Outriders Trickster Guide

People Can Fly's latest looter shooter follows in the studio's lineage of expressive and fast paced combat afforded through its four classes. Each class lays host to a range of playstyles and tactics. First-time players may find themselves overwhelmed with how to handle combat. This guide should help novices and up and coming players come to grips with the Outriders Trickster class. 

Note: This is a basic guide meant for starting players. While Outriders' loot game begins much sooner than its contemporaries, end-game expedition strategies will require more precise min-maxing. This guide is meant for the core content.

Outriders Trickster Basics

Understanding healing is the first step toward mastering Outriders. The Trickster's healing mechanic involves killing enemies at close range to refill health and shields, making it the only class with an additional defensive layer. The healing range is denoted by a skull with a green plus sign underneath enemies' health bars. Returning players from the demo will be find an aggressive shield degradation in the final build. How much this impacts the end-user depends on whether they're riding solo or online, which we'll cover under the skill trees. 

This class isn't for the faint of heart. Players will often find themselves on the cusp of death, barely scratching by thanks to the shield degradation combined with an anemic health pool. Despite the class' predisposition to getting in and out as quickly as possible, don't be afraid to hang back on occasion. A beginner Trickster's biggest mistake is teleporting into the middle of a combat arena. This strategy becomes a death wish at higher world tiers and as the game pushes larger spaces with more threats. If you find yourself overwhelmed, prioritize convenient choke points. Pick off adversaries in smaller groups with less sightlines as a safety net. 

Don't be afraid to melee either. The Trickster's melee slows enemies down, making it a perfect get out of jail free card in tight spots. A standing melee pushes a cone-shaped anomaly infused blast in front of the player. A running melee, however, acts as an AOE attack, making it perfect for crowd control. Melee attacks can also interrupt enemy skills. They're often the most efficient way to interrupt bosses. Because every boss arena is filled with underlings, it's safer to use interrupt skills on fodder to refill health and shields more immediately to speed up the up close and personal barrage on said boss. 

Outriders Trickster Class Trees

The Outriders Trickster has access to three class trees: Assassin, Harbinger, and Reaver. 

• Reaver - This tree emphasizes skills with increases to anomaly damage and skill leach taking up most of the tree. 
• Harbinger - This tree is about survive longer with health increases and reductions in shield degradation taking up most of the tree slots. 
• Assassin - The Assassin tree excels in damage dealing with increases to various types of damage including general weapon damage, close range damage, etc...

There are enough class points to invest in a large chunk of one tree or half of two trees. The tree depending on the circumstances makes the biggest difference. The player's invested tree will also influence what weapons and skills your build should gravitate toward. 

While players may find more excitement in the Assassin and Reaver trees, Harbinger is the easiest pick for solo players. The Trickster's weak armor pool forces players into playing more cautiously than they expect from the game's promotional material. Darting into a swath of enemies isn't sustainable with an Assassin or Reaver-focused build because you will find yourself taking damage more quickly than you can refill it. 

The Assassin tree is our recommendation for co-op players, however. The various damage boosts make quick work of fodder and even elites. In situations during which one wrong move could get a solo player killed in seconds, an Assassin-focused Trickster would ideally have a partner to either tank damage or kill extra enemies until the Trickster can outheal the damage it's taking. 

Outriders Trickster Skills

The Trickster's skills fall under four categories: deception, damage, movement, and interrupt. With three equippable skill slots, the more adventurous may have fun experimenting with balancing, though apprehensive and less-skilled folk will want safer decks. We recommend one deception, one movement, and one damage/interrupt ability at all times. Deception skills give the player breathing room when under pressure. Movement skills provide ways to zip around the arena. Damage skills do exactly as their name suggests. This allows access to at least one optimal skill in all situations. 

Of the three damage skills, Twisted Rounds is the least versatile as it only deals damage. The other damage skills, Temporal Blade, and Cyclone Slice, also interrupt. Between the two, Temporal Blade is the easiest to manage. Until players acquire useful mods to counteract this, Cyclone Slice leaves Tricksters vulnerable. This may work better for Harbinger, but even then, Temporal Blade has more utility. It not only interrupts and deals damage. It also inflicts the slow status. 

Slow Trap is the best deception skill for Assassin builds with its large bubble slowing down up to dozens of enemies at once. Conversely, the Venerator's Knife and Time Rift are better suited for Harbingers. Because the knife and shockwave only effect individually marked enemies rather than creating a large radius that also slows down bullets, players are more exposed to gunfire from afar. 

Hunt The Prey is the best movement skill for a Harbinger. This ability teleports players behind the selected enemy, potentially opening them up to damage they were otherwise safe from. Pro tip: If you swap weapons as you're about to teleport or during the teleport, you'll come up on the other side with weapons already swapped. 

Borrowed time provides better synergy with Assassins. Activating the skill provides a shield boost useful for offsetting the frail Assassins. Its greatest use case comes in the form of allowing one to teleport to wherever the skill was first activated. This lets players escape death much more reliably. 

Outriders Trickster Weapons

Amidst the dozens of total variants, Outriders' main weapons can be split into these categories:

• Sniper Rifles
• Pistols/Revolvers
• Shotguns
• Lightmachine Guns
• Submachine Guns
• Assault Rifles
• Double Guns

The pistols and revolvers have infinite ammo, relegating them to last ditch efforts when low on primary ammo. Even then, efficient players shouldn't find themselves running out of ammo often. Snipers should be immediately dismantled or stashed for the Technomancer and Pyromancer. 

Every Outriders Trickster build should have a shotgun in a primary slot at all times. Regardless of the variant, shotguns are the best close-range tool for fodder, and after attaining later mods and attributes, elites and bosses too. The pump action shotgun is recommended in the early hours for its high damage output being enough to one-shot fodder. Both tactical and breach variants are equally feasible. Automatic shotguns should be avoided until around the level 12-15 mark as players will eat through ammo quickly with a damage to rate of fire ratio that isn't worth investing in so early. Past those first dozen or so hours, auto shotguns are the most reliable close-range damage dealers.

For the other primary, submachine guns and assault rifles are the best picks depending on player preference. They both offer a good balance between damage, rate of fire, and reload speed. Double guns and light machineguns aren't awful picks. They're good stop-gaps between the next significant submachine gun or assault rifle drop, but their damage and clip sizes don't mitigate reload speeds. As a Trickster, players want to spend as little time reloading as possible. Those precious seconds spent reloading could be used to kill a mob. It's worth noting there are mods that employ various status effects upon reloading, but these just are more effective for the weapons with shorter reload times. 

Playing as a Trickster

Of the four classes, Outriders' Trickster is simultaneously one of the most exciting and difficult classes. Simply running in and killing things as the class description and marketing suggest is a recipe for disaster. Players need to make efficient use of their movement, deception, and damage/interrupt skills after deciding which class tree to invest in first. Skill decks and mods should be informed by the class tree progression and vice versa. Many systems need to work in tandem to make the Outriders Trickster tick, especially in a single-player environment.