I bought the cascade link to try to solve these issues I was having with the AF:

• Not plush enough for comfortable park duty
• Not supportive enough for big hits like moderate drops to flat-ish landings.

I'm a 190-200 lb intermediate rider. I race Enduro casually and the places I travel to most often are Snowshoe WV and Marquette MI. I was running about 200 PSI with the stock link and bumped it up to I think ~215 with the cascade (as is recommended).

My other bike is a specialized status 160, which is, in my opinion, a much better "park rig". It's enough travel to not get beat up on a multi day park trip. I was trying to reduce to a 1 bike quiver.

My feeling is that the cascade link completely took away harsh bottom outs on anything I'm willing to hit. I was still able to occasionally use full travel, but I wasn't slamming into the end hard enough to compromise control over the bike. It was also softer off the top, but not by enough to turn it into a "comfortable park rig" or replace my status. My biggest complaint though is that it did take it from a "brilliantly awesome efficient pedaling bike" into an "good/average pedaling bike". I will note that I'm fairly sensitive to pedaling efficiency, so others may not mind or notice to the extent that I did. However to me the DW link efficiency is part of the reason you buy a Ripmo (or any Ibis) in the first place.

Admittedly even cascade components suggests that riders usually exhaust other tuning options before buying their stuff. I had played around with compression dials and shock pressure a fair amount, but I have not changed the volume spacer. I was looking at whether to try the link or a larger spacer next, and ended up going for the link because it was shinier, or something. Ultimately the spacer might be the solution I wind up liking more (keep the pedaling efficiency but improve bottom out resistance, at the expense of the inconsequentially better off the top sensitivity that the cascade link provides). There's also the potential to put the stock link back and keep the cascade link for situations that warrant it; it doesn't take that long to swap out the link.

Anyway, thought I'd post my thoughts on this product and see if others came to the same conclusions.

Edited to add: My AF is the 2023 model with the Bomber air shock. It would certainly be interesting to try it with a coil but I'm not really wanting to spend any more on mtb right now.