whats up with banshee?

[JarodDempsey]

So I read about how banshee was originally designed to be a support frame with a large moderate to high damage ult. I got her a while back but only finally finished leveling her today. This is what I found:

Her 1 is one of the most useless skills in the game, even worse than mags 1. 

Her 2 is nice but mostly for the enemy radar since the bodypart multipliers are usually quite impractical to play around. Overall this would be a fine utility addition to a kit but definitely cant hold an entire kit up.

Her 3 seems pretty useless. Its closest use is to that of an oh S#&$ button for the large stun but the stun only lasts for 3 seconds and cant be used again for like 15. It seems like this ability was intended to provide a different kind of stealth but unfortunately for banshee, warframe is a hoard shooter with a very fast pace that runs very contrary to the slow and methodical style of play that this skill tries to push. Plus she doesnt seem to have a way to open enemies to finishers so the augment doesnt seem very useful. Granted there are methods of comboing this skill with various forms of invisibility and other methods of opening finishers but it seems like a lot of work just to use a playstyle that's very outclassed by inaros, ivara, ash, and loki with a covert lethality dagger. I think itd be much better if banshee had a sleep skill similar to equinox but instead it lasted much longer but enemies would be woken up upon hearing gunfire or certain loud noises such as a player smashing into enemies with bullet jump, the skill could still do the initial stun, during which time enemies would not be able to be woken up from noise.

Her 4 imo is very lackluster, from what i heard it used to buff damage by like 700% or something but now it seems pretty bad. Evidently banshees can still clear rooms by spamming her augment though I tried it with like 250 strength and it took like 200 energy just to kill a single lvl 85 boiler, not to mention i had to reposition myself on top of it every time due to the knockback and according to the wiki it is supposed to do high damage vs fossilized health (it was useless vs a corrupted heavy gunner due to the armor) which i did not notice.

Also shes so damn squishy, I get that her initial solo playstyle was meant to be relatively covert but as i mentioned above thats just hugely impractical due to the way the game is played and it really hurts her viability. Her ehp is just so abysmal, her prime gets 2hit around lvl 40 by corrupted shotgunners when using vitality + redirection/steel fiber, shes even squishier than mag!

Also her animations lock her in place and for a squishy frame thats not good, I dont use her 1 enough to remember but her 2 and 3 should definitely be upper body animations at the most, imo her 2 should be one handed. 

Her prime does have a really cool helmet and the animation for her base ult does look really cool when she smashes the ground to unleash the (underwhelming) soundquake so I guess shes got those going for her at least.

Any tips on how you use her skills so that theyre not so bad? Feel free to share your builds or ideas for changes you think she could use as well.

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

I agree that Banshee is weak and could really use a buff. I was thinking adding a corrosive proc to her ult similar to Saryns viral proc, that would help her not be obsolete against armoured enemies.

Edited August 1, 2018 by (PS4)Equinox21697

[EchoesOfRain]

Banshee is a Glass Cannon support. Sonar is an incredible ability that boosts the entire team's damage. It's honestly her best ability and the reason to take a Banshee into high level/endurance missions. If you're struggling to hit the weak points, try her Resonance augment, it's one of the best augments in the game.

Her 3rd used to silence her weapons as well as the stun, but now her passive does that. Silence creates an aura that stuns enemies as they walk into it's range, so you can technically infinitely stun an enemy by walking back and forth to put them in and out of range. I do think it could use a change though. Oh, and the augment does open enemies to finisher while they're stunned. Try a build with lower range if you wanna focus on a finisher build

Her 1st is for when enemies get too close to you, even with Silence on. Again, Banshee is a squishy frame. Sonic Boom is used to get enemies off of you, simple as that. The augment is pretty good as well, since it strips armor. For the player, Sonic Boom is vital to survival

Her 4th...has been ruined. It needs a mechanical rework. It used to be an "OH SHI*" button that stuns all of the enemies while your allies can clean them up. The augment turned the ability into an afk room clear. Players would say that her 4th is the only good thing about her, and it's actually the other way around, it's easily her worst. Even after they reworked the augment, players still try to use it as a room clear, which it just won't. Sound Quake nowadays annoys teammates more than anything, as well as leaving this squishy frame vulnerable to attack from enemies out of range. It needs a rework.

 

Banshee requires a lot more skill to play effectively than most players might be willing to invest. She does require a mobile, evasive playstyle to stay alive, but she can be one of the best supports in the game if she has a team to keep her alive. 

[Tain_OSkoom]

I've always found Sonic Boom to be one of the more useful first abilities. Huge AOE cone knockdown that takes the heat off, sets up ground finishers, or sets the target prone to make for an easy shot on a sonared soft spot. You're not so squishy when nothing can stand up to shoot you.

You can cast her second ability multiple times to cover entire bodies in weak spots. In conjunction with the augment, this will create stacked weak spots that basically set up instant kills.

