Prime Unvaulting: Banshee and Mirage Primes (2020)

An all-new Unvaulting this time around, Banshee and Mirage Primes. This Unvault will replace the current one (Ember + Frost) on December 15th/16th depending on your time zone.

Banshee Prime comes with Euphona and Helios Primes. Banshee is a sound-themed Warframe. With a variety of powerful offensive capabilities, but little in the way of survivability, Banshee is a great example of a glass cannon in Warframe.

Sonic Boom (1) sends forward a wave that ragdolls affected enemies, pushing them away. Sonar (2) creates weakspots on nearby enemies that massively increase damage dealt to those spots. Silence (3) creates a zone around Banshee that momentarily stuns enemies, disables their abilities, and prevents them from hearing anything. Sound Quake (4) plants Banshee on the ground, creating a zone that deals damage to enemies, constantly staggering them and pushing them back.

Banshee has a set of extremely potent Augments. Sonic Fracture (1) temporarily reduces the armour of enemies hit by Sonic Boom. Resonance (2) causes an automatic Sonar recast when an enemy is killed by hitting a Sonar spot on them. Savage Silence (3) massively increases Finisher damage dealt to enemies affected by Silence. Resonating Quake (4) changes Sound Quake entirely, emanating a single shockwave rather than planting Banshee to the ground. This wave deals massively increased damage with a much larger range, but its damage decreases with distance.

Banshee Prime has increased Armour, Energy and Sprint Speed compared to regular Banshee. Overall, Banshee is an ideal Warframe for players who enjoy high-risk, high-reward gameplay. She is very fragile and takes skill and experience (and/or exploitation of certain game mechanics) to keep alive, but also offers some of the largest damage multipliers in the game for those who can handle her.

Euphona Prime is a powerful but slow Semi-Auto MR14 Secondary. Its Primary Fire fires slugs with extremely high base Damage and Crit, but almost no Status Chance. It is very effective at dealing high single-target damage. Secondary Fire instead fires a spread of pellets with good Status Chance, but minimal Crit. It is only effective at point-blank range, with very wide pellet spread and horrendous damage fall-off, dealing a mere 1.14% beyond 12m. Though undeniably very powerful, the EuphonaP faces stiff competition and powercreep from much more balanced weapons like a Tombfinger Kitgun Secondary, or the newer Sepulcrum.

Helios Prime is an upgraded version of the Helios Sentinel, with increased Health and Armour, as well as an upgraded Deconstructor Prime. Helios is a Sentinel extremely useful for completing your Codex, as its default Precept, Investigator, will automatically scan objects that do not have complete Codex entries. Deconstructor Prime is one of the stronger Sentinel weapons, dealing fairly high damage-per-shot, however can only be used by Helios (Prime).

Mirage comes with Akbolto and Kogake Primes. Mirage is a light- and illusion- themed Warframe, with an odd and at times wonky, but extremely powerful ability set.

Hall of Mirrors (1) creates a number of mirror images of Mirage who surround her, copying her attacks though dealing reduced damage. These mirror images also draw enemy fire away from Mirage herself. Sleight of Hand (2) creates jewels that draw in enemies before exploding, either dealing a little damage or blinding them. Additionally, a large number of nearby objects including Arc Traps, containers, pickups and lockers are turned into friendly traps, affecting enemies instead. Eclipse (3) provides either a massive weapon damage multiplier, or very high Damage Reduction depending on whether Mirage is in light or shadow respectively. Prism (4) throws forward a disco ball, damaging a large number of nearby enemies within line of sight. When deactivated, it will blind all nearby enemies with line of sight to it.

Mirage also has access to a number of solid Augments. Hall of Malevolence (1) increases the damage dealt by her mirror images as more kills are achieved. Explosive Legerdemain (2) causes all affected pickups to turn into proximity mines, instead of just some randomly exploding. Total Eclipse (3) grants nearby allies the full effects of Eclipse. Prism Guard (4) is an originally PvP-only Augment that causes Prism to follow above Mirage with a short duration, rather than floating around randomly and draining energy-over-time.

Mirage Prime has increased Shields and Armour over regular Mirage. Mirage can be somewhat wonky to use with her light vs shadow mechanics, but she is undeniably an extremely powerful weapons platform. Alternatively, against a high density of lower level enemies, she can also be built as quite an effective room clearer.

Akbolto Prime is a Semi-Auto MR13 Dual Secondary. It has fantastic Crit while still maintaining a solid Status Chance. Fairly fast firing with decent Mag Capacity and short Reload Time, it is overall quite a powerful weapon with one major caveat. As a Semi-Auto weapon, you need to be clicking rapidly to get peak DPS out of it, which with a base RoF of 7 (11.2 with Lethal Torrent), is quite difficult to sustain with any semblance of accuracy. As such, though its on-paper DPS is very high, in-practice it can be quite difficult to get the most out of it (at least without a macro). There are a number of other weapons which, though perhaps weaker, are much easier to use.

Kogake Prime is an MR10 Sparring Melee. It has the highest base Damage and Status Chance of all Sparring Melees, as well as granting the user slightly increased movement speed. Its Crit Multiplier is below-average, though still usable. It faces competition primarily from the Prisma Obex, which has lower base Damage and Status Chance, but much higher Attack Speed and Crit.

If I were to prioritise the items in this Unvault, I would order them as such:

1. Mirage Prime - a Warframe who is very strong and relatively easy to build for.
2. Banshee Prime - though she can be difficult to handle especially at higher levels, she is unarguably the strongest weapon damage amplifier in the game, and greatly rewards skillful players.
3. Helios Prime - a tougher version of a useful Sentinel, and comes with one of the better Sentinel weapons.
4. Euphona/Akbolto/Kogake Primes - all are strong weapons but also all face rather stiff competition. Which you should prioritise will rely primarily on personal preference.