Outriders Classes and Roles: A Beginners Guide

If you don’t know which class you want to try first in Outriders you are in the right place. This guide’s focus is on condensing the information on the existing Outriders classes into one helpful resource. We’ll be talking about the strengths of each class and generally cover what they’re capable of as well as a show you a few quick Builds!

Outriders features four classes: The Devastator, The Pyromancer, The Technomancer and the The Trickster. While there are some overlaps in what each class can do in terms of traditional RPG-like roles, they will handle differently from class to class.

While we do talk about it here, we won’t be covering the mod system in depth. This will be covered extensively in a dedicated Guide to Gear and Modding. Here it’ll just be used as means of conveying some starter builds.

The Devastator

The Devastator is your quintessential tank or close-range bruiser. While an ability to make yourself the enemies focus hasn’t been showcased, there’s a good chance you’ll be their focus anyways as you’ll be jumping into the fray and staying in causing plenty of damage. This class has a high focus on Immobilization, Damage Mitigation and Area of Effect (AoE) Damage.

Each Class in Outriders heals in its own way. For the Devastator you’ll be healed any time an enemy dies in close proximity. This adds to the tanky bruiser play style, rewarding you for jumping in and staying in.

Abilities and Descriptions

Below is a list of the Devastator’s Skills in the order in which they unlock during gameplay.

Skill and Mod Combinations

Outriders’ Skill and Mod systems are both quite diverse, there’s a lot of good pairings that exist for both offensive and defensive situations. That said, with what is available in the Early Game, here’s my favorite setup with what I could find. Check out the full Devastator Class Guide when it releases for more information.

Assault Tank Build

While the Devastators early skills focus more on mitigation rather than damage, the mitigation skills can be modded to inflict some kind of damage. This build will let you do just that, be warned though the delay with one of the skills can take time to get used to, but it can also make for a strong burst of damage.

Skills: Earthquake, Gravity Leap, Reflect Bullets
Mods for Earthquake: Ground Crush
Mods for Gravity Leap: Bloody Crush, Human Comet
Mods for Reflect Bullets: Bullet Acceleration, Auto Reflect

Ground Crush and Bloody Crush boost the damage of Earthquake and Gravity Leap respectively. Devastator seems to lack any kind of major buff or debuff that most classes have, so you make do with a sizable base damage increase. Blood Crush adds a bit of extra damage, causing Gravity Leap to inflict Bleed on everything it hits.

Bullet Acceleration adds more damage to the reflected shots, and since you can’t end it early, it’s very likely to end up a huge burst of damage if you jump in before activating it. Auto Reflect makes it so you’re not locked out of dealing damage in other ways while the skill is active, at the cost of it no longer giving damage immunity, instead being just slightly weaker than Golem for damage mitigation.

If this is your new favorite class, check out the full Outriders Devastator Class Guide to learn how to play this class to its highest potential and find out what are the best builds for each skill tree.

The Pyromancer

The Pyromancer is a close to mid range class, one that falls close to the typical Spellcaster Archetype. Your entire goal and purpose is to make the world burn. You have plenty of abilities that cover close and mid range both offensively and defensively. The Pyromancer has a high focus on Damage Over Time (DoT) and Area of Effect (AoE), with the option to be a bit more bruiser-like as well.

Each Class in Outriders heals in its own way. For the Pyromancer you’ll be healed any time an enemy dies while afflicted with a Burn. This allows you to maintain a safer distance while still getting plenty of healing.

Abilities and Descriptions

Below is a list of the Pyromancer’s Skills in the order in which they unlock during gameplay.

Skill and Mod Combinations

Outriders’ Skill and Mod systems are both quite diverse, there’s a lot of good pairings that exist for both offensive and defensive situations. That said, with what is available in the Early Game, here’s my favorite setup with what I could find.

Pyro Nuke Build

This setup focuses on taking advantage of Overheat’s large range, using other skills to setup your burns, while also generating a ton of Anomaly power. There’s lots of burning, fire, and explosions; What else could a Pyromancer ever want?

