Banshee – Gloomshee

Banshee – Gloomshee

Introduction

Banshee excels at amplifying damage output, making her one of the few Warframes capable of multiplying damage significantly. She offers some crowd control and is a strong caster frame, but her low effective health and limited survivability tools make her a challenging choice. This creates a tradeoff: should you focus on her strengths or patch her weaknesses? Certain design and balance issues further restrict her potential, requiring careful optimization to make her shine.

Counters

  • Hard Counters: Nullifiers and abilities that negate crowd control significantly hinder her effectiveness.
  • Soft Counters: Damage-over-time effects and stray hits are dangerous due to her squishy nature. Tick damage, in particular, is a persistent threat.

Build Path: Sonar Spammer

Banshee’s abilities lean heavily into utility and damage amplification. Of these, Sonar and Silence are the standouts:

Sonic Boom

  • Knocks down enemies in a short range.
  • Its disruptive nature can hinder aiming for headshots, making it more of a hindrance than a help.

Sonar

  • Reveals weak spots on enemies and provides a massive damage multiplier.
  • Core to most builds, capable of generating absurd damage numbers, even at level cap.

Silence

  • A short-duration crowd control ability that stuns enemies briefly.
  • Works well for mitigating incoming damage and synergizes with certain setups. Without augment mods, its utility remains limited.

Sound Quake

  • Provides sustained area lockdown with minimal damage.
  • Effective for holding zones, but the high energy cost makes it less practical in fast-paced missions.

Build: Sonar, Silence, and Shield Gating

This build focuses on shield-gating for survivability, Sonar for massive damage amplification, and Silence for crowd control.

  • Shield-gating ensures that Banshee can survive stray hits and sustain her high casting requirements.
  • Gloom is a powerful optional Helminth ability, slowing enemies to extend Silence’s stun duration and making it easier to target weak spots revealed by Sonar.

Core Mods

  1. Brief Respite: Essential for resetting the shield gate without relying on Augur mods.
  2. Catalyzing Shields: Maximizes shield-gating potential.
  3. Transient Fortitude: Boosts power strength for higher Sonar multipliers.
  4. Primed Flow: Increases energy reserves for sustained casting.
  5. Streamline: Improves energy efficiency.

Flex Mods

Adapt these based on your preferences:

  • Umbral Intensify: Swap with standard Intensify for additional power strength.
  • Preparation: Starts missions with maximum energy, a quality-of-life improvement.
  • Augur Reach/Secrets: Both can increase overshield generation with ability casts.

Alternative Mods

  • Natural Talent: Speeds up casting, crucial for Sonar spam builds.
  • Rolling Guard: Adds invulnerability and status cleansing for repositioning.
  • Adaptation: Grants damage reduction for shields.
  • Blind Rage: Increases power strength at the cost of efficiency, great for shield-gating setups.

Helminth Suggestions

Subsumed abilities can dramatically enhance Banshee’s survivability and utility.

Top Choices:

  • Gloom (Sevagoth): Provides healing and slows enemies, extending Silence’s stun duration and improving weak spot targeting.
  • Null Star (Nova): Grants 75% damage reduction when fully stacked, ideal for survivability.
  • Shooting Gallery (Mesa): Bonus gun damage and weapon jamming for added utility.
  • Pillage (Hildryn): Restores shields, generates overshields, and removes status effects.

Other Viable Options:

  • Breach Surge: Blinds enemies and adds bonus damage multipliers.
  • Eclipse: Boosts damage in light and provides survivability in shadow.
  • Nourish: Grants energy, health regeneration, and bonus viral damage.
  • Roar: Grants even more bonus damage to get some rather high numbers

Synergies

Arcanes:

  • Energize: Essential for maintaining energy.
  • Barrier: Instantly restores shields.
  • Aegis: Boosts shield regeneration, complementing shield-gating.
  • Molt Augmented: Adds power strength over time for scaling damage.
  • Molt Efficiency: Increases ability duration while shields are active.

Companions

Dethcube for energy, wyrm for defense and status immunity, adarza kavat for critictal damage bonus, panzer is just good universal choice.

Archon Shards

Recommended Setup:

  • 2 Amber Shards: Faster casting speed.
  • 3 Crimson Shards: Additional ability strength for higher damage multipliers.

Alternative Options:

  • Violet Shards: Boost melee damage for a hybrid playstyle.
  • Crimson: Duration
  • Amber: Energy on spawn, parkour velocity
  • Blue Shards: Increase health, armour or energy max.

Conclusion

The Gloomshee build transforms Banshee into a versatile and lethal caster, leveraging shield-gating mechanics for survivability while delivering insane damage potential with Sonar. Adding Gloom or other Helminth abilities further elevates her gameplay, making her more forgiving and rewarding for players willing to invest in her strengths.