The Wild Cat Tier List

[This is part of a series of posts about animals. To find other posts in this series, see here.]

One of the best ways to start a fight among Outside players is to ask them which character is better, the cat or the dog. And while I love both of these characters, if forced to choose between them, my loyalty lies firmly with the cats. And I don’t just mean house cats – I love all the varied members of the cat guild. So today, I’m going to indulge myself a little and do a tier list of the cats, in the hopes of spreading my appreciation for this great dynasty. I should note that while the domestic cat is probably the most successful cat build in the game, it already topped a different tier list of mine, so I’m going to be excluding it and restricting myself to the wild cats for this one.

Baseline Cat Build Analysis

Source code analysis indicates that cats were first introduced to Outside towards the end of the Eocene expansion. However, the earliest cat build that left behind any surviving game logs, the Proailurus, did not appear until the early stages of the next expansion, the Oligocene, about 25 million years ago. Unlike some other dominant mammal guilds I’ve discussed, the logs we have suggest that cat players hit on their winning formula almost immediately, and never deviated very far from it. There have been some minor tweaks made to their dentition and some other elements, but on the whole, modern cats still have basically the same design and game plan that they had 25 million years ago.

As predator builds go, they’ve retained a fairly straightforward setup; rather than speccing into unique special abilities, they’ve taken most of the standard traits of mammal predators and honed them to perfection. Proportional to size, cats have more muscle than any other mammal. Their muscles make up around 50-60% of their body weight, in contrast to the roughly 40% that’s standard for a mammal, which means their pounces and claw-swipes tend to be far more powerful than those of most other similarly-sized predators. Their sharp teeth are formidable weapons as well. Mobility-wise, they tend to be built for short bursts of speed, and generally can’t maintain long-distance chases the way dogs or hyenas can. However, they compensate with highly flexible spines that grant them exceptional agility and let them change direction much more easily. They also have remarkable jumping abilities, and fantastic arboreal mobility; no other carnivoran rivals cats when it comes to hunting in treetops. They have a reputation for high intelligence, but this has been a bit exaggerated, as there’s not much evidence they’re any smarter than other carnivorans. However, the average intelligence rating for carnivorans is one of the highest of any guild, so this is nothing to be ashamed of.

Since the Oligocene, there have been two major rifts within the cat playerbase, both of which happened during the Miocene expansion. The first happened a little over 15 million years ago, when some cats decided to spec into long, dagger-like canines, rather than the conical teeth of more traditional cats. This produced the sabre-toothed cat guild, which became one of the top groups of large predators, while conical-toothed cats became one of the top groups of small predators. The split that’s more relevant to the contemporary meta happened later, about 10 million years ago, when the conical-toothed cats split into the Felinae and Pantherinae factions. Though they didn’t have sabre-teeth, pantherines followed the path of the sabre-tooths in becoming large predators optimised for hunting megafauna. Today, feline cats still generally focus primarily on hunting lightweight vertebrates like mice and songbirds, while pantherine cats target mainly mid-large herbivores, like deer, antelope, and cattle. To that end, feline cats are generally more slender and built for mobility, whereas pantherine cats are generally bulkier and built more for raw strength. Pantherine cats also have a ligament of flexible cartilage in their throats, which they can use to lower their larynx. This lets them lengthen their vocal tracts to produce deeper sounds, which unlocks access to their signature ability: [Roar]. This might seem like a small detail, but it’s actually important to their dominance, because roaring is a great way to scare rivals away from a kill or from a new player – much better than the purrs and meows of the feline cats. Feline and pantherine cats are sometimes referred to as “small” and  “big” cats respectively, but this is misleading, as this requires referring to some fairly large builds, like the cougar and cheetah, as “small” cats. To avoid confusion over this, for the rest of this post I’m going to be referring to the Felinae as “purring” cats, and the Pantherinae as “pantherine” cats.

As a guild, cats are the S-tier crown jewel of the carnivora. They’re the highest-ranked group of carnivorous mammals in the current meta, and one of the highest-ranked groups of carnivores, period. They occupy positions among the top predators on every major land server except Australia and Antarctica, and just about every land vertebrate, from the smallest mouse to the tallest giraffe, has to watch out for at least one type of cat. But which cats best embody what makes the guild so successful? To find out, let’s now take a deeper look at the cat tier list. There are around forty cat builds available, so as usual, I won’t be able to go through all of them. But I’ll try to cover the most interesting ones.