Skills: Heatwave, Thermal Bomb, Overheat
Mods for Heatwave: Tidal Wave, Burnt-Out
Mods for Thermal Bomb: Wildfire, Fire Frenzy
Mods for Overheat: Phoenix Force

For Heatwave, the Tidal Wave mod gives you a second cast of it, letting you burn, and more importantly debuff enemies both more easily. Burnt-out is the mod that makes it a debuff, making enemies hit by it take an whopping 35% more damage. This combined with Overheat’s mod gives this build some massive burst to crowds.

For Thermal Bomb, Fire Frenzy is used to get a second charge. This allows Thermal Bomb to more easily and reliably blow up groups as well as Ignite them. Wildfire enables it to ignite, allowing easier use of your Passive and even more setup potential for Overheat. Thermal Bomb isn’t great for bossing, unless the boss happens to have adds, so feel free to Swap with Feed the Flames and mod for Health Drain instead in that situation.

The Overheat mod is HUGE in terms of the potential boost it gives. Even at a low level, you can already get up to a max of 220 Anomaly Power, if at least 10 enemies are on fire when you cast it. This number will scale up with gear, but it already has insane potential. This is why it’s also important to have two charges of both Thermal Bomb and Heatwave, to take advantage of this bonus after setting up. If you wanted all the charges to get extra damage, you can also charge in and use a Sprint Melee to Ignite a group then Overheat for the boost and go right into casting.

Check out the full Outriders Pyromancer Class Guide to learn not just the basics, but how to master the class, how to prepare for EndGame and what are the best builds for it.

The Technomancer

The Technomancer is a long range support class, having access to both a direct heal and plenty of artillery. The Technomancer is best compared to a Traditional Summoner Archetype, offering a good mix of everything from DPS to Support. This class focuses on Crowd Control, Damage over Time (DoT) and Area of Effect (AoE) damage.

Each Class in Outriders heals in its own way. The Technomancer heals by simply doing damage. All Weapon and ability damage will heal them, letting them keep the pressure on the enemy. The Technomancer also has access to an AoE Healing skill.

Abilities and Descriptions

Below is a list of the Technomancer’s Skills in the order in which they unlock during gameplay.

Skill and Mod Combinations

Outriders’ Skill and Mod systems are both quite diverse, there’s a lot of good pairings that exist for both offensive and defensive situations. That said, with what is available in the Early Game, here’s my favorite setup with what I could find.

Scraptech Build

This Setup relies on making use of your AoE skills to clear groups effectively. Between Scrapnel and Pain Launcher, you can tear through groups very quickly. Blighted rounds is capable of putting in some work as well with the right weapons.

Skills: Scrapnel, Pain Launcher, Blighted Rounds
Mods for Scrapnel: Fine-Tuned, More Traps
Mods for Pain Launcher: Freeze Barrage, Rain of Pain
Mods for Blighted Rounds: Spare Mag

More Traps does exactly what it sounds like, giving you another charge of Scrapnel. If Desired you can even drop Spare mag and go for three of these via a second version of the mod in a different slot. Fine-tuned increases their explosion and trigger radius, making it a more potent AoE skill.

Rain of Pain is essential for this skill, as it knocks off a large portion of its cooldown. It has some of the best area coverage in a Technomancer Skill, barring weapons with mods that make your shots ricochet being used with Blighted Rounds. Freeze Barrage is more of a utility choice, you can just as easily go for more range or more damage if you really need the extra clearing power. This also setup up for Scrapnel to clean up what doesn’t actually get killed.

Spare Mag for Blighted Rounds is optional. You could swap it with Critical Analysis, which boosts your critical damage. It could also be swapped with one of previously mentioned mods for Pain Launcher as well. However, Blighted rounds is both good AoE and single target damage, so it feels like a must have in a lot of cases. Between the natural spreading of both Toxin and weapon damage, it’s very hard to pass up.

To maximize your experience with the class, be sure to read our in-depth Outriders Technomancer Guide. In it you will learn everything there is to know about the class and what are the best builds to spec into for the early, midgame and endgame.

