Outriders August Update – Buffs for ALL Classes

People Can Fly released a patch for their game today. The Outriders August Update, as we will call it, brings buffs for all classes and fixes

It’s been awhile since Outriders last major patch. Between extensive testing to make sure a particularly nasty bug didn’t go live and other complications, this one was delayed from roughly mid-July. This patch however will have a decent impact on the viability of a few builds while fixing some long standing issues.

Notable Changes

Where there’s a lot of changes in this patch, we want to highlight a few of the ones that will have more impact overall. These changes actually buff a few commonly tried, but less popular builds.

Legendary Set Bonuses

Two sets got fixes or improvements in this patch. Those sets being Devstator’s Statue Set and Technomancer’s Borealis Monarch Set.

Devastator’s Statue Set has gotten tweaked are reworded to reflect this. Now instead of being an “On Cast” effect, which meant it would only last 8 seconds maximum; it’s now a “While Active” effect. This means that Using Mods like Perseverance or Golem of Death can now extend this buff for as long as the skill is kept active.

Assuming the mods interact the way you’d should, this means using the skill alongside Golem of Death and Golem Squad can make your squad both more durable and deal higher damage for much longer periods of time.

Technomancer’s Borealis Monarch Set has been adjusted to apply to all frozen targets, not just those frozen by Cold Snap. This change can make a full Cyromancer setup incredibly potent.

Devastator Changes

Alongside the change to the Statue set, Devastator received some interesting changes to make some skills more useful and flexible. These changes specifically affect Boulderdash, Endless Mass and Reflect Bullets.

Starting off with Boulderdash. Boulderdash has been given 65% damage reduction during the skill’s animation. In addition to this, it seems to have been given an additional AoE attack that can be used during the animation. This may just be strange wording and referring to canceling the skill to slam early, if not though it’s more damage for an underrated skill.

Combined with Golem, this means you should be immune, or nearly immune to damage during the animation. With this skill being easily spammable with a specific set and mods, this may become a very fun build. In fact, we’ve briefly covered a variation of this build over in our Devastator Guide and Builds.

Endless Mass was also given a couple big Quality of Life Changes. For starters, enemies affected by Endless Mass can be damaged and killed during the skill use. I assume this refers to targeted enemy that becomes the monolith, which can huge for Expeditions as it will no longer stall out certain sections.

The Wide Horizons mod for Endless Mass now bypasses and ignores the Absorbing Skin status for the enemies that have it. Namely Alpha Perforos and Brood Mothers. This can let you lock down those high dangerous foes much easier. In the case of Brood Mothers, it can also be a good way to bring weaker enemies to them and use them detonate certain mods for easier burst damage.

Rounding out the Devastator changes, is Reflect Bullets. It was given a nice quality of life buff that refunds up to 90% of it’s cooldown when canceled early.

This cooldown refund change to Reflect Bullet in particular can make it incredibly potent on expeditions with lots of ranged enemies, like Boom Town as an example. You could use it as means of safely waiting out cooldowns without taking single bit of damage, as opposed to having it always go the full duration with reduced damage reduction. It’s still a bit of a niche skill for expeditions, since very few are exclusively ranged enemies, where the skill shines the most.

Pyromancer Changes

Pyromancer has a seen a few buffs this patch, mostly focused on Volcanic Rounds and Ash Blast.

Ash Blast has had its base cooldown lowered from 27.5 seconds, down to 23.5 seconds. This means it will be available more frequently. As a core part of a skill rotation, this alone is powerful change. Combined the the boost they gave to one of its mods, it’s definitely going to be in a much stronger place.

They also extended the duration of Ash Blast’s Death Sentence mod from 5 seconds to 8 seconds. This means the 40% Weapon Damage and 30% Anomaly Damage increases will have a higher uptime overall thanks to this change as well as the base cooldown being lowered.

Feed the Flames was buffed slightly, increasing the Bullet Absorption mod from 33% ammo replenished to 40%. This provide a little more uptime for Volcanic Rounds, and with one of Volcanic Round’s primary mods also getting buffed, will surely make the build stronger.

