A mediocre Photon Art evolves into an okay Photon Art. Kestrel Rampage Type-0 is a situationally useful addition to Dual Blades’ arsenal.
The recipe changes Kestrel Rampage to scale with Gear gauge. For Dual Blades, the difference between no Gear and full Gear is a single Heavenly Kite, so that’s not much of a problem.
The Gear scaling is quite significant. 1.5 years ago I needed Gu/Bo with 30-Chain to hit 17k on Kestrel Rampage. Since then there’s been 13★, easier affixing, title bonus and two buffs to Kestrel Rampage. That all adds up for Kestrel Rampage Type-0 to hit over 17k without Chain. The power creep is real.
The new Kestrel Rampage seems to have been sped up to 195F based on Sony Movie Studio’s frame by frame stepping, so that’s about 5% faster. Each hit seems to be around 30% of an Immortal Dove, so I’d ballpark the Gear 3 damage at 2.5x the Power rating, or 5960. That gives approximately 1834 power/second. 27% higher than Immortal Dove spam.
The blades are also 27% bigger it seems.
The downsides are that the blade rain is still as slow as ever, and it needs PP management since it empties the Gear gauge. Can’t press Shift for herp derp 18PP return. It’s a fairly steep PP payment of 65 to 85 PP too, depending on whether Dove needs to come in for positioning after Heavenly Kite.
So Kestrel’s new Vinto mechanic suffers from the exact same issues as Jet Boots’ Vinto. On paper, the DPS is high. If used for short bursts, it’s pretty great in fact. But steep PP management causes problems with sustain.
The main use I can think of for the new craft are for bosses that fly around or otherwise are difficult to hit, such as Train Ghidoran. Build Gear then wait for it to expose its weak point and unload. Second use is for Gu/Bo to make a comeback with Yoi v2 and Chain Kestrel.
I’m not sold on the latter though. Even if I wanted to Gu/Bo for free healing or something, I could… use Austere TMGs and get better results than Yoi v2 TCPBF Chain Kestrel at 20-Chain, with much less hassle. The power creep is real, not just for Dual Blades:
