Kardfogu's Guide to Shooty Outlanders

Shooty Outlanders are considered to be the hard-way, but quite the contrary, they are the easiest way to play Outlanders. Shooties have overwhelming damage, unmatched crowd control and they are fun to play!
Shooty Outlanders are actually the Torchlight II versions of the PvE bowazon from Diablo II with much more damage.
Also, boomsticks are cool!

Introduction

Author's Prologue

This is my Boomstick! Hell yeah, I always wanted to say that and now is the time! If you liked the cute lil' Amazon from Diablo II or the elven archer archetype of the countless ARPG games, then you clicked the right link!

What is a Shooty Outlander?

Shooty Outlander is the collection of the overlooked strength builds for Outlanders. All these builds have the common traits as high rate of attacks combined with slighly lower damage and the ability to convey weapon effects.

Pros

• Not a glaive-throwing boringlander
  
• Extreme crowd control
  
• Ranged
  
• Powerful

Cons

• Hard-to-build

Summary

Well, you won't understand how powerful they are until you try it out, but well-built shooty cripples a boss with the first shot and maintains the blind on it for the duration of the fight. No monster can retaliate to a shooty outlander.

Should I Play it?

Yes...
• ...if you want to play a good outlander build.
  
• ...if you want to fight against extreme odds like modded dungeons with bosses over lvl200 and/or multiple encounters in the same time.
  
• ...if you want a boomstick!
  
• ...if you play hardcore.
No...
• ...if you really can't stop playing your glaive spamming boringlander.

Skillset

Main Skills

Shooty Outlanders have quite a lot of options for main skills. Commonly, Shooty Outlanders choose one primary main attack, such as Rapid Fire or Chaos Burst and take Venomous Hail as a secondary attack form.

• Rapid Fire 15/15
  Rapid Fire is a piercing multi-attack skill and the first one in the outlander's arsenal to deal weapon DPS and potential primary attack. Rapid Fire starts with a low range, but eventually gains enough to become a stable choice endgame.
  Rapid Fire conveys all weapon effects.
  Common mistake to leave Rapid Fire at 10/15, as the skill gains damage with every point, max it!
  
• Chaos Burst 15/15
  Chaos Burst is a piercing, ricocheting multi-attack skill with a high spread, the other potential primary attack for a Shooty Outlander. Chaos Burst deals heavy damage in point-blank range, but it's somewhat lackluster at range.
  Chaos Burst conveys all weapon effects.
  Chaos Burst is safe to use in melee range of enemies in combination with the blind chance granted by Shotgonne Mastery.
  
• Venomous Hail 15/15
  Venomous Hail is an area of effect multiattack skill that requires no line of sight. Venomous Hail is a monster that deals extremely heavy damage, breaks shields instantly and scales with both strength and focus.
  Venomous Hail conveys all weapon effects.
  Venomous Hail requires only a single cast every time the cooldown resets, to deal damage constantly to a target.
  
• Shotgonne Mastery 15/15
  Shotgonne Mastery is the mother of all crowd control, it grants heavy knockback and high chance to stun and blind enemies. If you plan a shotgonne build, you should max this skill obviously. If you plan a pistol build, max this skill and throw away your pistol build asap.
  Shotgonne Mastery grants the Shooty Outlander the ability to cripple bosses completely, making this an invaluable must have skill for every decent outlander.

Optional Skills

Optional skills of the Shooty Outlander are quite close to the build, most of them are offensive passives and defensive active skills. All of them help the Shooty Outlander heavily.

• Share the Wealth 15/15
  Increase in cast speed, attack speed, critical hit chance, everything you ever wanted. While 7% doesn't sound much, it's 7% of hard-to-get bonuses. Charge bonuses shine in bossfights, where they are the most helpful and the easiest to maintain.
  Share the Wealth affects nearby players and pets.
  
• Poison Burst 15/15
  Poison Burst grants a chance to trigger on kills, on trigger, the target explodes and every enemy takes the damage written in the skills description. On the other hand, it won't help against stronger foes and single target fights are out of question.
  Poison Burst requires a skill that conveys weapon effects.
  
• Repulsion Hex 1+/15
  Repulsion Hex is the best friend of Rapid Fire. When you add together all the knockback on Shotgonnes and Shotgonne Mastery, it's obvious, nothing gets close in the linear area of Rapid Fire. Repulsion Hex covers the other 330° around the character with knockback, interrupt and the fear status effect.
  More points in the skill increase the duration, knockback, the interrupt chance and rate of activation.
  
• Rune Vault 1+/15
  Obvious mobility skill with a less obvious use. When you have to move fast, don't even move your cursor just push the button. Attacks in most scenarios come from one direction, if you shoot into that direction you can leap back repeatedly until you're safe again.
  
