work on resonated enemies pulled into the sonar by damage done by you or allies. This would stun enemies on cast when Sonar is cast initially like The old 3rd ability (silence) did.

 

Remove Silence.

 

New 3:

Oscillation

Vibrations surround Banshee, cushioning damage and increasing her armor for a duration.

Increase armor of yourself by 75/110/185. NOT PERCENTAGE. for a duration 15/20/25 seconds. effected my duration mods. effected by strength Maximum armor gained is 241 easily maxed by a maxed intensify.

Augment: Receptive Oscillation

In addition to effecting Banshee, All allies within a set range ( half the shared affinity range.) gain the armor increase on cast for a duration. They do not have to stay by Banshee's side to keep the buff.

 

Sound Quake:

Doesn’t need any changes, but an addition to the enormous CC, It’d strip armor by 0.5%/1%/1.5%/2% each proc. Max 2.5% with max intensify (sounds like a low number but on higher level enemies, it would already be devistating.) This would not only be good for the crowd control element but also restrict on range builds so they’re still in the area of the squad. (because a whole ceres intersception map is harder for your squad mates to get to the mobs.) Minimum armor strip would be 0.8% with minimum strength builds

 

Current augment (change):

Augment would stay the same but instead of damage it would have +5 % armor strip

 

Possible added augment or augment rework

New name: Echoing Quake

The sound from Banshee’s soundquake returns to her, pulling those caught in the radius of Sound quake towards her center. +2% armor strip for those caught in the echo. Only the enemies caught within the default cast range (circle around banshee [which is soundquake]) would be pulled in. anything outside of it would be staggered like normal. This would help prioritize higher level enemies with more armor ratings as well and promote teamwork.

 

Sound and visual overhaul

 

Stat changes:

 

Increase her Power max to 300 instead of 225 at level 30

Mobility also needs a tweak

Possibly a shield increase but up to DE.

 

I have gotten rid of Silence because her passive takes care of her weapons already. Therefore Silence would be useless. The stun would be in Sonar’s reworked augment so if people still want it, they can have the added stun effect.

 

Let me know what you think :3 I hope DE sees this and gets some ideas for her rework.

Edited July 25, 2016 by KrazyKubrowLady

[KrazyKubrowLady]

Apologies for the text being too light or too dark....the forums are being stupid x.x

[(PSN)CrackFoxLegend]

Must be too light, I see nothing :/

[KrazyKubrowLady]

1 minute ago, (PS4)CrackFoxLegend said:

Must be too light, I see nothing :/

k give me a sec imma try and fix

 

[Mr.Lube]

No need for a Banshee rework. She is one of the most well balanced Warframes in the game right now.

[KrazyKubrowLady]

1 minute ago, Mr.Lube said:

No need for a Banshee rework. She is one of the most well balanced Warframes in the game right now.

and I agree with you but she has nothing that makes her interesting. nothing that speaks "I love this frame because this reason". nothing that makes her outright shine. nothing interesting. it's just sonar right now... 

All of the other warframes have something else you can build for, always something more to do with them. Banshee just... isn't... interactive is the word?? All most people see her for is either sit in one spot for sound quake or sit in one spot and spam sonar. She can't survive on her own, 2 of her abilties are useless, 1 more so than the other, and isn't ever built for more one thing and one thing only.

[KrazyKubrowLady]

10 minutes ago, (PS4)CrackFoxLegend said:

Must be too light, I see nothing :/

fixed :D

[Mr.Lube]

Just now, KrazyKubrowLady said:

and I agree with you but she has nothing that makes her interesting. nothing that speaks "I love this frame because this reason". nothing that makes her outright shine. nothing interesting. it's just sonar right now... 

All of the other warframes have something else you can build for, always something more to do with them. Banshee just... isn't... interactive is the word?? All most people see her for is either sit in one spot for sound quake or sit in one spot and spam sonar. She can't survive on her own, 2 of her abilties are useless, 1 more so than the other, and isn't ever built for more one thing and one thing only.

It seems that your knowledge of Banshee is extremely limited.

[KrazyKubrowLady]

7 minutes ago, Mr.Lube said:

It seems that your knowledge of Banshee is extremely limited.

you say that but then that means that the community's is as well. I've given proof that Banshee is the least used warframe across all platforms and while yes she's balanced, but so was Excal and he was given the most extensive rework of all of the works done by far. Just because you think that she doesn't need a rework doesn't mean that she doesn't actually need one.

I don't know how you came to the conclusion that my knowledge of banshee is limited but if you can't see with your own eyes that the proof was provided by DE themselves via data pooling then I don't know if you even know how less she's used than even zephyr. That to me immediately screams rework.

