Man alive, I feel rotten about this. Seriously, just awful. MOP’s Chris, whom I consider a friend and also just an excellent dude in his own right, gets to step forward and take his new day-to-day role running the site more seriously, coincides with the week when I have to say “hey, can I ruin my usual column schedule and get something into you way, way too late?” It’s to his credit that he went along with it. I would have kicked me in the shins.
But, of course, I had to do things this way because we onlyjust got to find out all of the details aboutWarframe’s next update, Iceblade of Narin. And could I avoid talking about the update? Of course not. We’ve got a lot going on here! And as you might expect, I’m going to start by focusing in on… the Banshee rework, not any of the story implications or anything else. Yes, that’s what stood out to me first. I have never claimed to be consistent.
Honestly, I was curious what tactic the Banshee rework would use from the beginning, just because she’s got a kind of inherently problematic kit in some ways. It’s not that everything she has is bad, it’s that the good parts don’t balance out the bad. Which means that I feel like the two biggest changes – her passive and Sonar – are probably enough to help push her upward in viability while keeping her inherent properties intact.
Seriously, making good use of Puncture traits and the existing spread of weak point-based mechanics mean that Banshee is likely to hit some appreciable crit numbers with the right kinds of weapons without redesigning her too heavily. The changes to her blast attack and her quake are welcome changes too, although I suspect it won’t be enough to change how her 4 is generally seen as the best slot to subsume something else. I think it’s a bit of a conservative rework, but I also think it’s a good move to give her more playability and strength without radically redesigning her kit, and adding some armor strip/steal helps a bit with survival and offense as well.
These reworks are always difficult to land perfectly, since you want to keep the frame recognizable while also giving some good abilities along the way. I’m looking forward to playing around with it.
Narin herself, meanwhile, looks like she’s going to be an interesting sort of offensive support. It wasn’t mentioned (that I saw) if her second ability that sucks up Cold effects will apply overguard to her or to the rest of her squad as well; either makes sense, but the former especially makes her much more of a forward scout and enhancer sort. She seems well-suited to tune for a sort of offensive boost role with her status effects and cold ammo along the way, let’s say that.
This is not exactly a new concept inWarframe, but I’m happy to see it getting embraced a bit more and developed in more detail, and Narin looks like a fun variant on the concept. Also a relatively simple frame to understand, which is definitely nice after Sirius and Orion were… well, let’s just say they werenot that.
It’s also easy enough to understand why the new six-person missions are being started with pre-made groups, even though I have already seen much wailing and gnashing of teeth on this matter. And to be clear, I don’t think it’s without merit. People are mad because being able to queue up and go is a major componentof this game; finding out you can’t do that here is a pretty big deal and does not send the best message. That having been said, adding two more people is a major force multiplier because of how the game works, so I also don’t exactly blame developers for saying “let’s test this out before throwing the doors open.”
At the same time… like, I feel like it’s going to be hard to get a whole lot of data on this one just becauseWarframe is not a game with a robust in-game means of finding other people. Folks who already have abundant lists of friends can get a group together for this, but if it’s going to be super-hardcore, there just isn’t a massive groundswell. There also just isn’t as much demand. It’s a strange pull, in part because it adds on to a long list of missions where I have to wonder what the impetus was and what the win state looks like for the implementation.
I’m also a bit curious as to what the connection is between Melica and everything else. The Zariman isn’t exactly devoid of reasons to go back at this point. Did we need more missions there? Or is this more a case where we’re going to have things calling back to it anyway as we head to Tau, so this was a case where two birds made more sense to target with a single stone?
The Riven changes are, to my mind,insanely welcome. Even just being able to lock a single stat makes the mods more appealing, since otherwise the amount of resources you need to produce a viable option can be insane; having some stats you can mash together is so much the better. I expect to be working overtime to get more Rivens now, something I have traditionally felt was too much work for not necessarily as much payoff. (Not that they can’t be good, just that they tend to be… well, a lot of rerolls to maybe get something good.) I’m curious about the Splicer rewards, as I imagine they’re tied to the currency used for Narin herself and we don’t know a heck of a lot about that right now.
Obviously, this all means it’s going to be a kind of long and quiet September for players as we wait for the update to arrive, but that’s also part of what Plague Star was obviously meant to mitigate. (I had kind of guessed the 23rd once I saw Plague Star’s runtime.) If I have any big criticisms, it’s just that this does ultimately fall into a similar place as what I had criticized the game for in 2026 a few weeks ago, where we get very little new repeatable content. Sure, there’s the new mission type, but requiring a pre-made group of six means that even if it’s one of the most fun game modes in the game’s history, the challenge level and difficulty in assembling a group will make it harder to queue up for repeatedly.
Is that a crucial flaw? No, this looks like a good update with new things to play, and that’s going to probably pull it up. It looks more substantive to me than the last few additions did, including Jade Shadows: Constellations. But it also makes me very eager for Tau and (presumably) completely new mission nodes along the way. This, at least, will soften the wait.
Pick a ‘Frame, any ‘Frame! The Warframe galaxy is in danger, Tenno, and Space Mom needs help to combat it. Are you in the right Warframe of Mind to join in? The MOP writers have enlisted, suiting up in their favorite ‘Frames to fight the good fight, blasting the Grineer and Infected into smithereens.