Her third ability, in a horde setting, calls for extreme mobility. As soon as that initial stun wears off, an enemy can be stunned again, so long as they're falling into the sphere of silence again. So you can keep a group of enemies on the edge of a silence bubble stunlocked just by jumping back and forth. Though more practically, this can be used by gliding back and forth across wide open tiles.

In more claustrophobic corridor settings, this sets up stealth kills if you have a long range melee weapon.

 

All of her animation locks, with the exception of soundquake, can be worked around by glide-casting--initiating the ability cast while in the air and gliding for the duration of the casting animation. Though Sonic Boom sorely needs a one-handed casting update more than any other ability in the game.

 

I'll agree that her fourth ability doesn't fit with the rest of her kit, though.

[sati44]

From what I have seen the only problem with banshee is the fact that she is paper thin and more suited for coop at sortie level content and above.

[NinjaZeku]

12 minutes ago, Tain_OSkoom said:

Sonic Boom [...] Huge AOE

That's a serious overexaggeration, it's ~usable but pales in both range and damage compared to Pull (which also has multiple further effects).

It needs a significant range and / or damage boost (how 'bout Bleed procs, because internal damage because shockwave).

Or, maybe give it Silence's non-LOS stun (with Finisher functionality by default) and replace that ability already.

[DjKaplis]

I'm just going to drop this off here:

It's a quite long video but explains builds and how to use her properly, so if you really are interested in being better with Banshee maybe this helps you. 

She is very squishy tho so maybe on non-endless missions (on endless enemies oneshot you anyway) it would be useful to include primed flow + quick thinking in her setup for better survivability.

Edited August 1, 2018 by DjKaplis

[Birdframe_Prime]

I think that what you're lacking is the context of just what these abilities can actually do, and how you apply them in the game to get these results that people enjoy so much.

So, the thing you have to consider is that her 4 is generally the least useful of her abilities for active gameplay, and while her 1 is basically just a panic button (unaugmented... augmented it can instantly strip off armour, which at higher level can be the equivalent of reducing an enemy's effective health from millions to mere thousands), what you really can find is that her 2 and 3 are actually incredible.

For example, her 2 does initially seem to be awkward to play around, until you realise that with a fairly basic build you can get a 10x damage multiplier on our already powerful weapons, and this effect stacks. If you recast and spots overlap the multiplier is doubled, or tripled depending on recasts. If it's on a head hitbox? Massive crits.

A high range, multi-cast Sonar can combo with other frames (like a Speed Nova) to clear Defense missions in under a minute per wave.

But Silence is one of those abilities that's actually kind of genius. It's this ability that makes Banshee one of the fastest and most effective Exterminate frames in the game, and as such one of the best for Stealth Multiplier farming on things like Focus.

The key to it is that the Stun can be re-applied by movement; move out of range of the enemy and then back into range, it re-applies the stagger, interrupting most enemy actions repeatedly. Couple with the massive reduction in her Aggro, Banshee can use this to score the massive 'Un-alert' bonus on enemies with weapons. Simply stagger the enemy (making them un-alert while staggering) and then attack, the first attack on that enemy will have up to 8x damage (+700%) based on how high your weapon's current rank is.

Using this method you can instantly gain huge damage bonuses with the combo on Sonar and Silence, enemies will stay un-alert until they see the body parts of their comrades, or see you, and so you can literally run in, stagger, Sonar, one-tap enemies that would usually be far and beyond your weapon's current damage.

I'm hesitant to recommend this, as Melee is just about to be massively changed up... (look for the next DevStream), but my experience using Banshee took me to massively high level Survivals by simply running around with a crit/status hybrid Melee and using the combo counter scaling to keep my damage going to the point where I could take on hours of content on Mot or the Kuva Fortress or... anything really.

People so often say that Banshee is a quick-spam Defense frame, where they take her to be most difficult (but still remarkably easy) Defense on the Star Chart, use her Augment, and spam down the level 30-40 mobs for 10 waves and leave. Which is kind of the most annoying use of Banshee you can get.

Meanwhile I've used Banshee as one of the most effective run-and-gun glass cannon frames in the game for the last year and more.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Her abilities could use some minor improvements, but her 4 can 100% be left unchanged, or turned into a strictly CC ability.

[(PSN)MrNishi]

On 2018-08-01 at 12:21 PM, JarodDempsey said:

So I read about how banshee was originally designed to be a support frame with a large moderate to high damage ult. I got her a while back but only finally finished leveling her today. This is what I found:

Her 1 is one of the most useless skills in the game, even worse than mags 1. 

Her 2 is nice but mostly for the enemy radar since the bodypart multipliers are usually quite impractical to play around. Overall this would be a fine utility addition to a kit but definitely cant hold an entire kit up.

