User blog:Redfork2000/IaLR: Tier Lists - Ponies

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(Music Plays )

"Quoted from The Battle Tournament "

''Red Fork immediately rams towards Dark Green Shadow, crashing into her with all the weight of his body. The collision almost sends Dark Green Shadow flying away. She is able to stay on the platform, though.'' ''Dark Green Shadow fires peas at Red Fork, while aiming them at his face. Red Fork opens his mouth, swallowing the peas without any trouble.'' Red Fork rams into Dark Green Shadow again, delivering some heavy damage on the latter.
 * General Beet: Well, that's a heavy start.
 * Florette: When it comes to melee fighting, Red Fork's one of the heaviest hitters. If Dark Green Shadow wants to beat him, she'll have to be really smart on this one.
 * Dark Green Shadow: I hope you brought an appetite, because I got some peas for you!
 * Red Fork: Keep 'em coming! And while we're at it...

Introduction
Ponies are nowadays one the most well known classes in the current meta, alongside with humans, inklings and other classes. But this wasn't always the case. In fact, compared to a few other classes like humans and plants, ponies are fairly new, having been added during the Season 2A expansion patch. Currently they play a major role in the current meta, specially after the Heroes of Echo Creek expansion patch, which added many new pony characters into the game.

Now, to say all ponies are one in the same is a terrible mistake. Despite them all being four-hoofed creatures with bright colors, the pony class is easily one of the most diverse classes in the entire game, with all sorts of different strategies and playstyles available to choose from. That's why today, we'll be discussing the pony tier list, to find out which ponies are doing the best in the current meta, which ones are the top tiers, and what kind of pony character is strongest.

Now, before we begin this discussion, I have to clarify that since there's such a large number of ponies available in IaLR currently, making a tier list that covers every single pony would be extremely time-consuming, so I'll stick to the most relevant and well-known ponies that are seen in IaLR. As always, we'll begin from the low tiers, and progressively work our way to the top tiers. So without further adue, let's begin!

F Rank
Ok, so first on F rank, we have Fluttershy. Now there seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to Fluttershy. Those who evaluate her by her combat skills quickly realize that she's one of the weakest fighters in the pony class due to her low strength, her unwillingness to harm others, and how easily intimidated she can be. Intimidation is one of the main strategies of many fighters that try using their appearance, a display of power or their words to try and scare enemies away. This is seen mostly in characters that have a massive size or some scary attributes, such as shadowy or spooky appearance, or in characters who really like to show off what they can do. Characters like Dark Shadow, Fred or Akasha would be able to scare Fluttershy away easily without a fight due to her low resistance to intimidation.

Now, some of you might be looking at her ability to communicate with animals, and how these can easily help her defend herself against more powerful foes. And though this ability may come in handy in combat, there's several other characters that use animal allies much more effectively, for example Emma Emerald. Overall, Fluttershy is not a fighter character, and if you use her, she's better staying in a support role, since she's much more fit to the pacific playing style.

E Rank
Going up to E Rank, we'll find two more ponies that actually have better combat skills than Fluttershy, but still aren't able to hold their own against other pony characters. Those would be Windy Sails and Lemon Glass.

Windy Sails, despite being depicted as a counterpart for Blue Ocean, actually doesn't serve such a purpose. She doesn't have anywhere near the intelligence stats Blue Ocean does, which allow him to compensate for his low base strength by crafting inventions that maximize his damage output and defensive options. Windy Sails just finds herself in a very awkward situation where, despite being the regular base stats of a pony, is unable to match the rest of the cast since all of them have special abilities that give them an edge against their opponents. Still, she can at least fight decently, which allows her to score above the F Rank.

Lemon Glass is a pegasus, which means like Fluttershy, she has the ability to fly. Lemon Glass takes a bit more advantage of this than Fluttershy does, and uses it to drop explosive lemons on her opponents while staying out of reach for them. This works fine to an extent, since it focuses on the main playstyle a pegasus should be looking for. Pegasi have higher mobility than other ponies due to their flight ability, but they have weaker health and defense, because they have more fragile bones in order to be light enough to fly properly, similarly to birds.