Given this doesn't mean DE needs to focus on banshee per say and especially not right this moment. there are other more broken frames they need to deal with, but she is on their list and even scott himself said that they need to do something about the banshee issue, granted it was only talked about for 30-40 seconds.

[Jakorak]

15 minutes ago, KrazyKubrowLady said:

and I agree with you but she has nothing that makes her interesting. nothing that speaks "I love this frame because this reason". nothing that makes her outright shine. nothing interesting. it's just sonar right now... 

All of the other warframes have something else you can build for, always something more to do with them. Banshee just... isn't... interactive is the word?? All most people see her for is either sit in one spot for sound quake or sit in one spot and spam sonar. She can't survive on her own, 2 of her abilties are useless, 1 more so than the other, and isn't ever built for more one thing and one thing only.

high duration neutral range resonance sonar build. sonar keeps spreading for ludicrous damage. silence and keep moving around. unless you stop moving to revive someone or something almost nothing will hit you ever because they will repeatedly be stunned by silence as you go in and out of range of them. very active very engaging playstyle. i don't know why so few people use it

Edited July 25, 2016 by Jakorak

[Wurdyburd]

15 minutes ago, Jakorak said:

high duration neutral range resonance sonar build. sonar keeps spreading for ludicrous damage. silence and keep moving around. unless you stop moving to revive someone or something almost nothing will hit you ever because they will repeatedly be stunned by silence as you go in and out of range of them. very active very engaging playstyle. i don't know why so few people use it

It may be because Banshee is solid CC but has very little direct damage or buffing abilities, which is what people like to look for in frames. Sonic Boom also has a fairly short range compared to most other powers, bringing you closer than most would feel comfortable with Banshee's overall squishyness. Also, while locked into Soundquake, there's nothing you can do except for keep the area locked down. Enemies can still shoot you from beyond the range, and any enemies not dead when you stop quaking are just going to knock you flat immediately. I've had personal experience with Banshee in that teammates regularly don't realize what I'm doing with Soundquake, and just run off to other rooms, leaving me to try and deal with all the leftover enemies that they didn't feel bothered to kill.

She's also not very fast, which reduces her effectiveness of Sonic Boom, Silence, and setting up new Soundquake locations. If anything, I say give Banshee a decent boost to movement speed, which should help her survivability, and power application.

[DiabolusUrsus]

The only reason Banshee isn't more popular is, unlike other frames, she doesn't do that well until you start getting forma into her. Usually (from what I see) players start forma-ing frames they enjoy/find useful to take them higher, not bring seemingly sub-par frames up to speed.

Once you get the right mods on her, Banshee is tons of fun.

I don't like that you're suggesting Sonic Boom be turned into a mini-Sound Quake that you aim. Seems way too homogeneous. 

I also don't like that you want to remove Silence... it makes her a pretty viable stealth frame, and she's more interesting than Loki when it comes to stealth. 

The only thing Banshee really needs out of a rework is to - like so many other frames - get that base V out of her Aura slot. Once people have more to work with to START, I'm sure she'll start to rise in popularity. Especially if more people realized that Silence makes stealth-ranking firearms ridiculously easy.

[-Mandachordian-Tenno-]

i dont like that silence will be removed,

i do think Banshee is in the same class as Ash, an Offensive Stealth frame
the disadvantage of Banshee however is that she has no invisibility and her 1st ability would only be used for knocking down high priority targets like bombards and etc.
her second ability is the first part of what makes her an Offensive stealth warframe, Sonar can make even crappy weapons do high damage and at one point do 1 hit kills
the third ability, is the second part of the Offensive Stealth class she is in, Silence. this makes enemies in the vicinity to have a one time "stun" but going in and out of the aura range, will make the stun trigger, silence although makes every weapon wielded silent already(which is already being done as a passive) can reduce the enemies' awareness to a point that enemies wouldnt even be alerted when two or more enemies are within extreme close proximity killed through a 1 hit kill, and one weird perk of silence is that even non-lethal damage cant make enemies alert in the aura's range.

[Azrael]

29 minutes ago, KrazyKubrowLady said:

and I agree with you but she has nothing that makes her interesting. nothing that speaks "I love this frame because this reason". nothing that makes her outright shine. nothing interesting. it's just sonar right now... 

All of the other warframes have something else you can build for, always something more to do with them. Banshee just... isn't... interactive is the word?? All most people see her for is either sit in one spot for sound quake or sit in one spot and spam sonar. She can't survive on her own, 2 of her abilties are useless, 1 more so than the other, and isn't ever built for more one thing and one thing only.

You do not understand banshee at all. None of her abilities are useless, they are all very powerful. You should try playing savage banshee, which is a banshee built for a little duration and medium/low range, with high strength. You run around with silence up and take advantage of the fact that silence stuns enemies as they come into range. I prefer going melee only with this build. I use the augment for her 1 and maybe the augment for silence as well. Use her 1 on big enemies to strip their armor before killing them. 

