User blog:Redfork2000/IaLR: Tier Lists - Hybrids!

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(Music Plays )

"Quoted from Hybrid Mayhem "

''Dyna-Matic starts firing clusters of bombs at the gang from his bomb cannons. Blast uses his super strength to break off a piece of the wall, and use it as a shield. Captain Red Shell quickly slashes Dyna-Matic several times.'' ''Dyna-Matic fires bombs at Captain Red Shell from his bomb cannons. Captain Red Shell dodges several of them, but then gets hit by a few bombs, getting injured.''
 * Green Shadow: It's not hurting that robot hybrid!
 * Dyna-Matic: Target identified: Captain Red Shell. Destroy target.

Introduction
It's common knowledge within the userbase nowadays that hybrids are one of the most powerful classes to ever appear in the game. Ever since the first hybrid debuted in Ponies vs Inklings, we've witnessed the high level of power the members of this class have. Generally known for combining the powers of two different species, or at least two different individuals, hybrids are mostly high tiers when it comes to combat.

However, saying that all of them are the same would be a big mistake. There's many differences between the hybrids and their playstyles, so today we'll be analyzing each of the main hybrids known, and see where they'd rank on the tier list. We'll start from the low tiers, and make our way up to the top tiers. Lets' begin!

F Rank
There's only one hybrid that is weak enough to be placed on the F rank of our tier list, and that would be Timmy Turquoise. Timmy Turquoise combines the abilities of Emma Emerald and Sean Sapphire. He's proficient in the forest and the ocean, and has river/pond based powers. He can summon cattails and frogs.

However, despite being a hybrid, you can already see why he's so low on the list. He may have Emma and Sean's powers, but he has both of these abilities nerfed. Instead of ocean powers, we have simply river/pond powers. He can summon cattails and frogs, which helps a bit, but it's not enough to make up for his terrible matchups against ice-powered characters such as Green Shadow, Blast, Kyoji or Jaiden. He isn't able to cause nearly as much damage as the other hybrids on this list, so he's also not suited for facing powerhouses like Red Fork, Takeshi or Ace, which are known to be able to dish out high damage very quickly.

The low amount of damage, the nerfed abilities, and the terrible matchups against ice-powered characters are what places Timmy Turquoise at F rank.

E Rank
In E rank we have Dyna-Matic. Now it may be surprising for some of you to see him this low on the list, due to how powerful he seems, with his high amount of defense and his ability to dish out a lot of damage with bombs. How can a character with this amount of defense and attack stats be so low on the list? Well, the problem with Dyna-Matic is that, again, he has several strong counters.

First we have ice-powered characters such as Green Shadow, Blast, Kyoji or Jaiden. Dyna-matic is weak against ice-powered characters, similarily to Timmy Turquoise. And just like most robotic characters, Dyna-Matic has a terrible matchup against water-powered enemies, such as Sasuke, Rebecca or Tsunami. These two counters mean that enemies have several options for counterplay against Dyna-Matic. And considering that even Tommy now has access to water attacks such as summoning water guns, it makes sense that Dyna-Matic isn't very high on the list.

D Rank
At D Rank we'll place Whacker Weed. Despite being a hybrid of three characters, Whacker Weed simply can't take enough damage to survive against the more powerful characters such as Red Fork, Blast or Starcade. He's even weaker than Green Shadow in this regard. However, we have to admit that he doesn't have as many counters as the previous two characters. He has Green Shadow's ice powers, Bonk Choy's strength in punches, and Re-Peat Moss's small size.

I do believe that Whacker Weed's low durability is due to his small size and weight. Perhaps he would've ranked higher on the list if he was just a hybrid of Green Shadow and Bonk Choy. That way he'd be more durable, and wouldn't be defeated too easily by characters that can dish out a lot of damage in their attacks.

C Rank
There's two characters that reach this rank, and those would be Crusade and Pincers, the mid-tiers of this list.

First we have Pincers, a hybrid that combines Blast speed and flight abilities, and Captain Red Shell's durability, strength and claws. At first it seems like a very good combination, and in fact, it is. Unlike the other characters so far, this one doesn't have any particularly terrible counters. However, it must be noted that he's slower than Blast, and he lacks from the higher intelligence stats seen in Captain Red Shell, which is crucial to Captain Red Shell's strategy. Therefore, Pincers can't rely on the same tactics Captain Red Shell uses, and therefore must use a fighting style a bit similar to Blast's, with high speed movement and dishing out damage whenever he can.

Overall, a good character, but not enough to reach into the higher ranks. I believe if Re-Peat Boss had added in Alice's intelligence stats to the mix, Pincers might've been able to reach B rank.

