Outriders is a looter shooter game with great depth in terms of character customization, and how to play with weapons, gear, legendary items, mods, skills, and the passive tree. Players can choose from a set of four starting classes (Technomancer, Pyromancer, Trickster, or Devastator), each with its own set of skills, passive nodes on the tree, and mods. The build complexity is huge, and there are currently many ways players can actually shape how their characters behave and interact with the game's environment.
Some Outriders players may have a hard time discovering all the little details that these options can provide them with, and it is not easy to build a character properly from scratch. There are legendary items, mods, skill tree branches, and gear that can look good on paper, but then be sub-par or in-game. Vice versa, some of these options can oftentimes be overlooked, either because of the complexity of making builds combined with players emulating popular builds, or simply due to the lack of good RNG that allows gamers to find the stuff they really want or need.
Niche Combinations For The Firepower And Anomaly Power Trickster
Borrowed Time is a really good ability from the Trickster's set of skills, and it has very satisfying uses it can fulfill. The skill marks a location for around half a minute and provides the gamers with a nice Shield. The skill can be used again before going on cooldown, and what it does is teleporting the players back to the marked location. This is awesome both offensively and defensively, but above all, it comes with awesome mods. Among them, there is Death Shell, of course, which provides a lot of survivability; not only that but used in pair with the Chronosuit legendary set, reactivating Borrowed Time replenishes the magazine. This can be really good for the popular Twisted Rounds builds, for example.
Another great combo for the Trickster would be using Slow Trap with the Trespasser set bonus, while using Cyclone Slice as the main damaging skill. The Trespasser set states that players inside Slow Trap's bubble cannot die, so popping it and then activating Cyclone Slice in front of a boss or Elite is a great way to deal lots of damage while staying alive. The defensive boons could stack even more via Rebound, which is a Tier 3 mod that lets players reflect 50% of the incoming bullets while Cyclone Slice is active. An alternative would be using the Edge of Time set to increase Cyclone Slice's damage by 100%, at the cost of losing the Trespasser's immortality while in the bubble.
Furthermore, there is a mod that makes Cyclone Slice last 10 seconds longer (Ultimate Duration), which stacks with its lower-tier counterpart (Duration), providing a 5 seconds increase, for a total duration of 25 seconds. This works especially well with nodes like Countershield, Combat Shield's Timeline, and Altered Executioner, all augmenting significantly the players' Anomaly Power for Reaver Tricksters. In case players want to keep moving while using Cyclone Slice, then a great mod to have is Speed Up, which increases the character's movement speed by 25% while the skill is active.
Underused And Overlooked Technomancer Options
The Technomancer is mainly played as the Firepower Blighted Rounds variant thanks to its incredible damage output, but the class has so much more to offer than just that. There are several options to turn this class into something completely different than a weapon-based build, and most of them revolve around legendary items. One of them is the Torrential Downpour set, which revolves around Scrapnel—the first skill acquired by Technomancers but one of the least used.
With the set equipped, Scrapnel creates additional cluster explosions when it goes off, and it makes the skill even stronger with its signature Tier 3 mod called Trap Cluster. What this mod does is double the number of times Scrapnel can be used before going on cooldown, with a potential maximum of 6 uses with the mods More Traps and Supplies.
This makes the skill insane for clearing Expeditions, as its damage is AoE, and the set makes it create even more explosions. It synergizes well with both the bottom tree and the middle tree for the Technomancer, with the option to dabble in both being probably the best one. With enough Cooldown Reduction and Anomaly Power, Scrapnel can become a ridiculously strong skills.
The Borealis Monarch set is one that works pretty well with weapons, increasing weapon damage and critical damage, and it could be used in hybrid builds that use both Firepower and Anomaly Power, thanks to the Twins mod allowing for two Cryo Turrets to be active at once. A great node to grab with this build in mind is Overclocked, found in the Tech-Shaman middle tree, which increases both Weapon Damage and Anomaly Power by 40% when using a Gadget skill, and also providing a sort of second life if things go sideways. Using Blighted Turret and Cold Snap to support the Cryo Turret can result in enemies being permanently frozen, and also affected by Toxin and Vulnerable. Furthermore, grabbing both nodes called Marked for Execution makes Vulnerable enemies take 27% increased damage, up from 15%, and the Increase Damage mod makes both Cryo Turrets deal a lot more damage with each shot.
