yagi,hybrid or quad beam would win hands down every time, less noise from horizontal polarisation, more signal,high directivity, its a no brainer.
verticals excel when working 360 degree local and fringe stuff to multiple stations, of that there is no doubt, but dx more often than not comes from one general direction at a time with one station at a time, which leaves the vast majority of that 360 degree beamwidth of the vertical wasted energy and a source of excessive noise that can mask the wanted signal.
i believe the best compromise of all is one of each type of antenna, i used to run a 3 element yagi on the roof with an antenna specialists mighty magnum 3 above it, whilst in itself the magnum was superb, letting me work into n.ireland line of sight every night/early morning when it was quieter, it was no match for the beam when the beam was locked onto another beam,
the difference was staggering, but for general chatting local and for allround dx listening, the magnum took some beating, listen for the direction of dx on the magnum/any omni and quickly switch to the beam once found is very hard to beat. occasionally the magnum outgunned the beam when talking to a dx station using an omni, but that was the exception and far from the rule as more often than not polarisation gets skewed about via skywave anyway.
