Warframe Banshee Rework: Every Change in Update 44
Last Updated on September 26, 2026
Banshee got the biggest single-frame rework of 2026 and it shipped on September 23 exactly as DE workshopped it. Full armour strip on a 25-energy one-handed cast, a Sound Quake that runs on its own while you keep shooting, and Sonar weak points that now charge everyone’s Incarnons. She was C tier here, and she isn’t any more.
Every number below is read from the live game after Update 44 and Hotfix 44.0.1, not from the workshop post. Updated September 26, 2026.
Table of Contents
What changed, ability by ability
| Ability | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Passive | Weapon noise hushed | Still hushed, plus casting any ability applies max Puncture to enemies within 10m |
| Sonic Boom (1) | Two-handed, rooted, ragdoll, 50 Impact | One-handed, no root, knockback and stagger, 250 Impact, 70% armour strip scaling to 100% with Strength |
| Sonar (2) | Weak spots, a Banshee-only mechanic | Formal Weak Points. Weak Point mods and arcanes work on them, and shooting one charges an Incarnon |
| Silence (3) | Rooted, no recast | Recastable, no root, and enemies inside cannot activate abilities |
| Sound Quake (4) | Channelled, rooted, drains energy | 25 second area effect that runs independently. Cast it, then walk, shoot and reposition |
Live numbers at max rank
| Ability | Energy | Numbers |
|---|---|---|
| Sonic Boom | 25 | 250 Impact, 70% armour strip, 15m in a 180 degree cone, 5 Push Force, stagger on hit |
| Sonar | 50 | 5x damage on marked Weak Points, 30s, 35m, propagates at 20 m/s |
| Silence | 75 | 30s, 20m, 2s stun, enemy abilities disabled |
| Sound Quake | 75 | 200 Blast per second, 25s, 20m, 1 to 5 Blast procs per hit depending on distance from centre |
Sonic Boom is the line that matters: a 25-energy one-handed cast that strips 70% of armour, scaling to a full strip with enough Strength. Nothing else in the game charges that little for it.
Two augments were renamed and rewritten
Sonic Fracture became Sonic Siphon. Resonating Quake became Gaseous Quake. DE replaced every existing copy in player inventories, so you don’t need to re-earn them.
Banshee
Banshee
Banshee
Banshee| Augment | Status | What it does now |
|---|---|---|
| Sonic Siphon | Was Sonic Fracture | +50 Armour per enemy hit by Sonic Boom, capped at 1500, for 20s |
| Gaseous Quake | Was Resonating Quake | Turns Sound Quake back into the channelled version, adds Gas, and compounds its damage every second |
| Resonance | Unchanged | Sonar spreads to nearby enemies on a Weak Point kill |
| Savage Silence | Unchanged | Finishers on stunned enemies inside Silence deal bonus damage |
Sonic Siphon does not require a strip. The armour buff triggers on any enemy hit, even one with no armour at all, and any hit refreshes the full 20 seconds. The 1500 cap is fixed and Ability Strength does not raise it, though Strength does mean you reach the cap in fewer than 30 hits.
Gaseous Quake is the headline number
DE swapped base and augment. The base 4 is now the convenient one, and the augment is the old rooted channel with a damage multiplier bolted on.
- 200 Gas damage per second at max rank, in a 20m zone, with 1 to 5 Gas procs per hit.
- That damage is multiplied by 2.75x for every second you keep channelling, and the multiplier compounds.
- Cap is 24,736x after 10 seconds, which is roughly 4.95 million base damage per second before the Gas procs.
- Costs 100 energy up front, then 16 per second, and the drain compounds at 1.2x per second.
- Banshee is rooted and invulnerable while it runs, and the cloud lingers 6.25 seconds after you stop.
The catch that the dev workshop thread argued about for three weeks: Gaseous Quake requires line of sight, and the base Sound Quake does not. You can no longer park behind cover on a Defense fissure and delete the room. DE shipped it that way anyway.
Is she worth building now?
Yes, and not for the nuke. The three things that moved her are the cheap full armour strip, Silence shutting off enemy abilities in a 20m bubble, and Sonar charging Incarnons for the whole squad.
That last one is easy to undersell. Every Incarnon charges off Weak Point hits, and Banshee paints Weak Points on everything within 35m for 30 seconds, for the whole squad. No other frame does that.
We moved her from C to A on the Warframe tier list. Three days is not long enough to be sure of a placement, so treat that as a first read rather than a settled one.
How to get her free
- Log in any time between September 23 and October 7, cutoff 11:59pm ET on the 7th, for a free base Banshee and a built Forma.
- Already own her? Build the second one for Mastery or feed it to the Helminth. Silence is her subsumed ability.
- Her components also drop from the usual sources if you miss the window. See how to get Banshee.
- Banshee Prime is in Prime Resurgence. Parts and relics are on the Banshee Prime relic page.
- The Threnodia Collection deluxe skin, built from community artist Mischka’s concept art, is paid and is not part of the giveaway.
Hotfix 44.0.1 cleaned up script errors on Sound Quake and Sonic Boom the day after launch, so if you tried her on the 23rd and something looked broken, it was.