Weapon Burst — your weapon casts now

This one shipped a few patches ago and never got its own post, so here it is properly: Weapon Burst, a new augment class that makes your weapon cast spells while you swing it.

What a Weapon Burst does

Put one on a weapon and every attack round it has a chance to fire a spell at whatever you're fighting. Not a proc animation with a damage number stapled on — a real cast: real spell damage, real resists, real enmity, and if it lands inside a skillchain window it can magic burst like any other nuke. The roll itself is doubled while the target is holding a skillchain, so bursts love a squad that chains.

The rate is normalized by weapon delay. A dagger rolls more often but cooler, a greatsword rolls hotter — every weapon lands about the same procs per minute, so no weapon class is the "burst weapon."

Rules worth knowing up front:

• One Weapon Burst per weapon. The shop refuses a second — though you can swap the element in the slot your burst already holds.
• Wielded weapons only: main hand, off hand, or ranged. Never ammo, never anything stackable.
• Main, off hand, and ranged each roll, but at most one burst resolves per round.
• Your squad members' weapons burst too — alt-trusts inherit their gear, augments included.

The ten bursts

Six elemental tables, each casting its element's tier I through IV (about a 38% window per round, weighted heavily toward the lower tiers):

• Weapon Burst: Fire, Ice, Wind, Earth, Thunder, Water

Two split tables casting tier II of three elements at once (30%):

• Weapon Burst: Light — Fire II, Thunder II, or Aero II
• Weapon Burst: Dark — Stone II, Water II, or Blizzard II

And two utility tables:

• Weapon Burst: Shield (40%) — Blink, Stoneskin, Aquaveil, or Haste, cast on you
• Weapon Burst: Enfeeble (60%) — Poison, Blind, Paralyze, or Slow on the enemy

How you earn one

The currency is Burst Tokens, and the Gauntlet pays them. Gather up to 18 players (or your squad), type /arena, and climb: fifty floors of rising enemies, and clearing floor N pays every real player inside N Burst Tokens — plus 160 EXP and 120 capacity points a floor. A full 50-floor clear is worth 1,275 tokens, 204,000 EXP, and 153,000 capacity points. Dying costs nothing; leaving costs a 15-minute lockout before you can re-enter.

Every burst costs the same: 5,000 Burst Tokens plus 1,000 Drift Coins — roughly four deep arena runs. They sit on a permanent shelf below the rotating daily offers on the Drift Exchange: open /quests and hit the Exchange tab, or typed:

• !drift exchange — see the shelf and your token balance
• !drift augment b1 Ridill — quote a Fire burst onto a weapon, then confirm

One honest caveat

The native item menu doesn't know custom augment names, so examining the weapon raw shows an augment number instead of "Weapon Burst: Fire." The /quests window names it properly, and /bags learns the names in the next content patch.

Go make your greatsword a mage.