Banshee Gameplay Guide

[Banshee] has a varied toolkit capable of multiplying damage, crowd controlling enemies, and nuking entire rooms. She also has some mild stealth capability through her sound manipulation but it's best used as a supportive survivability tool rather than a replacement for invisibility.

📝 Build Overview 📝

This build combines Sonar with a subsumed damage buff to double dip on the damage multiplication without having to rely on ally frame. This trades energy economy efficiency for even greedier damage.

🔢 Helminth Options 🔢

Sonic Boom is fairly weak without the [Sonic Fracture] augment and due to the Helminth system it can replaced by abilities that provide more flexible armor stripping options anyway. Sound Quake is more expensive than it's worth in most content so it can be replaced instead.

Roar is redundant in most scenarios where you'd need the damage due to the nerf. [Rhino] can easily outpace your Roar and you're only allowed to have the strongest one active. It's still a solid choice in more solo oriented content or when using Sound Quake.

Eclipse, [Xata]'s Whisper, and other buffs are great but require you to adhere to specific playstyles or missions. Take them only when you're confident that you'll be able to maximize their damage.

Nourish saves a mod slot on most meta builds and doesn't need any additional augments or weird setups to utilize. Smite and other elemental damage buffs are can be used to counter specific health types but require an augment slot.

Warcry, Elemental Ward, and other hybrid buffs are redundant on [Banshee] as she has to rely on crowd control effects for survivability anyway. They can still provide competitive benefits on regular star chart content.

📊 Ability Stats 📊

Strength and Duration are usually the focus on buff builds but Sonar needs a bit of Range to hit far away enemies. This sacrifices Efficiency and build flexibility for mod swaps.

Helminth Invigorations, Arbitration Buffs, Ally Abilities, Arcanes, and other external stat boosts can save you multiple mod slots but may rely on specific team compositions, loadouts, or sheer luck. Plan around these situations and modify your loadout to hit desired ability stat breakpoints.

⏲️ Duration ⏲️

Duration doesn't need to be too high as Sonar and Silence already have good base duration. Flex mod slots can be used for more Duration but the build is tight enough already. Resonance can artificially prolong the Duration of some Sonar procs to save energy.

⛽ Efficiency ⛽

Efficiency can be boosted higher but these builds aren't necessarily focused on spamming Sonar. When relying more heavily on Sonar multiplication for damage rather than your subsumed buff Efficiency should be brought back up to the baseline or higher. [Blind Rage] can be swapped with Transient Fortitude and Fleeting Expertise can be swapped in over a flex slot when using this build solely support other frames.

📏 Range 📏

Range is boosted a bit to hit larger tilesets and to give you additional time to attack enemies rather than spam Sonar. Stretch is a flex mod on smaller tilesets.

💪 Strength 💪

Strength has a weird relationship with Sonar in this build as you could conceptually just spam more Sonars rather than invest this heavily into Strength. The stat investment benefits the subsumed buff and allows you to spend more time attacking enemies instead of standing still and spending your entire energy bar on Sonar casts. In support builds Strength should be dropped for more Duration and flex mods.

↔️ Alternate Playstyles ↔️

Most builds utilize tools that can be swapped out to serve the same purpose albeit in a different manner. The following suggestions are an outline and aren't exhaustive.

🔧 Mods 🔧

• [Brief Respite] is a powerful survival tool on a frame that constantly spams abilities. In this case we use Sonar so many times that you should be constantly getting shields back and a Decaying Dragon Key only accentuates this interaction. Other auras can be run at your discretion on easier content.
• [Primed Sure Footed] is a powerful survival tool that completely negates many forms of hostile crowd control. It also allows weapons with a large area of effect to be fired with impunity. It's an expensive login reward so replace it if you have other forms of status effect immunity.
• [Blind Rage] and [Stretch] are flex mods if you're planning on just spamming Sonar while standing near an ally and buffing their damage with your subsumed ability. Streamline and Primed Flow are flex mods when playing with and energy support frame.
• [Rolling Guard] is most likely not replaceable in content past the regular star chart. Shield gating is too unreliable to be your only form of survivability. Replace it only if you're planning on heavily abusing the invincibility from transference into operator mode.
• [Resonance] grants additional Sonar procs for free and it can be slotted in over augment slots. It isn't run here as it has a limit on how many free Sonar procs it provides and stacking Sonars isn't the goal of this build.

⚙️ Arcanes ⚙️

Arcane Energize pairs well with [Primed Flow] and allows you to be extremely greedy with your ability casts. It can be replaced if you're confident with your energy economy or you're playing with an ally Warframe that provides energy. Offensive arcanes like Arcane Strike or defensive arcanes like Arcane [Guardian] are usually the call on most content.

Arcane Aegis synergizes with shield gating to make you nearly invincible. It can be replaced if you're using multiple other forms of survivability. Tertiary offensive arcanes like Arcane Velocity or Arcane Avenger are the best choices against most content.

📋 Final Notes 📋

Sonar doesn't increase the damage of secondary effects like Slash procs or Toxin procs so the damage potential can be limited against some enemies. Spamming it enough times will eventually allow you outpace any enemy damage resistance scaling but at any point DE could change the secondary damage resistance formula to scale properly with damage buffs similar to Sonar.

Silence is a redundant stealth ability due to [Banshee]'s passive. After it was added as a Helminth ability many builds that use Silence are now better on other frames. If you're confused why a specific Silence interaction isn't being used it's most likely because the build has been moved to another frame that uses it better. Loadout slots are limited and putting the exact same gimmick build on multiple frames isn't suggested unless there's a good reason to run that frame instead such as Arbitration buffs or utilizing a specific ability interaction.

🔄 Linked Builds 🔄

Frames

• General Use Shared Polarities
• Resonating Quake Shared Polarities
• Finisher Nuke Shared Polarities
• Roaming Crowd Control Shared Polarities
• Stealth Affinity Shared Polarities

Weapons

• Kuva Nukor: Condition Overload Primer Shared Loadout
• Kronen Prime: General Use Melee Shared Loadout
• Kronen Prime: Naramon Alternate Melee Shared Loadout

Other Necessary Tools

• Smeeta Kavat: General Use Shared Loadout
• Panzer Vulpaphyla: General Use Alternate Loadout
• Adarza Kavat: General Use Critical Chance Loadout

📧 Contact Information 📧

Remnants of the Void / Phantom Vanguard Discord Server
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us through the Discord server. We appreciate all forms of support and welcome any criticism designed to help us improve. If you enjoyed this guide you can also support us by giving it a 👍 and sharing it with your friends!

This build is part of a collection that you can either find on the builder's profile or through a special bot we have in the Discord server. We have builds for every item in the game and we're adding new ones frequently. Come check it out!

🏆 Credits 🏆

• NICHE - Developed tools that made generating builds far easier.
• Dragazer - Helped to clarify certain melee interactions.
• Marr - Helped with proofreading original build format.
• Fz0ul - Optimized overarching polarity plans to save forma.
• Dystopia - Tested several strategies to the level cap.

🛑 Disclaimers 🛑

This build may make certain assumptions about mechanics that can change after a patch. Multiple unnecessary forma may be used to facilitate more options across multiple builds with one polarity plan. Certain sub-optimal mods may be run to fit them into the forma polarity plan. We do not make builds that purposely attempt to abuse mechanics that aren't intended by the developers. None of these previous statements are excuses for a fundamentally incorrect build and we ask that you please contact us when we're wrong. We do not consent to anyone other than the original author of this guide posting it without permission.