Kestrel

Tenno

Weapons

CONCLAVE (PvP)

Kestrel

Untradeable

📝 Update Infobox Data

General Information

Max Rank

30

Utility

Normal Attack

58.8
( 70%)

12.6
( 15%)

Throw

73.6
( 80%)

9.2
( 10%)

Projectile Type

Thrown

Throw Bounce Explosion

126
( 100%)

Projectile Type

AoE

Throw Recall Explosion

252
( 100%)

Projectile Type

AoE

Charged Throw

147.2
( 80%)

18.4
( 10%)

Projectile Type

Thrown

Charged Throw Bounce Explosion

252
( 100%)

Projectile Type

AoE

Charged Throw Recall Explosion

504
( 100%)

Projectile Type

AoE

Heavy Attack

Radial Damage

336

Slam Radius

6.0 m

Slam Attack

Slam Radius

5.0 m

Radial Damage

84

Slide Attack

Miscellaneous

Introduced

Update 8.1 (2013-06-07)

Sell Price

5,000

Variants

Vendor Sources

Article Categories

CODEX

The Kestrel boomerang is a heavy throwing weapon that can knock down enemies at a distance.

The Kestrel is a melee throwing weapon similar to the Glaive, capable of bouncing off surfaces when thrown. Unlike the Glaive, the Kestrel can knock down any opponents that it hits at range.

Manufacturing Requirements 📝 Edit blueprint requirements
15,000	8	4,800	5,000	4,000	Time: 12 Hour(s)
15,000	8	4,800	5,000	4,000	Rush: 50
Market Price: 150			Blueprints Price:20,000

This weapon can be sold for 5,000 Credits 5,000.

Characteristics

This weapon deals primarily Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage.

Advantages

High Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage – effective against shields.
Slam Attacks have innate Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage – effective against Shielded and Proto Shields.
Possesses momentum during regular swings, which resists interruption such as stagger or knockdown.
Heavy Attack throws the glaive, which can bounce up three times or travels up to 30 meters before returning to the user, damaging anyone in its path.
- Thrown glaive has innate Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage – effective against Machinery and Robotics.
- Thrown glaive has a guaranteed Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. proc.
- Thrown glaive has good critical chance and status chance.
- Thrown glaive has above average critical multiplier.
- Primary and secondary weapons can be fired and reloaded can be used normally with a thrown glaive, and retrieving the glaive does not interrupt these actions.
- Thrown glaive is silent.
- Glaive can explode mid-flight by pressing the melee button which also forces a return.
Can be wielded in-tandem with a single-handed secondary weapon.
Can use the Kestrel-exclusive Entropy Flight mod.
Innate Script error: The function "Pol" does not exist. and Script error: The function "Pol" does not exist. polarities.

Disadvantages

Tied with Halikar for the lowest base damage of all Glaives.
- Low Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. and Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage, less effective against armor and health.
Slam Attacks have innate Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage – less effective against Alloy Armor.
Thrown glaive has innate Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. damage – less effective against Ferrite Armor and Infested Sinew.
Low melee critical chance and status chance.
Cannot use melee attacks while the glaive is in mid-flight.
Explosion inflicts self-stagger.
Explosion has linear damage falloff from 100% to 50% from central impact.

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Tips

When equipping the Kestrel, the player can throw it and then press the melee button to detonate the Kestrel, dealing high AoE damage and returns to the player immediately. This is true for all thrown melee weapons.
- This is very useful for regenerating health with Life Strike.
- It can explode in this manner when not equipped and thrown, but the explosion timing cannot be controlled and will often damage the user in close quarters.
- It should be however noted that finisher attacks can still be executed while the weapon is in the air.
The Ground Finisher's bleed proc damage is based on the Ground Finisher damage (which is 30 * 400% = 120 damage without mods). Therefore, the bleed damage can be increased with anything which affects the Ground Finisher, including the Finishing Touch mod.
- For example, a Kestrel without any mods will deal 42 damage (= 120 * 35%) per bleed tick. With only a fully levelled Finishing Touch, this is increased to 67 damage and to 100 damage while channeling.
- Because bleed damage ignores shields, the Kestrel's Ground Finisher can be made into a potent attack against Corpus, especially when combined Script error: The function "Proc" does not exist. elemental mods.
With Entropy Flight unique to it and Whirlwind, the Kestrel can attain a higher flight speed than any other thrown melee weapon with Whirlwind. This also indirectly increases its maximum range.

Notes

When used on a boss they can be permanently stunlocked if a Dethcube is firing at it, causing it to reset the recovery animation. This is fixed by shooting him directly.
Can hit theoretically infinite targets on return.
Like with other thrown weapons, using Whirlwind on the Kestrel will increase flight speed as well as distance traveled, because the flight time is constant. A fully leveled Whirlwind will increase the maximum distance to ~63m.
When not in use, the Kestrel sheaths under your right arm.
Ragdolled enemies' health and shield bars are also concealed while ragdolled. Although they usually display damage indicators while ragdolled, sometimes they will not display if you are not the host - giving the impression that the enemy is invulnerable (not the case).
Sometimes it will continuously fly around its user in a circular path indefinitely after bouncing off at least 2 objects, such as two adjacent walls, if the user stands back and stays still afterwards. (Possibly intended but its exact mechanics are unknown, however, Rebound and Whirlwind were installed when this was discovered.)
- Simply installing a max rank Entropy Flight mod will also cause this. The Kestrel is considered flying on a return path the entire time, so it punches through everything it hits. If the player moves too quickly, they will catch the Kestrel; however, if it is carefully maintained, it can continually fly around the player and deal large amounts of damage to everyone in the vicinity.
- High flight speed, which causes this orbiting behavior, does carry some risk, as a current bug can cause the thrown weapon to disappear, disabling melee for the rest of the level or until the player has died & revived.