THE CAT TIER LIST

D Tier: Lynx

No cat build is bottom-tier in the current meta, because none of them deviate very far from the solid baseline I just discussed. However, if there’s one cat that stands out as being the weakest, it’d have to be the lynx. As some of the largest purring cats, lynx are in a kind of awkward position in the meta. They’re too big to survive off of birds and rodents like most small cats, but they’re still small enough that going after larger prey such as deer puts them at substantial risk, and if another large predator challenges them for the kill afterwards, they don’t have much hope of fighting back. This leaves lynx players without much of a purpose, as pretty much everything they can do can be done better by other builds. The main thing that keeps the lynx build from falling out of the meta completely is its great matchup against rabbits. Because of their broad, wide-spreading paws, lynx are among the few predators able to chase rabbits through snow, an ability they use to their advantage quite a bit. Unfortunately, their over-reliance on this one matchup cripples them in the overall meta. Lynx typically rely on rabbits and hares for over 75% of their diet, and if rabbits become scarce, they don’t really have the option to switch to different targets. Whenever there’s a drop in the rabbit playerbase in a given area, the lynx player base tends to also crash hard, and not recover until rabbit numbers do. Given how versatile a well-specced cat build can be, it seems to me like a massive waste to design one that’s so reliant on a single prey item.

It’s worth noting that most of this doesn’t apply to European lynx. Lynx populations in Europe have largely lost their adaptations to snow and instead adapted to dense forest biomes. Since rabbits are rare in these forests, the lynx there have instead switched to mainly hunting deer, which has been a mixed blessing. Deer are much more valuable than rabbits due to their larger size, so this shift has allowed European lynx to become larger and stronger than lynx elsewhere. But deer carcasses also take longer to eat and are more likely to attract the attention of rivals, so European lynx regularly get their kills stolen by bears and other competitors. In any case, there are much better cat builds available if you want to go for this sort of playstyle, as we’ll see later.

C Tier: Cheetah

The cheetah is one of the most divisive builds among Outside fans; some consider it high-tier due to its speed, while others say that it’s a garbage-tier which constantly gets bodied by lions and hyenas. The truth is somewhere in-between. I’ve already talked about the cheetah and a few other African cats in my tier list of the African savannah’s apex predators, so I’m not going to spend too much time on it here. To quickly recap, the cheetah is the fastest of all cats, and the fastest land animal in the current meta. Their streamlined bodies are well-adapted for explosive bursts of speed and rapid changes of direction, and they’re great at chasing down midweight mobility-based builds like gazelles and ostriches. However, they’re nowhere near as strong as the pantherine cats, and so can’t defend themselves very well against competition from rival predators. They have to be very careful when hunting to avoid getting their kills stolen, and it’s difficult for mother cheetahs to protect their young; around 90% of new cheetah players get killed before reaching the late game. Overall, a pretty average build, with some great skills, but too many shortcomings in vital areas of gameplay to be high-tier.

B Tier: Fishing cat

In B tier, we have some of the more niche purring cats, notably the fishing cat. Where most small cats hunt primarily birds and rodents, the fishing cat gets most of its XP from… well… fishing. Fishing cats spend most of their time sitting by river banks and waiting for fish to come to them, but they’re good swimmers, and can wade into deeper waters if they need to. Many cats fish from time to time, but the fishing cat is the only one that’s actually developed semi-aquatic adaptations, including semi-retractable claws to better grip fish underwater, and a double-layered fur coat to prevent their bodies from getting wet. While not as flashy as many of the more famous cats, they’re very effective at what they do; about 60% of their hunts end in a successful kill.

B Tier: Clouded Leopard

I don’t think there’s a pantherine cat that I’d consider low-tier, but the one that leaves the most obvious room for improvement is easily the clouded leopard. Clouded leopards split off from the rest of the pantherine lineage around six million years ago, before the pantherine playstyle had really been solidified, and don’t have access to some of their more powerful abilities. They’re the smallest of the pantherines – smaller than cheetahs and European lynx, in fact, though still larger than most other purring cats – and have partially ossified hyoids, which means they still meow instead of roaring. They’ve spent most of their points on evolving huge canines and a wide gape, both the biggest of any living carnivoran proportional to body size. This enables them to use a different killing method than other pantherines, paralysing prey animals by stabbing the back of the neck rather than suffocating them with bites to the throat. Because of this, they’ve often been compared to a miniature version of the sabre-toothed tiger during the Pleistocene meta, which had a similar technique. But as I noted in my post on the sabre-toothed predators, I actually think the sabre-toothed cats were relatively poorly-designed builds compared to current big cats, so trying to bring back their playstyle seems like a step backwards to me. The one big advantage clouded leopards have is that they’re incredibly agile climbers, possibly the best in the cat family. This would be great if they mainly hunted arboreal animals, but since they actually mostly hunt midweight ungulates like pigs and goats, I don’t think it’s enough to raise them above B tier.

