Most the ranger skills are for bows so how can you be a fighter/ranger hybrid? I use the only skills I can without using a bow does that make me a hybrid?

A hybrid would be the types that are battle mages or the rogue style with very high agi and low str on a fighter. Being primarily a fighter with normal stats and using a few AOEs would not constitute a hybrid IMO.

In general, hybrids characters are those that have skills and gear from a mix of classes. Hybrids are not typically as skilled at any one thing as their specialized counterparts are, but they are typically much more adaptable to a variety of situations.

Here's a pic of one of my characters:

UberAlice - Arcane Mage

Don't let the title fool you. As you can see from her stats, she's got excellent DPS with a crossbow. I mapped Shadow Lightning to my primary attack button. My weapon is fast enough that I can let several bolts fly between burst of shadow lightning, essentially making my own highly damaging single-target DoT spell effect. Furthermore, with a bow I can lock onto targets, which I'm unable to do with fireball... If I'm fighting shadow-resistant mobs, then I swap shadow lightning out for Noxious Shot (which changes my title to Ranger).

Through a combination of skills, attribute point and gear, I've converted Alice from an AOE Battle Mage to a Ranger/Mage with good DPS AND AOE skills.

Clever!

There isn't technically any official word for a mixed class (as far as I can tell) but I did have to call it something. And heck, it feels strange even calling it a "mixed class" since I believe that is what they call an oxymoron Perhaps "mixed skill set" is more appropriate...or does that confuse the issue even further? That doesn't seem to have enough definition.

I used the word "Hybrid" because it seems this word has already been adopted by the community. But nothing is ever written in stone.

Please feel free to discuss the topic. What other words to you use? Is there any particular word that you feel best explains a "combo character"? A word that rolls off the tongue (quick and snappy) would be ideal, don't you think?

How about "Amalgamated"?

/hums along to "Weapon of Choice" by Fatboy Slim

/has visions of Christopher Walken tappin' like a fiend.

Love that video

My hybrid is built for soloing mostly, and sitting in the rear of groups, secondarily. It is a ranger with 3 Agility, 1 Int, 1 End per level. I use high agility gear. I train all ranger skills plus fire burst and righteous stomp. When I solo, I shoot everything with poison shot when it runs in and then spam the 3 area effects (fire burst, Poison cloud, and righteous) in order of their cooldown speeds. I usually leave the acid curse off my bar and fear shot as well. Fear shot is too user unfriendly to use quickly when soloing. When in a group, I bring fear shot and acid blast back into my bar and move out either poison resistance or the running ability, depending on the group and dungeon.

The 3 area effects seems to lay waste to groups fairly quickly, and I'm rarely shooting normal shots into most enemies, except toughies.

I should also warn that this tactic is very mana heavy (so Int is my second favorite stat) and I am fine running dungeons at or slightly below my level when soloing. I will run and grab 2 groups then stop and hit them all with my area effects, maybe run away a bit while they cook in my poison and fire while my cooldowns count down, then repeat. The only other skill I've been eyeing is another "area effect" called retribution. It fits my mass area death tactic, but it would probably put me over on mana.

What constitutes a hybrid?

Having an account with a character over level 30, you will be almost certainly be a hybrid.

That's true, over lvl 30 you have a lot of skills from other trainers not just your class...

At least for me that's how it is. I'm planning to have some sort of fighter/mage hybrid now that I accomplished lvl 30.