Outriders has been out for over a month now, and one of the reasons why players keep coming back to the game is that it's fun, and it offers quite a lot of options to build the characters in different, unique ways. There are four classes in Outriders, each with eight skills, three main branches in the passive skill tree, with a total of 20 points to allocate, and then there are mods, gear attributes, legendary weapons and armor, legendary sets, and more. The options are endless, and there is no single correct way of approaching this aspect of the game, meaning that players have plenty of freedom while mixing and matching their items, mods, skills, and passives in ways that make for a strong combination.

Ever since the free playable demo for Outriders came out, prior to the game's release, the Trickster has proven time and time again to be one of the most popular classes, be it thanks to its space-time manipulation or because of its all-powerful Twisted Rounds builds. Whichever the reason, the Trickster can be an extremely potent tool of destruction when built in a way that takes advantage of its strengths and combines them, too. This specific build is designed to do just that, and that's because of the extremely strong Cyclone Slice skill combined with Temporal Blade, the End of Time legendary set, and a few other key options that make the Trickster hit like a truck, basically.

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There are two possible best set-ups for this build in terms of armor piece, and the end result is almost identical, so it's mostly up to the players to choose what works best for them, what they like more aesthetically, or simply based on which items they have. The first option would be to use the following legendary pieces:

• Cranium of a Lost Creature
• Armor of the Edge of Time
• Pants of the Edge of Time

Then, players have the option to add Epic gloves or Epic Footgear, based on personal preference or availability, and the remaining piece should be either the Footwear of the Edge of Time or the Gloves of the Edge of Time, respectively. The first three pieces are the best in slot here, considering they all provide players with the most useful combination of attributes, being Anomaly Power, Cooldown Reduction, and Skill Life Leech. Due to the Cranium of a Lost Creature taking the headgear slot, the remaining third piece from the Edge of Time set has to be either the Gloves or the Footgear, which is not ideal because they both provide Max Health instead of Anomaly Power. Otherwise, there's another option to avoid the trouble, which uses different pieces of the Edge of Time legendary set:

• Goggles of the Edge of Time
• Armor of the Edge of Time
• Pants of the Edge of Time
• Epic Gloves
• Epic Footgear

This set-up maximizes the amount of Anomaly Power gamers can get from the armor pieces, but it still requires the Tier 3 mod from the Cranium of a Lost Creature to be crafted onto another piece.

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The main skills to use in this Anomaly Power build of course include Temporal Blade and Cyclone Slice, with the third being Hunt the Prey for extra mobility and survivability thanks to the Shield it provides. As for the skill tree, the choice here is to go down the bottom path, and the best nodes to pick are:

• Combat Shield Timeline, which increases Anomaly Power by 50% for 10s when using a Movement skill, which is Hunt the Prey
• Anomalic Acceleration, which increases Anomaly Power by another 50% for 10s when a Damage skill ends, meaning either Temporal Blade or Cyclone Slice
• Leap of Clincher, which provides 25% more Resistance Piercing for 10s when using a Movement skill
• Scion of the Void, which grants an additional 25% Resistance Piercing for 10s when a Damage skill ends
• Shielded Readiness, which allows the Trickster to generate much more Shield at the cost of not being able to heal anymore from Close Range kills, but this scales particularly well with one of the Cyclone Slice mods
• Altered Executioner, the best node overall by far, considering it provides 10% increased Anomaly Power for each enemy in Close Range

The other nodes to pick are basically all the minor Anomaly power ones, called Concentration, all the ones granting Resistance Piercing, called Disturbance Coating, all those that grant Cooldown Reduction, called Continuum, and finally, all the nodes called Life Transfer, which provide Skill Leech. A single Concentration node can be swapped out for Anomaly Scything, just below Against the Odds, which grants 30% increased Anomaly Power for 5s when using the Trickster's Melee attack.

