The Crustacean Tier List

Crusts are some of the most popular builds in the entire game, in fact, they are so popular that it has become something of a meme that every player will eventually abandon their current character and become a crab, but how competitively How viable are encrustations really? What unique abilities does the Crustation class use that allowed them to become such a resilient Force in many of the game's expansions and balance patches? Are they actually an optimal build option in the current meta or are they just an easy low option to pilot? skill level character we will discuss all of this and more as we rank the most notable builds in the

crustacean

tier

list

, this video was sponsored by Givewell before we get into the IT

list

, let's first discuss the overall gameplay strategy of the

crustacean

faction and the key abilities that To achieve this, crustaceans are part of the larger arthropod faction, so crustaceans inherit all the main advantages of the arthropod class.

The most important, of course, is his exoskeletal armor, which provides a huge defense boost given that most Crusts have to deal with some of the most dangerous builds in the game. This additional protection is crucial to its viability. Its shell, which is the thickest, most resistant and important. The link in his armor can block attacks from seabird beaks, fish jaws, and many of the other threats common in the aquatic environment. However, they have the same weakness as all exoskeleton type builds, which is that their defense stat drops drastically for a short time upon leveling up, if their armor ever fails them, this does not immediately mean that finishing operations The game's game has the incredible ability to regenerate HP after taking damage.

It can even regrow entire limbs, so even something as devastating as using a claw or a leg isn't something the crustaceans can't recover from and In fact, it may be the optimal play to distract an opponent and escape from a fight that this ability creates. Crustaceans are a very beginner-friendly build, as you can make a lot of mistakes and still progress through the game relatively unhindered. Crustaceans also have exceptionally specialized limbs that reach two points instead of one, making it very easy to specify them into several different specialized opposable claws. which can be optimized for cutting, running, piercing or grappling.

I've said in the past that I think crustaceans are a broadly mid-level class, and I think this still holds. Crustaceans have many interesting tools at their disposal, but due to their medium size. -from the route stat distribution, they are constantly fighting an uphill battle against the many high-level threats they must deal with and they have to play things perfectly to not get run over in these matchups, so let's see how the Individual embedding is built fairly and we enter. the

tier

list starring us at an F tier, we have the Barnacle, the Barnacle is a crusting build with an AFK strategy almost completely barnacle larva, you find a spot and then attach it and filter the food for the rest of your I play now.

I'm not playing with players who enjoy idle games. I'm a fan myself, however this strategy has some major flaws even though Barnacles have the highest defense stat of any crustation, a barnacle's survival depends entirely on your choice of parking space. Barnacles can stick to almost any surface, from boat holes to cement walls, whalebones, and even other scabs. Choosing a spot on a non-living surface leaves barnacles vulnerable to predators, no matter how high their defense stats are. There are many structures that are arranged. invest in anti-Shell defense capabilities, such as the acid attacks of the starfish or the piercing attacks of the Welk snail, neither of which are uncommon on the reefs and coastlines that the Barnacles call home, but if they choose to a living host, it's easier to say. than to do so by the way, then its survivability is completely tied to the survival of its host, a tenuous Gambit in a metagame game as hostile as the ocean server.

Whales are a fairly safe option, but the opportunities to secure real estate on a whale are few and far between. You're much more likely to have to settle for a property in the shell of another shell, which, as we'll see later in this list, is a big gamble personally. I'd say if you want to play a primarily AFK Marine build, go for the scallop. Since you will still be able to cool and filter the food most of the time, but you can still escape if necessary, also in level F, we now have the shrimp. Shrimp are a super diverse group with a lot of interesting strategies, but overall shrimp are very poor.

Using the unique skills of crusting construction. Generally speaking, shrimps have weak legs, no eyes, and small claws. Eyeless may seem trivial, but eyes are actually a pretty useful ability that allows the player to take shelter in the sand or beneath the sea floor while still remaining. Vigilant shrimp rely heavily on that same strategy, but because they can't monitor their surroundings while hiding, a smart predator can easily wait until they resurface and eliminate them. Attacking a shrimp is also much less risky than attacking the most encrustations due to their abilities to cause damage. They are much worse than the rest of the faction.

