The Post Dump

If you have a post you want to write for Discord but with forum formatting, easy future linking, or archiving, just post it below here.

Introduction

To clarify for the readers, this is my rebuttal to everything I can think of that Bran has written on Starkiller vs Vader, whether it be on Discord or forum:

@Quorian Debatist

As a preface, you've written a lot to me on this topic in various places, so I may not cover everything you've ever said to me, and, if I have missed something, feel free to just repeat it.

The Force Unleashed 1

Your claim that Starkiller is only a "little faster" than Vader is completely unwarranted. Even pre-revelation, there's clearly a sizeable difference, as the text notes SK is "fast and sly" compared to Vader who is "strong and relentless" - describing one as fast, and the other as not isn't suggesting a marginal edge. Your whole idea of closeness seems to be based on the fact that Vader is still reacting to Starkiller even post-boost, but comparisons with other fights tell us that this doesn't necessitate such:

-We've seen Ti hold off Grievous for 10 seconds by her lonesome, when in that very same fight Grievous clowned her and 4 others simultaneously.

-We've seen Dooku hold off Anakin for 12 seconds despite the fact that he's a "joke" to him, and that the entire fight was basically a comedy with a forgone conclusion. He was also getting absolutely hammered by Anakin's augmentation just prior, before Anakin had his revelation about the strength of anger.

-We've seen the Hero of Tython hold off Arcann in sabers, despite the fact that he spent the whole fight getting greydolled, and had fatigued so badly by the end of the fight that Arcann could casually pull him onto his blade, yet Arcann had enough left in the tank to hold off Valklander's entire big Lightning blast for like a minute.

Or, if you want an example regarding Vader, he holds his ground against Maul for like 15 pages in Resurrection, and continually reacts to him, despite his "far more formidable" ESB self, being "much much slower" than Maul.

The way I see it, this happens because, regardless of the disparity between the two characters, the inferior character can draw more deeply into their reserves in order to try and keep up at the expense of gassing out quicker. To go back to Dooku and Anakin, Dooku is capable of "drawing lavishly on his reserve" to meet Anakin's attacks which would have otherwise cut him in half, but feels his enhanced perceptions dulling after a short period of time. This happens with combatants until they either gas out (e.g. the Hero vs Arcann), or the intensity of their opponent's assault becomes too much (e.g. Sidious vs Maul in Shadow Conspiracy). The fact of the matter is, all Vader does is retreat for the whole duel - post-revelation - and desperately try to defend himself, but he repeatedly proves unable to properly disengage and recover his bearings. By the end of the duel he's so overwhelmed he's not even blocking SK's strikes - he starts laughing and then gets slashed twice more. Or, if we want to look at the game, Starkiller is just bullying Vader with the Force, and Vader's utterly unable to respond. The way I tie this to peak Vader is simple: Maul couldn't replicate this on a comparably strong Vader in Resurrection. Vader "holds his ground" against Maul, lasts 15 pages, and manages to get himself into a position where he can kill Maul, in spite of his general inferiority. SK finishes Vader far more cleanly, in far less time.

The Force Unleashed 2: Exhaustion

Contrary to what you seem to be proposing, I do have methods of quantifying the exhaustion. My main one would be the one above: SK outperforms TPM Maul - who's far above even peak Vader - against TFU/ANH Vader. This would place SK far above TFU 2 and peak Vader, which answers your question. But, even setting that aside, I have three additional methods of quantification:

(1) The Sheev Lightning walk.
(2) The Starkiller Clones feat.
(3) Lord Starkiller defeating Old Ben despite being massively below Peak SK, as is supported by Sheev and common sense from Lucas's statements on Vader.

...all necessitate SK is far above Vader, so his exhaustion has to have been a big deal. As to how it can be when the text doesn't put incredible emphasis on it hindering him, I'd offer the same rebuttal that I did to MP. Sean Williams generally doesn't comment on debilitating circumstances outside a couple of sentences - irregardless of the extent to which they hinder a character. Examples are Galen being weakened against Maris, him still recovering from the ISD when fighting The Core, and resisting the Dark Side without an alternative strength to draw upon against Vader, etc. In-universe, it's not hard to see that it would be massively hindering: Starkiller is noted to feel "simultaneously cleansed and poisoned", and exhausted to a greater extent than when his reserves were almost gone. He then goes on to fight Vader equally, despite pulverising the army of Starkiller clones who could have "easily overpowered" Vader, mere chapters earlier in this very same book. You've compared Force Exhaustion to physical exhaustion before, and brought up how you're not unable to accomplish your best even while tired to say that it probably didn't impact his fighting abilities that much - all exhaustion does is make it increasingly more difficult to accomplish your best until you basically collapse.

However, while this is true, I'd contest its relevance. SK probably can operate at his peak if required to, but if he did so he'd probably just fully gas out quickly like Maul did on Hypori, without overwhelming Vader. Or, rather, would you expect someone who has run a marathon to be able to sprint for any length of time, rather than dialing down their speed to what they can currently handle without collapsing? SK being able to accomplish his peak, but not fighting at it aren't mutually exclusive - we see Force Users dial down the amount of reserves they're burning through all the time throughout the lore. SK even does this against The Core in TFU: he stops throwing out big Force Waves like he normally does in combat, unless absolutely necessary, to conserve energy: "Still weary from his efforts with the Star Destroyer, he saved each big push until the very last moment, to spare his energies." In this case, as I covered prior, he's barely got anything left, so it's nor unrealistic that he'd want to conserve as much energy as possible - only using enough to keep up with Vader, while trying to set up openings to bring him down, rather than trying to ferociously overwhelm him. Speaking of openings, actually, that segways nicely into our next section...

The Force Unleashed 2: Openings

...you've claimed that SK is "way too sloppy" to do anything against high tier prequel duellists, because of his fight with Vader. That, even if you grant him having way higher combat power, he's just going to leave a bunch of openings and get destroyed. The issue here is, Starkiller doesn't leave any openings in his fight with Vader - at least not ones Vader can capitalise on - unless he's in a mentally unstable state. Look at the end of TFU, and look at The Cloning Tower fight. Both represent Starkiller in his peak, LS mindset, and he doesn't get tagged once. In The Cloning Tower they fight back and forth with no headway made on Vader's part, and he ultimately needs SK reeling from a vision in order to land a Force Push and retreat. You know who is leaving openings in that fight, though? Vader. Starkiller sets up a scenario where Vader leaves himself open and blasts him with Force Lightning. I'm certainly curious as to how this is an anti-feat, when the only one exploiting lapses here is SK, if you don't mind explaining it to me. Anyway, regarding TFU, Vader tries to abuse an opening and gets repelled, then utterly destroyed in sabers while he desperately tries to retreat, rather than throwing SK off with a Telekinetic attack. All of these instances you can list of Vader tossing SK around are from the games, after Juno gets thrown, where Starkiller is noted to be in Force Fury, and is autistically screaming and jumping at Vader. Even past The Cloning Tower fight, Vader isn't landing Force shoves or grabs on SK in the novel, as SK remains mentally stable in this medium: on the rooftop he just stonewalls him, but doesn't make any offensive headway.

But, ignoring that, I'm more interested in how you're planning on scaling PT Jedi to Vader's ability to spot and exploit lapses. He's inferior to them in augmentation, lightsaber skill, etc, yes, but that doesn't necessarily scale them to his ability to throw SK around with the Force. I want proof that they can replicate these feats.

Summary

Okay, so, tl;dr:

(1) SK is far stronger than Vader in TFU.
(2) I've provided reasonable quantification which proves SK is above Peak Vader.
(3) The lack of comment on the debilitating nature of SK's exhaustion doesn't affect my argument.
(4) SK's exhaustion can reasonably drag him down to Vader level, even if he's far above.
(5) Vader doesn't exploit any openings against a mentally stable Starkiller.
(6) Vader's ability to exploit openings isn't necessarily scalable to other characters.

P.S. I want proof for everything you've said on Vader's growth if you don't mind. I believe what you've said - it's just for future reference.

...and that's everything bar one final section:

Special Credit To...

Special credit to @KingofBlades for single-handedly pissing me off enough to make me write this much. Seriously, though, bro I dislike constantly being nagged to about rebuttals, so, please fuck off, and don't doubt my ability to reply ever again.

oof

A response to a Discord debate about whether Shadow of Revan is favorable to the ancients. Special thanks to Decaf. 

THE SITH SPIRITS AND THE ANCIENT THREAT

There's a lot of misconceptions about all this.

(1) The Sith spirits and their talismans give you buffs. They amp you. They empower you. They support you. They help you. Etc. You need what they give you to fight the Ancient Threat entity. Specifically, the ancient Sith spirits cast a buff (in-game) or spell/mark (in-universe) for their talismans to respond to you. Note that the Outlander only receives this spell/mark if he makes physical contact with their energy wave. That is to say that, in-game, if you are 'out-of-range' of their wave, you do not get the buff. Otherwise, if you don't get the buff either by being out-of-range or not interacting with them at all, "the talisman doesn't react to your touch." It's default state is actually unresponsive. And so it's not the talisman clashing against the Outlander due to his inherent power/presence but rather responding to the call of this spell/mark. And this response, in turn, casts its own buff (in-game) or spell/mark (in-universe) on you. Many different possible takeaways from this:

(A) Note all of this is prefaced by the Outlander going to Tatooine and discovering an "Ancient Tome" which "appears to contain information about defeating an ancient threat." Given interacting with the Sith spirits and their talismans is necessary to fight the Ancient Threat, it plausibly follows that the Outlander allowed the spells to be unleashed on him the way they did as, demonstrably, said course of events is what allows him to defeat the Ancient Threat (so that is to say the Ancient Tome tells him to do it).

(B) The "Ancient Tome" lacked the most relevant information about fighting the Ancient Threat--how to in the first place--and the Outlander stumbled upon these Sith spirits and talisman by happenchance. If so, it plausibly follows that the Outlander is not expecting these reactions, negating the ability of a valid power/will clash. And if he is expecting these reactions and yet still is doing it anyway--"That ghost blasted me backwards and that talisman had me stunned for many seconds... let's try it again three more times”--which is the only way a power/will comparison can be made, that begs the question of why. Unless he's just a masochist, the only reason of why is that he figures out doing this is necessary to defeat the Ancient Threat, and so see (A).

And that's sufficient to render any power comparisons here irrelevant. Sure, there's a possibility that the Outlander is running around like a mad dog, lightsaber razed, foaming at the mouth trying to cut down Sith spirits and mentally overpower talismans but keeps getting knocked on his ass and almost telepathically overwhelmed, but that's not the only possible scenario. And it's not even a likely one. In fact, it's staggeringly hard to conceive that as even a valid scenario. And, so, given literally no other material relevant to this exists for one to possibly substantiate this as an active clash of power/will, the comparison is dead. And even if such material spawned into existence, that only opens up an can of worms on how talismans function, in which again you'll find a power/will war as merely one of many possibilities of what's going on there. 




(2) There's a point of contention whether the Sith spirits are attacking or helping you (somehow). If they were attacking you, that would be to say somehow their residual passive energies coincidentally formed a multi-hour, hyper-unique 'spell' that then made the talismans responsive to you ... which is the only way then to fight the Ancient Threat. I've never seen a Force attack empower someone ever, so it's a hard sell the Sith spirits are so mighty their attacks literally somehow also are empowerments. Mentally imagine Exar Kun ripping a telekinetic attack at a Jedi but that Jedi just growing stronger as the energies spread across his body and make him shine. And I've especially never seen a generic Force attack have such a coincidental side-effect: the ability to interface with their talismans to fight the Ancient Threat.

(3) "Long-forgotten Sith spirits have awakened on Yavin 4. This convergence of dark side energies could give rise to a powerful and ancient threat within the moon's already-treacherous jungles." doesn't mean the Sith spirits formed the Ancient Threat themselves, lol. Indeed, how are they forming an "ANCIENT threat." Wouldn't it be the "NEW threat," then? As mentioned, Tatooine has preexisting scrolls about this Ancient Threat. Further, the Ancient Threat has a talisman of its own--the "Talisman of the Unknown"--and even its own shrine. And that shrine has unique Sithy armor resting on the top. So, the Ancient Threat is a preexisting entity--perhaps an ancient Sith itself given the talisman, armor, backstory, location, etc.--that rises up again due to the convergence of Kun, Ragnos, Hord, Sadow all within like a city block of its original resting place. And given we've reasonably established the Sith spirits are helping the Outlander, that means they're opposing the Ancient Threat... and concerned about the Ancient Threat. But they're hiding behind the Outlander to do all this. 

NAGA: "Hey, that maybe-ancient-Sith entity over there is scaring me."
TULAK: "Me too. Ah."
EXAR: "Should we fight it? As spirits, we're uniquely capable of fighting other spirits, after all, and we have a four to one advantage."
MARKA: "Nah. Let's just assist the dashing Outlander in defeating it and hide behind him during the fight."
ANCIENT SITH COLLECTIVE DURING SAID FIGHT: 




(4) Kunities love citing this as their go-to Sith spirit comparison but also wave the "it's an easter-egg" fight when faced with some of the ramifications. You can't have your cake and eat it. If you want to use it, then you're faced with many ambiguities that renders it basically unusable anyway. If you want to prevail through the most apparent reading of it anyway, then the Sith spirits are afraid of this independent dark side entity they mistakeningly awakened and cooperate (from a safe distance) with the Outlander in destroying it. 