Volcanic Rounds itself is untouched, however the Susceptibility mod has been buffed. It now decreases enemy resistance by 50%, instead of the previous 34%. Since this skill can benefit from both Firepower and Anomaly Power, this can be very helpful. Though the Anomaly variant isn’t usually the go-to. This can however be used as means of buffing an Anomaly Power Build, either for yourself or a co-op partner.

Finally, one last change they made is to swap the effects of the Reload Boost and Lava Shots mods, swapping which stat is buffed by each mod. This actually has a very significant impact on the skill as well.

This means Reload Boost will provide 50% Anomaly power when Volcanic Rounds ends. This makes this mod much more practical, albeit niche. Chances are if your main source of weapon damage is down, you’re going to use skills instead.

This also however means that Lava Shots is now a MUST HAVE mod for this build. As Lava Shots now increases Firepower by 25% while the skill is active. This means if you can properly maintain Volcanic Rounds, then its just free Firepower, which is what this build relies on.

Trickster Changes

While there’s nothing too significant here to any meta or popular builds, they are trying to make some skills more viable and usable.

Borrowed Time had its base cooldown lowered from 13.5 Seconds down to 8 Seconds. This change alongside use of the Short-Term Loan Mod means that without any Cooldown Reduction, this skill can start at a 6.24 second cooldown. Combined with the Aggressive Teleportation Buff back in June, this may actually much more viable as a damage option when used correctly.

Slow Trap has its cooldown reduced from 30.7 Seconds to 21 seconds. While not a particularly powerful buff in itself, when combined with the Trespasser Set Bonus, this means higher uptime on the death defying bonus it provides. Between this effect and the Thunder Dome mod, you can be functionally immortal for long periods of time.

With most or all of the Trespasser set also granting Cooldown Reduction as well as just stacking it, we can reach an additional 31.25% Cooldown reduction, cutting the cooldown all the way down to 14.5 seconds.

Time Rift also received a few changes to help it along. It still may not be enough to bring it into viability, but it’s nice to see it getting some love. They also buffed several mods for it. This Includes ‘A Little Bit of Pain’, ‘Time Crack’ and ‘Pain Transfer’.

Time Rift’s base cooldown was lowered from 13.5 Seconds down to 8 seconds. This means it has much higher uptime, and alongside the Double Time mod and some Cooldown Reduction can keep an enemy permanently suspended in the air. The effect will last 7 seconds with Double Time and we only need to reduce the skill’s cooldown by 12.5% (exactly two Cooldown Reduction armor pieces) to achieve an equal Cooldown.

Time Rift’s A Little Bit of Pain Mod had it’s Anomaly power Ratio increased from 35% to 60%; and DoT Duration condensed to 6 seconds. This means where previously at Max Anomaly power it’d deal 2433 damage a second for 10 seconds, it would now deal 6,950 damage a second for 6 seconds. This effectively increased the raw damage by ~185%. Which also lets it scale a bit more with resistance reduction way better.

Speaking of Resistance Reduction, the Time Crack Mod now reduces Armor and Resistance by 35%, up from the previous 20%. This make it a much stronger support skill. It still won’t ever compare to the Debuff Pyro in co-op, but for solo play this makes it pretty good.

Finally, they gave Pain Transfer a buff that’s sure to really help Twisted Rounds users a fair bit with their AoE output. The Pain Transfer mod had it’s Weapon Damage spread increased to 20%, from 10%. On a build that’s capable of hitting for several million damage in a single shot, this may be worth considering over Hunt the Prey, if you can get used to landing the shots on suspended enemies. Alongside the buff to Time Crack, this skill can very heavily outweigh the Vulnerable status provided by Hunt the Prey.

Technomancer Changes

In addition to the Armor set changes mentioned earlier, Tehcnomancer also seen a few Mod and Skill buffs. These changes affect Pain Launcher, Scrapnel and Cryo Turrets.

Pain Launcher had it’s cooldown cut by 25%, going from 40 seconds, down to 30 seconds. This means a more constant barrage of rockets which can really increase the AoE potential for the Technomancer. Alongside the Borealis Set fix, using Freeze Barrage and a couple other mods can make this an interesting damage option for large groups.