It always disappoints me when people post reworks of frames that they don't currently appreciate or understand. Saying that any of her abilities is useless is proof that you really don't know what you're talking about. Just because most players don't appreciate her doesn't mean it isn't worth it to learn how to play her. 

[Azrael]

6 minutes ago, Wurdyburd said:

It may be because Banshee is solid CC but has very little direct damage or buffing abilities

I'm sorry, what? All of her abilities are either direct damage abilities or buff damage in some way. Her 1 and 3 allow massive finishers, and her 1 can strip armor. Her 2 is the strongest damage buff in the game. Are you sure we're talking about the same frame? 

[KrazyKubrowLady]

11 minutes ago, Wurdyburd said:

It may be because Banshee is solid CC but has very little direct damage or buffing abilities, which is what people like to look for in frames. Sonic Boom also has a fairly short range compared to most other powers, bringing you closer than most would feel comfortable with Banshee's overall squishyness. Also, while locked into Soundquake, there's nothing you can do except for keep the area locked down. Enemies can still shoot you from beyond the range, and any enemies not dead when you stop quaking are just going to knock you flat immediately. I've had personal experience with Banshee in that teammates regularly don't realize what I'm doing with Soundquake, and just run off to other rooms, leaving me to try and deal with all the leftover enemies that they didn't feel bothered to kill.

She's also not very fast, which reduces her effectiveness of Sonic Boom, Silence, and setting up new Soundquake locations. If anything, I say give Banshee a decent boost to movement speed, which should help her survivability, and power application.

 

good idea for the mobility suggestion. I'll add it :3

[(PSN)CrackFoxLegend]

46 minutes ago, KrazyKubrowLady said:

fixed :D

Sweet thanks

[(PSN)CrackFoxLegend]

I don't neccessarily agree with everything you've said about banshee because it's an amazing support frame that I think most people just don't understand and I'm a huge banshee fan, but this seems like a sound rework that would (for the most part) make everything I like about the frame better. +1

Edited July 25, 2016 by (PS4)CrackFoxLegend

[AsuraKyu]

Banshee does not need a rework. Her lack of playtime is simply because she's clan tech and her gameplay isn't really for everyone, and I think that's fine. Literally love Banshee right now.

[Rawbeard]

Banshee is least used? and I don't know why she needs a rework, her kit is pretty good.

[Misgenesis]

Shes balanced but outdated and unpopular because she doesnt trivialize content at a button press.

1 and 2 need their augments integrated, easy fix.

3 needs to do more or be revised. Maybe make it throw off enemy fire like Turbulence but not as strong.

4 is just outdated and needs a revise.

[(XBOX)AuS1010]

one of the main reasons why i think Banshee is the LEAST used frame is that many players, have not really used her abilities to their potential.

Banshee is by far the most game breaking frame in existence. (HOW you might ask?)

use her and start casting abilities like mad.

 

sure she isnt a "cast this ability to kill" frame Banshee is more of a, DPS trinity. <--- if you figure out what i mean. EVERYTHING will be made clear. all you have to do is use her yourself.

on that note, as an incentive. Banshee is the only frame that allows any other frame (including herself) to hit the damage cap of the game, which is 2.1 billion and some other slew of numbers. (YES BILLION, not million, Billion = Million X 1000) 

[AsuraKyu]

I mean completely ignoring Sonar since that seems to be what everything been about. Savage silence with a low duration silence build is Havok. The damage she puts out with it is just as absurd and invites you into a strait up melee style of combat. Add is armor strip from her one and a Slash melee which the majority of melees are and you've got a hell of a melee frame despite her lack of defensive anything.

[Azrael]

Okay, I suppose I should post some of that constructive criticism I keep hearing about...  :)

Most of this sounds okay, but frankly the replacement for her 3 is awful. You took a powerful and engaging ability with many different uses and turned it into a boring armor buff. Banshee lives by her wits and speed, or by her teammates, but never by being tanky. Building to that is a waste, and throwing away her most interesting and engaging ability for it is a crime against fun. 

The change to her 1 is interesting, but I doubt I would use it. I use her 1 to rag doll enemies so I can kill them. Pinning them against the wall for massive energy just sounds like a waste of energy, especially since you'd have to keep it on to take advantage of it. 

Finally, your change to her 4 would make her better at the most boring thing banshee can do: nuke entire maps while you drink tea. While it would be a powerful ability, I'm not sure making her even more p4tw would be a good idea..

[(XBOX)AuS1010]

put naramon on her ^ and you got perfect melee frame.(cloak on crit)  just be mindful of incoming unwanted damage.