The Kestrel is a Tenno melee weapon of the Glaive family, but it’s not really a Glaive. It’s a boomerang. If you’ve ever seen the Mad Max movies, then you know how awesome metal boomerangs can be. The Kestrel, though, has the added bonus of bouncing off walls and knocking down enemies, so I personally find it a little more fun than most Glaives, although it is not as powerful as some…As with all thrown melees, using channeling after throwing the weapon will cause an explosion.
How to Acquire
The Kestrel Blueprint can be purchased from the Market for 20,000 credits, and thankfully, it has no Mastery requirement, so you can purchase it whenever you like. The resource requirements aren’t buried in the Star Chart either, so it comes recommended as an early game Melee.
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Credits 15,000 -
Morphics 8 -
Ferrite 4,800 -
Nano Spores 5,000 -
Salvage 4,000
Stats by Variant
The Kestrel’s base stats are… not great, to be honest. That said, it’s thrown attack has much better Damage stats – including Blast and a guaranteed Impact proc, providing knockdown at a distance of up to 30m. An additional bonus is that it can be dual wielded with single handed weapons, which is my favourite way to use this weapon. Still, when thrown you are left without a melee weapon, which is not ideal.
Crit or Status?
Sadly, the Kestrel has fairly low stats on both fronts, with only 10% Crit and Status Chance (12% on Charged attacks, which still isn’t great). Personally, I’d build for flat Damage, but be aware that the Blast proc from the charged explosion does cause self Damage.
The Kestrel is fun to use, particularly with a single-handed Secondary, but it’s stats aren’t going to set the world on fire. It certainly isn’t going to scale anywhere near end game, but if you just want a fun thrown weapon for low to mid tier challenges, you won’t go wrong with the Kestrel.
Greg