Scrapnel had it’s cooldown reduced from 22 seconds, down to 17 seconds as well as a Anomaly Power Ratio buff from 75.6% up to 90% Anomaly Power. These changes, combined with the Torrential Downpour Set bonus makes this skill an absolute force to be reckoned with. The Scrapnel build was already decently viable, and now with these changes is even more so.

This means before and buffs or other modifiers, each cast of Scrapnel can do 62,550 damage. With the debuffs and everything available to the Technomancer, this can very easily reach well over 100k damage. If combined with the newly fixed Borealis Monarch set, that alone pushes it past the 100k per cast mark; though Torrential Downpour still offers most of the important mods without forcing a mod swap.

The Hail Shot Mod for Cryo Turret has had its Status Power Factor increased from 100% up to 150%. This means plenty of extra single target damage as well, between this change and the Borelis Monarch Set fix. The usual Cryomancer setup would want to stack Anomaly Power, Status Power and Cooldown Reduction, so this gives more reason for that setup to take Status Power for Cooldown Reduction.

Mod Changes

Really not too many mod changes that are worth highlighting, but there is a few that’s sure to stand out. With mods like Personal Space, Crit Stack, Anomaly Enhancement and Bone Shrapnel getting buffed, it’s gonna create some interesting new options.

Personal Space was changed to have it’s Close Range Weapon Damage Bonus from 15% to to 25%. This is pretty significant for quite a few builds. On top of buffing the high end Trickster Builds, it’ll also work nicely paired with the Devastator and Pyromancer changes as well.

Crit Stack was has seen a small bump to the Anomaly Power it provides, from 3,500 per stack, up to ~4235 (for Lv50 Gear). This means it can now provide a total of 21,175 Anomaly Power, compared to the 17,500 it provided before. This may not affect too many builds, but I can see it being a stand out for the Technomancer Scrapnel Build and many Pyromancer Builds as a powerful supplemental damage boost.

Anomaly Enhancement is seeing it’s ratio increased from 30% up to 40%. This means before any buffs, a full Anomaly Power Build will get an additional 27,800 Firepower from this mod. This is by no means a small amount and combined with the high amount of Firepower and Anomaly Power Of Crit Stack, can be very potent in the right situations.

Bone Shrapnel got a very small buff, but It’s being highlighted as it’s one of the mods that would also pair well with the strategy mentioned for the Endless Mass Changes. Bone Shrapnel’s small 5% buff would bump it’s damage up from 203,542 up to 213,719 damage at level 50. With a short 1 second cooldown, using this to get a lot of extra burst on to a Brood Mother that’s trapped by Endless Mass could deal a lot of damage very quickly.

With that, that covers all the major changes of this patch. Below is the full list of patch notes.

Patch Notes

With the major changes covered, here’s the Patch notes in full, as provided by People Can Fly.

Fixes

• Crash Fixes
• Improved multiplayer so that rubberbanding & packet loss should now be reduced for players under 350ms
• The Anti-duplication system will no longer take your equipped items into account when checking whether to re-roll a dropped duplicate.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the Pyromancer’s Thermal Bomb to lose all charges and enter full cooldown if a player was interruped while casing the skill
• Improved the targeting of the Trickster’s Venator’s Knife so that it should now more consistently target a player’s intended enemy.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the Trickster’s Hunt the Prey to not turn the player towards an enemy’s back if aiming down sights immediately after activation
• Fixed the Technomancer’s Borealis Monarch Set so that it will now correctly grant the 90% damage increase to any frozen targets
  • Note: The set bonus should apply to all frozen targets, no matter how they’ve been frozen.
• Resolved an issue with the Devastator’s Statue Set and changed its description to match its behaviour
  • The New Description is:
    • While either Tremor or Golem is active, increase Firepower by 100% and Weapon Life Leech by 100% for you and your teammates
  • The Old Description was:
    • Using either Tremor or Golem increases Firepower by 100% and Weapon Life Leech by 100% for you and your teammates
    • The old functionality meant that the Statue set bonus could end after 8 seconds. Reworking this set means that the bonus can now be maintained for longer.
• Fixed an issue that could cause low damage threshold mods to trigger immediately after death or after respawning.
• Fixed an issue whereby players who are level 50 could appear as level 1 while in a party. Note that this issue may still be visible when in lobby.
• Fixed some out of sync subtitles

