Darth Maul (prime) vs. Darth Vader (suit prime)

Vader win here mid-difficulty.

Honestly Fightsaber is full of outdated info, not saying that it's grounds for dismissal but the things they mention about Vader's impaired mobility really don't make sense, because as of Purge and TFU he can lift his arms above his head and as of ANH when he fights Ferus olin he can move fast when he wants, though I just attribute that to his bursts of speed, either or, the resurrection fight is non canon, and Vader has never faced Maul but while holding back was able to stalemate a Kenobi who was ~ ROTS Kenobi who is likely to exceed Maul in power. That is an argument for another day though, because Prime Vader can blitz his ANH counterpart, anyway, Vader wins.

@Nova I Will respond when I get back home

Nova wrote:@SithSauce I didn't say he couldn't make up for it, but "making up" in of itself suggests that it is a weakness, as Lucas, Fightsaber, Lightsabers: A Guide to the Weapons of the Force etc. have mentioned on various occasions. While Vader has circumvented that factor before, it's always been against plainly lesser enemies. Against opponents on his level, like Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, he relied on them having equivalent hindrances (old age/lack of practice and inexperience, respectively) to cancel out his own weaknesses. Maul does not have such a hindrance, hence I find it more likely for him to emerge as the victor here.

My assumption here is that Maul is on Vader's level in terms of raw prowess with a blade, which you're welcome to disprove. But I think it'd be quite difficult, given Vader's feats are primarily pre-ANH and we know then that he was only on par with a "pale shadow" of RotS Obi-Wan in lightsaber skill. Maul at his best is around Obi-Wan's calibre, meaning that he should be able to defeat a "pale shadow" of RotS Obi-Wan pretty swiftly. I'm generous in interpreting Vader's substantial improvements after ANH as bringing him up to Maul's grade, which is hard to prove when Vader doesn't have a lot of non-circular feats (like his fights with Luke, who depends on him for scaling anyway).

Maul was pre-prime in that fight as well, and Vader lost the actual sword contest in that fight. He won by exploiting his durability, which I mentioned as a factor for why he could win here.

Based on what is being a pale shadow of ROTS Obi Wan in lightsaber skill somehow mean that he would lose "swiftly" to Maul. I'd like to know how you came to that conclusion? Considering ROTS Kenobi is one of the best duelists in the history of the jedi order, with his soresu defence described as near "impenetrable".  I'd say being inferior to him saber wise isn't a bad thing, and should NOT be used to somehow lower Vader. There's a lot of characters that are below Kenobi with a blade, and I'd say Maul is definitely one them, and Dooku can be argued as well, if you take the ROTS novel version of the Invisible Hand fight into account.
I'd still say Vader is rather skillful with a blade, eventhough he doesn't rank amongst the best. 5 days after Mustafar, he was already blitzing like 4 or 5 jedi at the same time on Kessel (one of those jedi was a master with insanely good hype, look to Azronger's recent  post on the Mundi vs Vader thread if you want to know more).
It's basically confirmed that Vader grew more formidable after ANH.
I don't see why  feats have to be the be all end all to decide fully or not whether Vader grew more powerful as a combatant/force user in the OT.
Darth Bane's feats in DOE aren't exposed as much as his ROT feats, but it's practically confirmed in DOE that Bane grew more powerful after ROT.
Tenebrous is lacking heavilly in feats yet nearly everyone here has him in their top 5 most powerful sith lords list. I don't see why we shouldn't take Vader's accolades to consideration, when everyone else take's Tenebrous's.
When it comes to Luke. Considering that there is an emotional connection between Vader and Luke ( as father and son), this can very well can hinder one's performance in a duel between them. And we know after Vader's encounter with Luke on Bespin, he wasn't the same as he was in ROTJ ( stopped choking people and shit). Luke even states  that he feels the good in him, and the conflict during their end fight.
You could also use this to argue why Anakin (who was on his way to surpassing Yoda/Sidious)didn't stomp Kenobi on Mustafar or why Vader didn't beat Ben Kenobi convincingly on the Death Star. A character's emotional state is a factor to consider when analysing duels.