SHADOW OF REVAN RAMIFICATIONS REBUTTALS

-First of all, for the sake of formatting. The reason Malaphar is fighting for the Revanites is exactly the same reason the Massassi fought for Sadow, Nadd and Kun. They were worthy Dark Lords to serve. Darth Revan also qualifies. The simple fact that Malaphar's powers are exactly the same as what we see stated to be the powers that Exar Kun's own abominations display, is infinitely more telling. Because the reason they have those powers is because he spliced his DNA into them:

Lol. Recall the reason behind this whole thing is to say Shadow of Revan views highly of the ancients. Shadow of Revan has Theron Shan, an incredibly knowledgeable agent in-universe and generally a mouthpiece by which the writers can convey information out-of-universe, specifically say Malaphar is likely a Revanite creation. And that's easy to swallow given the Revanites possess thousands of Sith, including even Dark Councillors, and even Revan himself--one of history's most famous sorcerers. But you are to have us believe Shadow of Revan secretly wants us to look past that and realize it was EXAR KUN all along. That HE created some unprecedented dark side abomination despite no prior mention in the source, and so this is their way of conveying the glory of the ancient Sith. No, that doesn't seem apparent whatsoever. Certainly not the prevailing take, anyway.

To your point that Kun's Massassi exude rage and so does Malaphar, obviously, lol. Did you think Malaphar would exude happiness? And it works anyway as Malaphar is presumably a younger Massassi spawned from older Massassi--i.e. Massassi with Kun's DNA spliced into them. The point is, though, that the Revanites took a generic Massassi and turned it into the Incredible Hulk. Both things can be true at once. Irrelevant. 

There's also the interesting fact that despite Malaphar being less than a mile away from Kun and Sadow, and armies of Massassi maybe a baseball throw away from Kun and Sadow (Sadow specifically could take a piss and hit a Massassi given how close he is to them), they're nevertheless loyal to Revan. Unless Kun and Sadow are HIDING their presence (more on this later), then the Massassi are actively choosing to follow Revan than their original masters and help them restore to their former glory. That's not a good look for Kun and Sadow. 

4.You need to remember that Dashade sense a Force-user's essence, because it is the essence that they devour. So what Ak'ghal Usar is sensing is the Outlander's essence, Vitiate's essence and Kun's essence. Kun's essence is literally sat in bottles in his temple, because we see that his essence in the forum of red liquid is still present in his temples. So Usar, having scoured Yavin IV and the Temples, definitely isn't missing that or at the very least, isn't not going to sense it. Do remember that Kun's dark essence is stated to pervade the jungles of Yavin IV, even by SWG/JA. So yes, Usar absolutely has a measure of Exar Kun's essence. Not his power levels of that moments.

Usar doesn't seem to realise how much physical strength his imprisonment has cost him until he loses. But his opinion on the Outlander's standing is still very much the same. He doesn't change his mind even slightly. How he would pull off using the temple and other things doesn't really do anything to damage his species' specific trait. He definitelly appears to grasp what the Temple does, when he notes the planet had no fuel to feed it. Not when we know that the Dashade are right almost all the time on matters such as that. Thoughts that come to mind is when Hord's essence is devoured by another Dashade and far more importantly, Ak'ghal notes that he thinks Vitiate's supposed immortality is bullshit because he would've died without the temples. Which is absolutely correct.

I'm just going to bullet-point this section.

- I have no clue what this spirit / essence distinction is. Most (maybe even all) use those terms synonymously. Indeed, "essence transfer" itself refers to spirit transfer, lol.

- Nothing says Kun's essence sat in bottles in his temple. The fact a Star Wars Galaxies trading card says "This is an essence of the Sith" doesn't mean the Sith in question is Kun. No clue how that even makes sense. Kun's body is incinerated and his spirit anchors to the Dark Temple. How's his 'essence' split from that and within a jar? Why is there no mention of this elsewhere? Why didn't the smugglers destroy that essence after they plowed through Kun's temple and defeated him in single combat? Or, forget them. If Ak'ghal Usar HIMSELF found this jar of Kun's essence like you claim, why wouldn't he... you know... destroy it? "Oh, this is Kun's soul. Let me just put it back where I found it then cry about how I can't destroy Kun." What. Also, generally, I don't like arguments that clearly have no grounding in intent. Shadow of Revan writers didn't know about some obscure trading card when writing this Usar lines, lol. Referencing it doesn't get us any closer to deciphering the meaning of his comments. More on this later.

- The fact Usar faces the Outlander, loses, then claims he could have beaten him in his prime is not a good sign for Usar's credibility. The Outlander is the most potentially powerful being in galaxy history (up to this time, per Scourge at any rate) and has already conquered the Voice of the Emperor and fought foes like Malgus, the Dread Masters, Revan, and Arcann. The notion that a literally random Deshade from Kun's era could defeat him, and so virtually every character who came after, is absurd. If that's your argument, then it's just wrong on the default. You need a new argument there.

- Khem Val, another Deshade, one you say never gets anything wrong, senses Darth Nox!Outlander and initially judges her as weaker than she was in Act III. After the events of Knights of the Eternal Throne. That's the biggest thing to ever get wrong ever. The Outlander is incomprehensibly more powerful in every possible way INCLUDING POTENTIAL. So, we have a random Deshade thinking they can defeat the Outlander and another Deshade thinking someone verifiably far weaker than the Outlander is stronger than the Outlander. Their track record for this genuinely seems deliberately bad, which is plausible through the idea they just always profoundly underestimate their opponents.

I could probably go on all day about this argument, I really don't like it, but the gist is Usar is unreliable for a million and one reasons.

5.The Planet being razed and how it happened isn't actually as clear as you might have thought. Some sources blame the Jedi's power, other sources; including this one which is the latest and last take on the matter, state it is because of Kun. (It being IU doesn't bother me given sw.com support.) Yet more claim it was the combination of both. And if we want to get into very specific measures of 'usurping all life'(the context of Ziost is fine but hardly restrictive) would you like me to point out things such as 1990s Star Wars straight up confirming that even Danar could surface wipe planets or pull moons off of their axis with a monolith? A display of power very much locked beneath several orders of later superiority quotes, all of which end with Kun. Or y'know, Darth Nihilus stuff. 

Vitiate's inability to "usurp all life" at the end of Shadow of Revan is to say he couldn't kill everyone the planet. Revan is on the planet. The Hero of Tython is the planet. Darth Marr is on the planet. Satele Shan is on the planet. The Emperor's Wrath is on the planet. The Barsen'thor is on the planet. Darth Nox is on the planet. Armies of Jedi and Sith are on the planet. It's not just a matter of destroying the planet. It's a matter of "usurping all life"--it's usurping all the names I just listed collectively. Yeah, it's no wonder an unfathomably weakened Vitiate couldn't usurp all life. The implication that a fully powered Vitiate could do is is among the most impressive things ever attached to his name. Meanwhile, Tales of the Jedi explicitly attributes the fire spread solely to the Wall of Light. I don't know nor care about any sources attributing it to Kun, but it's at best then just extra fuel to a fire (literally) that can perfectly be attributed to just the Wall of Light alone. And that destruction is literally just a fire. It's not a Force energy wave like Ziost or what would have happened on Yavin. And there's no fifteen all-time Force users on the surface either. Comparing these two events to put Kun above is to compare, like, an atomic bomb with those baby reveal parties that end up burning down acres in California. 

---

THE ANCIENT SITH HIDE BEHIND BUSHES WHEN REVAN WALKS PAST THEM

Revan has activated the Temple of Sacrifice, a magical device that can turn spirits to physical form. Kun, Ragnos, Hord, and Sadow stand less than a mile away from this amazing possibility, with an army of Massassi surrounding them and the deaths of "war on a scale we've never seen" to fuel their powers. This is an unprecedented lucrative opportunity. Note that Revan's plan is to literally destroy Yavin, and if he's only partially successful there's a high risk then that Vitiate destroys Yavin. The Sith spirits should be freaking out right now. Or Kun should be, at any rate. Unless two end-all, be-all strike teams can take down Revan, at least Kun is a goner, and maybe the others too. So, their incentive to make a move here is insane. 

And they do nothing.

Instead they just fret over the Ancient Threat and hide behind the Outlander.

The Ancients should rally the Massassi behind them and storm the Temple of Sacrifice. The only reason they wouldn't is if they couldn't--whether due to the Massassi simply choosing Revan over them or fear of what revealing themselves might do. And there's no one to direct fear at besides Revan and friends.

The Ancients should mass possess Revanites and storm the Temple of Sacrifice. And presumably they 'could' in the technical sense, given all the fuel they'd be having and whatnot, so then it's again a matter of fear of what revealing themselves (to Revan and friends) might do.

(Note Satele Shan senses the presence of the ancient Sith in Shadow of Revan proper, so it's not just the easter egg (not that an easter egg appeal really works in a technical sense, and it's been used too frequently at this point for me allow you to take it back).)

To repeat, the ancient Sith have their original army, infinite fuel, the ability to return to the flesh (their only goal), and failing to do so yields a high probability of at least Kun's obliteration. And yet even collectively, none of them want to stand up to Revan. Lol. 

Then there's also the issue of how Vitiate's spirit on the "brink of oblivion" and not even conscious far dwarfs the energies radiating from this "convergence" of Kun, Ragnos, Hord, and Sadow by an extreme degree. Everyone agrees Yavin feels so awfully potent this time around due to this 1% Vitiate specifically. The Sith spirits get but a passing mention. "Vitiate's presence is plaguing the planet in darkness... Revan and the Temple of Sacrifice is the central nexus of the planet... Oh, yeah, ancient Sith are all huddled together too. Cool, I guess." This also links back to your Kun's essence in a jar argument as if you're claiming that sensing Kun's essence reflects his full potency, then the fact many characters in Shadow of Revan do general senses of the landscape and don't give the slightest fuck about it would suggest Kun's full potency is infinitely dwarfed by 1% Vitiate. Note the fact Kun's essence jar might be on the other side of Yavin is irrelevant because the characters explicitly speak about what they sense and how Vitiate is plaguing it with darkness on a planetary scale.

Assuming a in-depth response, will be a bit before I get back to this.

ADDENDUM:

Couple things I wanted to quickly clarify.

(1) The buff the Sith spirits provide you is what's necessary to interface with their talismans. The buff the talismans provide you is what's necessary to summon the Ancient Threat. They don't provide any actual help to the fight itself, in case one was thinking the Sith spirits were the make-or-break of the fight.

(2) Another way of thinking about the Sith spirits and Outlander dynamic is that if the Sith spirits actually wanted to attack the Outlander, why would they only do a single attack then vanish? Why wouldn't they continue an assault/. It's quite hard to defeat an intangible spirit, after all. And the only reason their knockback would be important is to claim they overwhelmed the Outlander's greater or at least somewhat active Force barrier, but if they could do that then they should be able to defeat the Outlander, especially when they're invulnerable to most of his modes of attack. And the game itself describes the encounter as you "speaking" with them rather than a battle, which fits smoothly the idea they're willingly empowering the Outlander but less so if it's all hostile and random.

And that's on top of everything else. Tl;dr is any favorable take for the ancient Sith here doesn't work.

There's a lot of misconceptions about all this.

1.The Ancient Sith

You're making a massive amount of assumptions based on very little.

1.That the Ancient Threat arises and is empowered specifically by their convergence in that area speaks volumes by itself:

patch notes, swtor.com wrote:Long-forgotten Sith spirits have awakened on Yavin 4. This convergence of dark side energies could give rise to a powerful and ancient threat within the moon's already-treacherous jungles.

The Ancient Threat feeds on the dark side energies created by the convergence of their spirits and rises in power because of this. To a point where SOR Outlander literally can't defeat this thing without massive aid.

2.So you're going to appeal to the greater questline.... just to prove that this is even more impressive than it is otherwise? Your funeral.

So yes, the Outlander gets the ancient tome describing how to defeat the threat from Tatooine which is needed because you literally cannot breach its defenses without knowledge on how to bypass it:



You're also flat wrong where it comes to the supposed shield or amps from the spirits:

Force Echo description, Ancient Threat, Shadow of Revan wrote:You've been touched by the Force and an echo of that power remains within you.

This does indeed acknowledge that he needs something from the spirits. What that is, is simply requiring to have an imprint of their power on him to interact with their respective amulets. A signature if you will. See, you were almost right, but as you yourself note. The amulets don't react to the Outlander without an 'echo'. This is a mark left on the Outlander that is only temporary, in in-game time it's no longer noticeable after an hour.

I mean, really? "Yeah, we're going to give you an amplification of our power. But we totally don't know any other way of doing that besides sending you flying with an omnidirectional Force wave."

The Outlander does apparently know however that they need to be imprinted with the energy signature of the owner of each amulet to be able to interact with them at all. There's no spell, it's an echo of their power from attacking you that goes away gradually.

Which leads to the amulets. First of all, the supposed amp/buff from the spirits; which as I have explained already is merely an echo from a touch of their Force power, goes away as soon as you obtain said amulets. Second of all, given all of the above, the moment any one respective amulet reacts to the energy signature of its owner, it unleashes its power and this causes the telepathic backlash to occur.

Given the creators of these amulets, you know, created them. There's definitely something going on here when the power is so much it nearly overwhelms even Nox-lander mentally, then sends them flying reactively....

And does so another three times afterwards, even with the Outlander now knowing what will happen and thus having preparation.

So this whole 'the ancient Sith are afraid of the threat and hide behind the Outlander who they amp' is nothing but pure head canon. What is not pure head canon is that the Outlander gets nearly dominated telepathically by the power of the amulets, sent flying by the backlash of Force energy when it stops mentally attacking them.

