Outriders: Pyromancer Best Build

So, you want to learn how to burn your enemies to ash? How to incinerate your foes and leave nothing but charred husks in your wake? Of course you do. Outriders’ Pyromancer is a devastating mid-range damage dealer and affliction stacker. This class is designed to support your team by weakening enemies as much as possible.

This doesn’t mean the Pyromancer is lacking in firepower, far from it. With a great array of Anomaly skills and three distinct subclasses, picking the ideal build is going to be tough. Read on to discover the build that will let you really turn the heat up on the enemies and unlock the Pyromancer’s full potential.

Updated November 20th, 2021, by Charles Burgar: Outriders has seen a balance update with the New Horizon update, tweaking a few aspects of the game’s sandbox and endgame. The Pyromancer has seen quite a few buffs since launch, making it a much better caster character than some players might remember. We’ve updated this guide to include more information on the Pyromancer’s trees, skills, perks, and good mods that synergize well with this class.

How To Heal As A Pyromancer

• Heal Mechanic: Skills Mark targets for 15 seconds. Killing a Marked targets grants 24% Health.

The first thing to think about with any class in Outriders is how they heal. The game brilliantly encourages aggressive play by doing away with automatically regenerating health and instead awarding it for meeting specific kill and damage conditions. For Pyromancers, that condition is killing marked enemies. Every enemy that gets affected by one of your skills will become marked for 15 seconds, killing a marked enemy will heal you for 24% of your max HP. With that in mind, the ideal Pyromancer build should employ their skills as often and as widely as possible. Not only will this help your team due to the status afflictions all the Pyromancer’s skills induce, but it will also help you, as you’ll constantly be regaining large chunks of health as your enemies burn.

Strongest Pyromancer Subclass

Skills and subclasses are intrinsically linked in Outriders, as they each synergize with each other. So, let’s whittle down the options.

Ash Breaker focuses on inflicting the Ash status effect—immobilizing enemies to prevent them from performing actions. If you want to play as a support character or use a Burn-consuming build, this is a great tree to use. But if you set your sights on any other type of build, Ash Breaker isn’t worth using.

Fire Storm reduces the cooldown on Ignite skills—the ones which Burn your enemies, causing damage over time. It also increases skill leech—the ability to regain health based on skill damage—maximum health, armor, and causes Burn to progress to Ash if an enemy survives, meaning you still get some of the benefits of the Ash Breaker subclass.

Tempest only really stands out in one way—it offers an auto-revive perk. This is useful, but the rest of the stat boosts feel lacking. Consider pathing between Fire Storm and Tempest.

Great Pyromancer Skills

The three best skills to use with the Fire Storm Pyromancer subclass are Heatwave, Overheat, and F.A.S.E.R Beam. Heatwave will be the bread and butter of the build. It’s an Ignite skill summons a wall of fire that shoots out in front of you and inflicts Burn to all enemies in its path. This skill already has a short cooldown, making it perfect for ensuring all enemies on the battlefield are marked. The additional Ignite skill cooldown reductions granted by the Fire Storm subclass will mean you can use Heatwave very frequently, ensuring all enemies stay burned.

F.A.S.E.R Beam is a devastating energy beam that inflicts Burn and Interrupt on enemies foolish enough to get in your way. Interrupt will—you guessed it—interrupt a charging enemy skill, giving you and your team some time to catch a breath. This skill is best used on bosses and large swathes of enemy grunts. Just make sure you line them up well, as this skill fire straight in front of you. Like Heatwave, it’s also an Ignite skill, so it benefits heavily from the Fire Storm subclass.

Overheat is your last resort skill, only to be used after you’ve used Heatwave or F.A.S.E.R Beam. Overheat is an Explosive skill, so it won’t benefit from the Fire Storm subclass as much as your other two skills, but it’s more of a finishing skill anyway, so that shouldn’t matter. It unleashes a large explosion that damages and interrupts all enemies in a sizeable radius. It also removes the Burn affliction from enemies caught within its blast, but it deals extra damage to them to make up for it. It also highlights enemy names and health on your screen so you’ll be able to hunt down any who survive the blast.

If you really don’t like using an Explosive skill, you can swap out Overheat for Volcanic Rounds, a skill that loads your weapon with Anomaly-infused bullets that will inflict Burn in a small radius and pierce enemies, damaging foes behind them. This is good, but F.A.S.E.R Beam already inflicts Burn in a wide area, making Volcanic Rounds unnecessary.

Best Pyromancer Perks

There are the perks you should use as a Pyromancer.

Best Minor Perks

Best Notable Perks

Best Pyromancer Tactics

With the Fire Storm subclass giving you extra skill leech and allowing you to use your Ignite skills faster, your fighting style should be hyper aggressive. The additional health and armor bestowed by your subclass will make you bulky enough to get deep into enemy ranks and fire off a couple of Heatwaves and even a F.A.S.E.R Beam if there’s a particularly tough opponent. Stay in the fight ensuring your Burn as many targets as possible, then, when their health is low, rush into the middle of a cluster and use Overheat to finish them all off.