While Lemon Glass's fight plan seems smart, and it is, it's not as effective as you'd expect it to be. Despite being "explosive lemons", the lemons don't do much damage themselves, at least not nearly as much as characters that use actual explosives can dish out, such as Red Ruby or Gary Guppy. Similarly, Lemon Glass, despite having high mobility, has low health and defense, meaning that if the opponent's attacks hit her, she can go down extremely easily. This is why she isn't very well suited to fighting on her own, but instead being a support fighter for more tankier characters like Red Fork or Metalshoe, who can shrug off the damage much better.

D Rank
In D rank we have quite a few characters, so we'll cover them quickly.

First we have Blue Ocean. As explained before, Blue Ocean doesn't have any impressive stats when it comes to health, mobility, strength or defense, which means that he'd technically be in the same spot as Windy Sails. However, his main advantage is his unusually high intelligence stat, which allows him to create powerful inventions that can help boost his attack and defense options. While Blue Ocean's basic attack might not do much damage, just wait until he starts shooting electric bolts at you with his cannon. While he cannot defend himself as much on his own, his technology allows him to enhance his magic abilities and create forcefields. This makes him a much more efficient fighter than otherwise. He's still not powerful enough to take out most mid-tiers and top-tiers, but he's still pretty good for a character that has otherwise pretty underwhelming stats.

Pinkie Pie is the first earth pony we have on this list. Traditionally, earth ponies are supposed to be the powerhouses of the pony class, which higher health and strength to compensate for the lack of magic and flight. However, Pinkie Pie completely disregards this, and opts for a more chaotic playstyle. Pinkie Pie has incredibly high mobility, managing to even mess with the physics engine of the game. This can allow her to appear out of nowhere, enter a screeen from any angle, and do other stunts that would be impossible for other characters to achieve. This can come in handy in confusing her opponents, who are simply unable to predict what Pinkie Pie will do next. Her strongest move is Party Cannon, which is a powerful ranged attack. Overall, a pretty solid fighter, though she isn't good enough to contend with the top-tiers.

Rarity is an elegant yet effective fighter who uses her magic to summon gemstones to attack. Gems, being some of the hardest objects known, function incredibly well as projectiles, since being hit by a blunt object can do a lot of damage, specially if they're sharp, such as the gem shards that Rarity can use. She could actually be a lot higher on the list, but something that really keeps her down is her special obsession with aesthetics. You don't need to do a damaging hit to actually stop Rarity from attacking. All you have to do is mess up her mane, or toss something dirty at her like mud or something else, and she will freak out. This means that weather-controlling ponies could easily take her down by ruining her mane with rain, or anyone with something that can stain Rarity's white coat would be enough to stop her.

Out of all the D rank ponies, I believe Applejack to be the most poweful of them, to the point where she could almost be a C tier character. Applejack is the traditional tanky earth pony build, with strong health and defense stats, and a high level of brute force to come with it. Applejack can deliver powerful kicks with her hooves, possibly enough to launch an opponent far away from her. She is also able to use the move hind-kick, which allows her to deal devastating damage to anyone who tries attacking her from behind. She uses her two hind legs to kick enemies with an incredible force that could knock them through a wall. She's a powerful contender, but she isn't within her drawbacks. As an earth pony, she lacks flight or magic, two of the abilities that, as we will see later on the list, make for a specially dangerous pony character. besides this, she doesn't have many options in the way of ranged attacks, as most of her attacks are only melee. The best she can do to attack an opponent who tries to stay away from her is to use her lasso in an attempt to grab her opponent and try to combo into a powerful attack.

C Rank
And now we've arrived at C rank! There's three ponies that I consider to be worthy of the C rank.

The first one is Windy Cloud. She's a pegasus that, staying true to the main pegasi formula, has high mobility and low defense. However, her defense and hp isn't nearly as bad as Lemon Glass's is, meaning she can withstand some damage before being knocked out. Her main ability is weather control. Most pegasi can control weather, as that's one of the natural abilities of the pegasi race, but Windy Cloud specializes in weather control like no other pegasus in the game does. She can manipulate clouds to create rain, snow, lightning and more. She can also create strong winds that can blow away lightweights, and create hot and sunny weather that wears out heat-sensitive opponents. The variety of moves she can use, and how she can modify the environment to put her opponent at a disadvantage definitely makes her a very versatile fighter, and easily one of the best pegasi in the game. However, there are a couple of other pegasi that still manage to beat her, even without being so specialized in weather control.