The shrimp's reduced appendages are a compensation meant to improve their mobility. The shrimp have shorter, flatter legs that increase their aquatic movement speed in a way that is somewhat reminiscent of the pelvic fins of a fish. A good idea that means the shrimp can swim freely rather than walking along the ocean floor, but in practice this simply meant that the shrimp ended up like the seahorses of the crustacean faction, a tankier swimmer but of slower movement that cannot adequately defend or evade attacks. so he is bullied by all other nearby players, the shrimp have an escape ability where they can run back very quickly, but this is of course very predictable and exploitable by experienced players, now it is important to note who, while they may not have the best stats, are sneaky.

M Shrimp have been able to achieve some level of viability in The Meta, whether by taking advantage of debuff clearing abilities and playing as a predator support class or by abusing a cork in the game engine that allows them to fire powerful short-range Sonic projectiles. scope. called cavitation bubbles that can stun other players, both are respectable strategies that deserve placement in a higher level, but in general, the shrimp are trapped in the lower level, first in level D, we have the isopod which is not the Barnacle, who literally cannot move. The highest base defense stat of any crustacean on this list, their shell is perfect for deflecting attacks and when they curl up into a ball like an armadillo, there are very few predators that can threaten them unless they are several orders of magnitude larger, However, the Isopod has essentially no damage dealing abilities, no attacks, no poison, nothing to threaten aggressive players, so against a persistent attacker it will essentially always lose.

Isopods are a diverse and widely distributed group with both terrestrial and aquatic variants. The terrestrial variants known as mealybug pill. Bugs and roly poys function much like miniature cockroaches, using their flat shape to get into hard-to-reach positions and only leaving the safety of these places to search for loot. The larger aquatic variants of the isopod are usually similar in their strategy, but you can also opt for a parasitic playstyle where they actually fuse with a fish player who destroys and replaces the fish's tongue. This parasitic strategy is great for farming XP and is super AFK, but carries pretty much the same risks I mentioned about Barnacle if the fish is attacked and defeated, the isopod usually goes down with the ship technically if they are given the chance to break away and escape. , but in the marine meta, opportunities like that are pretty rare and without a host they're likely to get eliminated anyway, no. the worst crustacean, but it leaves a lot on the table by not making use of the highly customizable crustacean for liims.

Then at the DET level we have the crayfish, also known as Crawdad. This is a smaller variant of the lobster subclass that primarily sticks to freshwater servers. This means that unlike a lobster, which needs to be prepared to take on sharks, octopuses, eels, and the multitude of dangerous threats you'd find on ocean servers, the worst a crayfish could encounter would probably be something like a turtle or Largemouth Bass, and yet even in this much less demanding environment, crayfish still underperform. They have solid rivalries against frogs, which applies to essentially every other structure out there as well, and they can sometimes hold their own against freshwater fish due to their armor, but so-so.

Anything beyond that and they start fighting, they don't have claws that are as powerful as some of the other Crusts on this list, so when faced with an adversary, they often lose if they can't escape, their only real advantage. is that their smaller size opens up many additional options for where they can run for cover and hide, as they can fit into very small openings between rocks and debris on a river bed; However, because they often aggregate so close to the coastline, they are vulnerable. until they are taken out by birds whose precise precision attacks can hit them even in partial cover without proper offensive capabilities, they will always be outmatched by their more powerful cousin, a build that I think we Nam have already dropped enough times to move on. and let's move on to the first one on level C, we have the lobster.

Lobsters are a solid sea-level build with many strengths, the most obvious of which are their incredibly large and powerful claws which give the lobster some of the greatest gripping strength in the entire game. to easily crush almost any other player's defenses and deal devastating damage in the process, this is great for defense and also for taking control of an objective or point of interest on the lobster-like seabed. They also have pretty decent mobility, although the only direction they can move quickly is directly backwards. This is all pretty solid. However, lobster has its own share of weaknesses, in addition to the standard crusting weaknesses.

