Chameleon

Chameleons are arboreal reptiles part of the lizard faction, known for their bizarre, specialized abilities. Chameleon eat insects and live in the African and Southern India servers, favoring jungle and rainforest biomes.

## Tier Placement

Chameleons have little in terms of power, and a chameleon's scales provide average protection. The mobility of a chameleon can make it impossible to escape predators, so they have to rely on their stealth, slow movement and tail. Looking at a Chameleon's stats is not enough, however, as they had a lot of left over evolution points to spec into very unique abilities. They have an impressive colour-change ability, allowing for very convincing disguises which mashes well with their low mobility. Disappointingly, most chameleon players decided to use it for emotes and communication. When a chameleon is using emotes, it can make it very exposed to predators.

The chameleon has also specked into a tether tongue attack, which they desperately need to catch prey, as they cannot do the typical lizard chase-down due to their pathetic mobility. The attack has good range, precision and start up. They also have rotatable eyes, allowing for full 360-degree vision. Furthermore, they have a tail which can latch onto branches, allowing them to get into more precarious positions to reach loot. All of this gives them a down-right broken match-up against insect players, which are very common in the jungle biomes most chameleon players favour. They have earned the title of the lizard with the best match-up against insects.

In terms of pvp, chameleons are heavily lacking. If they are found, which happens the most when they are using emotes or if somehow caught in the open, they are pretty helpless. Their tether tongue attack, tail and horns cannot help them in combat. Their armour is pretty average. However, their tail can be their saving grace. While not helpful in combat, it can make it difficult for predators, usually predatory birds, their worst match up, to grab a chameleon latched to a branch.

Chameleon players, although using their best ability for emotes, made a very good decision to not spec into autotomy. They realize how valuable their tails are and did not decide to drop them. Tierzoo has stated before that autotomy is a detrimental to spec into for lizard players if their tail is useful, and the same goes for the chameleon's tail. If they had decided to use autotomy, they would fare worse in the current meta and have a lower ranking in the tier list.

In terms of match ups, as aforementioned chameleons obviously excel against unsuspecting insects and small arthropods. They are relatively safe against terrestrial predators as they spend the majority of their gameplay in the trees. Chameleons have bad matchups against predatory birds and arboreal players in higher weight classes. However, their worst matchups are other, stealthy arboreal players, such as snakes. They have to rely on their average armour or somehow push them away and escape their grasp. If a chameleon player is ever caught out in the open, it can spell game over due to its bad stats.

Chameleons have specked into good abilities which helps the niche they are trying to fulfil. However its mediocre stats cannot be ignored. This is balanced out, landing them in C or B tier. A big step up would be if they decided to put their camoflauge ability to better use, as it is already the best of the best in the lizard faction. By this, and a more pronounced combat/defence mechanism, they could potentially break into the higher tiers. A pretty interesting and above-average member of the lizard faction.

## Abilities

### Skin change

Unlike other animals who use color change for camoflauge, most chameleon players use it for communication and emotes. This is a missed opportunity.

### Tether Tongue

A chameleons tounge is good for grabbing players in low level weight classes, with good range, precision and speed. It cannot help them in pvp situations, however.

### 360 degree eyes

Chameleons have eyes that can rotate in their heads having full 360 degree vision.

**Tail**

Chameleons have a long tail for holding onto branches, which allows them to get closer to insects to launch their tether tongue attack, with the secondary effect of being harder to be pulled out of trees from predator players.