Next there's Crusade, who is a combination of Kyoji and Starcade. She's fast, agile, and has a laser katana as her main weapon. Unlike the previous character, she doesn't lack the intelligence to use a more strategy-based combat style, and therefore, despite not having Pincer's strength or durability, she's able to outsmart her opponents, and due to her speed and fast reflexes, she's able to avoid powerful attacks that would knock her out quickly if she didn't dodge them. This makes her a more difficult opponent than Pincers, but she's still not B rank because she has a few counters.

She excels against slow powerhouses like Boulder because she's fast enough to dodge all their attacks before they manage to hit her, and therefore, can win pretty easily. However, she does get countered by characters who are able to outspeed her while still being powerful enough to dish out enough damage. Examples like this include Ace, Red Fork or Kyoji. They have fast reflexes, and they're able to dish out lots of damage as well, meaning they can defeat Crusade without too much of a struggle. Overall, still a very good character.

B Rank
There's two characters we're going to see in B rank, and that's going to be Octo-Phantom and Magi-Knight. Here is when we're starting to reach the high-tiers in this list.

Octo-Phantom is a powerful and spooky hybrid that combines the abilities of inklings and ghosts. She has a high intimidation level, meaning she can easily defeat character that don't have a high courage level, such as Tommy, Toby Topaz, Lemon Glass, Blade or Fluttershy. She also has several powerful abilities that result of the combination of two of the most powerful classes in the game: Inklings and Ghosts. She even ranks quite a bit above powerful characters like Ace and Red Fork, that despite having a high courage level, just don't have enough power to take out Octo-Phantom in a one on one combat.

What keeps Octo-Phantom from being an A tier is that she does have a couple of hard counters, such as water-based attacks (Rebecca, Sasuke and Tsunami) or light-based attacks (Captain Red Shell, Sakura, Sunray). Octo-Phantom is still a very powerful fighter, and since not many characters have access to light element ability tree, characters that lack water powers can only win if they have a high courage level and an above average power level.

Magi-Knight is even more powerful. He has heavy armor that gives him high defense stats, he has high attack stats from his electric powers and magic spells, and unlike most characters on this list, doesn't have many counters. The only possible counters available would be those characters who have abilities that deal bonus damage to metal, such as water-based powers that can cause the armor to get rusty, or acid-based powers that can corrode the metal armor. The only character with access to acid attacks so far is Lemon Glass with her explosive lemons, but they aren't able to do enough damage to corrode Magi-Knight's armor. Overall, a very powerful character, and almost an A tier.

A Rank
Continuing onto A tier, we have Dark Trident and Ink Burst, two very powerful hybrids. Curiously, all the hybrids that are in A and S tiers have one thing in common: They all share abilities from the Pony class, one of the main power classes in the game, known for their high defense and hp stats.

Starting with Ink Burst, she's the youngest hybrid on this list, and she has the devastating combination of powers from two of the most formidable classes in the entire game: The Pony class and the Inkling class. She's a very powerful character overall. She has the highest mobility and intelligence stats out of the PHX siblings, and unlike her siblings, has unlocked the "flight" ability, allowing her to increase her mobility even more.

However, despite all these advantages she has over her siblings, she's still not an S tier because she lacks the sheer strength and power from PHX-001 and PHX-002. Ink Burst is more inkling-based than her siblings, meaning she has higher mobility and offensive stats, but she's much smaller than her siblings, meaning she has less defense and hp stats than them. She also doesn't have access to the "Gigantic Growth" ability, which allows her sister Ink Splash to boost her stats to insane levels, similarly to Galaximus.

Overall, Ink Burst is a very powerful character, but has traded a lot of power and hp for mobility, something that didn't quite turned out as well as Dr. Zack thought it would. The PHX subclass works best with high hp, defense and attack stats, even if they have less mobility stats.

The other A tier character on this list is Dark Trident, a hybrid that focuses on the Pony class, and has a few sea-related powers, which is a very powerful combination. One of the two ponies he's a combination of is Red Fork, very well known for his high and well-rounded stats. The other pony he's based on is Blue Ocean, though his abilities are a lot more like ones you'd expect from someone like Sean Sapphire or Captain Red Shell. Still, the combination is excellent. It gives the already powerful Red Fork build additional power by adding sea powers into the mix. The only thing keeping him from S tier would be his dependancy on water biomes to function at full potential. Just like any sea-related character, Dark Trident performs best when in or near an aquatic biome. Therefore, he would be less effective in a biome that's very separated from the sea.

S Rank
There's three characters that are included in this rank for their power and abilities. All of them use the same pony-inkling combination that Ink Burst does, but unlike her, they exploit all of the main benefits from the PHX subclass. So here they are!

