The major expansion for Outriders has recently dropped, Worldslayer, and with it comes a slew of changes and various new ways you can create your classes. Outriders has been designed to satisfy your power fantasy and help you feel the sheer devastation you can cause on the battlefield. With that said these power fantasies have been turned up a notch in the new expansion and in this article, we will discuss how these changes have impacted the various builds and rank them accordingly.
The classes are ranked:
- Pyromancer – Anomaly Power (AP) – A Rank
- Pyromancer – Fire Power (FP) – B Rank
- Technomancer – Fire Power (FP) – A Rank
- Technomancer – Anomaly Power (AP) – A Rank
- Devastator – Anomaly Power (AP) – A Rank
- Devastator – Fire Power (FP) – C Rank
- Trickster – Fire Power (FP) – B Rank
- Trickster – Anomaly Power (AP) – C Rank
Ranking Consideration
For ranking purposes we will be looking at different aspects of the builds/classes that we think are relevant:
- Dealing with mobs (Mobbing): how good the classes are at clearing maps that have a ton of additional enemies or ads and how fast they are able to clear expeditions.
- Dealing with bosses (Bossing): how good the classes are at killing high-health bosses which is super important in Worldslayer as there are many such bosses in the new trials.
- Gearing: how easy it is to set up a build and get the gear needed to make the build actually functional.
- Ease of use: how easy it is to play with the class, whether it’s difficult to use to clear maps, and does it have good survivability amongst the chaos.
- Teamwork: how good the class is when you’re playing in a group if it’s going to provide some good buff/debuffs for your teammates to capitalize on or it deals enough damage on its own to be self-sufficient.
Pyromancer – Anomaly Power (AP) – A Rank
Pyromancer gets a lot of goodies in Worldslayer and probably has the most diversity in terms of builds out of all of the classes. With a PAX Tree Convection node giving you ridiculous cooldown reduction allowing you to spam skills back to back which is a crazy amount of fun and is very powerful for pretty much every AP pyro build. There’s a bunch of other stuff within the PAX tree that’s good and it kind of just depends on what build you’re going for. You can use Furnace node which is good for scaling up damage the more you burn enemies. You can reduce your cooldowns even further or even stack up your explosive damage.
With there being new T3 mods and a new legendary set Heatseeker along with some balance changes made to the skills and their respective mods there’s more variety with pyro than ever before. Pyro is one of the better classes in Worldslayer with there being so many build options.
For mobbing, it is highly dependent on the build you choose though it’s a bit on the slower side for us yet solid. If you were to have a build set up specifically for clearing ads, pyro probably has the best ad clear capability in the entire game. For bossing, you can kill bosses fairly quickly and it’s really good at elite damage but it’s just not as quick as some of the other classes. Most pyro builds will struggle with bossing the most while ad clear will be their strong suit.
For gearing, it’s really dependent on the build. Generally, it will need a good amount of mods to get going and take advantage of specific synergies. Ease of use is also dependent on the build. Some builds will be easy to play but for most others, it won’t be as effective as they don’t have as much survivability and require proper timing.
For teamwork, pyro’s debuffing capabilities have gotten significantly nerfed, and with that their teamplay potential is lowered too. Though there are still skills in their arsenal that can provide some amazing debuffs like Ash Blast paired with Death Sentence so they can still maintain good performance in a team setting.
Pyromancer – Fire Power (FP) – B Rank
Fire Power Pyromancer has always had issues with ammo management, to top up Volcanic rounds, this has been somewhat remedied by the PAX tree, Carbon Ammo, by doubling your magazine size as well as a Feed the Flames mod now giving you 40% ammo. This is going to help the class a lot but it’s still rough not having something like Toxic lead or some trick up the sleeve for your ammo regen.
FP pyro is still a bit lacking. The developers have reworked the Torture set to help out with pyro’s ad clear capability which is quite good now. The issue with FP pyro is that it just doesn’t seem to scale up its damage as much as the other classes and it’s going to have issues with single target boss damage.