Untapped Potential For The Pyromancer
The Pyromancer is not seeing as much play as the Trickster and Technomancer, and that may be due to the lack of build diversity out there. Pyromancers also have access to a rounds-based ability, called Volcanic Rounds, which is the less popular of the bunch (with the Devastator not having a rounds-based skill at all). However, there are specific mods and sets that, combined with the skill tree, can make for very interesting build concepts for Pyromancers.
One of such options is to use the Reforged legendary set, which revolves around playing with Thermal Bomb, Feed the Flames, or both. The set bonus increases the damage by 50% for both skills, but the main one would be Thermal Bomb. It is a skill that interrupts a target, inflicts Burn, and if the enemy is killed while the skill is still active, it turns into a bomb and explodes. The concept of the skill is really nice, and the Reforged set comes with pretty good mods to top it off, including Branded (which makes enemies affected by Thermal Bomb receive 40% more damage), Double Fun (which makes Thermal Bomb affect two enemies at once), and Power Assimilation to get some extra Anomaly Power when Elites are present.
This build synergizes very well with the Pyromancer's bottom tree, the Tempest, and would probably benefit from going all the way up to grab the Incinerate node and the Hot Situation node. This inflicts Ash on all enemies when Burn ends, and grant 45% increased Anomaly Power when using an Immobilize skill, respectively.
The Pyromancer also has options to go hybrid, scaling both Firepower and Anomaly Power. A good option to do this is to wear the Torturer's set, which triples the size of Volcanic Rounds' damaging aura surrounding each bullet shot. This perk is super useful, considering how easy it is to inflict Burn on a lot of enemies this way, and it also works very nicely with Radiation Flames (a mod inflicting Weakness onto enemies damaged by Volcanic Rounds) and nodes from the tree, like Incinerate, Extinction, and Ashes to Ashes.
Alternative Ways To Take Advantage Of The Devastator's Skill Set
The Devastator was subject to discussion in terms of the role of tanks in Outriders, and how the Devastator usually dishes out low amounts of damage when doing Expeditions, solo or as a team. However, there are multiple choices for the Devastator to make it a very nice choice. It is one of the most gear-dependant classes in Outriders, though, so farming for its gear is advisable.
Devastators have seen big damage numbers with the Bleed Anomaly Power Seismic Shifter build, which has become quite popular. However, there are not many popular weapon-based Devastator builds because of how Armor works; in fact, enemies' Armor scales immensely in the end-game, and the Devastator is the only class out of the four that does not have rounds-based skills (which all ignore Armor by default, inflicting much higher damage numbers.) Regardless, the Devastator can be built with the Marshal's set -a legendary set that makes Endless Mass pull multiple enemies, making them share damage-, while also grabbing lots of Armor Piercing, as well as Close Range mods and nodes. Among these, the best mods to use together are:
- Shattered Armor (increasing Weapon Damage by 10% against enemies affected by Endless Mass), Wide Horizons (to pull more enemies with Endless Mass), Stare Into the Barrel (additional Firepower per enemy in Close Range), Personal Space (25% damage increase at Close Range), Introvert (increasing by 2 meters the range at which enemies are considered in Close Range), and Life of the Party (5% reduced damage taken per enemy in Close Range, up to 8).
These all work wonders with nodes like:
- Stone Circle (increasing the distance to be considered in Close Range by another 4 meters), Through the Mob (increasing Armor by 7% per enemy in Close Range), Heirloom Armor (gaining 20% of enemies' Armor when they die in Close Range), and then nodes like Shotgun Master, Champion, and Altered Charge to further increase Weapon Damage.
Outriders is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.