The first one we'll talk about is Ink Splash, the first hybrid we were introduced to. She's a member of the PHX subclass, meaning that she combines the power of two powerful classes: Pony and Inkling. She's a very balanced combination of the two classes, having the high defense and hp stats from the Pony class, and the noticeably high attack, mobility and stealth stats from the Inkling class. She has access to the "Gigantic Growth" ability, which allows her to boost her already high stats to insane levels, to the point where she was able to overpower Galaximus herself in Ponies vs Inklings.

She can be either powerful and strong in her giant size, or stealthy and quick in her squid form. This amount of versatility allows her to adapt to all kind of situations, and makes for one of the most balanced and well-rounded builds in the entire game. In fact, the only thing that is able to actually overcome Ink Splash are characters that have even higher stats than her.

The next entry on this list is Ink Smash, who is very similar to Ink Splash, but has even higher intelligence, defense and hp stats. There's not much to say, except that he's basically a better and more powerful version of Ink Splash. Everything said about her applies to Ink Smash, but with the benefit of higher intelligence stats, and a more advanced "Gigantic Growth" ability.

The final entry on this list, the most powerful hybrid of them all, the one who could almost be considered an SS Tier, is PHX-001, the first hybrid to ever be created. What makes PHX-001 so special? Well, here's why he's the most powerful hybrid of them all.

First of all, let's have a look at his stats. Sure, he may have very low mobility and intelligence stats, but all his other stats reach an insane level. His attack stats are very high, thanks to his ability to dish out some of the most devastating ink-based attacks in the entire game. His hp stats surpass those of Ink Splash or Ink Smash, but out of all his stats, the most outstanding one are his defense stats. With near perfect defense stats, PHX-001 is completely unvulnerable to attacks from the outside. Even Captain Dark Shell and Sun Fork are unable to deal any damage to his exterior. The only part of PHX-001 that can take damage is his interior, so an enemy with high intelligence stats will use the strategy of shooting at his mouth to deal damage.

However, this is very hard to achieve, since PHX-001 has a huge variety of offensive and defensive abilities to aid him in battle. With the ability to form dozens of ink and magic spheres to either shoot them at enemies, or form a barrier around himself, and his huge size, PHX-001 is able to repel almost any opponent that picks a fight with him. He also has a unique ability to alter the gravity around him. Very few characters have access to physics alteration abilities, and most of the characters that have those abilities are top tier, such as Discord.

Having ranged attacks is a must if you want to have a chance to even damage PHX-001, since getting too close to his mouth is very dangerous. PHX-001 has a long tongue which he can use to easily trap enemies, and from there he can perform an gaming-ending combo by swallowing his opponent whole. The opponent would then fall to his stomach, causing them a game over.

Very few characters have ever succeeded in defeating PHX-001. The first time, in The Ace Plan, it took the combined effort of all of Team Hybrids to take him down. In more recent times, two characters have managed to defeat PHX-001 on their own. The first one was Captain Dark Shell, and the second time it was Sun Fork. Still, despite these defeats, there's no doubt that PHX-001 is a nightmare for most characters, and most of them would prefer to jump off a cliff than have to face this monstrous hybrid.

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 scene about powerful hybrids!

"Quoted from The Ace Plan"

''However, PHX-001 does another unexpected thing. He uses his magic horn, barely noticeable due to being covered in ink. PHX-001's magic causes the gravity in the room to disappear. Paula Python and the hybrids, as well as every other object in the room, start floating aimlessly around the room. PHX-001 then separates more ink particles from his body, and creates more magic ink spheres. They home towards Team Hybrids, while more magic ink spheres spin around PHX-001 creating a barrier.'' ''Magi-Knight activates another forcefield to protect Paula Python and Team Hybrids. Dark Trident and Timmy Turquoise spin around while holding each other, causing water to splash everywhere in the room with their combined water powers. All the magic ink spheres vanish. PHX-001 creates a magic forcefield around himself to protect him from the water. Then he spits a powerful magic beam at the hybrids, deactivating Magi-Knight's forcefield.'' ''Crusade draws her laser katana. She takes aim before firing a powerful laser beam from her laser katana into PHX-001's mouth. PHX-001 lets out a loud shriek, louder than all the previous shrieks, before fainting. The gravity in the room returns to normal, and everything that was floating falls to the ground.''
 * Paula Python: We're floating!
 * Ink Splash: We have to finish him off!
 * Paula Python: But how? We can't even control where we're moving!
 * Dark Trident: Magi-Knight, we're gonna need lots of protection, because we're gonna make a water park out of this room!
 * Magi-Knight: Got it!
 * Ink Splash: We need a precise shot directly to his mouth to finish him off.
 * Paula Python: We're floating aimlessly. How can we get a precise shot at his mouth?
 * Crusade: Precision? You got the right girl for the job!