That's where the actual fight comes in. The talismans aren't used as amps at all. They're placed on an altar, to summon the Ancient Threat and battle the thing, in the first place. You don't even have the amulets anymore when you battle it.

So to take note:
1.The Ancient Threat is awoken, empowered and rises specifically through the convergence of the dark side energies of the spirits of Exar Kun, Naga Sadow, Marka Ragnos and Tulak Hord.

2.The Outlander needs knowledge about how to bypass the Threat's defenses because it absorbs all damage otherwise.

3.The Outlander is attacked by the spirits with a Force wave and the echo of that attack is used to get their respective amulets to respond to that energy signature.

4.The amulets of Sadow, Hord, Ragnos and Kun nearly dominate and entirely ragdoll the Outlander with their power, four times in a row.

5.The amulets are used to summon the Ancient Threat and face it as a single entity, and don't act as an amplification at all.

6.The Outlander needs the aid of 15 'all timers' to defeat the thing; likely the same striketeam as that which faced Revan. As well as, again, knowledge on how to bypass what is otherwise impenetrable Force defenses.

2.Malaphar

Your entire basis for saying this is:

Theron Shan, Shadow of Revan wrote:"Trouble up ahead. I don't know if the Revanites have been experimenting or what, but they've got their hands on the mother of all Massassi."

So your source for Malaphar being a Revanite experiment is a Theron who prefaces this with 'I don't know' and then lists Revanite experimenting as a possible reason. Then your argument is that this abomination is unprecedented, when you already know Kun was making abominations in the first place.

This is where things get worse for you, because Malaphar isn't unprecedented, because he's not even the only one of his kind. There's another of the same size called Rnthmyr, who has nothing to do with the Revanites and who only guards ancient relics, and he's labelled as an 'Ancient Massassi'. Denoting his size has to do with his age, not any experiments by the Revanites as Theron claims. Malaphar doesn't have any reason to be any different:



And either you didn't read what I'd said or you're making a really bizarre argument. Malaphar's aura causes the team to become savagely enraged, the only Massassi who do anything of the sort are the ones specifically noted to have been made Force-sensitive by Exar Kun using his own physical makeup during alchemy, as I've already shown you:

Dark Side Sourcebook wrote:Exar Kun was more than happy to comply. He took his next step: infusing his new warrior with the dark side using some of his own physical makeup as a template. When Zythmnr readily took to the treatment-and even showed potential with Force skills-Kun chose several more "volunteers" to continue his work. Before long, he had several dozen living weapons that exuded the raw power and energy of the dark side. Upon feeling their power firsthand, the Jedi called them "abominations."

So not only is Theron Shan proven wrong in the very game itself, but the fact that Malaphar the Savage can so drastically effect the same strike team that goes on to face Revan with his mere presence, when the source of his power is a minute fraction of what Kun himself wielded. Speaks wonders for how well the team would fare against the Dark Lord himself.

3.Ak'ghal Usar.

This is a whole bag of wrong, I'm going to dissect it.

1.Khem'Val believes Nox 'carries the stench of weakness' because Nox was imprisoned by one 'twisted by the Force' and thus not a rival of Tulak Hord after all. In other words, Val is not claiming ACT III Nox is > Nox-lander. He is saying Tulak Hord wouldn't have been imprisoned in such a manner and that this shows weakness comparatively. It says nothing for Outlander's personal growth. All it does is show how highly Val holds Hord. Which is interesting given that Val has already recently met and killed Veshikk Urk, who devoured Hord's essence and thus fed on the power of the Dark Lord.

2.Usar is fresh out of his cell, and hungers to feed on the Outlander because he has starved for centuries. He is unable to defeat him because he is starved. You're forgetting that Dashade don't think they're gonna beat you in a Force contest. They need only defeat you physically and feed on your life essence when you die. These Dashade are comparing you to the greatest Sith they've met or fed upon. That's how they operate.

3.Whilst you're wrong about the bottles of essence, considering the card is literally called 'Kun's Insight'. If you want to throw out the reconciliations cross-lore, then fine. But you need to recognise that SWG is not the only source giving us one of a hundred reasons why Usar could have a measure of Kun's power, there's a bunch of sources talking about how his spirit pervades the jungles and all that jazz.

But more importantly, not only do we see that Kun's spirit is literally able to manifest itself in reaction to the arrival of muggle Ulic two years after the final battle. (So he's still around, and even visible) But as you say, SWTOR has people like Satele Shan sensing the presence of the Ancients anyway regardless of whether or not we take Ancient Threat as a full lore event.

All of which leads to us having no reason to think Usar is just basing his comparison to Kun off of nothing. And I also love the implications of Outlander potentially straight up saying he is a servant of Exar Kun in response. But that's another rabbit hole.

4.Usurping all life

You're saying there's no comparison and then wildly missing the point that the attack was directly aimed at Kun. Vitiate's inability to planet raze Yavin IV due to a lack of power is given far more context when we see how much extra juice he needs from the mass slaughter on Ziost before he doomwaves it. I.E. a lot.

So a far more powerful Vitiate than the one noted to make the Dread Masters 'insignificant' by comparison, is able to doomwave Ziost and thus shows how big that gap really is.

This helps because I have absolutely no doubt at all that tens of thousands of Jedi; including Thon, Nomi Sunrider, Sylvar, Tott Doneeta, Oss Wilum and more, launching this massed salvo of light side energy directly at Exar Kun, definitely equates to power to decimate a planet's surface. This battle stated to be 'titanic', Kun stated to have been stopped before he could 'become too powerful',  Kun priding himself on how well he performed against 'all the known Jedi', TCSWE confirming that his power had mitigated the salvo from the Jedi Order.

So Exar Kun is close to not just becoming equal to the combined power of these Jedi, but straight up more powerful than they could sto. Yet, these Jedi have so many means by which to scale off of planetary surface razing that I could double the length of this reply just by listing them. Though I'd hope you wouldn't need to even contest this.

Now the integral part of your apparent distinction is that usurping all life on Yavin Four also means beating Revan and the Coalition. Well, whilst this is a viable avenue to wedge a gap between comparisons. As I've already stated, Ziost makes it clear that Vitiate can't do so there either. It's not because the powerhouses of TOR are there on Yavin Four to prevent him from doing so, it is that he straight up just can't raze the surface at all. Be it on Yavin IV or Ziost. He needs an enormous amount of death to replenish him 'by the hour', to be able to raze any surfaces at all. So I don't buy at all the idea that there's some hidden distinction being made in that codex entry. The very same codex entry and its partners are making it obvious that, that's not the case.

5.Ancient Sith are somehow scared

First, let's establish that Vitiate was constantly feeding on the war against the Revanites to replenish himself:

Tenebrae, Shadow of Revan wrote:"You wanted my return. You did not need to destroy whole fleets or turn a world barren for that. You only had to point the Empire and the Republic at a shared adversary, and let them do what they do naturally: make war. The scores of dead have nourished me- I am awakened, and I bring with me, death!"

So, for all your talking about the fuel the ancient Sith had, he had his own too which was constantly feeding him.

Second, Tenebrae literally still has a physical form on Yavin IV for an anchor, his original body. So he's got a stronger connection, and access to midichlorian based regeneration of his Force power, even if he is on the brink of death. The Sith spirits don't share this luxury.

Thirdly, would you care to list all of these reasons as to how exactly it's beyond doubt in SOR that Vitiate DWARFS and STOMPS these ancient Sith. I sincerely hope it isn't this quote:

Satele Shan & Outlander, Shadow of Revan wrote:"I've been to Oricon, this is another level entirely."

"Oricon was affected by the Dread Masters, even their combined power was insignificant compared to the Emperor."

Even Nox potentially doesn't know what even a Massassi is, you know the person who ran the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge for years. So the Outlander, regardless of which version, does not have any form of a good idea of what Yavin IV's history is like. Outlander automatically assumes that the power here has to be because of the Emperor. But this is straight up not correct. Especially not when we also get these quotes:

Satele Shan, Shadow of Revan wrote:"You sense it too. Not the ancient Sith, or the Emperor. Not Revan. Another presence... different from the rest."

Outlander & Satele Shan, Shadow of Revan wrote:"The Emperor is here, I can feel his presence. I'd know it anywhere. But he isn't alone."

"The Emperor isn't the only Sith to have left his mark on this world."

So the fact that the ancient Sith also caused the nexus of Yavin IV to be on 'another level entirely'. Isn't lost on Satele, at the very least. Nor is it lost on the game itself:

Yavin Four Codex Entry, Shadow of Revan wrote:Yavin 4 also holds a great deal of interest to the Jedi and the Sith. For well over a thousand years now, the dark side of the Force has flowed through Yavin 4 in an ever-increasing magnitude. But those who visit the moon's deadly rainforests and swamps in search of an explanation for the phenomenon rarely return, and never with any answers.

The Dark Legacy of Yavin 4: Part I wrote:The first corruption of Yavin's fourth moon by the dark side that we know of corresponds with the arrival of Dark Lord Naga Sadow some fourteen hundred years ago. I'm not entirely sure whether Sadow was drawn here by the dark side or if he himself planted the first seed of its presence.

The Dark Legacy of Yavin 4: Part III wrote:Just as Naga Sadow trained his eventual replacement, so did Freedon Nadd's spirit find a powerful apprentice in Exar Kun. And just as Nadd killed his lord Sadow, Kun destroyed Nadd's spirit here on Yavin 4. These notable deaths likely served to further imbue the moon's temples with dark power, further fueling the barbaric Massassi--as well as the succession of Dark Lords who would later reside here.

I think Kun saw what Naga Sadow had accomplished here with Sith alchemy and architecture and decided he could do better. He forced the Massassi to build new temples, but this time with a focus on complementing and augmenting the dark side. Kun even went so far as to use various technologies to manipulate the Force in ways that I can't say I understand. I can't, but I would like to....

In fact, they go so far as to state that by the time Kun was done with it, it was so powerful that not even the WOL could cleanse it:

The Dark Legacy of Yavin 4: Part IV wrote:A few hundred years ago, the Jedi Order thought they could cleanse Yavin 4 of its dark influence. They were more aggressive then. I'm actually impressed. The Jedi bombarded the world from orbit with a destructive manifestation of light side power in the hopes it would free the moon from its dark embrace.

The attacking Jedi destroyed much of the life on Yavin 4, which they later worked to restore to its previous state. They thought they'd won, that they'd removed the influence of the dark side. How wrong they were. The Massassi are still here. The dark side is still present. I would not be surprised if Exar Kun's spirit remains, waiting for someone--a Jedi like myself, perhaps--to find him....

Nor is Kun's mark on the world exactly new to the mythos, given quotes such as:

New Essential Guide to Characters wrote:After obliterating Nadd's lingering spirit, Exar Kun made Yavin Four the new fulcrum of Sith power.

Star Wars Spy Game: Declassified wrote:A dark presence permeated the very jungles (Luke would many years later encounter the spirit of the bygone Dark Lord Exar Kun trapped in the Great Temple)

So unless I've managed to forget something crucial from the dialogue (kek), I don't see where you're getting literally any of these supposed indications that literally 1% of Vitiate DWARFS and SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF the Sith spirits. Not even slightly.

Again, Vitiate is very easily in a better position than the Sith are to replenish himself and them being far more familiar with his presence than all of these spirits who have only just woken up and who they have never met before. Does not mean he DWARFS them.

As far as the complacency of the Sith spirits is concerned, there's a hundred different ways to look at it:

1.Kun may well indeed be a partner of Vitiate's given what we see from the tablets in Reclaimed Treasure.

2.The ancients may not care given that both the Machine Core and Vitiate were both concerned with draining life, not killing spirits.

3.The Ancient Threat rising may in fact have been manufactured by the Sith spirits for some other motive we don't know of, perhaps to facilitate their return.

But on a more pertinent note, you seem to have forgotten that long before the whole Temple of Sacrifice was a thing. Sadow's secretive chambers, which had apparatus designed specifically for giving flesh to spirits, was already there. So no, the Temple of Sacrifice, which everyone and their grandmother was fighting over, was not in fact all that special. So yet again, you're proposing answers to questions never asked by the narrative and clearly never intended to be declarative by the writers you touched upon before.

Assuming there's yet more of a response, I'll attempt to find time given my ever-increasingly constrained schedule.

Great post HP and it makes a lot of sense, but I only have a few minor issues that need clarification. Don't worry, they really don't touch on that much of what you say. It's just really for a couple of little cloudy puddles.

AA3 wrote:
To clarify for the readers, this is my rebuttal to everything I can think of that Bran has written on Starkiller vs Vader, whether it be on Discord or forum:

@Quorian Debatist

As a preface, you've written a lot to me on this topic in various places, so I may not cover everything you've ever said to me, and, if I have missed something, feel free to just repeat it.

To clarify to readers, this is everything HP thinks I said to him on Starkiller vs Vader and it just might be because this is the first time he tried responding to any of it for years. Kind of hard to go deeper into it when it will get responded to "tomorrow" everytime and then you just ignore the other conversations about it happening concurrently or subsequently after.

HP wrote:
Your claim that Starkiller is only a "little faster" than Vader is completely unwarranted. Even pre-revelation, there's clearly a sizeable difference, as the text notes SK is "fast and sly" compared to Vader who is "strong and relentless" - describing one as fast, and the other as not isn't suggesting a marginal edge. Your whole idea of closeness seems to be based on the fact that Vader is still reacting to Starkiller even post-boost, but comparisons with other fights tell us that this doesn't necessitate such:

What you just did in the first line of your post is concede that Vader is stronger than Starkiller, and not only just a little but you doubled down and said sizably stronger.