• Stone Pact 1+/15
  Heal over time, and a really heavy one of that, Stone Pact helps you in solo and it is one of the most welcomed skills in multiplayer. If you have spare points, it's never a waste to put some into Stone Pact to increase the heal done.
  Stone Pacts affects players and pets standing in it's area of effect.
  
• Bramble Wall 1+/15
  Bramble Wall is awesome, he's your best friend to kill when you need someone to sacrifice. Starting with the basics, Bramble Wall is a wall, but it generates a high threat, most enemies will prefer to whack your Bramble Wall instead of you.
  You can also attack it to trigger weapon effects or Rune Vault it for healt/mana steal.

Weirdos

Well, yeah, we arrived to the first guide where I have to write about this! While I covered easy-to-use skills in many guides before, this time we've got some serious stuff that is really hard to use effectively.

• Shadowshot 15/15
  Well, if the released shadowshots had a chance to travel a bit further, they could hit the original target easily, but knockback can help with that. Shadowshot does an extreme amount of damage and can convey effects like there's no tomorrow. Shadowshot is awesome, but unreliable.
  Shadowshot is good, but in most cases, it will be outclassed by Chaos Burst and/or Rapid Fire.

Skills to Avoid

Some skills should be avoided, as they doesn't benefit the build in any way or even worse.

• Akimbo
  Easy maths, endgame any character will have ~1000% bonus damage from strength and focus. In comparison with 1000% from stats, 30% additive bonus damage marginal, that's one reason why Akimbo is awful. After some additional maths, the result will be 2,72% bonus to your damage from Akimbo.
  Akimbo gives you a bonus to Execute, which requires autoattacks. Autoattacks are extremely weak, that's another reason why Akimbo is awful.
  On top of these, Akimbo requires dualwield pistols, this is the main reason why Akimbo is awful.
  
• Long Range Mastery
  Hell, I really hate to hurt this one, but Long Range Mastery is another skill with marginal damage bonus and it's other bonus only affect auto-attacks.
  While this one at least works with every ranged weapon, there are better skills to burn the remaining skillpoints.
  
• Dodge Mastery
  Endgame ranged weapons require ~500 dexterity, you won't need any point in dodge mastery with that much dodge. On top of that, dodge is unreliable. While dodge can help against the attacks of weaker enemies, the heavy spell attacks used by bosses are impossible to dodge.

Stats

Main Stats

Shooty Outlanders are normally strength builds, but as you can see, there are countless ways to deal elemental damage, especially since the 1.22 update. On top of that, spelltriggers often deal magic damage. Not to mention damage over time builds...
Some useless statistics are ignored, like execute-chance from focus or armor gain from vitality.

Strength

Your goal is to hit the critical hit cap, which comes around ~1000 strength, but each build varies after that.
Damage over time builds on the other hand require no points in strength.

• Improves weapon damage and DPS
  Shooty Outlanders always deal considerable weapon DPS, increasing this damage is essential for each stat plan.
  
• Improves critical damage
  Shooty Outlanders as all outlanders have a naturally high chance to crit, so critical damage bonuses are always welcome. Spelltriggers are magic damage, but their critical damage is affected by strength, only damage over time builds settle with base strength.

Dexterity

Your goal is to hit ~500 dexterity to use endgame weaponry.
Damage over time builds on the other hand require no dexterity, their weapons are usable without meeting the stat requirements.

• Improves critical hit chance
  Shooty Outlanders require high critical hit chance to make strength a worthwile investment, but that's not the most important reason to have so much dexterity.
  
• Improves dodge chance
  Well, one shouldn't really care about dodge, but it won't hurt to have some.
  
• Endgame requirements
  Yeah, endgame ranged weapons require 486 dexterity, except for one bow and one crossbow.

Focus

Your goal depends on the build you plan to use. Spelltriggers concentrate on Focus after reaching critical damage cap to reach at least a 1000, while pure weapon DPS builds ignore it completely.
Damage over time builds on the other hand, should have around ~1000 Focus.

• Improves magic damage
  Shooty Outlanders have no conventional magic damage, but instead, they trigger and convey a lot by weapons! Actually, the most powerful spelltriggers cause magic damage, so they require high focus to increase the damage done by spells like Glacial Spike, Thunder and Meteor.
  Damage over time builds deal purely magic damage.
  
• Improves elemental damage
  Strange coincidence is that the best spelltrigger weapons often deal elemental damage, thus their damage won't go to waste with Focus investments. Also, weapon DPS spelltriggers also deal elemental damage.

Vitality

Shield is a no, so you need no vitality. If you want to go for defense, forget shields, use a shotgonne instead!

• Improves block chance
  Well, we really don't care about block chance if we can cripple everything with blind, do we?

