Best Outriders Classes TIER LIST
This Best Outriders Classes Tier List will give you a rundown on all of the Outriders Classes so you can decide which Outriders class is right for you.
If you’re playing Outriders, you know that one of your biggest decisions happens right at the start of the game when you have to select which of the 4 Outriders classes you’re going to choose for your character. Each of the Outriders classes has its own pros and cons, but there are definitely best Outriders classes and worst Outriders classes. For that reason, I’m typing up this best Outriders classes tier list to help you pick which class is right for you.
Not only will I be ranking all of the best Outriders classes from best to worst, I’m going to give a rundown of each of the classes that can serve as an introduction to each of the Outriders classes to you so you can make an informed decision about which of the Outriders classes you want to spend your time with.
Now, I write this in all of my tier lists, but it’s important to reiterate. There is an amount of subjectivity to tier lists. With Outriders, I’ve played the game a little over 120 hours, I’ve beaten the game with every class and gotten each of the different Outriders classes to at least challenge tier 12.
In that time, I’ve formed an opinion about which are the best Outriders classes. However, you might not agree with my conclusions, you may not agree with my reasoning, and that’s fine. I should also point out that I’ve almost exclusively played Outriders as a solo experience, so some classes might perform better or worse in a group setting.
Also, since there are only 4 classes, and none of them are far and away better than the other classes, we’re going to leave the traditional S tier out of this list and start at A tier. Finally, I should point out that I’m publishing this article the same month the game released, so there may be balance tweaks down the line that improve or nerf various gameplay elements.
That out of the way, this is the Best Outriders Classes Tier List.
A Tier – Best Outriders Classes Tier List
Technomancer
My experience when it comes to all the best Outriders classes is that Technomancer is the best class, the main reason being is that its kit provides it a great deal of safety without compromising damage output. Its focus on long range weapons, specifically sniper rifles and assault rifles, allows you to stay out of harm’s way, which means dying far less often than other Outriders classes without sacrificing damage potential, even at close range.
Yes, Outriders is full of monsters that zerg rush you, but honestly assault rifles are just as effective in close range as they are at long range, and even sniper rifles, especially automatic sniper rifles, are not terribly difficult to no-scope enemies with rapidly at close range.
I actually found that when using a sniper rifle with one of the on-crit crowd control mods (i.e. freeze enemies in a radius on crit), Technomancer actually performed better against the major rushdown enemies (like Behemoths and Alphas) than the close-range specialist classes, Trickster and Devastator, and sniper rifles are at least almost as powerful, if not even more powerful, than shotguns, with the added versatility of being devastating at any range.
In my time with Technomancer, I found it to have both the highest DPS, probably tied with Trickster, and the most survivability, thanks to its ability to stay safe at range and its easy access to all sorts of freezing abilities.
Blighted Rounds is also one of the better ammo skills in my opinion just based purely on the abundance of ammo-restoring mods that affect it even in the early game. Restoring ammo on every kill when it’s active, restoring ammo on every kill against enemies affected by toxic, etc. I very, very rarely reloaded my weapon in all my time spent with the Technomancer class.
Its skills leave a little something to be desired from a creativity standpoint in my opinion. They’re for the most part just somewhat thematically bland, or, in some cases, at odds with its other skills. Blighted Rounds doesn’t play nice with Tools of Destruction, for instance, so you usually wouldn’t want to use those in the same build. Cryo Turret and Blighted Turret are very similar skills. Scrapnel is effective, but a bit boring since it’s basically just a grenade (although if you gear for it, you can get 6 charges which is kind of insane).
B Tier – Best Outriders Classes Tier List
Pyromancer
I think Pyromancer will probably end up being underrated when it comes to the best Outriders classes because it has such a tough early game experience compared to the other Outriders classes. It’s not until you get Volcanic Rounds that Pyromancer really starts to be any good, and then it goes from one of the squishiest classes to one of the most survivable because it restores health on almost every kill as long as you’ve shot the enemy or tagged it with a spell before killing it.
On the survivability front, it also gets its own personal heal which has a very common early game mod to also restore 33% ammo, which means if you equip your Pyromancer with a suppressing light machine gun (150 clip size), you’ll be restoring ammo almost faster than you can expend it.
Also unlike many classes, Pyromancer doesn’t really come all the way online until you hit level 22 and get its last skill, Eruption, which is the AoE nuke you would want and expect from this type of character. It’s a super powerful AoE nuke that can be modded to have 2 charges, to ash enemies (effectively the same as freezing them), and increase its power, which pretty much eradicates any big zerg rush threats you might experience as the Pyromancer.
Speaking of zerg rush threats, in my experience that’s the key weakness of Pyromancer. If you get zerged with Pyromancer and you don’t have Eruption, Ash Blast, or any other AoE skill off cooldown, you’re going to have a bad time, unlike all the other classes which feel like they have a more robust set of tools to survive that scenario. In my time with Pyromancer, the behemoth monsters felt like the bane of my existence in a way they just didn’t on any other character.
