Players have a wide selection of equipment to choose from when speccing their character.
Teeth, claws, stingers, spikes, each weapon has distinct advantages and disadvantages
in combat.
Herbivore players tend to favor highly intimidating equipment, like horns and antlers.
In the African meta, things are taken to the extremes, with builds like the elephant, rhino,
and cape buffalo rocking some of the most threatening tusks and horns in the entire
game.
So you might be surprised to learn that one of the most successful builds in the African
savannah is the zebra, a build with no obvious weaponry to speak of.
So what is it about the zebra build that has granted it such a dominant position in the
savannah?
We’ll answer that question and many more in today’s video, which was sponsored by
CuriosityStream.
To answer that question, let’s zoom out a bit and discuss the incredible stats and
abilities of the entire equine faction, including zebras, horses, and donkeys.
Lets begin with their stats.
Right off the bat, it’s plain to see that this is a highly mobility-centric build with
an above average power stat to back it up.
With slightly above average intelligence and fairly poor defensive, HP, and stealth stats,
at first glance you might actually think these stats belong to a rushdown predator, something
like a wolf or eagle.
Something that can overwhelm its target with speed and power, and either finish the attack
before the defender has a chance to counterattack, or weave in and out of the defender’s effective
range, chipping away at it or tiring it out.
Clearly, stats do not tell the whole story here, as all equines are herbivores.
So, let's delve a little deeper into the abilities and strategies that horses and their variants
utilize to survive.
Seeing as their highest stat is mobility, it’s no surprise that an equine player’s
best defense against a predator player’s attack is to run away.
While not technically as fast as the max speed of a top tier predator, horse builds are able
to maintain high speeds for much longer, and because of this, builds like the big cat or
bear have little chance of catching them without an extremely stealthy ambush.
The horse’s specialized hooves grant them a bonus to burst movement speed and allows
them to ignore the movement penalties of rocky terrain.
The likelihood of a successful ambush is driven even lower due to the horse’s solid intelligence
stat, which allows it to engage in herd behaviors such as individuals keeping watch to alert
vulnerable teammates of approaching enemies.
Taking shifts keeping watch is really important in a party of horse players, because horses
need to spend massive amounts of time grazing.
See, horses did not spec into the ruminant perk, which means they can’t extract nearly
as much energy from grass as builds like sheep and cows can.
This was an intentional trade off to keep the build much more lean and agile than ruminants,
enabling them to dash quickly and jump great distances.
But because the amount of time they need to spend feeding with their heads down is around
double that of an equivalent sized ruminant, there’s no way they’d be able to avoid
an ambush alone.
If they do get attacked, the chase begins, and this is where one of the horse’s other
core abilities comes into play: sweating.
Now, I do need to address an inaccuracy I made in a previous video, my most viewed video
to date: Are Humans OP where I say that the ability to sweat is uniquely human.
This isn’t entirely accurate.
Horses also have the ability to sweat in order to dissipate heat, however they’re nowhere
near as efficient at cooling down via sweating as humans are, for one main reason: body hair.
Sweat doesn’t evaporate off of a horse as easily as it does a human because sweat gets
trapped in the hair on the horse’s body.
As such, humans do still absolutely crush horses in terms of thermoregulation during
distance running, BUT, sweating is still an extremely powerful ability that massively
reduces a player’s loss of stamina during a run, and thereby greatly increases the potential
distance a player can travel.
Anyways, if during a chase, the horse player finds itself somehow unable to completely
avoid an attack, that’s when the other signature equine ability comes into play: their kick.
Now, in relation to the more typical combat moves, like biting, swiping, and stinging,
Kicking is generally seen as a rather janky attack style, used mostly as either a desperate
combo breaker attempt, or the best option available to builds which haven’t specced
their characters to allow for better combat moves.
Generally speaking, kicks don’t deal that much damage, they’re fairly telegraphed
and easy to dodge, and they can even throw the user off balance if they miss.
However if we take a look at the Horse’s kick we see an entirely different picture.
The horse’s kick hits with a force of around 2000psi, putting it well above the power of
a jaguar bite and just a bit below the power of a crocodile bite.
Both of those builds are top tier specifically because of their incredible bite damage, so
having a kick of roughly equivalent power is extremely useful.
However plenty of large builds have no issue dealing damage.
Moose, elk, wildebeest, and other large ungulate builds can threaten insane damage if they
connect with a charging slam.
However attacks like that are incredibly telegraphed and most players have a decent amount of practice
dodging them.
In contrast, a horse kick has incredible frame data, to the point where it’s basically
unreactable if you’re within range, which I should add, can be deceptively far.
This makes approaching a defending equine player a lot more risky than most herbivore
builds.
