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Human beings:
Are they as overpowered as the game's community would lead you to believe?
Short answer: yeah.
They're the most meta-defining build of all time.
And the undisputed top build in the current expansion
But, believe it or not, this wasn't always the case.
Humans used to get bodied left and right, on a daily basis by other players
And it took a pretty long time before the player base how to actually
make use of the human build's unique abilities
The story of the humans rise to dominance is a really interesting one
And so today, we're gonna do an in-depth look
at the human's abilities, their strengths, and their weaknesses
Because yes, they do have weaknesses
We'll also go over notable matchups and finally look at the steps human players
took in order to reach their dominant status
First, their unique abilities
I touched on this topic in my video about primates, but I'll recap here
And also go into more detail
First off the bat, we have their ability to throw things.
Other builds can throw things, but humans can do so harder,
faster and further than anyone else
The reason for this is their body structure
Bipedal builds are tough to balance
Both within the game development sense and the center of mass sense.
Throwing an item with any real force behind it requires serious balance
Achieved only by having shorter arms and longer legs
This is why humans can launch projectiles at deadly speeds
Whereas other primates kind of just lob things without putting much effort into it
If they tried to, they would knock themselves over.
Even if chimpanzees could figure out how to craft a spear,
there's no way they could throw it hard enough to deal any significant damage
Next, there's stamina regeneration.
Humans can chase down anything
If you try to run from a human, you might outspeed them initially,
But you'll run out of stamina much sooner than they will.
And they'll catch you while you're in your weakened state.
This is partially because of their superior balance again,
But mostly it's because of the human build's unique choice to not spec into fur
This gives them access to the extremely broken ability: sweat
Every other current build that's decent at distance running
recharges stamina by using the move "pant"
This works great, but it does require the user to stop running
Sweat, on the other hand, works better while moving
Massively extending the distance that human players can run
They've got a few other important abilities that are essential to their kit
But aren't unique to humans
Their ability to speak is unique among mammals, but some birds can pull it off too.
In humans, the ability to speak allows them to use one of their signature moves:
teach, which drastically boosts skill point gain.
Mitigating the main penalty a player receives upon getting a game over
Humans and birds also share another unique trait which is being able to stand upright.
Standing upright is extremely useful for
dealing with stealth builds that might normally be using tall grass to hide
Tool use also might be thought of as a human-exclusive move,
And it certainly is the most effective in humans
But it turns out, that a pretty wide array of other builds can also do it.
Birds, primates, cephalopods and even fish can
use tools on occasion
But sweating and throwing, uniquely human. Now onto their weaknesses.
And yes, it's true that currently most human players can subvert these with their crafting ability
But it's important to recognize that without equipment, the human build
isn't necessarily unstoppable
The decision to not have fur granted humans a massive buff to mobility at the cost of stealth
In the mammal faction, fur is the prerequisite to
all the major stealth abilities camouflage
And lack of stealth abilities means getting in close on their targets is a serious challenge
The human build's lack of fur also means that
they have very low defense, both from physical attacks and from
environmental affects.
Bare skin offers almost zero armor
To the point where even lower weight classes
Have no trouble dealing damage to humans.
And bare skin also takes quite a bit of damage from the sun too.
Humans are also pretty limited when it come to the power stat.
Physically, they're the weakest of the great apes.
And don't really have any good options for dealing damage
They lack the classic high damage bite attack that nearly every other non-herbivorous
build relies on, instead having to resort to blunt attacks like punch and kick.
Which we all know aren't very effective against builds that have thick fur or skin.
The last major weakness that I can see is that they're pretty bad at dealing with stealth.
The lack of night vision means darkness can really hamper their ability to locate targets
And their lack of a strong sense of smell means camouflage is especially useful against them.
Okay, now let's talk about matchups.
Obviously, a key feature of the human build is being able to craft equipment
Given basic equipment, like low level armor and hunting gear.
The human's best matchup is going to be against medium-large mammals
Unlike blunt damage, piercing damage is quite effective versus builds with thick hide.
But on defense, they're actually pretty awful.
A humans only option on defense is against a large mammal is intimidation.
Unless they've got some crazy high level equipment
But I'll make a video on power creep later.
The classic equipment cannot stop a charging tank main
Unless the intimidate attempt works.
But overall, this matchup is one of the reasons humans became top tier.
Hardly any builds have favorable matchups against tanks.
But that's not to say that humans don't have their counters though
As I said before, stealth can be really effective against them
due to their lack of a keen sense of smell and night vision.
Humans have the ability to win pretty much any fight as long as they've got time to prepare
But, taken by surprise, humans have lot fewer options
Another thing humans have trouble dealing with is flight.
Even when a human has a ranged weapon,
players with high aerial mobility are pretty safe during flight
Now as far as I know, there aren't any bird builds powerful
enough to one shot humans, which is important because blunt
attacks like punches are actually quite effective against birds
Birds have hollow bones that are resistant to tension and torsion, but not compression
This is the opposite of mammal bones,
which are resistant to compression and tension, but not torsion.
The point is, birds aren't the best choice against humans, but,
flight has been unlocked by four different classes in the game
Birds, which we just discussed aren't a good choice, bats,
which do even less damage than birds.
Reptiles, which unfortunately had their arial builds banned in
in patch 1.3.1 and insects
Flying, eusocial insects have, by far, the
best matchup versus humans in the entire game.
Humans have zero counterplay options against a swarm of stinging insects.
I mean, sure, there are special items that they can use to combat swarms if they're prepared.
But the amount of human mains who've chosen that as one of their prestige abilities
is pretty small.
Humans lack of fur means they have no innate defense against stings.
Stings also have the chance to proc the anaphylaxis debuff,
which can actually lead to a game over
And it's for this reason that the high score for human eleminations
Belongs to the africanized honey bee,
known better by its community given name, the killer bee.
And even if the stings don't proc the allergic reaction effect,
They will still definitely achieve their primary goal of dropping their
resolve to zero and granting you control over the territory
And we can see that lately the viability of killer bees has only been growing now that they've expanded their territory outside of Africa
Which brings me to my main point,
Are humans overpowered?
Well, just like the africanized honey bee,
Humans only really became OP once they escaped the African server, and invaded other areas.
Notice how humans took down megafauna across every terrestrial server except Africa
The African tank mains have the matchup experience and counterplay options
to deal with the vast array of skills humans have access to.
But the rest of the community was totally unprepared to deal with the rapid
invasion of new human mains invading their competitive scene.
In other words, the devs could have prevented
the massive destabilization of the current meta if they'd region locked humans
Staying competitive in the meta requires a good player constantly be leveling up their skills.
There's no better example of this than the rapid rise to dominance that humans experienced
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