Rainbow Dash is the embodiment of a traditional pegasus character taking to the extreme, with very powerful results. Unsurprisingly, she has the highest mobility stat of any pony in the game, which definitely gives her an edge against everyone else, since she can easily outspeed them, so fleeing is never an option against Rainbow Dash. She is also a very powerful fighter. Her attack stats are much higher than the average pegasi, meaning that unlike other pegasi, who are better off avoiding melee combat against powerhouses, Rainbow Dash can be completely fine fighting off even tankier characters. That being still, she still suffers the same downfalls as other pegasi, such as low health and defensive stats, so its important to use the extra speed to dodge the enemy attacks. The best formula with Rainbow Dash is a hit and run strategy, where you attack with full power, and then move away to avoid getting hit by the opponent. This works specially well with other melee characters who don't have many ranged options, such as Coconut Crab, Boulder or Boom. However, she can get countered easily by character who are tanky enough to shrug off her hits, or have ranged options that allow them to overcome her ability to speed away from them.

Black Gem is another C Rank pegasus. If you're looking for a pony that functions well as a rogue or thief class fighter, Black Gem is without a doubt your best bet. Despite having low health, she makes up for it with her other stats. She has very good mobility stats, comparable to Windy Cloud's, but not as good as Rainbow Dash's. She also has an above average attack stat, allowing her to deal a good amount of damage on opponents. She has the greatest accuracy out of any pegasi character, so that means that she can often land hits with much better precision while moving than any of the other two ponies at this rank. She also has a special skill, night vision, which allows her to see much better in the dark than most other ponies do. This gives her an extreme advantage if the fight takes play at night, or in any dark area, since it allows her to completely negate the stealth buff other characters receive in the dark, while allowing her to use her stealthy abilities a lot more efficiently. Overall, a very powerful character with very efficient abilities, and able to easily take out any other pegasi in this list, as well as most low-tiers and mid-tiers as well. However, she's still vulnerable to powerhouses that can dish out enough damage to knock her down, as well as anyone with light powers, since they can negate her advantages in the darkness. Still, a very powerful character.

B Rank
Don't let size fool you. One of the most surprisingly powerful characters is on the B rank, and that is Red Spoon.

At first glance, you may think he's a low-tier character due to his small size, and not having nearly as much hp as other characters. However, appearances can be deceiving. Red Spoon is a powerful glass cannon character. His attack stats are pretty high, seeing as he's dominated a wide variety of spells, to the point where he can easily overcome enemies much larger than himself. His specialty are fire-based spells, since he can harness fire in his frying pan, and use it as his main weapon together with his magic horn. He also has a very good mobility, comparable to Red Fork's mobility, and most of all, he has the highest intelligence stat in the entire game, even higher than all the characters that belong to the scientist class, such as Blue Ocean, Gary Garnet, Dr. Zack, Bright Spark, Kaitlynn and every other. This allows him to create battle strategies and tactics that allow him to easily overcome enemies that would otherwise overpower him easily. Intelligence is a stat that is often overlooked when studying the combat potential of characters, but Red Spoon is the clearest example of how OP a high intelligence stat can be. Just imagine what some of the top tier characters would achieve with such an intelligence stat? They would be way too OP and would have to be nerfed.

A rank
Suprisingly, the rank that has the most ponies is the A rank. There's a lot of characters that have a very similar power level, which is why they're all here.

So first, let's talk about Iron Heart. Unicorns are usually known for dominating the control of magic, and using that to gain an advantage on the battlefield. However, Iron Heart doesn't focus much on this, and instead inclines mostly towards technique, power and precision. Iron Heart may have an average health stat, but her attack and defense stats are high, allowing her to dish out and take damage efficiently. She also has high mobility, on par with Red Fork's mobility. Finally, she also has a high level of accuracy, allowing her to deal very precise and critical hits on her opponents, similar to Black Gem, but more powerful. She was shown be able to hold her own against other high-tiers, such as Red Fork and Dark Shadow, thus allowing her to achieve A rank. She isn't S rank though, since she still lacks higher hp and defense stats, and also needs to use the magic potential of the unicorn race in order to score higher. Still, a very solid fighter that makes for a very challenging opponent, even for high-tiers.