Gear

Gearing

Generally, Shooty Outlanders can go with a shotgonne, dualwield, pistol+shield. Shotgonnes are obviously the best mix of offense and defense, outclassing shield builds completely. Dualwield may work, but it rarely offers enough increase in damage to make up for losing the blind chance from shotgonnes.
Shooty Outlanders work well with anything when it comes to armors, but using parts of a set that gives manasteal never hurts, as Rune Vault is a fairly good skill for manasteal purposes.

Mainhand and Offhand

Mainhand is the most important part of the build, as it offers the base damage of skills and most skills convey it's effects. It's often the best to choose a shotgonne over other weapons, but spelltrigger builds have a higher damage output using a dualwield setup.
This time I'll offer you two-handed weapons and weapon combinations, instead of mainhands and offhands separetely.

• Tri-Force Catalyst
  Spelltrigger weapon. It's one of the best shotgonnes in the game, as it offers high DPS in the form of purely elemental damage and 5% chance to trigger Glacial Spike, Thunder and Firestorm.
  On the other hand, it has an annoying downside, having a 5% chance to cast Chaotic Rift.
  Socket it with 3x Eye of Aleera to trigger Glacial Spike!
  
• Bloom's Margin
  Physical weapon. While Tri-Force Catalyst is superior in terms of weapon speed and potential DPS, the Bloom's Margin offers a nice chance to immobilize without the annyoing Chaotic Rift proc.
  Obviously, stuff 3x Vellinque Skulls into it for even moar physical damage!
  
• Netherrealm Shotgonne
  Spelltrigger and damage over time weapon. While it's damage is purely physical, it's 5% chance to proc Thunder and it's 5 open sockets make for a great shotgonne used in spelltrigger builds. Also, the 5 open sockets make it ideal for stacking physical damage over time in it.
  Socket this one with 5x Eye of Aleera for triggering Glacial Spike or 5x Zardon's Mighty Skull to stack physical damage over time!
  
• Any Pistol & Hammer of Retribution
  Spelltrigger weapon combo. Well, if you're ready to sacrifice a guaranteed blind for more chance to trigger spells, get a Hammer of Retribution as offhand and use Ator the Fighting Eagle or Netherrealm Pistol. Ator the fighting Eagle makes up for losing the chance to blind that shotgonnes offer with Shotgonne Mastery, but it's impossibly rare.
  Socket both weapon with as much Eye of Aleera as you can stuff into it to increase your chance to trigger Glacial Spike!

Shield

No shields, but if you really-really want to use one, well, it's up to you!
In this case, anything that blocks can work, but I personally recommend Parma's Coal-Burner with it's whopping 45% chance to block, that way you require ~100 vitality only to reach block cap.

Armor

Shooty Outlanders are good with any combination of gear as long as it gives some useful bonuses. While they have no real need for manasteal, it can help to use at least two items from the Liberation or Inquisitor sets or three items of the Aristocrat set.
Your best bet in armor, sockets and enchants is to get the following attributes:

• Damage Reduction up to 75% for additional defense.
  
• Chance to reflect missiles.
  
• Strength and Focus, the more the better.
  
• +X Health.
  
• +X% Health.
  
• Casting Speed.
  
• Attack Speed.
  
• Magic finding luck for loot.
  
• Gold finding luck for farming money faster.

Enchant your gear with attributes by Boris, try to get ~150 stat on everything, so that you can hit 1000 strength, ~300+ dexterity and 1000+ focus.

Tactics

General Tactics

Correctly built Shooty Outlanders are so easy to play, that I wonder how they never managed to become a popular cookie-cutter.

Generally, whenever you see something, it's very likely that you can solve the problem with shooting. Rapid Fire mid ranges, Chaos Burst at short ranges, Venomous Hail if the target is large or you have no line of sight to shoot directly at it. Shotgonne Mastery is the trick, whatever you manage to hit, it won't strike back again.
If you have Poison Burst, large crowds of weaker enemies are very likely to die instantly from the first explosion.

Repulsion Hex is an important tool against fast melee enemies, try to cast it whenever the cooldown resets, so to have it on yourself always. Repulsion Hex ensures that you can ignore melee enemies, while you concentrate on killing the ranged and spellcaster ones.

Against ranged and spellcaster enemies, sometimes you have to dodge their missiles, use Rune Vault once or twice.

Bramble Wall and Stone Pact are your friends if you have to kill something that has a larger range than your skills.

Boss Tactics

Well, from all the builds I tried - and I tried a lot -, Shooty Outlander is the most effective at killing bosses. Once you shoot it, the boss becomes blinded, and you have no additional problems.

While bosses have ~90% resistance to stuns and ~80% resistances to immobilization effects, their resist to blind effects is exteremely low, 70% in most cases. If you strike first, they will never strike back.