Her 3 seems pretty useless. Its closest use is to that of an oh S#&$ button for the large stun but the stun only lasts for 3 seconds and cant be used again for like 15. It seems like this ability was intended to provide a different kind of stealth but unfortunately for banshee, warframe is a hoard shooter with a very fast pace that runs very contrary to the slow and methodical style of play that this skill tries to push. Plus she doesnt seem to have a way to open enemies to finishers so the augment doesnt seem very useful. Granted there are methods of comboing this skill with various forms of invisibility and other methods of opening finishers but it seems like a lot of work just to use a playstyle that's very outclassed by inaros, ivara, ash, and loki with a covert lethality dagger. I think itd be much better if banshee had a sleep skill similar to equinox but instead it lasted much longer but enemies would be woken up upon hearing gunfire or certain loud noises such as a player smashing into enemies with bullet jump, the skill could still do the initial stun, during which time enemies would not be able to be woken up from noise.

Her 4 imo is very lackluster, from what i heard it used to buff damage by like 700% or something but now it seems pretty bad. Evidently banshees can still clear rooms by spamming her augment though I tried it with like 250 strength and it took like 200 energy just to kill a single lvl 85 boiler, not to mention i had to reposition myself on top of it every time due to the knockback and according to the wiki it is supposed to do high damage vs fossilized health (it was useless vs a corrupted heavy gunner due to the armor) which i did not notice.

Also shes so damn squishy, I get that her initial solo playstyle was meant to be relatively covert but as i mentioned above thats just hugely impractical due to the way the game is played and it really hurts her viability. Her ehp is just so abysmal, her prime gets 2hit around lvl 40 by corrupted shotgunners when using vitality + redirection/steel fiber, shes even squishier than mag!

Also her animations lock her in place and for a squishy frame thats not good, I dont use her 1 enough to remember but her 2 and 3 should definitely be upper body animations at the most, imo her 2 should be one handed. 

Her prime does have a really cool helmet and the animation for her base ult does look really cool when she smashes the ground to unleash the (underwhelming) soundquake so I guess shes got those going for her at least.

Any tips on how you use her skills so that theyre not so bad? Feel free to share your builds or ideas for changes you think she could use as well.

Sound Quake never buffed damage output.

The ability that buffs damage is Sonar which you said is only good as enemy radar...

At level 30 Base 100% Powerstrength Sonar is 500% or 5x multiplier

Overlapping Sonar Weakpoints is where the damage starts to take off:

3 Overlapping Sonar weakpoints is 5*5*5 or 5^3 = 125x multiplier or 12,500%

5 Overlapping Sonar weakpoints at base 100% Powerstrength is 5^5 = 3,125x multiplier or 312,500%

She really does not need Armor Removal

On 2018-08-01 at 12:31 PM, (PS4)Equinox21697 said:

I agree that Banshee is weak and could really use a buff. I was thinking adding a corrosive proc to her ult similar to Saryns viral proc, that would help her not be obsolete against armoured enemies.

^but if you must want Armor Removal

Her 1st ability has Fractures Crush which removes enemy armor. If you have enough Powerstrength she can remove all enemy Armor in 1 single cast. (To reiterate though, overlapping Sonar weakpoints can overcome Armor damage mitigation.)

Level 500 Juggernaut Behemoth with Armor intact can be 1 shotted ...of enough Sonars are cast/stacked.

Which brings in Banshee's weakness: she is a literal Glass Cannon.

As for Savage Silence @JarodDempsey Banshee end's up needing to be super mobile to open enemies up for finishers or shorten Aura Range and be mobile to keep opening enemies up for finishers.

For normal Survivability Silence stun works to give small window to get shots off with Sonic Boom working to knock enemies out of Silence Aura so that as you once again close-range they get hit with the Stun from silence again.

 

In short Banshee still has her massive Dage multiplier from Sonar.

 

To be fair, if DE let Eidolon Synovias be susceptible to Banshee Sonar...the Eidolon Meta would go by the way side.

A Sonar spamming Banshee with Unairu Void Shadow and Void Crystallis to protect Lures or Vazarin Protective Dash;  could simply overlap multipliers to the point that the Mote Amp would decimate Eidolon Shields and allow the Mote Amp to destroy a Fully Armored Synovia. 

Two or more Banshees in a Group able to weakpoints overlap Eidolon Synovia for even more efficiency.

(I'm not joking)*

Edited August 2, 2018 by (PS4)MrNishi
Mote autocorrect to more*

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

3 hours ago, (PS4)MrNishi said:

5 Overlapping Sonar weakpoints at base 100% Powerstrength is 5^5 = 3,125x multiplier or 312,500%

Tbh I wasn't aware her sonar stacked, so a recent range duration build should work right? Gonna try it out

[(PSN)MrNishi]

14 hours ago, (PS4)Equinox21697 said:

Tbh I wasn't aware her sonar stacked, so a recent range duration build should work right? Gonna try it out

Yes, Sonar stacks but needs to overlap. Usually why people prefer Resonating Sonar to assist in spawning more weakpoints for the same amount of energy.

The delicate thing with Banshee is more Range and Duration hurts her Silence (Protective) stun Aura.

Which is fine in a group setting or with clever Operator Dashing.