Eat your heart out, Squall.

Gunbreaker is one of Final Fantasy 14’s three tank classes. Added in the Shadowbringers expansion, the Gunbreaker class gives players the chance to wield the gunblade - a bladed weapon that can also fire magic shells for huge amounts of damage. This class utilises this power to provide incredible defense as the tank in party compositions.

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This stylish and exciting job can be easy to learn but hard to master, with a wide range of combo possibilities, defensive skills, and a huge range of utility in its kit. It’s also surprisingly accessible for those learning to tank for the first time and can be the perfect place to learn the fundamentals of tanking in Final Fantasy 14.

As with other classes added in expansion content, this class cannot be played from the beginning of the game. In order to unlock Gunbreaker, you must first have reached level 60 with any Disciple of War job and have paid for the Shadowbringers expansion.

After you’ve fulfilled these requirements, Gunbreaker can be unlocked by talking to the NPC God’s Quiver Bow in Central Shroud (X:19, Y:28). This will start the first Job Quest and after completion, unlock the Gunbreaker class, a set of Gunbreaker armour, and the Job Stone item. From this point onwards, the Gunbreaker Job Quests will continue with the NPC Radovan in a variety of locations (see ‘Job Quests’ section below).

As a tank class, the primary objective of Gunbreaker is to draw the attention (‘aggro’) of all enemies the party faces and take the majority of damage from these enemies. Simultaneously, the tank should also be dealing damage and utilising its defensive and self-healing skills to mitigate the amount of damage done overall.

Tanks control the pace of encounters in party-based content and the Gunbreaker is no different. The Gunbreaker in particular has several high damage combos suitable for single targets and multiple targets as well as a range of off-global cooldown defensive skills that can be employed to swiftly regain control of dangerous situations.

A good Gunbreaker should be reactive and quick-thinking, carefully considering all of their skills to deal damage, generate enmity and keep their defenses up in equal measure.

The Powder Gauge system for Gunbreaker isn’t particularly complicated but requires some explanation before we offer up recommendations on skills and rotations.

Like other tank job gauges, the center of this gauge is a symbol to indicate if your tank stance, Royal Guard, is on or off. The circle will glow red if it’s on. Generally speaking, it's ideal to keep this tank stance on in most encounters where you’re the primary tank. The one exception is when you’re in parties with multiple tanks and you are not the designated main tank.

Surrounding the light for the Royal Guard are three cartridge slots represented by three circles. These will be empty until you activate a skill such as Solid Barrel or Demon Slaughter, which in addition to doing damage will add a cartridge to your powder gauge. Each glowing blue circle represents one cartridge that can be spent on higher potency skills. Using the skill Continuation, you can chain together multiple cartridge expending skills in one long combo.

After engaging the Royal Guard tank stance and pulling the enemy, you’ll want to begin engaging the Gunbreaker’s basic damage rotation and getting cartridges ready for more damaging attacks. To do this, all you’ll need to do is a basic three-button combo: this begins with Keen Edge, continues with Brutal Shell, and finishes with Solid Barrel, which will give you one cartridge to spend.

Shortly after beginning combat, you’ll want to engage the ability No Mercy. This is an incredibly useful buff that ensures your attacks do 20 percent more damage. Activate this on cooldown whenever available to keep it active. Ideally, you’ll want to time this to get the most amount of actions within the window of the buff being active.

Outside the skills mentioned in these three essential combos, there are a few other weapon skills on the global cooldown that can be used mid-combo or to spend cartridges.

It’s important to note that Sonic Break, Burst Strike, and Fated Circle do not interrupt the basic single-target three-button combo, and therefore can be incorporated throughout the rotation.

Double Down is Gunbreaker’s huge damage attack, unlocked at level 90. For two cartridges, you can do an attack to all nearby enemies that deals an incredible 1,200 potency for the first enemy it hits and 20 percent less for each enemy it hits after that.

There are also a number of defensive and offensive abilities that Gunbreaker can apply to bolster their tanking capabilities without using the global cooldown, in addition to a variety of utility skills for specific situations. Some of these are Role Actions, meaning they are shared with other tank jobs.

As with other jobs, you’ll need to complete a few Job Quests between levels 60 and 80 to get key items and unlock certain essential skills. These are vital to complete to have the complete range of skills available for the job. Most of these quests will be offered by Radovan in various locations.

As with other tanks, the Gunbreaker uses ‘of Fending’ gear. This type of gear will increase the stats Strength and Vitality as a priority, which will increase your damage and HP respectively.

When it comes to melding materia for Gunbreaker, you’re going to want to go for materia that increases Critical Hit, Skill Speed, and Direct Hit. If you can get an even balance of all three, that’s great, but if you need to prioritise, Critical Hit is always a safe bet for this class.

Next: Final Fantasy 14 - Complete Guide To Playing Monk

Adam is a Guides Writer for TheGamer. They are also a marketing professional and freelance writer in the UK. They are a huge fan of JRPGs, cooking and cute dogs.