I feel that a part of your verdict hinges on the fact you main snipers, who are hard counters to Hydras.
Yeah, I was kind of thinking about it in terms of other weapons, but I don't get too much of a grip of the short range problem. Still, I must say my response is rather charger-biased, because I'm familiar with it. And yes, snipers are extremely hard counters to hydras, making them not nearly to the rank of "Overpowered status"
Still, I think short ranged weapons can get rid of a hydra if they flank it before it gets bubble, or if it does get bubble, there's the 1 hit KO of a roller, blaster, or you could burst cancel the hydra before it even gets a chance to bubble. However you'll have to be accurate to pull these strategies off, but getting rid of a hydra is extremely beneficial to your advancement.
@Heart of Ice, I've seen some of the arguments before hand about the E-liter and it's variants, and the E-liter is an amazing support weapon. It's sheer range is enough to make some teams absolutely helpless against a good user. It's presence on some maps allows it to be able to completely secure the middle ground all by itself, also it fits well on most teams being that long-ranged defensive weapon. However, I feel that it's not overpowered in the slightest, and that it does not deserve to be put in a tier above every other weapon in the game. It has weaknesses.
Firstly, this weapon's ink usage is atrocious. It can only shoot 3 and 3/4ths worth of fully charged shots, before it runs out of ink. This means, without damage up, you'll have to always fully charge to get the one-shot on a foe. To get 4 fully charged shots, you'll need at least: a main of ink saver main and one sub to get the forth consecutive shot in. With this in mind, your gear loadout is already leaning towards damage up and ink saver main/ink recovery up, already limiting your choices in abilities to use. Most E-liters typically use about 1 main 2 subs of damage up ranging to 3 mains of damage up. So with this in mind, you've probably sacrificed half (most likely more than that) of your gear loadout to just those perks. Meaning if you want Tenacity or Cold Blooded, you're probably going to miss out on mobility perks or vice versa.
Secondly, the E-liter is not immediately superior to other snipers. I know it has quite a bit more range than the splatterscopes, but it doesn't make them inferior by any means. The splatterscope line has about two lines less than an E-liter scope, making quite the difference here, however if you can get the opposing E-liter into your optimal range as a splatterscope, you've turned the tables and the gun fight is now in your favor.
Your charge time as a splatterscope is much faster than an E-liter's full charge, also partial charging for the E-liter isn't an option because they nerfed the range on that. Another factor on the splatterscope's side is that they have much more shots to try and kill the opposing E-liter with, having just over 5 fully charged shots at your disposal, instead of the aforementioned slow 3 and 3/4ths of a shot.
Also for combating other snipers, the Bento splatterscope and the Kelp Splatterscope are great choices for combating other long-ranged weapons. The Kelp has a killer wail, which makes the charger move out of their peak/position, and gives the kelp some time to predict where the other sniper will be. Meanwhile, the Bento is amazing at dealing with other chargers, the splash wall makes the other sniper either wait until the wall is out, or makes the other sniper waste a shot on the sub weapon, meanwhile the Bento user can either challenge the sniper with the protection of a wall, or use the wall just to see where the other sniper is. Other than that, echolocator is a great tool for any sniper, allowing you to see where the enemies are, and it instantly refills your tank with its non-existent cooldown.
Other than that, the E-liter is still a dominant force in the metagame with it's unstoppable range and amazing kits on both of the variants, it can literally tear up teams that aren't ready for it. However deeming it as overpowered with its limited mobility, awful ink usage, and long charge time is a bit ridiculous to me.
This is just my current thought about the E-liter, and the custom hydra, however I somewhat ranted on about the E-liter, and I'm sorry about that, and for this insanely long post. But hope you guys enjoy this wall of text. :D