Most Useful Pyromancer Weapons

The Pyromancer’s best weapon is honestly itself, but, since the build outlined above really benefits from getting right into the action, you’ll want some guns that help that endeavor. Shotguns and SMGs will be best for when you’re right in the enemy’s face, while LMGs and Assault Rifles will be best when you’re at medium range. If you’re going for Volcanic Rounds over F.A.S.E.R Beam or Overheat, then an LMG is essential, as they will benefit most from that skill due to their high magazine capacity.

A shotgun will be better than an SMG, as it will allow you to quickly finish off a Burned enemy and move on to the next, whereas an SMG will take longer to down weakened enemies. This is really down to personal preference though, so if you really favor one over the other, this build will work with either.

Unique Pyromancer Mods

Mods are passive skills—like perks—that can be found on weapons and armor. Disassembling an item with a certain mod will allow you to unlock it and rebuild it into a different item you craft. Once you unlock a mod you’re free to use it as often as you like, so get experimenting. Weapon mods are available to all classes, while most armor mods are class-specific. Below are some of the best mods for weapons and armor available to the Pyromancer. While you’re obviously free to use whatever you like, the mods outlined below offer the best synergy with the build already created.

Weapon Mods

• Ashen or Burning Bullets will work well with your skills and subclass, so go for those on your medium-range weapons. They also have improved variants, so keep an eye out for those. T3 variants are particularly powerful on the Pyromancer.
• Clip Combustion causes a shockwave around you when you reload, so this is best for your short-range weapons—it’ll give you some breathing room when you’re right in the middle of the fray.
• Proliferation spreads target status afflictions to nearby enemies so is great for rapidly spreading Burn. If you get a good weapon with this mod you can definitely leave Volcanic Rounds off of your roster.
• Crematorium would be great on a shotgun, as killing shots create explosions that inflict Ash on enemies within a seven-meter radius—another great mod for allowing some space when in the middle of a fight.
• Mark of the Stake is an interesting one. Reloading a weapon with this mod will inflict Burn on all enemies wounded by this weapon without a weapon change. So, spray a battlefield with an LMG and on reload, all enemies you hit will erupt into flames.
• Judgment Enforcer marks enemies, perfect for the Pyromancer’s healing requirement. A reload will then deal five times the weapon’s damage to all marked enemies—this is like Overheat but in weapon form.
• Fortress grants a 30% Resistance and damage increase, the latter affecting your skills when active.

The best weapon mods for this class would have to be Clip Combustion on a shotgun and Improved Ashen Bullets on an assault rifle or LMG. Combine Ashen Bullets with the Cinders armor mod—a mod that causes Overheat to consume Ash instead of Burn—and turn Overheat into an absolutely devastating finishing move.

Armor Mods

• The Blacksmith mod causes your Overheat skill to generate armor for you for each status effect consumed by it, a great way to boost yourself while damaging enemies.
• Burnt-Out will boost Heatwave, causing enemies damaged by it to take additional damage for a time.
• Cinders will cause Overheat to consume Ash instead of Burn. This is great when used in conjunction with the Fire Storm subclass skill that makes the Burn affliction turn into Ash.
• Inferno Wave Increases the damage done by Heatwave—a necessity for this build.
• Pure Power increases the damage dealt by F.A.S.E.R Beam—also essential.
• Ride the Wave and Tidal Wave both allow Heatwave to be activated one additional time before its cooldown is activated—these mods will help you breach enemy lines and allow you to mark whole rooms or battlefields with ease.
• Third Degree causes enemies damaged by Overheat to take an additional 25% weapon damage for eight seconds, meaning any survivors of the blast can be quickly moped up with a shotgun.
• Detonator is an amazing mod that reduces the cooldown of Overheat by 50%. This completely mitigates Fire Storm’s lack of Explosive skill cooldown bonuses.
• Ashen Champion causes F.A.S.E.R. Beam to inflict Ash instead of burn. Enemies hit boost your AP by 20% for ten seconds, stacking up to five times.
• Ashes and Leeches grants 40% Weapon Leech for six seconds after using Ash Blast, useful for Volcanic Rounds builds.

You have more room for armor mods, so feel free to mix and match these a bit more. Since you have to pick five mods—as there are only five armor slots—these are the five that would suit this Pyromancer build the best.

Ride the Wave or Tidal Wave are invaluable, being able to use Heatwave multiple times before cooldown will massively boost the potential of this build. Inferno Wave will then add even more damage to Heatwave, causing it to be more than just a status skill and actually a good damage dealing skill. Pure Power will increase the damage done by F.A.S.E.R Beam which is absolutely essential for dealing with bosses and big groups. Cinders will synergize perfectly with the subclass and Ashen Bullets to ensure you aren’t removing the useful Burn affliction too early. And finally, Detonator will compensate for Fire Storm’s lack of Explosive skill cooldown and allow you to use Overheat far more often, allowing it to be the perfect finishing move for the build.