Falcon...
Falcon Punch!!
This game has some of the coolest, most unique abilities you could ever think of.
From Prehensile Tails to Venomous Fangs, it can be tough to choose,
but the fact of the matter is,
you can't choose all of them.
And so while playing, you've almost certainly come across another player with an ability or move
you really wish you've been able to make work with the rest of your build.
And, while things like Venom and Camouflage are highly coveted,
nothing compares to the jealousy players experience when they realize
they'll never unlock Flight.
While there are 3 currently available classes that can fly...
...the poster child of this ability is, of course, the Bird.
But talking about Flight only scratches the surface of what Bird builds are capable of.
So which Bird performs the best in the current meta?
So which Bird performs the best in the current meta? Which abilities are crucial to their success?
So which Bird performs the best in the current meta? Which abilities are crucial to their success? Is Flight even necessary to be top tier?
Birds are awesome and also extremely diverse.
Making an exhaustive Bird Tier List would take such a long time
that I'm pretty sure by the time I'd finish making it, YouTube's algorithm would've left me behind!
So, instead, I'm going to need to divide up Birds into a few separate videos.
I'll start with the group I get the most requests about:
Birds of Prey.
As a whole, they tend to range from
B Tier and up and kind of function as the gatekeepers of the meta.
If you know the matchup, use cover and have good fundamentals,
you shouldn't have too tough of a time.
But, if you make a mistake, these guys are built to punish it and punish it hard.
At the end of the video, I'll also talk about some of the advanced techniques Birds are using to advance the meta.
But first, let's get through this tier list.
As always, we'll start low and move up from there.
So, in low B Tier, we've got Owls.
Owls are the premiere Stealth Assassin of the night Sky.
They've got a special ability which allows them to fly silently,
meaning many Ground-based players don't really have any defense against this,
since they can neither see nor hear an Owl coming.
Not only does this make exploration at night near impossible for smaller builds like Rodents and Lizards,
but it can even pose a threat to other nocturnal rogues
like Cats, Raccoons and Oppossums.
While this is definitely a powerful combo, Owls are not top tier for a few reasons.
First, their Stealth Strike attack doesn't actually do all that much damage.
If the target keeps its footing,
an Owl player has basically no options aside from retreating.
Second, the Owl's Silent Flight ability is near useless against Bats,
because they rely on Echolocation rather than hearing or sight.
This means they can use their superior Mobility to easily dodge Owl attacks
If Owls had a better match up against Bats,
they'd be much more successful and would rise on the Tier List,
but for now, they're sitting comfortable in B Tier.
Next up, we got Vultures.
While I don't think they've quite perfected the build,
they function decently well as Tanks.
A good Tank build needs to be able to accomplish two things.
The first is Area Denial,
which Vultures do quite well.
A few of them can easily lock down a carcass,
one of the most contested points-of-interest you'll ever see on the map.
They can do this because of their large size
and Acidic Projectile attack.
The other thing a Tank must be good at is shrugging off hits...
...and this is where vultures fall short.
Their thick feathers shield them completely from smaller attacks,
but because they need hollow bones to be able to fly,
blunt force can easily crush their defenses and take them down in only a hit or two.
So, while they can defend a carcass from hoards of smaller Scavengers,
they don't have much counterplay towards bigger, more aggressive builds.
If they could, they could potentially even steal kills,
and at that point, they'd be really overpowered.
But, until they figure out how to pull that off, they'll stay near the top of B Tier.
Right. So in A Tier, things are gonna get crowded.
There are three A-Tier Guilds of Bird I wanna talk about,
but since they all overlap on the Tier List,
I'm instead going to first talk about the Guild traits,
and then talk about what I think the S-Tier members of each Guild are.
The guilds I'm talking about are Hawks, Falcons, and Eagles.
The're all pretty similar with a few key differences.
All three are diurnal Ambush-style builds,
and all are nightmares for inexperienced players.
Hawks and Eagles are...mostly the same.
Both deal most of their damage using their extremely powerful claws to slice and grab their target.
Hawks are smaller and much more nimble in the air.
Since they can make much tighter turns,
this means they're better at dodging obstacles than most other Birds of Prey.
The best Hawk build is, without a doubt, is the Goshawk.
Goshawks are one of the best hyper-aggressive Rushdown builds in the game.
being able to weave through dense Forests at breakneck speed.