Luckily fire power pyro is easy to gear up and it can be considered a great option for early Apocolypse tiers but as you progress through the tiers you will eventually get out-scaled by other classes. FP pyro isn’t that difficult to play either as long as you properly manage your ammo.
This class used to have some survivability issues but now that can be remedied fairly easily with a gear mod or two so not that big of an issue.
For team play, FP pyro doesn’t really offer much at all. As mentioned in the previous class Ash Blast’s crowd control and Death Sentence can be helpful. Luckily you’re not reliant on landing final blows for ammo regen but you just don’t add that much other than damaging from a distance and applying burn to the enemies.
Overall FP pyro is a good option in the early game but in the long run, when it gets super chaotic, this class loses potential and it’s going to have some serious issues with boss damage.
Technomancer – Fire Power (FP) – A Rank
Fire Power Technomancer has always been incredibly dominant. It’s intrinsically very strong by taking advantage of long-range damage multipliers, applying toxic and vulnerable for free, getting ammo back for free, ad clear, and elite damage has just never been an issue and the survivability is pretty good with built-in weapon leech and being able to stay at range.
FP techno has always felt a bit too powerful and in Worldslayer that stays the same if not further boosting its deadliness. The PAX tree node Permanence applies random status effects to enemies paired with Dissection which increases how much damage you deal to enemies per status effect they have on them you just end up dealing a ton of extra damage. All this is also going to synergize perfectly with Borealis Monarch set that is going to give you 60% extra damage to frozen enemies, which adds up to deal crazy amounts of damage.
Not much else has changed for techno, there are a few new Tier 3 mods that are particularly strong and a new weapon mod, Omen, which is perfect for this build. Outside of all the above it’s just the same old firepower techno, the ad clear is as strong as it always has been, the boss damage is incredibly good with status effect stacking, it’s super easy to gear up and doesn’t really require a ton of mods to get going, and it’s by far the easiest class to play if you just equip a survivability mod or two.
In team play, firepower techno doesn’t really offer much but the class is just so strong that you don’t really need anyone to help you and you can provide a crazy amount of support with your sheer damage potential.
Overall FP techno is just as good as it always has been and it’s an easy pick in most if not all situations.
Technomancer – Anomaly Power (AP) – A Rank
The Anomaly Power Technomancer with a proper build is so great. The new Lethal Devices PAX tree node is insane when you pair it with something that is going to apply toxic constantly and you scale your AP high you end up doing a ton of damage with this 10% Anomaly Power damage node. Pair this with running two turrets and stacking turret mods to make them shoot incredibly fast further boosting your damage dealing.
Using Permanence and Dissection will also compliment all those status effects as well, pair this with the new legendary set Techmonger which is going to give you a stacking increase to your turret damage, and your turrets will carry you through everything. On top of that Cold Snap and Icicle Storm will provide you with good AoE, while the turrets just kill bosses faster than literally anything else in the entire game.
The build is incredibly good for both mobbing and bossing and will also have really good survivability. It is literally an auto-kill build where you just throw down the turrets and watch them shred everything in the vicinity.
In a team setting you are not going to be debuffing as much though you do provide some utility in the form of crowd controlling with Cold Snap along with that, you will be killing everything so fast that your teammates won’t even care what you’re doing.
Overall AP techno is one of the strongest classes in the game if not the strongest bossing class in the entire game. It is also recommended for its ease of use as stated before with the auto-kill. This class is easy to set up in terms of gear as well.
Devastator – Anomaly Power (AP) – A Rank
Anomaly Power Devastator has always been fairly good. It has good damage but it lacks in overall clear speed i.e. slow at clearing the map, luckily by equipping some cooldown reduction it won’t be much of an issue anymore and you end up spamming your Earthquake skill and do crazy amounts of damage. In the PAX tree you get a node, Puncture, that’s going to make your Seismic skills such as Earthquake inherently apply Bleed which pairs perfectly with Seismic Commander set.