Trivia

The Kestrel is a carnivorous bird in the falcon family known for hovering.
The Kestrel shares the same sheath style with the other thrown melee weapons, where they retract and attach under the right forearm.

Media

Kestrel in arm sheath
Kestrel with Radiation damage

Warframe Kestrel

Kestrel Skins

Edit

Patch History

Hotfix 27.2.2 (2020-03-06)
Reduced the following AoE weapons Radial Damage Falloff from central impact that were all previously 90%:

Kestrel: 50%

Update 27.2 (2020-03-05)

Self Damage Changes

We are getting rid of Self Damage and replacing it with something else: instead of Self Damage, it’s now ‘Stagger’. This change completely removes the chance of killing yourself, and instead now creates scenarios where you will interrupt yourself - or ‘Stagger’ - to varying degrees if you aren’t careful.

The degrees of Self-Interrupt start with a small stumble all the way to full knockdown depending on how close you are to the center of explosion. Any Mods referring to Self Damage will be converted to acknowledge Stagger.

With this Self-Interrupt system, we have added dozens of new recovery animations that harness a ninja-like recovery experience. By pressing ‘Jump’ at the correct time, you can execute a ninja-skill-based knockdown recovery to ALL in-game knockdowns. This ninja recovery window is indicated by a glowing FX on your Warframe.

In the original Dev Workshop, we said:
As a result of this overall systemic change, Weapons with Stagger will be getting approximately a 20% buff in Damage, with any weapons with AOE receiving a 50% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact.

This is no longer accurate after continued testing. What we are doing now is:

No damage buffs have been added, but any weapons with AOE are receiving ~20% increase in Radius. Additionally, AOE weapons are receiving a 90% Radial Damage Falloff from central impact. This means on the very outer section of the explosion Radius 10% of the Damage will be dealt. Tactics will be deadly - aim true, Tenno.

Why: Several players brought up the history of the Tonkor and we want to make sure we ship this change in a place that’s conservative in its starting point from a balance perspective. The complete removal of Self Damage does change the pace of destruction with some of the game’s most powerful weapons, so we want to make sure we can iterate upwardly instead of releasing a bonanza of explosions with no other choices.

Update 26.0 (2019-10-31)
As a general note, self damage has been removed from Glaive power throws. As this decision made it through the testing pipeline, some mentioned this impacts a specific Chroma interaction, but positively impacts 41 other Warframes.

Damage increased from 35 to 84.
Range increased from 0.5 to 1.2.
Slam Attack increased from 70 to 252.
Slide Attack decreased from 175 to 168.
Parry Angle set to 55.
Follow Through increased from 0.5 to 0.7.

Hotfix 24.5.3 (2019-03-19)

Changed the Glaive recall to be done with Melee instead of Melee Channel so its consistent again (Channel being a toggle-only messed up this function).
Fixed an error where, after Dual-Wielding gun and Glaive, throwing the Glaive in the "normal" Melee only mode could result in a turbo throw that is only supposed to apply for Dual-Wield.

Update 22.12 (2018-02-09)

Updates and sound additions to one handed secondaries when using Glaive type weapons.

Update 21.0 (2017-06-29)

Increased critical chance from 5% to 10% for Melee hits and projectiles.
Increased damage from 30 to 35.
Increased Crit Multiplier from 1.5 to 2.
Fixed issues with Glaive-style weapons being thrown through walls.

Update 19.4.2 (2016-12-20)

Fixed a crash that could occur when Glaives and similar Weapons hit ragdolled enemies.

Hotfix 19.0.7 (2016-11-22)

Reduced the Channeled explosion damage and radius of all Glaive weapons in Conclave.
Increased projectile damage of Kestrel in Conclave.

Update: The Index Preview (2016-10-20)

Removed auto-targeting of Kestrel in Conclave.
Fixed Glaive type weapons with increased flight speed 'orbiting' players when attempting to recall it by channeling.

Hotfix: Specters of the Rail 0.1 (2016-07-08)

Fixed an instance of Glaive weapons causing the game to crash.

Update 17.9.1 (2015-10-29)

Fixed Glaive weapons not appearing for melee stealth attacks.

Update 17.5 (2015-10-01)

Reduced the radius of channeled explosions from Glaive projectiles in PvP.

Hotfix 17.0.3 (2015-08-04)

Fixed the Redeemer and Glaive weapons being unable to do a charge attack when the player had a fast enough attack speed.

Hotfix 16.5.1 (2015-05-12)

Fixed an issue causing Glaive weapons not to appear as full size when viewed in the Codex.

Update 16.5 (2015-05-12)

The Kestrel now available for use in Conclave.

Update 15.0 (2014-10-24)

Fixed an issue with Glaives/boomerangs staying scaled down/weapon trails off if you attack during the previous attack scaling down.

Update 14.8 (2014-09-24)

Fixed an issue with thrown melee weapons (Kestrel) losing weapon functionality if they perform a ground slam attack when they are already close to the ground while in melee mode.

Update 14.0 (2014-07-18)