It has been less than two weeks since Outriders first launched globally. The game has since received mixed reviews, with many people either loving it or hating it, and fewer people just being on the fence. Outriders has been quite the popular talk lately, but like the reviews, that's mixed too.
The game did come with some minor bugs, and not very serious ones that ended up being an occasion for the online community to have a laugh. However, there were also game-breaking, critical bugs that kind of ruined the experience for the unfortunate players incurring in them, such as the dreadful inventory wipe for the Outriders. Bugs aside, the game still feels not balanced enough in terms of gameplay, class-exclusive abilities, class trees, and overall damage output. Unfortunately, Devastators seem to have gotten the short end of the stick in some cases.
The Devastator Class in Outriders
One of the main issues the Devastator has, which has been crippling players' damage output, is that the other three classes - namely, the Technomancer, the Pyromancer, and the Trickster - all have abilities that allow them to deal damage that ignores enemy armor, while also having higher base damage for their Anomaly skills. What does this mean, though?
There are many builds around for Outriders, and the Devastator, unlike the other classes, does not come with a built-in skill to add effects to the rounds of its weapons. The Technomancer comes with Blighted Rounds, which is a skill that infuses the magazine of the current weapon held by players with the Toxic ailment, dealing damage over time and a small amount of the base damage in an area as well. The Pyromancer gains Volcanic Rounds, which is a skill that inflicts Burn onto enemies even if the projectile misses them, but it allows players to cause damage and pierce the target if it hits, dealing damage to other enemies behind the first. The Trickster learns the skill Twisted Rounds, which amplifies the damage each bullet within the magazine deals to enemies by increasing the player's Fire Power stat.
These skills count as Anomaly skills, despite adding special effects to the bullets from the players' weapons, and this in return means that these three classes are all able to ignore the targets' armor simply by shooting at them. The Devastator, on the other hand, does not have any skill that is remotely comparable to these, making it a sub-par class in terms of raw damage output. Plus, even if Devastators were to be built to mainly use their Anomaly skills - thus ignoring the enemies' armor as well - they would still have to wait for the cooldowns to replenish, and the damage of their skills would still be lower than those of the other classes'.
Another issue that is a significant factor in this situation, weighing further the Devastator down, is that enemies scale armor the higher the World Tier a player unlocks, and the higher the Challenge Tiers the content players are playing is. What this means is that the Devastator does progressively less damage to enemies the harder the content is, which is a huge detrimental factor for players trying to obtain Gold Chests from Expeditions by completing them in less time. As a Tank, the Devastator isn't really about to go down, but its damage output is in much need of a buff. The added drama here comes from the fact that PCF recently nerfed the other three classes, instead of buffing the Devastator.
Problems Devastator Players Are Facing, and Possible Solutions
As of lately, on Reddit, there were many new posts and comments regarding the Devastator situation, with party leaders reportedly kicking Devastator players from their parties when found through Outriders' matchmaking system. This is bad, as Devastators do need their gear upgrades just as much as all other playable classes.
The problem stems from the fact that the challenges for obtaining Gold Chests from Expeditions are time-based, making Devastators "less desirable" when it comes to clearing the zones in a speedy fashion. While this is a Devastator-specific issue that still causes many players to be unable to progress with the gear acquisition for their characters, the time-based Expeditions are something most players don't like.
The general consensus here arises because of how Outriders is conceived similarly to The Division. This means that time is not of the essence, and encounters should take as long as they need to be completed, rather than having to rush them in order to achieve better results and obtain better rewards. A possible solution would be to make the Expeditions' challenges anything but time-based, and this would solve both a general issue the game currently has and one of the issues that are hindering the progress of a specific class: the Devastator. Another potential solution to the Devastator's low damage output would be to either make the class have shorter cooldowns overall and increasing its Anomaly Power to higher amounts.
The first scenario has the potential of not being enough, though, to fix the Devastator's damage output, as skills still tend to have much less uptime when compared to guns and bullets. The second option is likely the most efficient one to fix things for Devastator players and to balance the classes more. Ultimately, it remains to be seen, but the Devastator is in need of some love.
Outriders is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and Stadia.