So what you have is Vader before 5 years of growth being sizably stronger than Starkiller and Vader getting physically bashed around by Luke at multiple points between 4-5 years later, as well as getting faster in those years and still getting seemingly outsped by Luke.

The point you're not getting here is most of the characters involved in where you place Starkiller aren't conceding on both fronts AND they compare favorably to Vader who isn't ANH Vader where most of his lowball happens in that he is canonically slow.

I'm glad you brought up Shaak Ti for example because she was portrayed as faster than Starkiller post Order-66. You used her as an example of how skilled Starkiller was in the Discord discussion and that was a reason your stance on Starkiller being Dooku level makes sense; something you omitted in your entire post. You want him to be Dooku level in all aspects, you just don't want to come out and say it but think he's Sheev level too but also maybe Dooku level, so I'm not sure what it amounts to? But anyway back to Shaak Ti.

So in your example, you have Shaak backing up the entire time and then getting a saber effortlessly batted out of her hand, because surprisingly defending while moving backward gives you more spacing to work with. I'm sure as a FENCER you should understand this. If you had infinite space then how long would fencing duels last? All you have to worry about is moving out of range and defending. Her mind was not on offense only survival. She still gets treated like trash. We see this same Grievous get treated like a joke against Dooku - who was only ever pushed against maxed out Grievous... a maxed out Grievous who treated a later Shaak also like trash.

So growth and factors aside, what you just used was someone who was faster than Starkiller/landed saber hits on him get shit on by Grievous who got shit on by Dooku - and this is an example you used to help facilitate your opinion that Starkiller is Dooku level. Let me read your mind here...
Oh, you're thinking "But Starkiller grew so much past his Shaak Ti fight so we can't use ANY of it" which is really weird since that's uh... my point with Vader.
And Shaak grew from Hypori but Grievous really grew from Hypori and was still far above her. What Shaak didn't have however is post-Order 66 depression that impacted far more powerful and far more mental fortitude Jedi than Shaak in Kenobi and Yoda, so I think it's pretty fair even comparing her to CW Shaak but that's neither here nor there... unless you want to read Ethan's blog on the subject which I'll link at the bottom as optional reading, but recommend just to see how mentally weak she is. Winky face.

Now we'll take a detour back to strength before we get back to fully talking about your post in-depth.

Strength is simple. ROTJ Luke at his full level shown vs ANH Vader. Who wins? How well does Vader deal with his strength and speed?

Now realize that that entire Vader movement a while ago was about pretending George changed his opinion on Vader behind the scenes while everyone unanimously agreed that George absolutely was shitting on ANH Vader. Suit's limitations (we'll get to this later), speed, power, etc. George even uses how much quicker ESB Vader is as an in-universe increase in speed and power. You even admit this when you mock it later. We then have Vader foddering robots he previously struggled with in seconds and extensively pushes his suit's limitations in Shadow of the Empire. I will show you stats later of Vader increasing by over twice what he was in ANH. Haden Blackman favorably compares ANH Vader to his own.

So I'm not entirely sure what your point is here. Does speed not matter? Does strength not matter? Does growth not matter? Starkiller is sizably faster than Vader but he can't do anything with it, but that doesn't matter because he gets more powerful so that's the arbitrary limit in which it matters. Since you use the Sheev walk here, I can only assume you think it portrays equals. So Starkiller has to be as powerful as Sheev for his speed to matter against someone slower than ANH Vader.

And you say he's not sloppy. Alright, good talk, moving on.

---

Yes, Starkiller was more agile than Vader. We see this when he's jumping around Vader in the novel testing his defenses. Vader doesn't move like that, that's alright. Since the only point talking about his speed was of dancing around, we can go back to the context of the duel. They fight back and forth and then Vader's attack redoubled and he almost tags Starkiller twice while he could do nothing about it physically. What you're going to say here is that Vader was angered so he was more powerful so it makes sense that all Starkiller can do is turtle. That's a very good point HP, glad you mentioned that. Vader being more powerful can completely overwhelm Starkiller with a realization in a saber duel. I sure hope Vader didn't get 6 years of growth with more control over his anger to a point where he could last minutes without his suit past that point. I wish Vader got a lot better in every aspect past the point when he had realization Starkiller turtling.

Starkiller at this new understanding of power blasts Darth Vader (weakness to lightning) when he catches him off guard with lightning, and that's all he can do to get any breathing room. Vader takes that attack fairly well even though Starkiller is now Sheev level if I'm understanding all your arguments correctly because you argue when Vader is ****ing smashing him around is when Starkiller gets his mega amp. Starkiller then gets caught in a choke at this Sheev level without his sloppiness and instead of properly defending the choke, he lashed out with a force push that Vader landed on his feet out of and immediately got back into the fray. Then he starts forcing Vader back with his new strength and finally finds the chink in his armor both were looking for when Vader moved too slow to block one blow which surprised both of them.

So yes, when the onus was on Vader moving a little too slow to block a blow after a relatively close fight, I think the speed isn't that far off. It wasn't even really set up either, he was just a little too slow because he's half machine fully encumbered by it I guess. It's the first time it actually matters in a relatively back and forth fight where every comparison you just used was one-sided according to you. Vader FINALLY gets tagged after moving too slow implying he could have moved fast enough. Since you're arguing Starkiller was already sizably faster than Vader - and then you're going to kind of shy away from admitting it - but you have previously said this is where he got his big realization that allowed him to do the Sheev walk NOTHING ELSE; then you have this Starkiller who's already way faster than Vader getting a huge amp and can only find a chink in his armor when Vader moves a little too slow. A Vader slower than the ANH Vader universally used as to how much better PT fighting is.

In the game, he only achieves this by hiding his repulse behind debris and then dropping a bunch of scrap on Vader smashing his suit. He also gets physically grabbed and thrown away too among other pathetic things. We'll get to more games things later, but I don't want to dwell on the first game too much here.

One more thing before I get past your first paragraph, but you're arguing Starkiller already started out sizably faster than Vader and then got a mega amp in speed and power (I presume) that allowed him to take on Sheev so that's why it took him a few exchanges to beat Vader. So what happens if you replace that Vader with a far stronger, faster, smarter, and more skilled Vader? Starkiller had to work down his chink in his armor and was surprised to land. You justify this with an amp, but if you replaced Vader it would actually be a monster amp for Vader.

Should Vader not win that fight? Should Vader be overwhelmed by someone that could only put him on the backfoot? Why does only Starkiller's growth matter for erasing things that happened weeks/months ago?

Ponder that while we move onto your next section.

HP wrote:-We've seen Ti hold off Grievous for 10 seconds by her lonesome, when in that very same fight Grievous clowned her and 4 others simultaneously.

-We've seen Dooku hold off Anakin for 12 seconds despite the fact that he's a "joke" to him, and that the entire fight was basically a comedy with a forgone conclusion. He was also getting absolutely hammered by Anakin's augmentation just prior, before Anakin had his revelation about the strength of anger.

-We've seen the Hero of Tython hold off Arcann in sabers, despite the fact that he spent the whole fight getting greydolled, and had fatigued so badly by the end of the fight that Arcann could casually pull him onto his blade, yet Arcann had enough left in the tank to hold off Valklander's entire big Lightning blast for like a minute.

In your top two examples, it's actually a foregone conclusion and the last act of desperation. The emphasis is placed on how screwed they are the entire time whereas with Starkiller he was only forcing Vader back at that stage, not stomping like Grievous was. This also addresses how you're more focused on the time than the context. They were losing, badly. What Starkiller and Vader were having is a back and forth fight.

If two people are fighting for 3, 12, 30, or even 31 seconds in a back and forth affair and then one guy lands a lucky hit, then that's different than one guy absolutely blasting one guy everywhere and then smashing their saber away like a dad slaps a cup of juice. What you lack is the emphasis on it being that one-sided, you just insist it is because he won and these other guys did it so SK must have as well.

He was finally winning yes, but it wasn't imminent doom like when Grievous was backing up Shaak. Or like how Stover wrote in the perspective of it being an inevitability and skewed everything in favor of Anakin as the hero of the story. Vader was on the back foot and then got beaten. Shaak was outmatched at every turn and could only turtle while moving backward. It may sound similar but you lack that important aspect of being outmatched previously.
Did it sound one-sided when you read it? No, then there's your difference.


I don't know if I have to say any more about Shaak since you just said he clowned all 4. Notice a difference in the portrayals? Your false analogy doesn't work since Starkiller never John Wayne Gacy'd on Vader beforehand. Inferiors can stave off more potent beings sure, but you lack that higher ground to realize the analogy.

A saber is going to block a saber every time. Well, almost. It's the context or lack of context around it that tells the story. You lack the context to have it be one-sided. Had the novel had the exact same thing happened but threw in some lines on Vader having no chance then that would make your comparisons work.

As for Dooku, you're combining two different portrayals ironically enough since you refuse to use anything from the games of TFU (who created the story). In the movie, Dooku was keeping up with Anakin and doing fairly well. But Anakin outplayed him and caused him to overextend so he could grab his hands in an unorthodox move. Had Anakin not locked his hands the duel would have persisted for who knows how long. It might have been a foregone conclusion Anakin was going to win at that point, but it's not solely due to a world of difference in power at least according to the movie. Gillard has close matches as chess matches where Dooku was overconfident and Anakin was driving him to make that mistake. Anakin outwitted Dooku in the movie, he wasn't bashing him around like the book.
If you want to contrast that to Starkiller, then that's fine. Starkiller is smart enough to lead Vader to make a mistake after a close fight... except Starkiller was surprised about it.
If you try and combine the ROTS book and the movie it would extend the fight past 12 seconds, and it would still have the clashes looking the same way, it would just be telling the story almost post-mortem and biased in favor of Anakin. An example of this would be you retelling the Starkiller vs Vader 1 fight without any qualms about spoiling it. You could write off anything Vader does as futile because you want the readers to know that Starkiller wins at the end. The fight still plays out the same but because the result is known in the first line, everything is an inevitability prolonging Vader's defeat. It's very biased and it doesn't care because it doesn't have to. That style would make any fight sound one-sided.

So either the fight and the 12 plus seconds (tables thrown) were written in that style, or an entirely one-sided affair played out for an unknown interval and that's fine too. Anakin was warping reality at that point in time and it was under the understanding that he was the greatest Jedi ever in every aspect even before the Darkside. Good feat for Dooku either way... wish you could compare it to Starkiller vs Vader though.







Don't care about Arcann but pretty sure every ragdoll was done when Outlander was standing around with his hands on his hips or dreaming about a field of roses. This would be an example of openings exploited, not necessarily raw power. Going back to Dooku, Dooku is a master of exploiting openings. Even the tiniest openings that don't seem like openings. He very rarely ever makes mistakes and the Anakin example was one of the few times he's ever made them. He has even taken advantage of Yoda making a mistake to show how quick he is capitalizing. It's not always raw power with these things. So you can see my contention with putting Starkiller with Dooku and that meaning anything when the guy regularly makes mistakes every single fight... but we'll get to that in a bit.

DC's Brother wrote:Or, if you want an example regarding Vader, he holds his ground against Maul for like 15 pages in Resurrection, and continually reacts to him, despite his "far more formidable" ESB self, being "much much slower" than Maul.

Next up... oh boy let's unpack this, Maul vs Vader.

First up it's non-canon before it gets twisted, though judging by how you're using Lord Starkiller I guess it doesn't matter:





Second up, I know you saw Jake's posts on the subject.
In summation, it was created to answer the big question of how Vader vs Maul would go. Who is the baddest Sith Apprentice? This will finally answer that... by having Vader be as weak as he was vs Starkiller... in the second game...
It worked effectively as a quote with some context behind it. The timeline was only because Marz really wanted it to fit into canon but no one cared. The non-canon nature allows us to view it under its original intention, and that's to FINALLY answer who wins and how. I could go over this more or just quote Jake, but I feel you already know all this.

Third, you just conceded on Vader being far more formidable in ESB so you're all confused about what actually means what again. I know you're trying to show how speed is actually irrelevant, but you're stepping all over what you're trying to argue. Speed doesn't matter, being stronger doesn't matter, huge gaps in power don't matter, nothing matters except Starkiller leaching off of actual one-sided fights and pretending he shared the same advantages that the winners of those fights did. It was probably one-sided because Starkiller is way faster and more powerful. See he's forcing Vader back like Vader just did to him, only Vader did it because he surprised Starkiller with an amp which is totally unlike Starkiller surprising Vader with an amp...
But if you're telling me being somewhat faster than Vader and maybe weaker than Vader is all Starkiller gets with an amp, then how exactly does this benefit Starkiller? Anyone can just fight anyone regardless of speed and power?

I want you to realize that your argument here is that Vader can make Maul's speed gap irrelevant before 5 years of growth, so Starkiller with less of a speed gap is above Vader with 6 years of growth. Aren't you just arguing that Vader with more growth can handle anything Starkiller can throw at him? In fact, he might even be faster than Starkiller at that point if we take what you just mocked at face value. Sizably stronger to start with and now even sizably more. In fact, let me reach into my quote drawer to pick out some relevant ones here:
"Far more formidable" is ESB over ANH which you're implying is speed. That beats marginal to me.

So now that Starkiller is the underdog in speed and strength in sabers we need to realize that speed and strength don't matter again; only Starkiller does so Starkiller wins. I'm not sure what advantages you're leaving in sabers anymore for Starkiller with your logic.