This backward mobility is quite limiting and means that attacking a lobster from behind often leaves them in great difficulty. few counterplay options as their claws cannot reach backwards and if they try to use their Explosive Mobility option their only option will be to move directly towards you unless they slowly reposition themselves so that their back is facing away from the threat. This is in contrast to the next version on our list, which I think is a little more versatile in its mobility, the next one at level C, we finally get to the crab build, the crustacean class model and one of the levels more reliable and consistent means throughout the game.

They are extremely customizable and can be optimized for what best suits the current meta. Some Speck grow into smaller, more precise claws that allow small prey to be captured more easily. Some Speck evolve into sharp-edged claws used to cut through soft body components such as seops, and some opt for spikes. The claws are perfect for prodding PES fish that can't do their job; However, what really distinguishes crabs from other crustaceans is that they have chosen not to specify the pleon trait: the pleon is the rear abdomen seen in most other crustaceans we know of. We have discussed so far that it is the tail part that allows shrimps and lobsters to use that special option of explosive mobility.

However, the trade-off is that the pleon greatly increases his damage box and functions as a weak point to have the flexibility to hit that fast move, he can't be as heavily armored as the rest of them, so while Since crabs, shrimp and lobsters fold up quite quickly when attacked from behind, the crabs can usually ignore it, however, only because they can't run backwards.instantly like others. Crustaceans do not mean that crabs are immobile, rather crabs focus on lateral mobility which is usually much more useful for dodging attacks, they can swim quickly or run left or right when necessary and although This may not be as impressive as the lobster.

Regardless, he still shoots it often enough to save their lives. I don't want to give you the impression that I think crabs are at all overpowered, they still have a lot of body, especially for builds that have that spec in high intelligence, but the strategy involved in optimizing your character's hert box is not something I think that we should overlook, since it is actually a fairly high-level game. First at level B, we now have the hermit crab, unlike basic crabs, hermit crabs have a pleon that they must protect by finding and equipping the shell of a defeated snail player technically this means they are not true crabs, but they What really matters is that this ability breaks, it allows them to match the Barnacle's defense stat while retaining their ability to move and, furthermore, the shells.

They themselves can be augmented with additional buffs courtesy of C andem players and using this hermit crab combo can also add a toxic sting to your defense. I won't spend much time on hermit crabs because I already have a whole video on them, but I just understand that they have turned the main weakness of false crab crusts into a huge strength. The largest variant of the hermit crab, the coconut crab, can actually reach such gigantic sizes that they outweigh the need for a protective shell, as essentially nothing else is capable. to threaten it and by dropping the heavy shell they gain the ability to climb, which may allow them to even turn the tables on M birds, which normally have an oppressive matchup against crustaceans.

Next up on Tier B we have the Copa capsule. Now this may seem like an odd inclusion in this tier list as I don't normally talk about micro weight class builds, but the police units really deserve a mention as they They have virtually the entire Zoo Plankton metagame locked down, are one of the most numerous builds in the entire game, and can survive almost anywhere due to a multitude of elemental resistances. In a way, they are almost like water bears, except that in addition to being quite durable, they are also easily the best. most Plankton mobile constructs, most other Zoo Plankton only start in that weight class using their microscopic size to avoid detection by larger predators; however, as they level up, they increase in size and gradually disappear from the planktonic metagame entirely, however, while in their planktonic state.

At this stage they are generally not super competitive as they have spent all their evolution points on abilities that they only unlock later in the police ponds, on the other hand they are fully optimized to maximize their viability against other Zoo Plankton and therefore therefore, completely master The Meta. In that space they are not completely invincible, of course, and are often defeated by colonial microbes like the Portuguese man-of-war and its kin, but among the free-roaming copap zo capsules Plankton reign virtually unopposed in their niche, this is especially problematic. for human mains because copap pods also ally with vibrio bacteria for bioluminescence ability, but they can also transmit the deadly disease chera and at the top of our list on one level we have the mantis shrimp.