Buffs

Pyromancer

• Feed the Flames
  • The Ammo replenished by the Bullet Absorption mod has been increased to 40% (Previously: 33%)
• Volcanic Rounds
  • The Resistance debuff provided by the Susceptibility mod has been increased to 50% (Previously: 34%)
  • The “Reload Boost” and “Lava Shots” Mods have had their perks swapped.
  • Reload Boost will now increase Anomaly Power (Previously: Firepower)
  • Lava Shots will now increase Firepower (Previously: Anomaly Power)
• Ash Blast
  • Ash blast has had it’s base skill cooldown reduced by 4 seconds, from 27.5 to 23.5 seconds
  • The buff duration of the Death Sentence mod has been increased by 3 seconds, from 5 to 8 seconds

Trickster

• Borrowed Time
  • Reduced the cooldown of Borrowed Time by 5.5 seconds, from 13.5 seconds to 8 seconds
• Slow Trap
  • The cooldown of Slow Trap has been reduced by 9.7 seconds, from 30.7 seconds to 21 seconds
• Time Rift
  • The cooldown of Time Rift has been reduced by 3.4 seconds, from 15.4 seconds to 12 seconds
  • Increased the DOT damage of the “A Little Bit of Pain” mod by 71% (from base 0.35 AP to 0.6 AP)
  • Condensed the DOT duration of the “A Little Bit Of Pain” mod to 6 seconds (Previously: 10)
  • Increased the Armour and Resistance debuff provided by the “Time Crack” mod to 35% (Previously: 25%)
  • Increased the Weapon Cleave damage provided by the “Pain Transfer” mod to 20% Weapon Damage (Previously: 10% Weapon Damage)

Technomancer

• Pain Launcher
  • Reduced the base cooldown of Pain Launcher by 10 seconds, from 40 seconds to 30 seconds
• Scrapnel
  • Reduced the base cooldown of Scrapnel by 5 seconds, from 22 seconds to 17 seconds
  • Increased the base damage of Scrapnel by 19% (from base 0.756 AP to 0.9AP)
• Cryo Turret
  • The Hail Shot mod has had its SPF set to 1.5 (Previously: 1)
    • SPF controls how much this mod benefits from the Status Power attribute. This change effectively means that the damage increase provided by Hail Shot will increase by 50%, though the effectiveness of this improvement still depends on the character’s Status Power attribute.

Devastator

• Boulderdash
  • Using the Skill will now provide significant (65%) damage reduction during it’s animation
  • Players can now press trigger again to use an AOE attack during the run animation
• Endless Mass
  • Enemies affected by Endless Mass can now be damaged and killed during the animation
  • Changed the “Wide Horizons” mod so that, on top of the range increase, the mod will allow Endless Mass to ignore the enemy skill “Absorbing Skin” used by Alpha Perforos and Brood Mothers
• Reflect Bullets
  • Ending the Skill early will now refund a part of the cooldown (up to 90%)

Universal Buffs

Armor Mod buffs

• Personal Space will have its damage bonus increased from 15% to 25%
• Critstack will have it’s Anomaly Power boost increased by 21% (from base 5.79 to 7)
• Stand Tall will have its base Firepower bonus increased by 20% and its base Anomaly Power by 16%. (From base level 10 Firepower and 15 Anomaly Power to 12 Firepower and 17.5 Anomaly Power)
• Perseverance Shield will have it’s base shield value increased by 40% (From base 25 to 35)
  • Note: This patch will also fix a bug whereby Perseverance Shield could trigger and grant shield after death
• Blazing Aegis will have the armor increase it grants increased by 21% (from base 46.35 to 56)
• Plate Dodger will have its armor value grant increased by 12% (from base 58 to 65) and its duration increased from 5 seconds to 7 seconds.

Weapon Mod buffs

• Anomaly Enhancement will have its co-efficiency increased from 30% Anomaly Power to 40%.
• Bone Shrapnel will have its damage increased by 5% (from base 56.7 to 59.85)

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