However the horse’s kick has synergies that increase its utility far beyond what can be
explained by its base damage and frame data.
When it comes to defending themselves from attacking carnivore players, equine builds
are at a huge advantage.
Let me explain.
So, most herbivore players have only two options when confronted with an adversary.
Fight or flight.
Carnivore players know this, and tailor their strategies to take advantage of the defending
player’s limited options.
When wolves hunt large prey, like elk, their main objective is to break the defending player’s
nerve, and frighten it into fleeing.
They will not commit to an attack if the defending player chooses to stand and fight.
However, they will continue to pressure it with bluff charges and fake outs, hoping to
bait out a defensive attack.
As mentioned before, these counterattacks are slow enough to be dodged on reaction,
quickly lowering the elk’s morale, especially as the rest of its herd likely gets further
and further away.
It’s only after a prey animal starts fleeing that these predators will actually try and
deal damage, by attacking the hindquarters to inflict heavy bleed buildup.
In order to stop these attacks, most herbivores will need to once again stop and turn to face
their attackers, which just resets the situation back to the first phase.
Horses, Zebras, and Donkeys can completely thwart this plan of attack, as their kick
grants them an extremely valuable option: the ability to counterattack while fleeing.
Since they don’t need to stop and face their attackers in order to deal damage, and because
their kicks are harder to dodge than horn charges are, zebras have one of the highest
K/D ratios against lions and hunting dogs in the game.
While it might not be as impressive and showy as having huge horns or antlers, there’s
no denying that this strategy is extremely effective at warding off attacks and escaping
danger.
On top of all of the other benefits, kicking also allows the equine player to keep its
vitals well out of reach, and isn’t exposing itself to a critical hit counter attack like
some horn users do.
It does have its limitations though.
Kicking backwards requires specific positioning which, unless your character has 360 degree
vision, will make your attacks less accurate.
And on the odd chance that your opponent does get in front of you and lands a grab before
you’re able to turn away, your options to fight back will be fairly limited, and nowhere
near as powerful.
Now, I do want to mention that unlike many ruminant herbivore builds, which only have
lower teeth, equine players do possess a full set of upper and lower teeth that are able
to deliver quite powerful bites.
So they aren’t completely helpless when facing an enemy head on.
But nonetheless the unidirectional nature of their strongest attack option does mean
that some counterplay is available.
Next lets discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the different variants of the equine build.
We’ll start with the Horse, the most well known of the bunch.
Horses undoubtedly have the best base stats in the group, with higher power and more HP
being the most obvious things that scale with size.
They've also got the fastest top speed.
However, perhaps even more importantly, the horse’s higher intelligence stat enables
cross-species team strategies, which can lead to some incredibly broken combos.
Zebras have a slightly lower base stat total, although this change isn't enough to really
change their playstyle.
They're still perfectly capable of escaping attacks using their speed and endurance, and
punishing overly aggressive enemies with a devastating kick.
In addition to all of this though, the zebras unique stripe pattern grants it a few extra
bonus perks.
Because this pattern helps break up their outline and obscure their position, especially
when grouped up, attacks against zebras incur a slight accuracy penalty.
Surprisingly, this debuff even applies to insects, resulting in zebras taking significantly
less damage from parasites than other similarly sized builds.
In exchange though, the zebra's intelligence stat is a fair bit lower, to the point where
zebras are unable to engage in the same team combos as horses.
Donkeys are a bit of an outlier, with the lowest power stat of the group.
They have the highest intelligence stat of the group, but tend to actually prefer solo
play.
They can be trained to be a useful party member, but they aren't naturally suited to this style
of gameplay.
And although they're quite capable of dishing out serious damage with their kicks, Donkey
mains also tend to favor the bite move in combat.
A somewhat poorly optimized build, in my opinion.
It’s no surprise that despite horses and zebras having quite solid matchups vs both
canid and felid opponents, donkeys end up experiencing a fair bit of difficulty, in
part due to their smaller size but also because they maybe just don’t realize the potential
power of a well placed kick.
Of the 3 main equine classes, it’s a tough call which one I think is the most viable.
I think they’re definitely all at least high B-tier.
Personally I do think horses take the top spot and I’d even give them the rank of
low A-tier.
See, despite being originally from the north american server, horses have successfully
established invasive populations all across the overworld, including places in africa
that even zebras have difficulty surviving in.
This is the premise for the incredible documentary Stallions of the Namib Desert, which chronicles
the descendants of a small group of horses abandoned by WW1 soldiers a century ago.
This documentary is available to watch right now on CuriosityStream, the sponsor of today’s
video.
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It’s especially relevant in today’s meta.
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Thanks so much for watching, thanks especially to my patrons on Patreon, and until next time,
good luck out there.