FF14 player and content creator ‘SuperLouis64’ has done it again, this time taking the Gunbreaker class from Square Enix’s MMORPG, turning it into a real-life prop, and playing through dungeons with it. So if you thought managing any of your Tank rotations across all of what Eorzea already has to offer was hard enough, you’ve seen nothing yet. Yes, the Gunbreaker has just been ‘nerfed’ (I’m so sorry).
Twitch streamer and YouTuber Louis Hamilton is known for playing videogames in the greatest ways possible, with Final Fantasy XIV one of the games he keeps coming back to. While I’m still out here trying to get to grips with the Red Mage in Square Enix’s MMORPG, Hamilton has once again cooked up a custom controller, this time making a Nerf Gunbreaker’s Arm, because why not?
Hamilton has already played FFXIV with a Nerf bow, ran across Eorzea with a Ring Fit controller, and even played Overwatch with one too, so he’s no stranger to making games much harder for himself. I can’t help but respect that.
Using a combination of 3D printing, a Nerf gun, sensors, and a lot of ingenuity, Hamilton was able to both swing the Gunblade for melee attacks and shoot Nerf bullets for ranged attacks too. It’s simple, you “Use Motion Controls for melee abilities and shoot targets with nerf darts to activate more.”
Once the Nerf gun and blade printout were connected Hamilton made what he calls “a very cheap Wiimote,” where sensors would read the types of swings he does and correspond them with specific moves on his hotbar in the game. For the Nerf gun part of the build, the foam bullets would hit a surface attached to a sensor that reads vibrations, which would then correspond to even more hotbar moves that relate to the Gunbreaker’s shooting ability. Hamilton then built four cardboard box sensors for the different abilities and labeled them so he’d know which to shoot for each ability.
As Hamilton says himself though, the Tank has a lot of responsibilities in a dungeon run, and the last thing the party wants is their Tank scrambling around on the floor because they ran out of Nerf darts. Now, you might be thinking about all the Tank actions this can’t do because of the limitations of the build, which Hamilton says is “a really good question for future Louis.”
One of these problems comes in the form of Superbolide, a Gunbreaker ability that reduces HP to one while making you impervious to most attacks for ten seconds – a staple for any good tank that wants to keep their team safe. Hamilton’s solution to the problem of making this work in real life is a simple one: shoot himself in the head with a Nerf dart.
Now that the IRL Gunbreaker is ready to go, Hamilton takes the build into the Duty Finder with NPCs before going into Duty Roulette with actual players. As you’d probably imagine, Hamilton’s biggest problem is running out of ammo for his moves, even if the rotation actually ends up being pretty solid.
If Hamilton’s work has you itching to dive back into Eorzea we’ve got you covered with all you need to know about the FFXIV Dawntrail release date, the new Viper job, and a robust FFXIV classes guide if you’re looking for something new.
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