The more potent nodes are Upheaval and Multistrike for when they are taken advantage of properly allows your Earthquake to do upwards of hundreds of million number of damage as Multistrike is going to end up double-dipping off of itself giving AP dev broken levels of power.
AP dev has the best survivability in the game. The build isn’t really going to require much gearing, you just equip a few items and take advantage of Multistrike and Upheaval to deal crazy amounts of damage. The build is super easy to use allowing you to run around smashing your Earthquake button and killing everything.
Upheaval also works in a team setting enabling your teammates to instantly kill everything. There is a slight chance that this level of broken ends up getting fixed in the future. AP dev is one of the best classes in the game if not the single best class at face value as of right now.
Devastator – Fire Power (FP) – C Rank
Fire Power Devastator is not even worth talking about as it’s always been such a disappointment and so annoying to set up. You run out of ammo and you have to abuse the ultimate damage link to actually do anything.
FP devastator has gotten some really nice quality of life changes but the biggest issue with this build is its squishiness. It is extremely vulnerable and you end up needing a lot of very specific gear to not die. Considering the trials in Worldslayer where in most cases all of the enemies will be spread out over the map, FP devastator is more of a close-range class and has some difficulty managing the long-distance damage coming its way.
FP devastator does have decent damage and it has a good clear speed but survivability is what ruins this class.
Trickster – Fire Power (FP) – B Rank
Fire Power Trickster is a mediocre class. In the PAX tree, we have some appealing nodes such as Goals Beyond Understanding giving you a 25% chance to deal an extra 200 damage on elite when marked by a Deception skill, this would end up giving you a whopping 50% extra damage against elites however it just doesn’t work at all right now, it’s completely broken and doesn’t do anything. This would have helped the trickster’s boss damage by a decent amount but in its current state it’s useless.
The next best PAX node, Perpetuum Trickery, is more critical damage based which is pretty good but it’s not ideal when using a shotgun which has always been the trickster’s go-to weapon. There is an interesting new legendary set, Terminal Velocity, that gives you a stacking damage bonus whenever you use mobility skills or just run around though the issue is that it incentivizes you to equip both Hunt The Prey and Borrowed Time which is slightly counterintuitive to the class and this particular PAX tree. There is a kind of hybrid setup you can go for using both Anomaly Power and Fire Power and take advantage of the PAX node, Power Overwhelming, that’s going to convert more AP into FP, also the new Shield Beast set gives you Anomaly Power for every percentage of shield that you have.
This class is going to end up being the best build for trickster after the fix but it does require a very specific play style and pretty high-level gear. The FP trickster is a bit underwhelming relative to everything else in the game from other classes to difficulty.
Depending on the build setup the ad clear can actually be good but its boss killing ability is incredibly weak especially with the previously mentioned PAX tree node not working. On top of all this, the trickster has always been forced into close range to take advantage of the close-range damage multiplier which makes him harder to play than other classes.
Trickster – Anomaly Power (AP) – C Rank
The Anomaly Power Trickster class has always been a kind of a meme in the Outriders community. The biggest issue with Anomaly trickster in the Worldslayer trials is that all the enemies are so spread out and this class doesn’t have the same kind of range as the other anomaly builds and requires the player to deal with enemies up close and personal. Devastators got earthquake that hits a lot of enemies at once, pyromancers have Ash Blast, Overheat, Phaser Beam, Thermal bomb huge AoE skills and Anomaly technomancers got the turrets and the Cold Snap and just so much AoE damage leaving behind the anomaly trickster in their dust.
The Worldslayer expansion has changed the power fantasy game of Outriders and in the case of most classes, you can feel the rush of power. Though some classes remain weak and few are downright broken. The developers will eventually fix the issues hopefully and rework some of the balance giving other classes the same level playing field probably. We just have to wait and see.