People Can Fly's Outriders has been out for a little while now, and it offers exciting gameplay features with skill-specific mods, legendary gear, a sprawling skill tree, and different classes to choose from. The game has already had its ups and downs, but it remains one of the most played games and best-selling games out there at the moment.

Outriders came with a free downloadable demo, running from February 25, 2021, up to the present day. In fact, People Can Fly had already confirmed that the demo would be available even after the game had successfully launched. The demo offered useful insights into how players were playing the game, and which features or classes were the most popular. Trickster merged as the most popular then and has continued to be so since.

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Among the most played characters, PCF showed that from the data collected from the demo the class that Outriders players chose the most was the Trickster. From the get-go, this class has proven to be extremely popular among the player base. Maybe it was due to the allure of being able to manipulate the space-time continuum to damage enemies, stay alive, and enjoy a diverse and fun experience.

Whatever the original reason, Outriders didn't have a meta back when the demo was released, and it couldn't have one simply because the level cap was 7, a difficulty cap set at World Tier 5, and the class-specific abilities that players could unlock were the first four. This of course is relevant, considering the reason why the most popular class was the Trickster cannot be credited to it being the strongest class of the bunch at the time.

Specifically, the Trickster got the credit of being the class chosen by a whopping total of 28.5% of the players playing the demo. The Pyromancer took second place, at 27.6% of the players having played as the Pyromancer. These numbers might indicate that the role People Can Fly specified for each class played a role in how popular they ended up being. In fact, both remaining classes, the Technomancer and the Devastator, still do not appear as high-damage classes in the path selections screen, with the Technomancer being flagged as a support, and the Devastator being flagged as a tank.

The Trickster's popularity might stem from most players not wanting to rely on other players to play the endgame, and thus choosing what seemed to be the most flashy, shiny class with the highest damage-dealing capacity. Also, the demo could have worked as a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, further corroborating the Trickster's popularity thanks to its cutting-edge skills.

Outriders officially launched on April 1st, 2021, and its developer team already dished out some nerfs to the most well-performing classes. The three classes out of four that People Can Fly nerfed were the Pyromancer, the Technomancer, and the Trickster. It won't come as a surprise to many that the most nerfed of the bunch was indeed the Trickster.

The class saw a decrease of 15% in three nodes on the class skill tree, namely Disruptive Firepower, Scion of Power, and Outrider Executioner, all now having their power reduced to 35% from 50%. That's not it, unfortunately, as the Trickster got nerfed even more. Its Twisted Rounds ability previously had a cooldown of 16 seconds, and now it has a 25 seconds cooldown. This is a huge hit to the Trickster's overall damage output, but the class still performs better than others - especially the Devastator.

One of the most prominent builds for the Trickster at the moment still revolves around Twisted Rounds, and it uses shotguns to deal immense damage numbers on enemies. In fact, with the Expeditions being time-based to get higher scores and, subsequently, unlocking better rewards, Tricksters are very sought-after due to their extreme damage-dealing capabilities.

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What makes the Trickster a great choice even after the nerfs it received is its amazing skill kit. Obviously, Twisted Rounds still comes out to be one of the best skills in the entire game, and the Trickster does have a few ways of keeping it up all the time, rather than using it as the intended magazine-based skill it normally is. One of these ways is the Perpetuum Mobile Tier 2 mod, which makes weapons replenish their magazines when they land a kill while having 35% of the total ammo or less inside the magazine at the time of the kill. Another option is to have the Instant Reload Tier 3 mod, which refills the magazine upon using the skill Hunt The Prey.

Speaking of Hunt The Prey, it is a popular Trickster skill that teleports the players behind the target enemy and makes them obtain a decent shield to boot. This is a very mobile skill with a very low base cooldown, easily scalable further down thanks to nodes on the skill tree or perks on gear. It even has an associated mod that reduces its cooldown by another 20%, called Dance of Death.

Considering Outriders is a game where the balance between single-target damage and area damage is very thin, and considering that area damage is key when it comes to speedy runs of the various end-game Expeditions, another great skill the Trickster has is Venator's Knife. While the ability does not dish out a great deal of damage on its own, it amplifies all damage dealt to the enemy hit and up to 5 more nearby enemies by doubling the first source of damage the enemies receive.

Other skills of note are Slow Trap and Borrowed Time. They delve deeper in the Trickster's space-time manipulation, with Slow Trap creating a bubble within which enemies are slowed, also slowing all projectiles traveling through it. Perfect for some Matrix action in a shooter game, both for solo play and party play. Lastly, Borrowed Time lets players mark the location the skill is first used in for 28 seconds, and then provides gamers with a shield. Activating the skill again will let the players instantly travel back to the marked location, making up for a very tactical tool.

Outriders is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE: Outriders Preview: Watch the Fast-Paced Trickster Class in Action