Dio Brando/Abilities and Powers

Personal
Intelligence: Dio is naturally intelligent, displaying cunning and perceptiveness as well as imagination repeatedly.

As a child and teenager, Dio Brando managed to achieve academic excellence with ease, having planned to graduate from university as the top law student.

Otherwise Dio is a cunning villain and proficient tactician in combat. Dio almost managed to get away from two murders, bidding his time in order to have a perfect alibi and was only discovered by accident. Upon his return from the bottom of the ocean, DIO built in six years a powerful criminal empire spanning over several continent and which brought him many riches. In a fight, Dio is particularly cunning and perceptive, his ruthlessness making him able to exploit dishonorable and downright inhuman tactics to get ahead, such as leading his enemies into a trap, using hapless civilians as projectile and source of energy, or plain sneak attacks. Dio has the habit of analyzing his opponent and determine quickly a counter to their strengths, such as freezing blood in order to stop the flow of the Ripple, or forcing Jotaro's bluff by throwing multiple knives from all direction so that he's forced to act during the stopped time.

Naturally ambitious, Dio constantly seeks to improve himself and meticulously studies his abilities to make the most of them. As such he developed a freezing power akin to the Pillar Men's Modes in just a month, and in six years, discovered enough about Stands to be able to fuse several together with souls in order to create the ultimate Stand. Arguably his most successful move, Dio experimented on how his vampiric powers allowed him to fuse two organisms together, and used that knowledge to steal Jonathan's body.

Though he doesn't show it often, Dio has become a natural philosopher, arguing about the human condition with multiple people.

Toughness: All prior to becoming a Vampire, Dio was already an able bare-handed fighter; A skill he says he developed in the slums of London. A good amateur sportsman, during a rugby game as a young adult, he is shown to have developed high athletic ability (as well as fantastic muscle mass).

Charisma: Dio is a cunning and charming individual. In addition to Stand Users, whom Avdol and Joseph suggest he recruits through sheer charm or charisma, he has seduced many women through his life.

Knowledge: Throughout both his humble youth and tempestuous maturity, Dio is often seen reading. During his pre-teens, he is seen playing chess with adults. In Part 6, in conversation with Enrico Pucci, he is shown to have accumulated some wisdom within the world of Stands. Importantly, Dio is able to concoct a plan, contained in his diary, incorporating vast, unknown information as to the deliberate creation of Stands of perfectly specific abilities.

Vampiric
Becoming a Vampire as a young adult, Dio displays a broad range of fantastic, supernatural abilities; explained as expressions of the full, unbound potential of the human body.

Inhuman Strength: Dio attains massive strength as a Vampire, allowing him feats such as forcibly walking on walls and single-handedly deflecting attacks such as Hierophant Green's Emerald Splash (volleys of substantially-sized emeralds flying at almost bullet speed). After absorbing Joseph's blood he is powerful enough to pick up and drop a steamroller on Jotaro.

Inhuman Speed: Dio also possesses enhanced speed and agility. At one point he was described by Speedwagon as being as fast as a cheetah.

Enhanced Senses: Demonstrated when placing his head on the ground to hear Jotaro's heartbeat, despite being a few meters away, Dio appears to have senses beyond human level.

Regeneration: Dio can regenerate his body faster than fire can consume it. His incredible vitality is maintained by consuming human beings (or their blood), which he commonly does by piercing them with his fingers. Like all JoJo vampires, Dio sucks blood through tentacles in his fingers and has been seen at least once drinking blood from an unnamed girl. His body is able to live even after having vital body parts amputated and he can also control his detached body parts. The extent of Dio's own survivability is demonstrated when he could continue as just a head.

Space Ripper Stingy Eyes: Dio is able to pressurize bodily liquid in his eyeballs and then create small openings in his pupils, eventually unleashing two fluid jets (referred to by Straizo as "Space Ripper Stingy Eyes" ) powerful enough to slice stone. Vaporization Freezing Technique (気化冷凍法): A freezing ability enabling Dio to freeze his own body parts and transfer this over to other objects or beings. It is able to cancel out the Ripple by freezing the blood in the user's body.

Fusion: By fusing different species, Dio can create half-man half-beast creatures. He can even fuse himself with another living being to take control of them.

Spores (肉の芽): In Phantom Blood, Dio's powers are more bio-organic, but for the most part in Part 3 he only utilizes the "evil implants" - a parasite that brainwashes Polnareff and Kakyoin. A vampire's cells can spawn Evil Implants generated from hair and insert it in the brains of living beings to control them. If someone tries to take out the spore, it will grow tentacles in a attempt to kill both the host and the one trying to remove it. If the vampire wants, he can give permission to someone to activate the spore's tentacles anytime he wants if close to it. The spores possess another effect in case DIO himself ever dies. According Keicho Nijimura, his father who was implanted by the spore underwent a mutation into a greenish animalistic form by having DIO's cells inside his body. Presumably, this is a side effect that the rest of the surviving Stand Users that DIO had implanted his spores inside of would suffer from.

Hypnosis: This ability was used twice on Jack the Ripper (anime only) and Poco respectively. In the case of the former, Dio hypnotized Jack to convince him to join as a servant, allowing Dio to drain his blood and turn him into a zombie. Poco was manipulated to lure Jonathan into a trap, though his consciousness returned after being subjected to Jonathan's Ripple.

Teleportation: Dio also shows the ability to disappear by fading into darkness. Whether or not this may be an actual vampire ability or a result of the use of his Stand (see below).

Healing: Dio also seems to possess the ability to heal other people's wounds as he was able to completely cure Pucci's wounded foot by simply touching it. However, the origins of this power remain unknown.

Weaknesses
All of this, however, is at the expense of having a body sustained by sheer willpower alone, rather than vital energy. A sufficiently powerful force of vitality - specifically, sunlight or the Ripple - will negate the sustaining force's presence and disintegrate the long-unliving body.

Stand
DIO's Stand is the humanoid The World; facilitating melee attack roughly equal, if not even superior, in its immense force and speed to Jotaro Kujo's Star Platinum.

About a year after gaining his Stand, DIO discovered that it is capable of stopping time. At first, he could only do this for a very short amount of time, but by the end of Part 3, he is able to stop time for a maximum of 9 seconds. This duration would have continued to develop had DIO not been defeated. When stopping time, DIO gives the impression that he is teleporting or otherwise moving at impossible speed.

The ability is best known for Dio's activation and cancellation phrases THE WORLD, Time, stop! (! 時よ止まれ!) and Time resumes. (時は動き出す).

Joestar Stand Abilities
Due to the familiar connection between Jonathan's body and Jonathan's descendants, it seems that The World shares abilities with the Stands of the Joestar family. This is hinted when DIO was shown able to create a vision on a photograph, similar to Joseph's Hermit purple and this could explain why Star Platinum is also able to stop time as eventually discovered by Jotaro during the grand battle between him and DIO.

Still, due to this connection, DIO is also able to sense the presence of other Joestars. He was even able to tell when Joseph used Hermit Purple to take a psychic photograph of him, as well as instinctively know that his acquisition of a Stand also awoke Stand abilities in Jonathan's descendants. He also had control over Jonathan's Stand, which allowed him to create psychic images, be it on photographs or crystal balls. This increased his charisma with people, as it made them even more aware about how superior DIO was.

In Video Games

 * Blazing Fists (MudaMuda)
 * Blazing Strike
 * The World, Road Roller
 * Eye-Crushing Kick
 * The World, Circle of Knives
 * The World, Time Stop
 * The Touch of Evil (Charisma)
 * Referring to his "Evil Implants"