GNB cartridge infusions

For a class that's all about firing off aether infused magical rounds and weaving that between swordplay, I feel like it's a huge missed opportunity to give the player some means of granting various elemental infusions to their powder gauge especially when we already have skill descriptions showing we're capable of atleast harnessing - Aether/lifeforce leeching, lightning, curatives, shields, weaponized sound, fire/explosives, and light - letting us the player infuse our cartridges with a variety of elements for different effects added on to our spenders would spice up our gameplay and help solidify our class identity.

I can see them adding new combo enders that serve this purpose.

From an entirely speculative viewpoint, you could argue that GNB's kit is already utlilising other elemental cartridges.

Bow Shock and Lightning Shot are clearly using lightning aether. (blasting zone maybe too but thats just going off of what it looks like nothing solid)

Aurora is very clearly water based.

Heart of Stone could be tenously linked to be using earthen aether to make the barrier.

The only unaccounted obvious ones are Ice and Wind (although you could make a VERY tenuous relation that rough divide and maybe sonic break for wind but that is just pure conjecture)

We know that these abilities must come from the Gunblade itself as thancred can use them despite not being able to manipulate Aether, implying they must come from either cartridges or an innate property of the gunblade itself. The only hole in this is that thancred can use them without someone present in the party to make the cartridge for him, although that could be explained by him carrying around that ammo and not the fire aether ammo as he clearly has cartridges on him even when the other person isn't present in the party from reading his dialogue.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

From an entirely speculative viewpoint, you could argue that GNB's kit is already utlilising other elemental cartridges.

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Way back when we only had a picture and nothing else, I wanted nothing more than Gunbreaker to rotate through cartridges that inherently granted different properties.

It's a playstyle that isn't well represented, with the closest relative being Bard Songs.

I feel as though they would take advantage of this next expac to give it more. I was personally thinking of something along the lines of how DRG plays in a way that after you've executed a combo using a cartridge, it enters a new state that when filled with another cartridge, would perform a new, stronger combo in its place. At the same time, I never felt anything with a gunblade from FF was ever about the ammunition you use or firing off rounds. I'd rather GNB stay away form being that type of utility tank.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Way back when we only had a picture and nothing else, I wanted nothing more than Gunbreaker to rotate through cartridges that inherently granted different properties.

It's a playstyle that isn't well represented, with the closest relative being Bard Songs.

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Rotating stances would be interesting, heaven knows tanking needs a boost in mechanical engagement, but they'd have to give the other tanks equivocal features or else Gunbreaker would be even farther above them than it already is.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

We know that these abilities must come from the Gunblade itself as thancred can use them despite not being able to manipulate Aether, implying they must come from either cartridges or an innate property of the gunblade itself. The only hole in this is that thancred can use them without someone present in the party to make the cartridge for him, although that could be explained by him carrying around that ammo and not the fire aether ammo as he clearly has cartridges on him even when the other person isn't present in the party from reading his dialogue.

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Bit of a tangent, but:

This is obviously why the gunblade is the realms most superior weapon!

It's a sword, which is already rather useful on its own, but it seems to come with a built-in pseudo-vancian spell casting system. So long as you have the right cartridges to load in you can theoretically "cast" pretty much whatever you want.

Thancred, with no innate aether manipulation abilities, can produce explosions, shields, heals, and ranged lightning attacks. Obviously for gameplay reasons we're limited to the abilities we've got, but I don't recall seeing any lore reason that the cartridges couldn't be loaded with pretty much whatever spell you fancy, so long as the aether packed within can fuel it.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Bit of a tangent, but:

This is obviously why the gunblade is the realms most superior weapon!

It's a sword, which is already rather useful on its own, but it seems to come with a built-in pseudo-vancian spell casting system. So long as you have the right cartridges to load in you can theoretically "cast" pretty much whatever you want.

Thancred, with no innate aether manipulation abilities, can produce explosions, shields, heals, and ranged lightning attacks. Obviously for gameplay reasons we're limited to the abilities we've got, but I don't recall seeing any lore reason that the cartridges couldn't be loaded with pretty much whatever spell you fancy, so long as the aether packed within can fuel it.

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Now I'm just imagining a 3 minute cooldown where the Gunbreaker creates a target, and a spell can be cast upon it. The Gunbreaker then gets X uses of a special action that repeats the spell, where X is based upon a potency cap.