First of all, the gradient is an interesting pattern in its own right. By itself it's rather bland, which is also true for Perlin noise in general, but you can use any component of the gradient, or some combination of components, like the length of the gradient or its angle, as a term or factor in color mixing. By themselves, the x and y components of the gradient are somewhat directional and have a more "wormy" look to them than the noise value, and for some procedural patterns that might be what you are looking for. Procedural texturing is not about "what's right", it's about what "looks good", so don't be afraid to try some wild ideas!
However, the really fun stuff starts to happen once we do some math with the gradient vector.
// Text in this pane will be dynamically replaced.