Hardcore

Hardcore in Singleplayer

Well, every build for hadcore needs to meet some important requirements. Also, it's important to meet most of these early, especially in elite.

• Strong offense
  
• Effective crowd control
  
• Swift mobility
  
• Heavy defense

Strong offense - check
At the start of the game, Rapid Fire is already unlocked, not much later, Chaos Burst is accessible as well, both skills do considerable weapon DPS to multiple targets. All these skills along with Venomous Hail scale well endgame.

Effective crowd control - check
Early on, Shotgonne Mastery is accessible and it gives a very powerful crowd control to every weapon attack. Attacks with multiple projectiles that can convey Shotgonne Mastery are also accessible early in the game.

Swift mobility - check
Rune Vault is accessible early and it serves well as a mobility skill. While it works differently than other skills, you jump in the opposite direction your character faces, so you can instantly use it without moving your mouse in combat. Well, with practice it's fine, otherwise you'll fail.

Heavy defense - error
Well, defense is something that only engineers have in this game, so don't take it badly. At least you're ranged, not like the poor berserkers who fight in melee with the same zero defense!

Hardcore in Multiplayer

Hardcore is something you should play in coop if you can. Of course, stay away from unknown people, strangers, aliens, extraterrestrials and cheaters. Back to the topic, every well-built dedicated hardcore coop party has two important roles:

• Support - yeah, that's the Force Field spamming Engineer...
  
• Crowd Control - yeah, a shooty outlander, hey, that's you!

Guess what! One of these ensures that the party survives a strike now and then, the other one ensures, that noone will strike twice.

If you plan to play hardcore coop and one of your friends already plays an engineer, then go pick the Shooty Outlander!

You can stop bosses from instagibbing your friends. Is that not cool enough for you? While you shoot a boss, the others can stop running around in panic and concentrate on killing stuff instead of dodging like mad!
Shotgonne Mastery saves time and energy for the whole party! Shotgonne Mastery to the rescue! And so once again the day is saved thanks to the powerpuff girls Shooty Outlander!

Epilogue

Author's Epilogue

Well, this one is quite easy, isn't it? My favourite outlander build, but I have so much more! On the other hand, none of my other builds can decimate bosses as fast and easily as the Shooty Outlander can.

Well, my first shotty outlander, Ashoora was a shooty/summon build, it was quite good actually, but I wanted even more out of her! After some tweaking, I decided to convert her to a shooty build with more support skills, but I was too lazy to level her. After that, I learned about spelltriggers and stuff and I decided that it's cool enough for her and that's all.

Okay, she's a lot less effective without gear than my Emberquaker, but she's still much stronger than my glaivelander.

Have fun and if you liked this, stay tuned for more!

[jikidajackson]

░░███████ ]▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ - - - HELP BOB TAKE OVER STEAM
▂▄▅████████▅▄▃▂ HE IS THE GREATEST!
I███████████████████]COPY AND PASTE TANK TO JOIN WAR!
◥⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙◤

[Wendigowak]

Noice

[neustar]

Possibly the most broken build ever. For years i thought that every boss in the game was absolutely imune to blindness.

[75338]

Master of the Elements yay or nay?

[lis_baka]

Hey, if anyone alive in here, can u explane a thing to newbee? Author mentioning some "speltrigger" and "DoT" builds, obviously, based on this guide. I wonder, what is the difference? I guess, speltrigger build main idea is to use maxed Poisin Burst, but wtf is DoT build prefer? Sorry if looks stupid, but need answer on this///

[Metalhead1652]

interesting thinking but completely flawed dynamic; outlander with low dodge on hardcore elite is gonna die very quickly

there's points in the game where the enemy goes zerg on your character and I promise you, that's when you die the fastest

[Sergeant Poultry]

Lmao first time playing shooty outlander and I put the majority of my points into Akimbo, Long range mastery and dodge mastery. Oops.

[Rainover68/Purganis]

Hi friend started play torchlight recently thanks for the guide! How much vitality do i need? Im playing HC on the hardest dificulty!

[mad dog.]

How can I get 1000 str? Enchants?

[JewelryStar]

/txhuy88

@Nihilninja: if you want to play with DoT Outlander build, you can go with Shotgone and using max Shotgone passive skill, it can help you "play" with even bosses, Venomous Hail can stacked alot Conveys dmg on target in VH's landed area. And yes, you can spend all attribute points into Focus to boost Conveys dmg, Dex just enough to wearing gears. You can play focus all on DoT/Conveys dmg or mix both of them, or full crit dmg (which you combine Dex enough to wearing gears and +%crit chance from gears to good enough %crit, then the rest attribute points focus on Str).