The mantis shrimp is famous for being one of the most stacked builds. The game has ever seen, at least when it comes to offense, instead of the standard crustacean claws. Blanket shrimp opt for rapacious blades or blunt clubs that they can swing with truly unparalleled strength. These attacks deal devastating damage to any player unlucky enough to be caught. their receiving end and in many cases these attacks result in a single death. Now the mantis shrimp has a lot of hype and attention around it with many players criticizing the mantis shrimp as op and broken and so on the hype around its power status. it absolutely deserves it, however we can't forget that this build has a more or less similar body plan to the build I rated as the second lowest on this tier list.

Their large, less armored pleon sticks out quite a bit from their carp, which can leave them vulnerable to ambush attacks like a normal shrimp or lobster, which is not uncommon given their lack of camouflage, plus their small fins and small legs don't translate exactly on a high mobility stat, so even though they have incredible size. Thermal mantis shrimp generally only hunt the slower prey, scallops and snails. This isn't a bad thing at all, in fact I think the existence of a proper tank, Buster Abil, is healthy for metag play in general, but I think the power of The Strip of Man is greatly exaggerated on forums and discussion boards.

Abilities like being able to see color and polarize light in a unique way or the additional sonic damage effect that his blows create. These are fun little quirks, but I don't think they significantly affect the mantis shrimp placed in the tier list give them legs to run on and the ability to breathe on dry land and we'd probably need to start discussing a raid, although overall I think the Crustaceans are in a solid place in the current meta, they are not overpowered, but they shouldn't be. Crustaceans and insects are closely related and are the most successful factions within the arthropod class, so it is only natural that they are constantly compared to each other.

Insects are much more dominant on land, while crustaceans reign in the water, although they are similar in many ways, insects have many unique abilities that crustaceans do not have, such as Venom, our sociability, and most importantly, flight, while most of the important abilities we see in the crustations are also found in the insect faction, robust defensive armor, the ability to equip shells of defeated. tanks rapid explosion Mobility limb regeneration these are all things that insects can also do. I'll give credit where credit is due, although scabs do have an advantage when it comes to that regeneration advantage.

I mentioned that insects can regenerate every time they molt, but insects actually stop molting once they molt. They reach their level cap and can no longer regenerate after that, this coincides with the insects getting their wings, which is a bit paradoxical because it means their most fragile trait is also the only trait where they can never regenerate scabs. , on the other hand, continue to grind and regenerate even after reaching their full potential reinforces the idea that encrustations are a more beginner-friendly build. Crustaceans are arthropods, one of the most diverse factions in the game, and while many are important parts of their ecosystems, many others, including the police groups mentioned in this video, can transmit diseases.

It can devastate communities that don't have the infrastructure to prevent them and unfortunately these same communities are often the least equipped to combat these same diseases, 'tis the season of giving and if you're like me, you want to help, but you worry about it. Your donations could go much further and do much more good if used in the most efficient way. This is where current sponsor Givewell comes into play. Givewell was founded to help donors with that exact dilemma where they analyze independent studies and data from charities to help donors direct their efforts. funds to evidence-backed organizations that are saving and improving lives, for example at Givewell I was able to discover that one of the best ways to prevent malaria, the disease transmitted by another arthropod, the infamous mosquito, is to donate to organizations that focus on providing mosquito nets and medicine to communities in sub-Saharan Africa where there is malaria.

I even learned that it costs on average $5 per person to provide them with a mosquito net and $7 to provide them with medicine when done efficiently. Givewell has spent over 15 years researching charities and only directs funds to some of the most impactful opportunities they have found. Over 100,000 donors have used Givewell to give over $1 billion. Rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save more than 150,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more. Give Will wants as many donors as possible. To make informed decisions about high-impact giving, you can find all of their research and recommendations on their site for free.

You can make tax-deductible donations to their recommended funds or charities and Givewell doesn't take a cut if you've never donated to Givewell Ed Charities. Before you can have your donation match up to $100 before the end of the year or while matching funds last to claim your contribution, go to givw well.org, choose YouTube and enter Tio at checkout, make sure they know who heard about Givewell. from Tio to get your donation matched again, that's it, hit dorg to donate or find out more, thanks for watching and see you next time.