Raptor

The **Raptor**, not to be confused with the dromaeosaurs, is a guild known for their high Intelligence, Power, and Mobility, and for being one of the most popular and successful Bird builds. As a whole, Raptors range from B to S tier, and they function as the gatekeepers of the meta. These builds are built to punish mistakes and punish them hard.

## B Tier Raptors

### Owl

In low B tier, there is the Owl. Owls are the premier Stealth assassins of the night sky and can fly silently, which makes it hard for any ground-based players to see or hear them coming. Not only does this make the 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 Opossums.

There are a few reasons why Owls are not top tier. Firstly, their Stealth Strike attack doesn't actually do all that much damage. If a target keeps its footing, an Owl player has basically no other options aside from retreating. Secondly, the Owl's Silent Flight ability is near useless against Bats as they rely on Echolocation rather than Hearing or Sight. This gives them an advantage as they can use their superior Mobility to easily

dodge Owl attacks. If Owls had better Mobility, Stealth techniques, and Power, they would be much more successful and rise in the tier list. Overall, this is a generalization and average among all Owl types. There are 250 species of Owl, all with varying traits. The Owl tier list in itself can range anywhere from S to F tier but generally averages at B tier. Some notable high-tier Owl builds include Blakiston's Fish Owl and the Eurasian Eagle Owl.

### Vulture

    Next up, there is the Vulture near the top of B tier. They haven't quite perfected the build, but they function decently as tanks. A good tank build needs to be able to accomplish two requirements; area denial and soaking up damage. For area denial, Vultures do it quite well. A few of them can easily lock down a carcass, some of the most contested points-of-interest on the map. They can do this because of their large

size and food distraction attack. The other thing a tank must be good at is shrugging off hits. And this is where Vultures fall short. Their thick feather completely shields them 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 a hoard of smaller scavengers, they don't have much counter-play towards bigger, more aggressive builds. If they could, they could potentially even steal kills. And at that point, they'd be really overpowered.

## A Tier Raptors

The three builds that will be mentioned are the Falcon, Hawk, and Eagle.

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They're all similar with a few key differences.

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### guild Traits

All three are diurnal ambush-style builds and 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 targets.

### Hawk

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 Raptors. The best Hawk build is the Goshawk. Goshawks are one of the best hyperaggressive rushdown builds in the game, being able to weave through dense forests. In biomes full of players who specialized in Mobility, Goshawks still managed to reign supreme.

### Eagle

    Eagles share almost everything in common with Hawks but trade a bit of Mobility in exchange for sheer size and Power. Being the most heavily-armed Raptors, their sickle claws can do extremely brutal damage on anything caught in its sight. Most Eagles have such a wide wingspan that it inhibits them from entering forests or jungles, and so meadows, mountainsides, and plains tend to be Eagle's favorite places to patrol, with the exception of being the highest-ranking Eagle of the game, the Harpy Eagle. The Harpy Eagle modifies the core Eagle build setup by adding two important abilities, Jungle Wing and Harpy Claw. The first is that they have a greatly reduced wingspan, much shorter than an Eagle of its own size should have. This cuts its ability to soar quite a bit, but it lets it fly through jungles and forests much easier. The second is that they have truly monstrous talons, larger and more powerful than all other raptors. Not only can they insta-kill Monkey and Sloth players, but they can even pierce through armor. This means that no even highly Defensive builds like the Armadillo are safe from this jungle menace.

### Falcon

While Falcons and Hawks share some traits, such as their high aerial mobility, their core hunting strategies are actually fairly different. While Eagles, Hawks, and Owls all use their talons as their main source of damage, Falcons actually rely on their beaks. The Falcon build modifies their beak (called a tomial tooth). And with this special tooth, it can deal massive damage with critical hits. But because of its tiny hitbox, it can be difficult to score a hit with this dangerous beak, so Falcons need a way to combo into it. A Falcon's talons aren't really that great at grabbing. So instead, they make a fist with their feet and dive-bomb their targets. This stuns them and makes the finishing blow with their beak easy. This is demonstrated best by the Peregrine Falcon, whose near supersonic speed allows it to knock other birds out of the sky with almost no counterplay.

## S Tier Raptors

All of these standout members of these guilds have a strong argument for S tier, as do the last two Raptors on the list.

### Osprey

The Osprey easily has the best air-to-water matchup in the entire game. It really feels unfair for fish players as none of their normal counterplay options work. Their claws penetrate armored scales, and even the stealthier fish builds can be seen from the sky by this build. In addition, the barbs of its talons make its grab inescapable, except for the Arctic, where fish players can use the cover provided by ice to avoid getting caught. Ospreys are an ever-present threat and are successful on every major server because they are just too good at what they are doing.

### Secretary bird

The Secretary Bird has an incredibly strong matchup spread in one of the hardest servers in the game, Africa. Secretary Birds are easily the best alternatives for someone who used to be a Velociraptor main in a previous expansion. Hunting on foot and in pairs, they prove 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 Kick

    attack. Their Kick move has extremely high accuracy that allows Secretary Birds 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 from 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, proves that this is the optimal raptor build.