Oh and fourth thing is... Anakin autistically trained against Maul's style for years to a point where he was smashing Maul holocrons at 13. Anakin specifically trained Ahsoka against saberstaffs, and Proxy had Maul's data in it. Maul's style changed the entire Order and revealed the Sith still existed, and it changed Anakin's entire life. Anakin intimately knew Maul's style and had almost 3 decades of training against it. He might not have had the same advantages as Anakin had but he was still fully trained against Maul. He knew exactly what to expect from Maul and used the best of his abilities to fight him knowing this. If I know all your big moves then do I need to be as fast as you to move my saber to react to your giant staff I've trained years to fight against? If you fight like some doppelganger Scottish shadow version of yourself who's your superior in all physical aspects but you knew his every move while he didn't know yours, do you feel confident you could counter him? If his big move in beating you 99 times was headbutting you in the tooth, do you think that on the 100th time you could simply counter him at every aspect as he got into his big teeth-rattling combo? We saw this play out with Obi-Wan and Anakin where Anakin enjoyed a sizable power advantage but they knew everything they were going to do in advance while Anakin was a bit mentally incoherent. We saw this play out at the beginning of the Starkiller fight with Vader where he was confident because he knew Vader so well and almost got his wrists broken. He realized that they never actually fought each other properly before so that familiarity went out the window.





What you're focusing on is just power, speed, and absolutely no strength, but then you're just throwing that away at the same time. You're not focusing on familiarity, skill, openings, surprises, etc because you only care about that tiering you're taught to care about... a tiering bastardized and lost the way Gillard uses it for that matter. It's not chess, it's not moves, it's not mental, it's just this number is higher than this number so this number wins. Game over.

And the problem is that while Starkiller did utilize openings and win against Vader both times, is that Vader would now be more familiar with that at his prime. Those openings, his speed, his power, his strength, surprises. And then Vader's skill has received rapid expedition, and all facets of his mental and physical game have increased as well. If he can create an opening at vastly lower levels then why can't he do the same where he's almost comically more powerful and smarter?

The way I see it, this happens because, regardless of the disparity between the two characters, the inferior character can draw more deeply into their reserves in order to try and keep up at the expense of gassing out quicker. To go back to Dooku and Anakin, Dooku is capable of "drawing lavishly on his reserve" to meet Anakin's attacks which would have otherwise cut him in half, but feels his enhanced perceptions dulling after a short period of time. This happens with combatants until they either gas out (e.g. the Hero vs Arcann), or the intensity of their opponent's assault becomes too much (e.g. Sidious vs Maul in Shadow Conspiracy). The fact of the matter is, all Vader does is retreat for the whole duel - post-revelation - and desperately try to defend himself, but he repeatedly proves unable to properly disengage and recover his bearings. By the end of the duel he's so overwhelmed he's not even blocking SK's strikes - he starts laughing and then gets slashed twice more. Or, if we want to look at the game, Starkiller is just bullying Vader with the Force, and Vader's utterly unable to respond. The way I tie this to peak Vader is simple: Maul couldn't replicate this on a comparably strong Vader in Resurrection. Vader "holds his ground" against Maul, lasts 15 pages, and manages to get himself into a position where he can kill Maul, in spite of his general inferiority. SK finishes Vader far more cleanly, in far less time.

Kind of funny considering your entire argument is that Starkiller got a big amp in the middle of the fight and is now above Vader by a ton because he beat Vader before Vader could adapt to the new amp. Starkiller drew on all his reserves to defeat the superior Vader imo. He caught Vader off guard by surprising him with all of his power. Then in the second fight, Vader didn't have to draw off his reserve at all. He was patiently waiting out Starkiller while Starkiller was giving it everything he had. This is best displayed in the Wii version when Vader throttles Starkiller like a child. Literally going up turbolifts while choking Starkiller the entire time. Therefore Vader was barely tapping into any of his power while the inferior being was lavishly spending up his reserves and drew in too much at once to surprise Vader.

Probably.

Even if you're right on those fights, that still doesn't mean any of that was in play against Vader in the first fight. Sean Williams doesn't think so. In fact, Sean Williams writes a line later on implying Vader adapted to his mistake there too. Which per your logic means Vader either got a mega amp, or he simply read it correctly and was just a tad too slow. But we'll get to that later.

Right now you're doing that thing where you're invoking other contexts to defend your headcanon with nothing from the source. Why was Starkiller way faster than Vader? Oh because Vader was spending up his reserves so fast to KEEP UP WITH Starkiller at an even pace, and his reserves were so spent up he started to laugh instead of break down with his huge lung issues.
Yes, he can burn through his reserves so fast to keep up with Starkiller and that's why a mega amped Starkiller is actually way faster because that mega amped Starkiller wasn't spending his reserves while Vader was.

He was so much faster they were the same speed and Vader had to spend more power to keep up with Starkiller who was using more power?

That is what you're arguing you realize that right?

Your defense is to use inferior characters using more power to keep up with characters who aren't explicitly going all out, but by using it against Starkiller all it does is imply Vader is spending more reserves to amp himself up to Starkiller's amped state. Both are amped to similar states if you draw parallels to these fights. Futilility.



As for the specific examples, Anakin was operating at the peak of his lightside abilities there and even then Dooku kept folding him over. Like I said before Anakin was the best Jedi ever in that fight, and Dooku doesn't rely on pure power for his duels. That amount of pure power with skill behind it was too much for him so he had to keep replenishing. He had to use more effort than normal to defend against it. I'm not arguing with you about this specific example since that's about it but I want it laid out a little bit.
Dooku kept folding the greatest Jedi ever in skill, power, speed, etc over while he was outmatched in pure power. And he kept smashing Kenobi at the same time too.

Dooku wasn't doing this with sheer overwhelming power as you may have noticed. Dooku kept doing this because he was exploiting openings on technically perfect duelists. Dooku quickly adapts on the fly to finding out Kenobi may be the best Soresu user in history by ragdolling him while Kenobi is in full Soresu defense. Dooku turns on Kenobi while Dooku can't possibly fight in two directions at once and folds Anakin over and knocks out Kenobi trying to cheapshot him. You question how PT users can exploit gaps later on but then you compare him to Dooku and think comparing him in any capacity gives him the same leniency against that tier.

The issue is even if you think he's as powerful as Dooku or in the same tier of sabers as him - both are false - he doesn't get that same level of exploitation or some sort of defense against it. Dooku can either exploit an opening or create one at the top of the dueling class. Starkiller can get hit in the face by a Shadow Guard.

Not a chance wrote:Contrary to what you seem to be proposing, I do have methods of quantifying the exhaustion. My main one would be the one above: SK outperforms TPM Maul - who's far above even peak Vader - against TFU/ANH Vader. This would place SK far above TFU 2 and peak Vader, which answers your question. But, even setting that aside, I have three additional methods of quantification:

(1) The Sheev Lightning walk.

Let's talk about Sheev.

First off, the power was never described to differ from when he cheapshotted a handcuffed Kota in the back and continued to pour it on that Starkiller had to step in-between them. Kota then got up immediately and ran away. This was after Kota previously got absolutely hammered by Sheev for an extended period of time in a prolonged blast so much so that Kota was limping and "smoking and weak." He then gets cheapshotted while smoking and weak in the back for another prolonged blast that Starkiller blocked.
Sheev was operating at a level that Kota could take two prolonged blasts with zero defenses and still get up and run away.





Let's take a look at how powerful Kota is. Shaak is more powerful than Kazdan who is far more powerful than Kota.







"Before anyone else could react, Kota whisked the lightsaber from Starkiller's belt and launched himself at the Dark Lord. Vader raised a hand and caught the general telekinetically about the throat. Kota dropped the lightsaber and desperately clutched at the invisible fingers choking him, but the pressure only increased. When his resistance was crushed, Vader threw him bodily toward the Stormtroopers and turned his attention elsewhere."

I can post the cutscene too, but Kota gets completely oneshotted by Vader when he was in combat. Sheev shoots him in the back and pours it on and then once it gets interrupted he gets up and runs away. Vader > Sheev.
2:20


That same lightning instantly rips through Starkiller's body and sears every nerve so much that he wants to curl up and go unconscious, but SOMEHOW he stays standing. Can a Vader level being fueled by immense willpower manage to deal with Lightning that Kota can just walk away from right after it's released? I don't see an issue with that.

You're going to say desperation and pain. Any amount of his own power backlashed into him is going to cause pain when he's letting it hit him, and even worse when it describes it as overtly SEXUAL pain. He is desperate but he has a giant boner... if he had a penis. The fact that he then tanks all of the power that Starkiller can release point blank with minimal damage make both a question of how much power he was using. And also the quotes stating he was no match which I'm sure you're familiar with. I'm not sure if your buddy Meatpants used this one, but here it is.

You're going to go into a sphere thing where you pretend he was splitting his power on purpose (we'll get to repulse right below this) but what you're going to ignore is that Starkiller has no avenue to direct all his power at once in one area. Is he going to do one big lightning blast in one area that releases all his energy in one split second beam? Is he going to totally release all his power in one TK force push so much that it kills him? What is the alternative besides becoming a literal force nuke? No other attack is going to release as much power at once. He is a bomb. There is no better way to release the energy of a nuke than aimed directly in someone's face.
Unless he teleports inside Sheev and blows up? If you're arguing this then I concede he didn't do all he could to hurt Sheev. Very good point HP, you got me.

Also what you're glossing over is that most of his big feats are from repulse too. You mention the Clones. You want to use him leveling a forest in an ad. The Death Star explosion. The Salvation, Shaak Ti cheapshot in the comic, etc. What is the proof you use against it?

360 degrees.





And of course, you knew this was coming so let it fall.

DESTINY POINTS

If all above doesn't sway you, then Starkiller has a literal power to give him unleashed capabilities that he can only do very rarely if at all. If he didn't do it in his literal death walk, then did he never do it?

Did he not do it in the most important moment and choice of his entire life - not killing Vader but saving Kota... twice - that ended in his death from literally blowing up with too much energy? That Unleashed moment allows him increased powers of all his powers, and his Destiny Points allow him a lesser level in Force Secrets which center on just increasing power. It's not a split-second thing either like when he blew up. The choice was made, the moment was powerful and you posit this is his greatest feat that's out of line with his others. If it's out of line then why wasn't he amped when it's baked into his character?

His choice and decision were already made before he blew up so it wouldn't have just activated the split second before he went kablooey. The Force and his Destiny weren't waiting for him to hold hands with Sheev for a while in case he changed his mind.

Destiny Points and Force Secrets:

Next, we'll go onto him also having an increased level part of his power in TFU2. You can add this wherever you wish but the main point is that its part of this Clone's powerset. He has Force Fury in this game which grants him unlimited power.





It raises his Repulse from a 10 to 100 at 2:25. The key thing to note here is that fully upgraded Force Repulse disintegrates opponents too without Force Fury. In fact, it is by far his most powerful normal attack in the game surpassing lightning by a lot. It can two-shot a lot of the mini-bosses including the Terror Biodroid on Easy even though it takes quite a while for lightning to drop it. It disintegrates all normal enemies. It is his most powerful attack and it's backed by all his big feats happening around it too.

But back to Force Fury.
You're going to say that it's just anger, but he already had that as part of his powerset in the first game and it didn't drastically increase his powers to that degree.


And in contrast to Force Fury, he continually used it throughout the game (even against Vader : > ) and he never literally blew up from an overload of power.

So... Fury Force Repulse is potent but not as potent as his Destiny Force Repulse which used all his power. IE, it was his most powerful attack he could have done.

Essentially Destiny Moment > Force Fury/Rage >>> Dark Rage > Normal Starkiller.

Instead of saying Starkiller has access to these powers in threads or battles, what you do is pretend he has this level of power all the time. You've seen it done with other characters; IE Flash of Brilliance. What happens with that is you end up pretending that TFU2 Starkiller's base level is above his Sheev walk which then leads you to reconcile everything in the game with him just being mega weak the whole time.

The interesting thing to note however is this would mean that Starkiller prior to his 13 days of exhaustion would have also been above his Sheev walk no? Would this not put him above Vader by a large degree and he knows it? Or did he go from sub-Vader level to Sheev walk level in 13 days of exhaustion for some reason? And then what... didn't grow the entire game but just should have grown once he healed (we'll get to this later)? Oh doesn't matter, and let's see why.

He fights some Acolytes he can't really do much about in the Force. Actually, he can't do anything and they swat his full-charged repulse away with a slap unless they get stunned by sabers. He struggles against Droids. He struggles against the Terror Walker to a point where he needs to throw it out into Hyperspace and weakens himself doing it in the novel. The Terror Walker is just some Kamino prototype Vader gives Boba Fett. Boba Fett blows his damage out against the Gorog.
These are all at "FULL POWER" and that full power is above what you pretend the Sheev Walk is, and it's also pretending that what; he just easily destroys Vader at full power (we'll get to this too)? The big battle of the sequel is when he was severely weakened and could actually beat up a whole bunch of Vaders at full power based on that one tough fight he had against one of Vader's droids or literal fodder to Vader. It can't be a portrayal of how the battle might be close, no it has to be him severely weakened because of all of his great feats.







Sheev with the same power blasting Kota almost instantly overwhelmed Starkiller while Starkiller was at his "enlightened" state under your concession and had some measure of his power and knew he was running in to stop that stream of power so he wasn't unprepared. Yet there's no mention of Sheev upping level of power like against Luke for example. There's no mention of his output changing and digging deep.