The Trickster

The Trickster is a mobile class and focuses on a hit and run play style. They manipulate space and time to weave in and out of combat. With their powers focusing on time and space, The Trickster is a DPS focused class with a healthy amount of crowd controlling abilities. A lot of their damage is Area of Effect (AoE) focused, with a weapon buff that helps in single target situations.

Each Class in Outriders heals in its own way. For the Trickster you’ll be healed any time you kill an enemy in close range. You will also get a portion of your Shield up. The shield does decay however, which encourages you to stay in the fight to maintain it.

Abilities and Descriptions

Below is a list of the Trickster’s Skills in the order in which they unlock during gameplay.

Skill and Mod Combinations

Outriders’ Skill and Mod systems are both quite diverse, there’s a lot of good pairings that exist for both offensive and defensive situations. That said, with what is available in the Early Game, here’s my favorite setup with what I could find.

Hybrid Assassin Build

The Trickster is a class that has both high burst and high sustained DPS. This setup takes advantage of that to the fullest, or at least to the fullest the early game allows. It’s focused on staying mobile while still doing damage via both weapons and skills.

Skills: Temporal Slice, Hunt the Prey, Twisted Rounds.
Mods for Temporal Slice: Slasher, Cut Loose
Mods for Hunt the Prey: Dance of Death, Radiation Jump
Mods for Twisted Rounds: Strong Twist

The Temporal Slice mods are what give you a fair bit of your sustain. Slasher is the go-to for damage in my opinion, two uses of Temporal Slice will almost always do more damage than simply adding bonus damage. Cut Loose makes it so whether you have one charge or two, it comes back quicker after they get used.

Hunt the Prey because a very reliable DPS boost with this pairing of mods. Dance of Death gives it more uptime by lowering the cooldown. Radiation Jump applies Vulnerable to the targeted enemy, making them take more damage.

Strong Twist on Twisted Rounds significantly boost your single target DPS. In the Case of bosses however, it tends to be better to shift more mods toward this skill. Grabbing Additional Mag and/or Blue Blood for longer lasting bonuses and healing that doesn’t rely on adds can be a game changer for bosses.

For a lot more detailed and in-depth look into the class, check out the dedicated Outriders Trickster Class Guide and Best Builds. There you will find everything you need to know about the class and more!

Which Outriders Class Should you Play First?

So with the overview of the classes out of the way, let’s talk about which of the classes make for great starting characters. While you can’t switch between classes on a single character, you can at least be confident on whether or not it will be rough on you or not as you go through the early game.

For me personally despite it not being my favorite to play, I’d recommend Devastator as the top choice, especially while solo. While early on into World Tiers and the story it’s not a Damage powerhouse, once you start getting gear with Mods you get a ton of durability AND damage. Which quite honestly, the other classes just don’t provide early on.

The second recommendation is Pyromancer. While this class’s early skills aren’t super amazing, you do get access to a few AoE skills and at level 6 you get Overheat. Using Overheat in combination with your other skills and previously mentioned Weapon Mods that can spread fire, you become a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Conclusion

Outriders has some pretty interesting classes. At the time of releasing this guide, the demo has recently gone live. While the demo gives an opportunity to try all the classes available before launch, you miss out on the deeper parts of progression, where the classes begin to stand out from each other in certain roles.

I’m personally looking forward to when I can get into creating builds and fully building out a character. That’s sure to be a fun time. There’s already some fun skill combos in the Demo, and that just grows as progression continues into launch.

I’d like to thank Kevbottron for assisting me with farming these mods so I could put together the builds in this guide. I hope you all enjoyed this Outriders Classes Guide. I’ll be seeing you again, as there’s plenty to cover before and after launch. Stay tuned for the next one.

Looking for a community to be part of for Outriders? RubyRose also leads the Outriders branch of a multi-game Discord server that started with Anthem. Come and Join the Community as we build up in preparation for any Guild feature that may come to exist.

Follow RubyRose‘s extensive Outriders coverage here on VULKK.com as the game launches fully in April 2021. Get a head-start with the game by knowing some of the basic mechanics and some tips and trick which stay as far away from spoilers about the game as possible.

The next best thing you should read is probably the DOs and DONTs Outriders Beginners Guide full with tips and tricks to help you dominate on Enoch!