Still, blowing away a ton of monsters or killing elite mobs with a couple Eruptions is one of the most viscerally satisfying things you can do in Outriders and it’s hard to discount that.
Trickster
This is going to controversial when it comes to the best Outriders classes, because everybody seems to love the Trickster class. And I did, too. In fact, Trickster was the first of the Outriders classes that I picked. It has, in my opinion, the most varied and interesting skills, and it’s thematically the coolest class available. I also really like that up-close in-your-face gameplay style.
The problem with Trickster is it’s high risk high reward. It kills fast, but if you get out of position or make a mistake, you die, and not dying in Outriders is kind of the way to go, since during the game itself, dying causes you to lose World Tier progress, and in the post-game, dying is the difference in expeditions between a cache of absolute garbage or slightly downgraded cache from going a bit slow.
In my experience, Trickster dies the most often, and you could say that’s just me, that I’m a bad player, and maybe there’s some element of truth to that, but I’m a fairly experienced gamer, and to me it just feels like a lot higher risk than other classes. The tradeoff, obviously, is it has extremely high damage potential. Trickster with a pump action shotgun, tagging enemies with its Venator’s Knife skill, can one shot most enemies, often even one-shotting elites, and sometimes even taking down bosses in just a handful of shots.
Still, if you get mobbed on Trickster, you’re in for a bad time, because if you’re running with Venator’s Knife and Twisted Rounds, which are where the majority of its damage potential comes from, that means you only get one slot left to dedicate to its defensive and movement skills (Slow Trap, Hunt the Prey, and Borrowed Time).
Trickster feels like it needs any two of those skills active for its mobility kit to really feel complete, which means you have to either severely handicap your damage potential, or severely handicap your survivability.
In some ways, this is sort of a good problem to have because it stands in direct contrast to other classes that have so few truly useful skills that you struggle to find ones you even really want to use. On the other hand, it really feels like Trickster needs 4 ability slots, because no matter what skills you decide to outfit yourself with, you’ll feel like you’re missing something crucial that would really pull the whole playstyle together.
C Tier – Best Outriders Classes Tier List
Devastator
When it comes to the best Outriders classes, Devastator has survivability, but it also just feels underpowered. Also, thanks to its lack of an ammunition type skill, it has ammo problems in a way none of the other classes do. While Pyromancer, Trickster and Technomancer all basically have ways to achieve never having to reload your weapon ever, Devastator spends a ton of time on the higher difficulty levels looking for ammo.
This problem is compounded by its overall lower DPS output, which will see you dumping clip after clip point blank into an elite enemy’s face to take it down where Technomancer or Trickster could blow the same enemy away with a handful of well-placed headshots.
Devastator’s low DPS can be offset by one of its armor set bonuses that doubles damage whenever you cast its two biggest defensive skills, but let’s be honest, what percentage of Outriders players are going to be able to get that armor set?
What the Devastator does have going for it is that it has a lot of emergency buttons that keep it from dying. Reduced damage from Golem, heal + AoE interrupt from Tremor, etc.
It also, shockingly, has the best mobility out of all the classes with its Gravity Leap skill which is, in my opinion, a better mobility skill than Trickster’s Hunt the Prey, since it deals AoE damage and interrupts. You can use Gravity Leap over and over again whenever it’s available without really thinking about it, as opposed to Hunt the Prey where you have to use it somewhat strategically so you don’t accidentally put yourself in a bad situation.
Devastator’s signature status effect, Bleed, is also vastly inferior to what every other class gets. Pyromancer gets Burn and Ash, Trickster gets Slow, Technomancer gets Freeze and Toxic. All of those are game-changing status effects that can really turn the tide of a fight. On the flipside, Bleed is barely noticeable and has almost no effect on the game whatsoever.
Also, even though survivability is basically Devastator’s whole thing, I found Technomancer’s survivability to be much higher thanks to its safer playstyle and crowd control tools, as Devastator has to get up close and personal and stay in a vulnerable position much longer. So it has the lowest DPS and only the second highest survivability.
Lastly, I should mention here that in Outriders, a good offense tends to be the best defense thanks to life leech, and Devastator is really lacking in terms of a good, solid offense.
That about covers it when it comes to the Best Outriders Classes Tier List. If you want to check out my full 100+ hour review of Outriders on my new Youtube Channel, you can click here. Be sure to check out the Outriders section of this site for more gameplay guides for Outriders, including opinions on the best mods, skills, classes, etc.
While you’re here, be sure to check out the main page to see guides for all the other RPGs I’ve covered (that’s what we do here). Finally, if you’d like, you can check out my critically well-received superhero novel Gods of the American Wild. Alright, see you next time.