As for the weapons, players can pretty much use anything they want. The must-have mod here is Fortress, which is found on the Deathshield legendary shotgun, meaning players can either wield the said weapon or look for another one and craft Fortress on it. There are two best approaches here. The first is to have a weapon of the players' choosing that can be crafted with Fortress, or they can simply use the Deathshield and craft on it one of the following mods:

• Death Chains, which inflicts AP damage over 3 seconds on the target
• Moaning Winds, which makes reloading the weapon deal a lot of AP damage to nearby enemies, and it has a cooldown of 8s
• Scrap Grenade, which makes the first shot fired inflict AP damage in a small area, and it has a 1s cooldown
• Shadow Comet, which summons a comet dealing AP area damage, with a 3s cooldown
• Ultimate Storm Whip, which hits enemies with a lightning bolt that deals AP damage, with a 1s cooldown
• Kinetic Stomp, which creates seismic shocks around the Trickster, dealing AP damage in a 5-meter area, with a 4s cooldown
• Ravenous Locust, which conjures a swarm of locusts around the target, dealing AP damage over 10s and applying Weakness to all enemies within 6 meters from the target, with an 8s cooldown
• Weakness Trap, which causes an explosion that deals AP damage in an area and applies Weakness to all enemies within a 5-meter radius from the target, with a 3s cooldown
• Claymore Torrent, which creates Anomaly blades with shots, dealing AP damage to a maximum of 4 enemies at once when struck, with a 4s cooldown
• Sandstorm, which conjures a sandstorm that deals AP damage over time in a 5s time span, coming with a 5s cooldown

It's important to note that the weapon of choice influences the build with its attributes even if it's not used at all, so players should always try to look for a weapon that has either Skill Leech or Close Range damage as one of its attributes, or even both. These are the best overall, and the others don't really matter much.

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There are several mods that help the build in different ways, and while some are pretty much required, others can be chosen from a small selection of powerful mods that all play a role, albeit smaller than that of the main ones. Among the best to use, which shouldn't be disregarded for the build to work properly, there are:

• Power Assimilation, which increases Anomaly Power by a substantial amount based on the number of Elite enemies on the battlefield. Normally guides usually say that Elite enemies are those that are represented with a big red skull icon on the map, but truthfully the bigger enemies found in the game are also classified as Elites, meaning this mod provides way more AP than it seems
• Rebound, which allows the Trickster to reflect 50% of the incoming bullets while Cyclone Slice is active
• Ultimate Duration, which extends the duration of Cyclone Slice by an extra 10 seconds
• Captain Hunter, which grants 25% increased damage against Elites, again, very useful because of how Elites are classified
• Cut Loose, which reduces the cooldown of Temporal Blade by 20%
• Slasher, which provides an extra use of Temporal Blade before it goes on cooldown
• Shield Evoker, which grants an extra 10% Shield when killing enemies with Cyclone Slice. This is particularly powerful because of the fact that it stacks with the regular 12% Shield that Tricksters gain when killing enemies in Close Range, and it is further increased by the aforementioned node called Shielded Readiness. This means that kills in Close Range grant 14% Shield, and an extra 12% if the kill is scored with Cyclone Slice, for a total of 26% Shield per kill with Cyclone Slice.

Now, for the remaining mods, there are three more to pick, and this small list is aimed at allowing players to choose ones that fit their playstyle from the following selection:

• Wind Slash, which increases the damage dealt by Cyclone Slice, scaling with Anomaly Power and effectively increasing the DPS of the build
• Duration, which extends the duration of Cyclone Slice by another 5 seconds, and it stacks with Ultimate Duration
• Backstabber, which makes Hunt the Prey inflict damage to the enemy the Trickster teleports to, with the damage scaling off Anomaly Power
• Dance of Death, which reduces the cooldown on Hunt the Prey by 20%, making the build more mobile and allowing Hunt the Prey's Shield to have more uptime
• Temporal Armor, which provides the Trickster with a 50% Armor buff per enemy struck by its Temporal Blade skill, with a maximum of 8 targets, granting 400% Armor in the best-case scenario. This doesn't scale with Fortress, unfortunately, although that would have been nuts and likely too strong.
• Life of the Party, which reduces all incoming damage by 5% per enemy in Close Range, up to a maximum of 8, for a total 40% damage reduction
• Double Slice, which makes Temporal Blades damage enemies with an additional Anomaly Slice for 50% damage of the original value each time the skill is used

That's all for this build of the week, which hopefully helps gamers willing to play an Anomaly Power Trickster spec to optimize their damage output and survivability, too.

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

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