You like to pretend everyone is operating to their limits while Starkiller is holding back(?) so why can't the reverse be true? Why can't Sheev use the same level of power he hit Kota with no proof to the contrary? Certainly, him tanking the entirety of Starkiller's power and more help show that he wasn't going all out.

Don't you sometimes make note that some of the Starkiller Clones in the Tower Fight have more power than Starkiller? So why can Starkiller one-shot people more powerful than him with a less powerful blast but he can't cause like any damage to Palpatine?

I will answer this of course, but I want you to chew on how your logic has been working for years before we move on.



So not saying that the Sheev walk isn't a good feat, but there's a lot of reasons it isn't what you say it is. And it does anything but quantify his exhaustion. None of these examples do lol.

lol wrote:(2) The Starkiller Clones feat.

The failed Clones are garbage that used no defense. They had power but they were shitty flesh and broken minds. This is your whole contention with the "sloppiness" part, isn't it? That being sloppy leaves him vulnerable to attacks he wouldn't normally take? Imagine if he didn't even use a force defense and just tanked attacks with his normal flesh? How many Starkillers could he kill with his maximum power if they just stood there?
How many Sheevs did he fail to damage with an even bigger attack at a closer range even though you argue he matched him in raw power??? : >



Vader didn't leave openings to get tagged like that in the novel. He got hit twice by two very focused quick attacks but one was when Starkiller threw away all his defense to catch him off guard with his weakness, and it didn't do much. If Vader could pack all his power into a repulse he could probably one-shot a couple Darth Vader's not defending themselves too. Important side note, but in one of the mini-games where you have a mandatory Force Fury going on, Vader takes a Force Repulse right in the face whenever he tries to choke you.
14:40 for example but this happens pretty much every battle unless you cheat him out fast enough.



Also, something that never gets mentioned is that these were all failed clones with physical deformities. What that means is they were never considered to be apprentices. What that means is they didn't have near the training Galen Marek had if they had any training at all. What that means is not only were they fodder to Vader like what happened in the game, but they were garbage at controlling their powers in addition. We don't even know at what stage the Clone surpasses the original, but it's implied to happen due to heavy training, not fresh out of the cloning tube.


And he and Vader kept having little exchanges before that where Vader could come out of nowhere and could jump away from Starkiller's attacks and then escape before Starkiller could follow him before the Clones fight. Unless you want to argue that was all Proxy, then Proxy could block his blows and continue escaping until Starkiller finally caught him. Fine by me since that makes it worse, but fine by me.


But I'm glad you mentioned Lord Starkiller and we talked about the previous clones being shit because that leads us into the Dark Apprentice. Dark Apprentice needed a ton of training from TFU 2 to struggle against Leia who only had ANY Jedi training at all AFTER Hoth, which means she missed out on the 3 years Luke had previously. Dark Apprentice who was the only perfect Clone (including the protag of the game) with 5-6 years of growth struggled to beat Leia who only ever had Yoda training... if she did at all. Considering EU Leia is complete garbage with way more training than that, it makes it hard to think that she ever surpassed ROTJ Luke in power. Considering the DA was still subservient to Vader and they weren't ready to take on Sheev at any point there it makes it doubtful the DA even surpassed Vader for that matter...
What you're arguing is that DA should be wildly beyond that level based on how you think these Darkside endings corroborate Starkiller being immensely weakened and really actually prove that he didn't actually really use like any of his real power maybe. The Darkside ending of TFU 2 implies Vader was actually holding back for that matter and had the DA on standby in case SK didn't capture Vader and bring him to the Rebel bases. That's not even non-canon either for that matter, that's part of the story:


Also important is Vader saying the DA was far more powerful than the original Starkiller ever was and then seemingly beating him in a duel in the next slide while DA has his sabers lit and cuts all over him. If you don't see the cuts look at his arms and face.



Luke needs both his kind of shit training and his Yoda training to be at the level he achieved. If you split that up he simply won't be as strong.

With Leia she missed out on the earlier training and presumably only had the Yoda training. That is missing out on a ton of experience Luke had built up and power he acquired.

And until literally the last book she appears in, it's doubtful she ever surpasses Vader in Legends despite having Luke's potential. She has an enormous amount of training but she simply can't overcome her mental hurdles. I don't see any reason she would come close to ROTJ Luke with less training and all we know of Legends Luke, so it's not exactly a good thing Starkiller struggles against her and needs tricks to win.

So Dark Apprentice who is still canon is far more powerful than the Original Starkiller, seemingly loses to Vader, then has 5-6 years of growth and struggles against Leia in the non-canon ending. And all that time training together and they were still never in any position to usurp Palpatine in contrast to Vader thinking a barely trained Luke was ready to do so at his side. : >

But you weren't talking about Dark Apprentice who was an actual canon character albeit with a non-canon ending. You were talking about Lord Starkiller, so let's talk about Lord Starkiller.

(3) Lord Starkiller defeating Old Ben despite being massively below Peak SK, as is supported by Sheev and common sense from Lucas's statements on Vader.

Lord Starkiller was a failure in Sidious' eyes as you can see by him utterly shitting on Starkiller but he still got a GOAT quote. He was what Starkiller would be IF he were more powerful than Darth Vader. Can you imagine?!? : >






So with him being more powerful than Vader and having 2-3 years of growth, I don't see an issue with him beating Ben Kenobi in the manner he did. I'm not even sure why you brought this up, to be honest. Unlike the complacency of Vader, Lord Starkiller would have been active and not bored too and we saw the difference between Vader being complacent and being excited about a fight... or you will see. You will see.

Then 3 years later he has a battle with Luke on Hoth who had zero Yoda training. At one point in time, he gets force pushed and seemed pretty hurt by it. So he was more powerful than ANH Vader with 3 years of growth and still is challenged by an angry Hoth Luke.

If you want to argue those GOAT  quotes extend to Sidious then you'll have to include this to put Lord Starkiller far beyond Starkiller (and the Databank one that said he was no match. You'll know it from Meatpants fame):


This all seems pretty in line with being a Vader tier to me. No idea how this shows how exhausted he was and how he was actually far above Vader. It's hard to imagine Vader not slapping Hoth Luke away like he did post-Yoda training in the first couple exchanges, and Luke had actual saber training. When he first arrived at Dagobah he couldn't even hit a stick and was terribly out of shape and din't know how to call on the Force to alleviate it. Sometime through his training, he then could cut it in four segments after a run.



(credit to Ethan)


After some training, he gets knocked out by 2 floating orbs. Once he's about to leave Dagobah he deflects 3 while cooking with a spoon and a lid in Yoda's hut.



Also this



Luke was not very good at that stage in time with a saber, nor with using the Force. He was just powerful without the ability to properly channel it. After the Yoda training, he was growing rapidly as time went on. I'd assume he could cut it into 7 segments by the time of ROTJ as everyone believed he could beat Vader but all he had was an anger boost without the knowledge to do anything when he fought Lord Starkiller. An anger boost against someone who's always using those emotions. Vader would have stomped that Luke badly.

And with your Lord Starkiller example, you seem to be under the impression that I don't think Vader can be outpaced in power by Starkiller. That's not my intention since obviously, Starkiller can grow in a short period of time since that's your entire argument for avoiding any criticism of Starkiller, isn't it? The problem is his growth led him to hover around Vader levels both times and that was the end of his story. Yes with time he should have surpassed Vader - ignoring his perfect clone appearing to fail - but he didn't have that time. TPM Maul should have been the greatest Sith ever until Anakin but his time was cut short. We're in a conversation about Darth Vader (Chosen One potential) over whether or not Starkiller is above Vader's prime and you're using a non-canon example 2 years later where he displays more power than ANH Vader as your ace.

Even if there are no contradictions in Starkiller's line I fail to see how you missed the point there. Starkiller can grow more powerful than Vader for all I care, but the issue is his story stops before his peak and Vader continued on.


I think you dropped the ball on all three and one of them even help show he was in Vader's tier. Good examples.

...all necessitate SK is far above Vader, so his exhaustion has to have been a big deal. As to how it can be when the text doesn't put incredible emphasis on it hindering him, I'd offer the same rebuttal that I did to MP. Sean Williams generally doesn't comment on debilitating circumstances outside a couple of sentences - irregardless of the extent to which they hinder a character. Examples are Galen being weakened against Maris, him still recovering from the ISD when fighting The Core, and resisting the Dark Side without an alternative strength to draw upon against Vader, etc. In-universe, it's not hard to see that it would be massively hindering: Starkiller is noted to feel "simultaneously cleansed and poisoned", and exhausted to a greater extent than when his reserves were almost gone. He then goes on to fight Vader equally, despite pulverising the army of Starkiller clones who could have "easily overpowered" Vader, mere chapters earlier in this very same book. You've compared Force Exhaustion to physical exhaustion before, and brought up how you're not unable to accomplish your best even while tired to say that it probably didn't impact his fighting abilities that much - all exhaustion does is make it increasingly more difficult to accomplish your best until you basically collapse.

However, while this is true, I'd contest its relevance. SK probably can operate at his peak if required to, but if he did so he'd probably just fully gas out quickly like Maul did on Hypori, without overwhelming Vader. Or, rather, would you expect someone who has run a marathon to be able to sprint for any length of time, rather than dialing down their speed to what they can currently handle without collapsing? SK being able to accomplish his peak, but not fighting at it aren't mutually exclusive - we see Force Users dial down the amount of reserves they're burning through all the time throughout the lore. SK even does this against The Core in TFU: he stops throwing out big Force Waves like he normally does in combat, unless absolutely necessary, to conserve energy: "Still weary from his efforts with the Star Destroyer, he saved each big push until the very last moment, to spare his energies." In this case, as I covered prior, he's barely got anything left, so it's nor unrealistic that he'd want to conserve as much energy as possible - only using enough to keep up with Vader, while trying to set up openings to bring him down, rather than trying to ferociously overwhelm him. Speaking of openings, actually, that segways nicely into our next section...

SEAN WILLIAMS YOU SAY?
Sean Williams doesn't put emphasis on it because Sean Williams thinks Vader and Starkiller are around the same power. Vader who is utterly dwarfed by Starkiller can achieve an "anything can happen" fight against Starkiller.




(Credit to Jake)

Imagine the sole source of info that Starkiller is vastly more powerful than Vader being your headcanon about exhaustion and how it works and then ignoring what the writer actually thinks about how the two matches up. Anything could happen when this guy who I wrote wildly above Vader fights Vader in a third match. That clearly signifies that Starkiller could murder a cadre of Vaders. All the different depictions showing a close fight or a fight in favor of Vader are ignoring that Starkiller is clearly out of his league.
Also funny is your imaginary take of how bad Starkiller was beating him earlier when it was written by a guy who thinks it's 50/50.

"However, while this is true, I'd contest its relevance."

Thanks for the concession. "However, while you are completely right, how is being right relevant here?"

And what you missed entirely and I think I've said it to you every time and you clearly keep thinking about it because KoB apparently hounds you... is that I never said it didn't play an effect. I didn't say he got up to 100 percent... in the novel. I didn't say oh he wasn't exhausted at all because it never happened. The point you missed is that even at the absolute worst exhaustion he could be in, it's still beat out by Vader's growth. I accounted for it before while you ignored every other depiction of the fight and focused solely on the novel of a guy who got handed someone else's script (more on that later). You ignored the intention behind the fight, the intention behind all the fights, both fights, and made up some pseudo-God version of Starkiller that doesn't exist. Your reconcile here is that Sean Williams doesn't care about debilitating circumstances so it doesn't matter, Starkiller is still wildly above peak Vader, and you even throw an invisible "tee hee" in there for good measure.

I'm accounting for it being at its worst but that doesn't mean I think it is either. 13 days is pathetic. Maul was sent out as a 7-year old for 17 days with broken ribs and an arm on Mustafar and had only slept twice with no equipment, then fought a giant Abyssin h2h while still damaged with only a fish to eat. Or where for 14 days he was deprived of food and had to endure all of Sidious' tests to the point where his entire body ached but he fed off the Darkside. Immediately after those 14 days, he was sent to Hypori for a month to be hounded by assassins every day. After 44 days of exhaustion, barely eating anything he could barely stand and had to fight Sidious and actually did very well against him as I'm sure you know of. I'll include the context here but not the Sheev fight as that's overplayed.

Hypori Circumstances:

What's important about this is this is true exhaustion and extenuating circumstances. Starkiller is either really pathetic for being in secret terrible shape by this or it wasn't near as severe as you portray it to be. Starkiller was "exhausted" but he wasn't breathing heavily during or after the Tower fight. He wasn't breathing heavily before, during, or after the outside end fight. There's not elaborating on circumstances and then there's reminding us that an exhausted man should have at the very least belabored breathing. There's no mention of his strength being sapped. There's no mention of him having to hold back so he doesn't exhaust himself, and that's just in the novel it originates and only comes from.
What you're proposing is like the greatest drop in power from simple exhaustion alone in the lore yet your proof is "13 days" - which is pathetic by Darkside standards - and nothing about that actually hindering his power. After those 13 days were up he blasted Vader and felt the Force swelling in him and he started knocking off platforms outside in Kamino. If he was more exhausted than the time he was felt the force swelling in him like an invisible muscle and he was more excited than he's ever been in his life then he must have been at like 2 percent power. And with you conceding on how exhaustion doesn't work like you pretend it does it makes it hard to buy that it even impacts the fight let alone beats out Vader's growth.

He was super exhausted and weakened, he just had no telltale signs of exhaustion or being weakened in the fight. Sean Williams doesn't expound on that, he just believes they are around equal so he obviously thought Starkiller was mega weakened.