The next character on this list does the exact opposite as Iron Heart. Instead of ignoring the magic potential of the unicorn race, this next fighter unleashes catastrophic levels of unicorn magic as his main ways of damage. We're talking of course, of Dark Shadow. Right off the bat, Dark Shadow's stats are very scary. He has high hp and defense stats, meaning he can take a lot of damage before going down. He has an insane power stat, meaning that he can dish out a lot of damage very quickly. Dark Shadow has dominating dark magic, and is able to not only use it the same ways as unicorns use normal magic, but is also able to unleash a devastating dark magic explosion, dealing massive damage to everything around him. He also has one of the highest mobility stats around, slightly higher than Red Fork's. Plus, he has a strong intimidation ability, which makes most low-tiers and mid-tiers shake in fright at the very sight of this dark unicorn. The only characters that are able to withstand this intimidation are either characters that have a reasonable chance against such a fighter, such as Red Fork or Captain Red Shell, or characters that are just too reckless or cocky to recognize the threat this unicorn is. Stilll, with all this, how is he not S tier? Although he has some of the best stats of any pony character, he can still be defeated consistently by other A ranked ponies, so despite how scary he may seem, he isn't anywhere near invincible.

The next character on the list is probably the most iconic member of the pony class in IaLR: Red Fork. Now, Red Fork has been seen countless times as one of the most powerful fighters in the gang, managing to handle entire hordes of enemies on his own, and even taking down other powerhouses without help. So how powerful is this red unicorn? Let's first look at his stats. First of all, we notice that Red Fork uses a tank style build. He has the highest health stat of any pony character, along with very high defensive and attack stats. This brings to mind the traditional earth pony build. Normally, earth ponies are supposed to be the tanks of the pony class, with high endurance and power. However, Red Fork manages to be a unicorn who uses this strategy very effectively, even more so thanks to his magic power. Though his magic isn't as advanced as that of Dark Shadow or Twilight, he's still able to use very powerful magic abilities. Once he was seen using his levitation to paralyze eight superpowered teens in place, completely negating their opportunities of attack. He also has an incredibly high mobility stat. This is suprising because most heavy characters tend to have low mobility as a result of their excessive weight, but Red Fork manages to remain with a pretty high mobility stat, only surpassed by the specialized speed characters such as Sonic or Rainbow Dash. Overall, Red Fork has very high base stats in every category, which make him a verypowerful fighter with very few weaknesses. However, he isn't S tier because he lacks the broken stats and powers that all S tier characters have.

Next up, we have Metalshoe Jet. Metalshoe Jet could be considered an even tankier version of Red Fork. He has higher health than Red Fork, and a lot more defense, due to his metallic parts. He also has an insanely high power stat, managing to quickly break through the defenses of almost any other defense-based character, so sorry Captain Red Shell and Magi-Knight, but that shell and that armor won't do much to stop this beast. He does have lower mobility than Red Fork, but he more than makes up for it for his brute strength and raw power. Besides, who needs speed to chase their fleeing opponents, when you  can craft some of the most powerful weapons in the game? Metalshoe Jet, similar to Blue Ocean, is capable of crafting items to help him in combat. However, Metalshoe is specialized towards weaponry, giving his ability a purely combat-based approach. In his introduction story we could see him significantly buffing most of the gang's stats with his weapons, and it's clear that he can use his weapons to give him an even greater advantage. Opponent outruns you? Use a ranged weapon. Opponent has incredibly high defensive stats? Use a powerful melee weapon. Need to survive a duel against a very powerful fighter? Use armor. Metalshoe is easily A+ tier, and if he had more magic abilities, and slightly higher stats, he could possibly even reach S tier. But for what he is now, he's still one of the best pony fighters there is.

Now, in the pony class, there are earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns, all of which we've already discussed widely. However, the truth is that there's a fourth pony race, which is by far the most OP one of them all: The alicorn race. Alicorns are known for having the strength of all three of the main pony types. They have the hp and endurance of an earth pony, they have the flight and mobility of pegasi, and they have the power and magic abilities of unicorns, though alicorns usually have much more magical power than normal unicorns. And that's exactly the case with the last A+ ranked character on this list, which is of course, Twilight Sparkle. If you thought Red Fork's magic skills were OP, you clearly haven't seen what Twilight is capable of. If you're searching for a powerful magical character, you'd struggle to find anyone who uses magic as efficiently as Twilight. But magic isn't the only thing going for her. She also has a high intelligence stat, which means she can plan out strategies to easily outsmart opponents. She does have a good balance of her other stats, but in her case, her magical abilities alone make her even more powerful than Red Fork or Dark Shadow are, which award her a place in the A+ tier.