In biomes chock-full of players who specialize in Mobility,
Goshawks still manage to reign supreme.
Eagles share just about everything in common with Hawks
but trade a bit of Mobility in exchange for sheer size and power.
Eagles are easily the most heavily armed Birds of Prey.
Their Sickle Claw's able to inflict crazy high damage on anything caught in their sights.
Most Eagles have a Wingspan so wide, it inhibits them from entering Forests or Jungles.
And so, Meadows, Mountainsides, and Plains tend to be an Eagle's favorite places to patrol...
...with the exception of the highest ranking Eagle on the List:
the Harpy Eagle.
The Harpy Eagle build modifies the core Eagle setup in two important ways.
The first is that they've got a greatly reduced Wingspan,
much shorter than an Eagle of its size should have.
This cuts its ability to soar by quite a bit, but it lets it fly through Jungle much easier.
The second is that they've got truly monstrous Talons,
larger and more powerful than all other Birds of Prey.
Not only can they instagib Monkey and Sloth players,
but they can even pierce Armor.
This means that not even highly Defensive builds like the Armadillo are safe from this Jungle menace.
Now, a player with little Raptor experience might be under the impression that
Falcons and Hawks are fundamentally the same,
and while they do share some traits,
such as their high Aerial Mobility,
their core hunting strategy is actually fairly different.
While Hawks and Eagles use their Talons as their main source of damage,
Falcons actually rely on their Beak.
The Falcon build augments its Beak with a special tooth that deals massive damage on Critical Hits.
Now, obiviously because of its tiny hitbox,
it can be difficult to actually score a hit with this dangerous Beak,
so Falcons need a way to combo into it.
Eagles, Owls and Hawks don't have this issue since they just grab using their Talons,
but a Falcon's Talons aren't really great at this either.
So instead, they make a
So instead, they make a FIST with their beak and Divebomb their targets.
This Stuns them and makes the finishing blow with their Beak easy.
This is demonstrated best with the Peregrine Falcon,
whose near-supersonic Speeds allow it to knock other Birds out of the Sky with basically no counterplay.
Like I said, all of the standout members of these guilds have a strong argument for S Tier...
...as do the last two Raptors on my List, today.
The Osprey easily has the best Air-to-Water matchup in the entire game.
It really just feels unfair to Fish players, as none of their normal counterplay options work.
Their Claws go straight through Armored Scales,
and even the stealthier Fish can be seen from the Sky by this build!
As an added bonus, the Barbs on the Talons of the Osprey make its grab inescapable...
...with the exception of the Arctic,
where Fish players can used the cover provided by ice to avoid getting caught.
Ospreys are an ever-present threat.
They're successful on every major server because they're just THAT good at what they do.
This last build is, in my opinion, the dark horse of the Raptor meta.
It's got an incredibly strong matchup spread in one of the hardest servers the game has ever seen.
And yet, it isn't very well known,
possibly because of its very unassuming name:
the Secretarybird.
Secretarybirds are easily the best option for someone who was a Velociraptor main in a previous expansion.
Hunting on foot and in pairs,
they've proved time and time again that striking from the Sky is overrated.
They can easily defeat other high tier builds, such as the Cobra and the Mongoose,
with their high-damage Kicks.
[Power: 65, Acc: 100] Their Stomp move has extremely high Accuracy
allowing Secretarybird players to score game-ending headshots with ease.
And, they do all of this without completely sacrificing their Flight ability.
If they ever find themselves outmatched—
which only ever happens against builds in the higher Weight classes—
They can still retreat to the Sky or Treetops.
The fact that this strategy works in Africa,
one of the most unforgiving servers of all time,
is proof enough to me that this is the optimal Raptor.
Now, normally I'd expect Intelligence-based Birds, like Corvids and Parrots,
to be the ones to be really advancing the Bird meta to new heights,
but, surprisingly, some of the most impressive advanced techniques have come from the Raptors.
Eagles have been known to eliminate targets by knocking them off of Cliffs or Mountainsides
and essentially letting the physics engine of the game do the work for them,
and several Australian Hawks and Falcons have been seen intentionally spreading fire,
destroying cover and leaving targets without any defensive options!
Well, that about sums it up for this video, so thanks for watching, everyone!
If you're interested in exploring the meta further, be sure to Subscribe and check out my other videos.
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on a platform that's more well-suited to daily uploads— even though I upload only about twice a month.
Thanks! See you next time.