Tell me more about how clear-minded and focused and how his plans come through in the sloppiness section though. I would hate to hear how he concocted a plan to catch Vader off-guard when he's more exhausted than that time he couldn't even formulate a thought.

Exhaustion and overcoming exhaustion is something Starkiller was specifically trained to deal with. It's the whole reason he was in the pit for 13 days in the first place. This is what Darksiders do. They get used to it so it's not as much a factor. Luke did it against ESB Vader and he was still holding his own and they actually went hard on how exhausted he was during the fight. Was Luke actually way above Vader considering how exhausted he was? Answer this in your head right now and see how your headcanon answers hold up near the end here.

Even you do something like this. It's called adaption. You don't drink any water at all yet you can swim and fence in heavy gay fencing gear while your body screams for water. I have little doubt I am in far better shape than you in every way, but I know for a fact I can't go years without water, and well... I don't think I'd even move if I didn't drink water. Your body has adapted to having zero nutrients and the literal most important thing a human can possibly have, and yet you still function like a real human. Astounding. But that's what training does. Marathon runners train so they can continue running forever. MMA fighters train until they nearly drop and can still wrestle people evenly who they wrestle at max capacity. They used to do a thing where they'd go in an oxygen deprivation room with a gas mask and a short hose just to train their lungs and body to operate under as little air as they needed. Starkiller spent his life doing this type of stuff with the Force to sustain him. Real high-level athletes can still keep operating at high levels when their body is pushed to their limits without the Force. When you personally get exhausted your strength and speed don't drop below half of your maximum unless your body literally shuts down and Starkiller's body was anything but close to shutting down.

So, why would I take a word like "exhaustion" and use zero real-world or even Star Wars examples and think it means something? You can't quantify exhaustion without using anything to explain it. You're dropping the word like it means something when you refuse to actually try to use any definition for it from any fiction or reality. If you want to believe it's a deterrent then sure, I'm not arguing it's optimal. But how it's used is like a 1-10 percent shift in power at best and not something that allows him to turn Vader into dust effortlessly. It's not even clear it played a role for that matter, which is odd because Star Wars goes pretty heavy into the details when exhaustion plays a role, and they don't usually have the heavily weakened guy showing no tell-tale signs of exhaustion and doesn't even breathe heavily after the fights are over.



Yeah, he was probably worried about that while we got a large amount of his POV that fight. He was actually holding back his full power because everyone knows if you can go full power against someone you dwarf, you should instead only use enough power to stalemate them when you think he killed your girlfriend. That when you uncork a blast at stormtroopers about to shoot her you're still holding back as you scream her name, and then Sean Williams wrote that Darth Vader's grip was no less powerful than Starkiller's as he gave HP Legend a wink with invisible ink as you knew he meant Starkiller in his holding back state and only you would get it.
I could go further into this, and I think I will but before you think I'm just making up my own headcanon, let's check out what the novel says here:


"HOWLING WITH RAGE"

Neato.

Let's go back to going over your excuse while we pretend the novel doesn't prove you patently wrong instead. Maybe we'll get back to the proof, or maybe we'll let it fester without expanding on it, who knows? Guess you'll find out.

I find it really odd how you just assured me Sean Williams likes to gloss over very important circumstances like how weakened characters are yet you're showing me a Sean Williams quote where Starkiller is weary and saving energy. Would you say Sean Williams likes to post relevant context or not to explain events? And if he's a fan of explaining how Starkiller is conserving energy and only using Force pushes when necessary then it really begs the question of how this context is missing from the Vader fight? It seems pretty important to include considering how weakened he was, no?
Also, he was holding back big pushes as well because he didn't want to waste it on fodder and he didn't want to kill Proxy so he was actually holding back. He then releases a blast that surprises him with all his strength and rage for a prolonged period of time against the Core and later says he was so tired he would need a week of sleep after that and it might not be enough.



Good feat again, but it simultaneously helps him operate at full power while actually weakened, and it's missing from the Vader fight. If I use this example what exactly is stopping me from saying SK can operate in an actual weakened state for minutes at a power that surprises him? What's stopping me from pointing out that Starkiller was actually physically drained and it showed after and during the fight? Starkiller did this for a Droid but you're arguing he was measuring and limiting his power carefully when he saw Juno "die"? Not only that, but that was a refusal to spam huge Force blasts in your example, that wasn't actually drawing on the Force more to sustain yourself so you can pay back Vader and not die in the process.

Already went over Maul on Hypori. Maul could barely stand before the fight and he was in a zombie-like state. He still did pretty good considering and it wasn't THAT short of a fight.

And that's a problem when you're once again comparing it to other fights without evidence of your own. It was probably like this, it was probably like that. I saw The Mortis Beings hold back against Kenobi so Starkiller was probably holding back as well against everyone. That's called a false equivalence HP. You are the best Starkiller debater that has ever graced the forums, but you're going to need more than vague similarities to sidle up to instances laden with context.

Honestly, if I had an instance where he is going ballistic after he saw Juno "die" I'd post it... but he only started looking for openings in the second fight once he was getting pushed off the platform and came to the realization that he needed to end it otherwise they would just stalemate for a while. Otherwise, they just kept raging like Sith Lords of Old back and forth. Do you know what would also end the fight instead of fighting for a few minutes while your girlfriend was dead? Using your full power. In fact, Starkiller had a good measure of how powerful Vader was by now so why would he still be holding back if he was wildly above him and could tap into that power?

You keep conceding certain dubious parts that go against what you're saying.

Unless Starkiller's full power wasn't enough to quickly overwhelm Vader when he had enough reserves to go into multiple prolonged fights, use lightning and end the fight without showing any signs of exhaustion?

Which kind of doesn't work very well with putting Starkiller above Vader's peak now does it?

In fact, both had a good measure of each other from the first fight and Vader was a little quicker with his saber. : >



The interesting part here is that Vader learned from his defeat beforehand and is now a little quicker and has the full measure of Starkiller now based on this fight/previous one. This implies that Starkiller is at least fighting to the ability of the previous Starkiller when he defeated Vader. Vader proved he learned from it by arriving just a little quicker than Starkiller every time. If he learned how to defend against it, then he's capable of fighting past that level. If he's capable of fighting past that level, then he's at/past that level. If he's at that level then so is Starkiller. If Starkiller is at that level then he's at the TFU 1 Revelation level that you claim was way faster than Vader and more powerful.

TFU2 Starkiller might be more powerful and I really don't care if he is or not, but I don't think he's past that level enough that he's severely weakened if he's operating there. That's proof to the contrary actually. Seeing the pattern that's forming here, however, I suggest you use a Luke showing where he's near death and operating at one of his earlier levels to PROOVE Starkiller was as well. Any evidence of something that happens in Star Wars is directly applicable to Starkiller's misgivings after all.

...you've claimed that SK is "way too sloppy" to do anything against high tier prequel duellists, because of his fight with Vader. That, even if you grant him having way higher combat power, he's just going to leave a bunch of openings and get destroyed. The issue here is, Starkiller doesn't leave any openings in his fight with Vader - at least not ones Vader can capitalise on - unless he's in a mentally unstable state. Look at the end of TFU, and look at The Cloning Tower fight. Both represent Starkiller in his peak, LS mindset, and he doesn't get tagged once. In The Cloning Tower they fight back and forth with no headway made on Vader's part, and he ultimately needs SK reeling from a vision in order to land a Force Push and retreat. You know who is leaving openings in that fight, though? Vader. Starkiller sets up a scenario where Vader leaves himself open and blasts him with Force Lightning. I'm certainly curious as to how this is an anti-feat, when the only one exploiting lapses here is SK, if you don't mind explaining it to me. Anyway, regarding TFU, Vader tries to abuse an opening and gets repelled, then utterly destroyed in sabers while he desperately tries to retreat, rather than throwing SK off with a Telekinetic attack. All of these instances you can list of Vader tossing SK around are from the games, after Juno gets thrown, where Starkiller is noted to be in Force Fury, and is autistically screaming and jumping at Vader. Even past The Cloning Tower fight, Vader isn't landing Force shoves or grabs on SK in the novel, as SK remains mentally stable in this medium: on the rooftop he just stonewalls him, but doesn't make any offensive headway.

But, ignoring that, I'm more interested in how you're planning on scaling PT Jedi to Vader's ability to spot and exploit lapses. He's inferior to them in augmentation, lightsaber skill, etc, yes, but that doesn't necessarily scale them to his ability to throw SK around with the Force. I want proof that they can replicate these feats.

I did say that yes. Here's a bunch of comic scans of Starkiller getting tagged:

Starkiller no openings:

And it's not like he got a ton of saber training between all those tags in the comics to make his skill higher. He just got more powerful. He's still going to have those openings in his style, he's just more powerful is all.

For no reason at all, Here's the Shadow Guards being fodder:





Way to prove me wrong by telling me that Starkiller wasn't tagged once in 2 very short fights (only in the novels) against Sub-ANH Vader who you keep saying is inferior to "PT duelists" in aug and lightsaber and speed, etc. Considering you're adamant about only counting the TFU 1 section after his revelation, you're literally only counting an exchange that you think he dwarfed Vader in and gave a bunch of excuses as to why he didn't utterly rape him even though Starkiller would be wildly amped and Vader matching that would just prove his aug is close. In your own very cherry-picked examples you still have Starkiller having strongly contested fights against Vader and you admitted that Starkiller is taking advantage of openings Vader leaves and not landing without those openings.

But yes, if Starkiller can eventually cause Vader to make mistakes then he must be comparable to high PT Duelists. He is amazing! I like when he actually did dwarf Paratus and couldn't get through his defenses in saber combat.




So if Starkiller fights like he normally does in every appearance he's sloppy, but if he fights measured and careful as he does against Vader who he knows his style he can have a safer battle. Sounds like you're having a revelation of your own here. Not that I think he fought greatly against Vader post-revelation lol, but that's what your argument is; he didn't get tagged when he dwarfed Vader so he must have no openings. Except when he got caught in a choke. When Starkiller fights carefully he fights to the level of Darth Vader so he must be really skilled is what you're saying, but when he fights like he normally does he gets physically grabbed while Vader reaches for a coke so he can dilute it with tap water. Careful Starkiller slightly above Darth Vader 1-2 years before ANH. I don't think you realize how little I care about that.

Now, before you cry about the games some more and comics and how the novel is the true canon while trying to leave a backdoor where you go "Well I never said I wasn't counting the games, I just gave every reason why it shouldn't count!" I'm just going to use it all and justify it at the end because you never said we shouldn't count the games.

In the spoilers, he gets tagged by everything. In the TFU 1 fight, he gets physically grabbed by Vader after WINNING the little quicktime event. Vader completely ragdolls him multiple times in TFU 2 including going up an elevator while holding Starkiller in a Force choke in the Wii version. Again in TFU 2 Vader physically grabs Starkiller and disarms him in the ending sequence along with multiple times he grabs him throughout the fight and starts the fight grabbing him when they blade lock.

It's funny you mention autistic screaming because in the game under supervision by the series creator Starkiller does that entire section in Force Fury and you can't turn it off and Vader stands against you in a blade lock for an extended period of time. Once the game fight is over they immediately lock up and Vader disarms him then grabs him and physically throws him. Vader could have just stabbed him when he had the unarmed Starkiller physically by the throat and would have had to move his saber out of the way to be careful not to stab Starkiller. Vader then tries to punch him, misses, then ragdolls him anyway with the Force, then takes time to grab something so he could push him off the platform when he could have just given an extra force push in a tenth of the time while Starkiller laid on the floor. Then Force Fury Starkiller using the Kamino lightning rods blasted Vader for an extended period of time and eventually had him on his knees after Vader kept resisting. There's also a quicktime event where this amped Starkiller blasts Vader in the face with a Force Repulse, which again is the most powerful attack he has, but this guy in the video did not do it. I posted it earlier but you probably forgot already. All this happens within the first five minutes.





(notice how I was a gentleman and didn't use the ragdoll part)

In the Wii Version... lol
He manages to back Vader up, then they go up an elevator while Vader is choking him. Vader can choke you at will. If you try to attack wrong Vader tosses you. First cutscene break he kicks Vader back and Vader slams you through the middle device. In the end, Vader grabs you and very very slowly pushes you towards the lightning ball and you kick off and force push him into it like he could have done to you at any time.






SLOWLY

In the DS version Starkiller appears more powerful, in the Novel Starkiller appears smarter but equal in raw power. In the comic Starkiller probably comes off the best. In the Wii and Xbox versions, Vader appears a lot more powerful but still lost. That exhaustion also doesn't exist in any of those games or comics. There was no big tower fight repulse explosion and Vader was fighting clones as well. All of the Clones were fodder. None of these portrayals depict Vader being wildly out of his league even without exhaustion present. The writer of the novel thinks the two are close. Different depictions go back and forth on who's stronger. The people who wrote the script for the novelist to follow had Vader appear stronger. And the novel even depicted a very close fight. What you're saying is that actually no, Starkiller was so many times stronger, he just didn't do anything to prove it against Vader. All the different fights just had it wrong. Don't use the games unless you want to but also don't use the games because when they created the story they intended it to not be canon and also they wanted Starkiller way stronger and they showed that by having no stamina issues or damage.



But back to what you said when you used both Starkiller and Vader both being incredibly cautious. Vader only opened up when he saw an opening but Starkiller capitalized on it instead. Starkiller was fast enough to counteract Vader, but he still left an opening that wouldn't work on a faster opponent. And I didn't say it was an anti-feat since I don't care to limit it to only the novel like you do while you pretend the novel was the big selling point for you on Starkiller. I can explain to you that I'm looking at it through an aggregate instead of just the novel. However, it is an anti-feat to be relative equals to Vader when you want to pretend Starkiller is completely out of Vader's league. That's the issue.