S tier
Now, unfortunately, there aren't any S tiers in the pony class, at least not currently. There's many powerful pony characters, but none of them are quite as broken or OP enough to justify a S ranking. If I had to choose someone for the S ranking, it would probably be either Twilight or Metalshoe.

However, there technically is one pony who could be considered S rank, if we stretch things a bit. You see, there's one pony who could qualify as an S rank if using magical items are allowed. The Elements of Harmony are some of the most powerful items in the entire game, and ponies are the most suited for harnessing the power of the elements. The Mane Six are the most known for this, and when they use the elements of harmony, they can one-shot anything, even the most OP of characters, like Discord. However, that's not what I'm looking at here. There's another character who is the next best choice for harnessing the power of the elements after the Mane Six, and that's Red Fork.

Similar to how Sonic can use the power of the Chaos Emeralds to turn into Super Sonic, Red Fork can use the power of the Elements of Harmony to turn into his own superform, Sun Fork. Now Sun Fork is one character that we could definitely consider S tier, if you were to consider Sun Fork a separate character. Not only does Sun Fork have insanely high health, defense, attack and mobility, but he also gains the ability to fly, one of the only limits Red Fork has in his normal form. Besides this, the power of the elements makes Sun Fork completely impervious to most attacks. Only top-tiers are actually able to damage Sun Fork. As well, Sun Fork's damage output becomes insane, to the point where in a battle, Sun Fork was able to defeat PHX-001, one of the most powerful S tier characters in the game. Definitely, if you want an OP pony, Sun Fork is what you need. However, it's debatable if he could be considered a character at all, since he's just a super form of Red Fork, which can only be obtained thanks to the power of the Elements of Harmony.

Conclusion
And that's all for today! I hope you enjoyed this episode of IaLR: Tier Lists. Remember to stay alert for new entries in the series. If there's any set of characters or any aspect of the game you'd like us to analyze, feel free to request it in the comment section below. Have a great day, and let's end this episode with another epic scene on powerful ponies!

"Quoted from Unicorn Rush" ''Iron Heart charges towards Red Fork, but he jumps out of the way, and kicks Iron Heart into a wall. Iron Heart quickly gets up, and fires burning magic blasts at Red Fork. Red Fork moves around quickly to dodge the burning magic blasts, and then rams towards Iron Heart. Iron Heart jumps out of the way, and lands directly on Red Fork, kicking him down. Red Fork gets up, and shoots several magic blasts at Iron Heart. Iron Heart skillfully dodges the magic blasts, only to then charge towards Red Fork again. Red Fork jumps above Iron Heart, ready to smash her. But before he lands on Iron Heart, Iron Heart teleports to above Red Fork,and kicks him into the ground.'' ''Red Fork charges towards Iron Heart again, but Iron Heart dodges out of the way again. Red Fork seemed pretty confident, as always, but he was now realizing that Iron Heart might be a tougher opponent than he had expected. The determination in her eyes, her fast movements, and precise hits, she was certainly a trained warrior, skillful and with the heart of a hero. Of course, Red Fork still believed he had to teach her a lesson about teamwork. And to be fair, he's up to the challenge of fighting this unicorn warrior.''
 * Iron Heart: Once we're done, you'll be sorry for underestimating my power.
 * Red Fork: To be fair, I'm just here to do my job just like you.
 * Iron Heart: Then shall the best warrior win.
 * Lemon Glass: Oh my, I hope they don't hurt each other too much.
 * Bright Spark: Want some popcorn, Mega Spark? *gives him a box of popcorn*
 * Mega Spark: Quite.

''Iron Heart, on the other hand, was getting slightly frustrated. Out of all the opponents she had fought before, Red Fork was certainly one of the toughest she had encountered. She rivaled her in speed, strength, and pretty much anything else she could think about. But Iron Heart wasn't going to give in to Red Fork's little game. She had to win. She was determined to show this self-centered unicorn to not mess with her.''

''Iron Heart began shooting burning magic blasts at Red Fork, this time faster than before. Red Fork teleported to behind Iron Heart, and kicked her into a wall. However, before hitting the wall, Iron Heart teleported to behind Red Fork., and did the exact same move to him. Red Fork crashed into the wall. He then stood up, shook his head, and continued his battle.''

''Red Fork shoots a magic blast at Iron Heart, but she counter it with her own magic blast. They both then charge into each other, and crash with a great force. The collision sends both unicorns into opposite walls, taking heavy damage simultaneously.''