B Tier: Sand cat

Returning to the purring cats, also in B tier is the sand cat, the only cat build that’s exclusive to hot desert biomes. Sand cats have sandy grey fur for camouflage against the desert sands, and long hairs covering the soles of their paws for protection against hot ground. In order to survive in areas where food can be hard to find, sand cats have become good at winning some difficult fights; they’re known for being among the few predators that regularly hunt and kill venomous snakes, which they stun with rapid blows to the head before killing them with neck bites.

A Tier: Cougar

At the low end of A tier, we have the largest of the purring cats, the cougar. The cougar is basically a standard purring cat build, but bigger and with much higher stats. In comparison to the pantherines, cougars aren’t quite as muscular, but compensate with their high mobility. They’re great at leaping and sprinting, abilities which they use mostly to hunt hooved mammals, particularly deer. While they don’t have much in the way of unique special abilities, cougar builds are very popular among cat players because they’re so adaptable. Cougars inhabit territory across the Americas, all the way from the Yukon to the Strait of Magellan, and covering almost every habitat type within that range; aside from humans, no other land mammal in the Americas is successful over such a wide area.

Cougars dominate over most other American predators, and their presence in a region often leads to a drop in the viability of animals like bobcats, coyotes and wolverines. However, they do still struggle against other apex predators. In North America, bears basically walk all over them, and while they typically beat wolves in one-on-one fights, wolf packs tend to dominate them and frequently steal their kills. Cougars in Central and South America don’t generally have to deal with these predators, but they do have to worry about competition with jaguars. Cougars and jaguars don’t typically fight for kills directly; instead, cougars in jaguar-heavy regions tend to avoid drawing attention to themselves by staying away from the most valuable prey and sticking more to smaller targets. While the cougar’s success is enough to earn it a low A-tier rating, its poor matchups against other large predators prevent it from going any higher.

A Tier: Serval

Also in low A tier, we have one of the more underrated cats, the serval. Servals are slender, medium-sized purring cats, notable mainly for their huge legs – the longest of any cat, relative to body size. This is an advantage on the African savannah because it gives them a height advantage to see over tall grasses. It also makes them great jumpers, skilled enough to easily catch large birds in mid-air. Servals also have the proportionally largest ears of any cat, which helps them to detect the faint sounds made by rodents moving through the grass. While not as physically powerful as some other cats, servals are among the most successful, thriving in almost every biome type across sub-Saharan Africa. For thriving in such a famously competitive meta, servals earn an A-tier rating.

A Tier: Snow Leopard

Purring cats and clouded leopards are generally solid high-tiers, but if you really want to see the potential that cats have, you need to go for a cat of the genus Panthera. There are five such cats in the current meta, and all of them rank in mid-A tier or higher, but the least overpowered is the snow leopard. Snow leopards are a bit smaller and weaker than the rest of the Panthera cats – although still strong enough to kill prey up to the size of yaks – and are also the only ones that can’t properly roar. Instead, they spent most of their points on adaptations to the cold, in order to survive in the tall mountains of Central and South Asia. Like lynx, snow leopards are well-adapted to walking on snow and ice, with broad, snowshoe-like paws that have furry undersides to increase grip on slippery surfaces. Another trait that helps them survive in the mountains is their long, thick tail. Like all cats, they use their tails for balance, and the extra length comes in handy in the rocky terrain of the Himalayas. However, the tail’s thickness means it can also serve a number of other functions, like acting as a store of fat for when food gets scarce, or as a blanket to keep the leopard’s face warm while it sleeps. The snow leopard is easily one of the most dominant builds in the Himalayas, and has basically no bad matchups within its range, but the fact that it’s only been able to dominate one biome type keeps it below the true roaring cats. It’s still in mid-A tier for now, but its position on the tier list is likely to drop further in future expansions as climate change shrinks the alpine zone of the Himalayas.

A Tier: Leopard

At the top of A tier, we have the most widely popular wild cat build in the current meta, the leopard. Leopards play similarly to cougars in many ways; both are highly adaptable and occupy a wide range of biome types across their servers, but tend to get dominated in a fight by other apex predators in their environments. However, the leopard is the better of the two builds, for a few reasons. Unlike the cougar, the leopard can actually roar, and while both cougars and leopards are great at sprinting and climbing, the cougar’s build is optimised more for sprinting, while the leopard puts more emphasis on climbing. These are both useful skills, but leopards’ climbing abilities have a wider variety of practical benefits, both in terms of enabling them to hunt arboreal animals and to better protect their kills against competitors. As with the cheetah, I already covered leopards pretty thoroughly in my post on the apex predators of Africa, so I won’t spend too much more time on them here. However, it is worth noting that the leopard build is also available on the Asia server, where it’s arguably even higher-ranked. While all of the roaring cats have taken a hit to their viability since humans rose to power, Asian leopards have done the best job at adapting, and some of them have even managed to establish a viable player base in city biomes. Their poor matchups against lions and tigers (and hyenas) may keep them from being top-tier for now, but if they continue to adapt to living alongside humans, leopards might well end up having the most viable strategy of any big cat in the long run.