As for Maul's prime. In Legends anyway, TPM is his prime. It shouldn't be fair to factor in all the TCW material as that is all Disney Canon.

Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy, a Legends novel, states that Maul grew more powerful from The Phantom Menace to the Clone Wars. Even in Legends, Maul's stated prime is TCW.
As for this fight, Vader is the only possible victor, though it nothing short of an interesting engagement.

dark-sith123 wrote:Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy, a Legends novel, states that Maul grew more powerful from The Phantom Menace to the Clone Wars. Even in Legends, Maul's stated prime is TCW.
As for this fight, Vader is the only possible victor, though it nothing short of an interesting engagement.

Fair enough but the Vader vs Maul comic isn't really part of the TCW legends canon, which makes it more dubious.

Fightsaber potentially being "outdated" is irrelevant since we've had the same claim repeated to us both before (by Lucas) and after (by Lightsabers: A Guide to the Weapons of the Force). The claims about Vader's mobility are not isolated ones.

@SithSauce — You've missed the point. Maul was roughly on par with Obi-Wan by the end of the Clone Wars. Even if we were generous in giving Obi-Wan the lead by RotS, they're still clearly within the same level of swordsmanship (on the same Gillard-Lucas level, that is, since even TPM Maul and RotS Obi-Wan are, and TCW Maul has grown more powerful). ANH Obi-Wan, and by extension ANH Vader, are far below that — hence they're clearly not on Maul's calibre as a duelist. If we raise Vader back up on account of his significant improvement after ANH, then he's roughly level with Maul again.

Nobody argued that we don't know Vader improved after ANH due to a lack of feats, or that we wouldn't take accolades for him. It's stated that he improved, but that is indeed the only way we know he improved, since his feats from that point on can't be meaningfully compared to his pre-ANH feats. That's why we can't actually quantify the gap and are restricted to estimations. Tenebrous and Bane are both poor examples for your case — there's direct evidence for comparing Bane in DoE and RoT based on his fights against Zannah, who obviously improved, while Tenebrous' limited feats clearly place him in the upper echelons of combatants. And again, nobody denied Vader's improvement. We're talking about the difficulty of quantifying that improvement.  

Ant has already disposed of the claim that Vader was hindered against Luke. That fight has repeatedly been made out to be a feat of parity for Luke, the point of which would be lost if Vader was actually meaningfully hindered. The fight against Anakin vs Obi-Wan is widely recognised as circumstantial; most versions and descriptions of the fight make it clear that Anakin is technically better. That isn't the case with Luke vs Vader; sources instead say that Vader is fortunate that Luke was inexperienced enough to not overwhelm him outright. Many sources also make it clear that Vader was giving it his all in that fight.

@SithSauce

I don't see why feats have to be the be all end all to decide fully or not whether Vader grew more powerful as a combatant/force user in the OT. Darth Bane's feats in DOE aren't exposed as much as his ROT feats, but it's practically confirmed in DOE that Bane grew more powerful after ROT. wrote:

That's very debatable tbh. We can definitely say he's far ahead of POD Bane as his lightning is now capable of incinerating flesh and bone while on 20 prior, while amped by the neutral nexus created in the aftermath of the Thought Bomb, his lightning couldn't even instant kill three mercenaries - even exhausted DOE Bane while hindered by the Huntress's Force suppression was able to instant kill three of his assailants - and it's stated he would have incinerated them had he not been hindered.

DOE Bane > Hindered DOE Bane > Amped POD Bane > Base end-of-POD Bane is well established by feats. ROT Bane is debatable. Personally I think that while both have advantages ROT Bane was his most formidable.

Bloodlusted ROTJ Vader replaces Sheev against Maul in Shadow Conspiracy.

Vader destroys

@DoA I merged your thread with the existing one. Please use the search filter to look if the matchup has already been made to avoid creating duplicate threads in the future.

Maul.

Vader, though if it's rage amped Maul, then should win.

Vader in a good fight. More powerful, physically stronger and comparable technique that kept improving (see TFU Vader vs TFU II Vader, for reference).

Maul wins solidly.

Either way but if you made me choose I'd pick Vader.

Vader ragdolls