Outriders: Weakness effect vs. Vulnerable status

Two of the status effects in Outriders, Vulnerable and Weakness, can be confusing. After all, those two words have very similar meanings, so how could they be all that different? In practice, the difference between Vulnerable vs. Weakness in Outriders is much more than the similarity between the terms would lead one to believe.

What’s the difference between Vulnerable and Weakness in Outriders?

In Outriders, the Weakness effect targets the enemy’s ability to do damage, and Vulnerable affects how much damage they receive. An easy way to remember this is that if they’re afflicted with Weakness, it lowers the amount of damage they can do to a player. On the flip side, if an enemy is struck with Vulnerable, it affects how much damage a player can do to them.

• Weakness: Lowers enemy attack by 30% for 6 seconds.
• Vulnerable: Lowers enemy defense by 25% for 10 seconds.

Each enemy has its own Status Resistance modifier, which influences how likely it’ll be affected by a status effect-inducing attack, and how long the debuff will last. The good thing is that with persistence, players can inflict weakness and Vulnerable statuses on any enemy. The exception to this is when Elites use their Status Immunity skill. When this happens, a blue symbol appears by the enemy’s health bar. Fortunately, this skill is only active for a short time and takes a while to recharge.

We haven’t found an instance where an enemy inflicted Weakness or Vulnerable to a player. Unlike Ash, Freeze, Bleed, Burn, and Toxic, it seems as though Outriders are immune to those two effects. This is likely due to how powerful they are. It would be incredibly frustrating for enemies to cut a player’s attack by almost a third or defense by a quarter, especially given out outnumbered Outriders are at all points in the game.

Now that we’ve explained Weakness and Vulnerable status check out our guide to Leech to dive even deeper into the game’s mechanics.