S Tier: Tiger

At the low end of S tier, we have the tiger. If my rankings were purely based on which build would win in a 1v1 match, the tiger would easily top this list. At up to 306 kg, it’s not only the largest and strongest cat in the current game, but quite possibly the largest cat that’s ever appeared in the game, rivalled only by some of the prehistoric sabre-toothed cats. Outside of their size, they don’t really have any unique special abilities compared to other cats, except for maybe their above-average swimming ability. However, they don’t really need special abilities, because they can easily dominate their environments just through their incredible physical strength. Their primary targets are midweight hooved mammals like deer and pigs, but if needed, they can take down animals up to six times their own size, such as large cattle. No other land animal in the current meta can solo such huge prey – the only other ones that hunt these kinds of targets have to rely on teamwork. For being probably the most dominant land predator in Asia, the tiger earns a spot as one of the top-tier cats.

One thing that’s worth noting is that tigers are the only cats to spec into a striped pattern, rather than a spotted or plain coat. This is probably a form of camouflage, but nobody’s entirely sure why their camouflage pattern is so different from those of the other cats.

S Tier: Jaguar

In mid-S tier, we have the only pantherine that’s managed to break into the North and South American servers, the jaguar. Jaguars look and play basically like giant leopards, but they have a few extra abilities that make them stronger overall. As I just noted, jaguars are considerably larger than leopards, and correspondingly stronger. Leopards are already amazingly powerful, but they do sometimes get dominated in contests of strength with other apex predators, while this basically never happens to jaguars. Also, while both jaguars and leopards are equally comfortable on the ground or in the trees, the jaguar is a good enough swimmer to easily take on prey in the water as well. Finally, the jaguar has a much, much more powerful bite – proportional to size, the most powerful of any cat, in fact.​ This was probably a trait they specced into to deal with the relative rarity of large mammals in South America compared to Africa and Asia, which forced them to find other food sources to rely on. Turtles and tortoises were plentiful and valuable loot, so jaguars specced into extra-powerful jaws in order to be able to crack open turtle and tortoise shells. Jaguar players continue to do this fairly regularly, but it’s not the only advantage of having such a powerful bite. Most of the big cats kill mid-large prey with a bite to the neck or throat, causing the target to suffocate. This is effective, but it can be a bit complicated getting into position to do it. The jaguar’s bite force allows it to use a simpler and more efficient method: biting straight through the skull of its targets and stabbing them directly in the brain. With the ability to one-shot anything in its server, and to hunt in every zone in their biomes except the sky, the jaguar is a clear S-tier.

S Tier: Lion

But even the jaguar is narrowly edged out as the best of the big cats by the King of the Jungle. Lions are pretty similar to tigers, except they scaled back slightly on size in exchange for better social abilities (as well as an intimidation bonus due to their prominent manes, if they’re male). This is a bold move, because feeding a pride of giant cats requires quite a bit more food than just feeding one, but it pays off because it allows them to hunt bigger targets much more often. A lion on its own is already powerful enough to easily take down prey up to the size of zebras and wildebeest, but in teams, they can even take down prey up to the size of giraffes. It’s high-risk, but extremely high-reward if you can do it right, and lions are just about the only land animals in the current meta that have been able to do so.

Lions are easily S-tier in the Africa meta, being the single best build in the current meta for hunting herbivorous tanks, and being so dominant over competitors  that much of the meta for predators in Africa is determined by the ability to withstand competition from them. I’m not going to go into too much detail about why lions are top-tier here because, again, I’ve already covered them extensively in my tier list of the savannah’s top predators, but I do want to give a warning against one of the biggest mistakes that noobs often make when trying cat builds for the first time. A lot of new cat players try to multiclass lion+tiger, assuming that because regular lions and tigers are so overpowered, that these hybrid builds, called “ligers” or “tigons”, must be even stronger. However, trying to multiclass these builds actually causes a glitch if you spawn as male, which renders you unable to produce viable sperm and so makes it impossible to complete the main objective of the game. So, while lions and tigers are both individually great build choices, you do need to pick just one of them if you want to succeed. If you’re interested in exploring combination carnivoran builds, coyote/wolf or grizzly bear/polar bear hybrids are much better options.

So that’s the tier list of the wild cats. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and that it’s increased your appreciation for these beautiful creatures.