He did not get utterly destroyed in sabers. Come on now.


What exactly do you want Vader to be HP? You keep making all these concessions but then pretend that it doesn't matter even if you concede the gaps are large. Speed doesn't matter, strength doesn't matter, power doesn't matter, and now Vader can lack all of that but his exploitation is great because of the circular reasoning around Starkiller where you just argued Vader couldn't create any openings against Starkiller when he was serious... so that begs the question of what exactly are you basing your assertion of Vader's exploitation on? What did Vader do that was impressive that I need to beat here? Was it him beating Fat Ferus after a huge struggle post-ANH when he grew from the Death Star explosion? Fat Ferus by the way was on a decline and his Padawan days had him being puny in comparison to Anakin half a year before AOTC.
Interesting factoid, but the story where Ferus was puny compared to Anakin was also the story where Dooku was tossing ships at Anakin and Kenobi and looked like a God in comparison to them.  

Fat Ferus:

I don't even know if that fight's in order since I saved it so long ago but didn't post it until now. All I know is that a severely pissed-off Vader couldn't catch a weak-as-shit Ferus because his mind was too clouded by rage and power. I really wonder if he got super pissed at Starkiller right when you argue he had a big revelation of power or something?



I sure hope he didn't get his arm cut off by Luke when he was super pissed off on Mimban, and I hope he didn't get his shoulder gashed open by an exhausted ESB Luke when he was going ballistic. That would make it seem like Vader can't exploit as many openings or defend himself as well when he falls to his rage. So if someone managed to land a blow after an extended exchange in that state to his throat, then they must be far above him. If only Luke caught his throat instead of his shoulder he would have surpassed Vader by far in ESB!

---


But IDK, let's just look at speed and skill I guess with just a saber or physicals. Here's Darrus Jeht turning up his speed in an already Master looking performance, and hitting Lanius before he could see it. Here's Ventress moving faster than Jeht could see. Jeht was Mundi level btw.







(Before it gets said that severely beat up and actually exhausted Jeht acquired more power than he ever thought possible by succumbing to rage. Fancy that huh?)

We see Ventress exploit and get tagged by the Kenobi levels while she is portrayed comfortably above the lesser Masters. Not Starkillers, not Fat Feruses, but fully trained Kenobis and even Anakin. Dooku was able to comfortably control Ventress in a duel, and only rarely ever gets pressured by Grievous. In fact, 13 chapters - or right before he sent Grievous to fight Mace right before ROTS - Dooku was getting angry at how sloppy Grievous was fighting and then effortlessly killed two Magnadroids that Grievous was sparring before holding his saber millimeters away from Grievous' throat. Grievous then matches Mace with two sabers when he couldn't move.



Like I said I don't know what you want. The PT duelists are great. Sometimes they aren't but it's against capable duelists and they have feats where they can abolish their low feats. Starkiller's best dueling feat is against Darth Vader years before ANH yet you want to abolish his highest feat like he did something better in the interim. The one you arbitrarily compared Starkiller to (much like everyone else) is Dooku. I get Dooku is something of a safe bet when throwing levels around because it's universal for "well can't put him Yoda level but I really really really want him there so Dooku is really inoffensive" but you can't ask of people to compare to Vader's piercing of Starkiller's when you want him to somehow become Dooku level. Here is what Dooku did to Hypori Grievous.





And here is Dooku playing around with Ventress who then immediately gives almost dark Yavin Anakin a hell of a fight.






This is where you want to pretend Starkiller is because Robo Vader lost. Dooku can rip battle-ready masters into his saber, make Kenobi look untrained every fight, boot around Anakin, tag Yoda, play around with Ventress and Grievous, dance around saber attacks unarmed, fight Ventress and other Nightsisters poisoned and win, match Yoda, force Mace back instantly, fight Mace and Kenobi while laughing, etc. Not only is Starkiller sloppy like I said, but Dooku isn't. Why you want to randomly put him there is beyond me.

This is exactly what Dooku vs Starkiller would look like.




We can go Grievous who's roughly equal to Kenobi. He has matched or given Mace a tough fight on 3 occasions. Swatted around all the Hypori Jedi without making a mistake. In fact, he was fast enough to drop his saber and catch it and still not lose any ground. The issue with Grievous is he puts people on such high defense that it causes them to tighten up their defense and as such, they don't commit to making mistakes. Even then he still disarmed Shaak and Mundi in short order.

Speaking of Mundi; Mundi long before sitting on the Council was above A'Sharad Hett. 14-year-old A'Sharad was capable of beating the Dark Woman while holding back. The Dark Woman who only has low showings like getting shot by Mercs was capable of stopping Vader's attack from behind her back and was capable of disarming Vader in a fight she kept outspeeding Vader in. She disappeared right in front of his eyes or ran headfirst at him and got behind him. This happened right around TFU2 and is actually canon. He beat her yes by grabbing her wrist and throwing her which led to her getting beaten by a tree falling on her slowly while she didn't move a foot to the right or left lol. With her only other saber fight, we can conclude that 14-year-old A'Sharad Hett was almost more capable of exploiting her saber openings than Vader was.

Dark Woman Fight:

With Ferus - who as a full-fledged Padawan who was about to become a Jedi Knight and had puny power in comparison to pre-AOTC Anakin - he was capable of matching Vader in sabers while he was fat and on a big decline. But seeing as he pretty much did nothing since 18BBY, he made a mistake and Vader cleared his mind and capitalized. Good for Vader, but very sad that his raw power couldn't create an opening on a fat out-of-shape Padawan. This was post Death Star explosion when Vader was at his most powerful at that point in time. Do I think Kit Fisto who was above AOTC Kenobi would have problems doing whatever he wanted against Fat Ferus in any matter he decided? I don't really get your whole stance here with Vader's exploitations when they only succeed against well... complete fodder in Star Wars... and Starkiller...
We saw it not work against Ben Kenobi. We saw it not work against ESB Luke in a saber duel to a point where Vader had to maximize the distance to create openings and then just went ballistic. We saw Vader accomplish nothing against ROTJ Luke and Luke's entire history up until Dark Empire and sometimes beyond show how vulnerable he was to getting well... exploited.

In contrast, we saw Kenobi at his peak getting exploited by Dooku. Kenobi post-AOTC where he's beyond TPM Maul getting exploited by Ventress, Grievous, Maul, etc. We saw a post-Prime but still capable Kenobi exploit A'Sharad's Jedi peak in an advantageous battlefield and cut off his arm. Hett's lowest level in canon was capable of exploiting Dark Woman seemingly better than Vader. The less said about Mimban the better, and I'm not trying to harp on Purge Vader too much here either but I really don't see an issue with Kit Fisto replicating every exploitation Vader accomplished against every single Jedi he fought, and that's without taking heavy damage in the process. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be impressed by or even what I'm supposed to compare it to. Every time Vader exploited an opening usually was after a hard fight where he usually got tagged, or it was in TFU. I'm not sure that looks good for TFU which I why I understand why you didn't use any examples. You could have used the time Vader foddered Kota, Starkiller, and Proxy back to back to show how good he is and how tough they are. : >

But before we let your concessions go, let's talk about that a little. What if someone is better than Vader in every area but can still ramp up his power like Vader can to fight superior opponents? If you're arguing Vader can jump up tiers or whatever you're saying, then what happens when Kenobi puts on his game face? Does he lack the ability to jump up as well? What happens if Dooku does the same? Your entire red Harrison of why Vader could fight revelation Starkiller is based on him jumping up tiers based on aug which you just admitted was lower lol. So what happens when Dooku augs out against Starkiller when he can fight Zonakin for a period of time? You conceded Vader should be far lower on the totem pole and yet he can stand against a fully unleashed Starkiller, so what happens when the baseline is raised with the same capability for aug?

If you want to wank Vader then wank Vader. But you're simultaneously shitting on him/ shitting on him in comparison to Starkiller while just tossing out "Vader is good in this very specific area" with nothing backing it.

Okay, so, tl;dr:

(1) SK is far stronger than Vader in TFU.
(2) I've provided reasonable quantification which proves SK is above Peak Vader.
(3) The lack of comment on the debilitating nature of SK's exhaustion doesn't affect my argument.
(4) SK's exhaustion can reasonably drag him down to Vader level, even if he's far above.
(5) Vader doesn't exploit any openings against a mentally stable Starkiller.
(6) Vader's ability to exploit openings isn't necessarily scalable to other characters.

NOPE

DubiousBelieverFan77 wrote:P.S. I want proof for everything you've said on Vader's growth if you don't mind. I believe what you've said - it's just for future reference.

As for Vader's growth. Yes, I'm sure it's just to file it away in your head. You believe me you said so I don't have to post anything.




But I can't just rely on your slips in speech to show I'm right I guess. I win because you made a mistake and misspoke. Just because you concede we can't leave it at that I'm afraid.

However, I will only use common information for Vader's growth because of all the Snake BoDs in the grass. Can't be giving them all of their ammo to use on Comicvine after all.

So, let's start with Lucas.

Here Lucas speaks about the fights ramping up in the OT and attributes this to simply getting better. We'll ignore the Prequel comments that follow of course. : >
Start at 2:55



Here Haden abides by Lucas' words and even says that Vader is not yet what we see in ANH.


(Jake)

So that's a direct tie into TFU.


So I already touched upon this, but Vader's saber skills were corrected in the Tower fight where he was arriving before Starkiller's blade every time. Which implies not only is he more powerful, but he's faster than the combo that took him out when he made his mistake. He also seemingly beat DA and didn't officially apprentice him until after confirming he was far more powerful than TFU 1 Starkiller. You can be my apprentice guy who utterly dwarfs me haha!


Vader was more powerful than ever after the Death Star and Kenobi were destroyed. Will trust you saw this, but can post later.


Fightsaber.







And ESB which wasn't actually a complete blowout and was actually quite the fight. In fact, the implication is that Luke was more powerful than Obi-Wan and Vader still had the upper hand at the end. This means Vader grew beyond someone who was above his equal.



We see Vader in Shadows sort of struggle with his top-of-line ASP programmed training droids that were above any others he could have made or received. Note how easily he beats Proxy earlier. Yet later on he was capable of completely foddering them in seconds.





Also in Shadows, we see him setting new records for his sheer anger in being able to survive without his suit to a point where he feels closer than ever to soon completely overcoming his suit's limitations. At the beginning of the book, he could barely do it for a moment and this is post-ESB.





Vader spent that entire time in Shadows just training to be ready for Luke in a rematch and to definitively become his master so they could take Sheev down. He upped his training in every way than he had previously and...

He was equal to Luke in the next confrontation - Per Lucas. This means under all this training it allowed him to grow almost in lockstep with Luke who had basically awoken his Jedi skills and had time to grow after that. In fact, he was activating new powers in Shadows, Vader believed he had more potential than Anakin and daily growth and in ESB they didn't think he stood a chance against Vader, but in ROTJ, both Ben and Yoda felt he was ready and was a full Knight, and Sheev thought he would beat the shit out of Vader too. Everyone thought Vader would get rolled over because they felt Luke had grown enough to win as long as he tried. Yet, Vader was able to grow enough to equal this new growth in Luke. Vader remarks on how much Luke increased as well.
I'll keep the contrast here between ESB and ROTJ.







Again, I don't want to use too different of sources, but that's the elephant in the room that no one talks about. It's that the ESB fight was hard-fought, and Vader was still capable of keeping up with Luke's growth to a point where they evened out. You can see Lucas talking about Luke's growth there. You can see Fightsaber talking about Luke's growth there. You can see the confidence in Luke showing his growth.

And the stats back this up as well to a point where they almost double from ANH to ESB.





Basically ROTJ Luke ~ ROTJ Vader > SOTE Vader > ESB Vader >/= ESB Luke > ANH Kenobi ~ ANH Vader > TFU 2 Vader > TFU 1 Starkiller

And his ANH incarnation as always is completely shit on in comparison to his later selves. I wonder what that makes of his weaker incarnations in TFU???

In fact, Vader makes all this growth up because of Luke's power. He needs to be ready for it and autistically trains for his fight against Luke, yet the same growth is not apparent from TFU 1 to TFU 2 even while training a bunch of clones and losing in front of his Master. He never had the same drive to get ready for Starkiller's possible turn or growth. In fact, he had well over a decade with Starkiller and he never felt the need to explode in power. Hell, even him using Starkiller to turn against the Emperor seemed to be a lie as he had no faith in him, yet he believed he and Luke could beat Sheev soon, which would be odd when you argue both him and Luke should be far below Starkiller probably together. Interesting...

Much better than Starkiller:

Or, and possibly even worse is he did train autistically for Starkiller and all that training did was bring him sub-ANH which he then multiplied in 4 years. He just needed to kill Obi-Wan and know he had a son to unlock his chains as using Starkiller for motivation was weak even knowing he survived TFU 2.



And thus brings us to the crux of your issue. Not only do you lack the ability to properly explain how much of a deterrent his "exhaustion" was or how Starkiller somehow gets more exhausted than anyone ever has before, but you're using this unquantifiable nature of it to then demand proof of Vader's actual real growth that has entire novels dedicated to it - read any part of SOTE that has Vader's thoughts - and then going you believe me, but also Starkiller is above all that anyway. See, what I've been doing is just being generous in putting Starkiller with Vader's peak in allowing you to keep maintaining this exhaustion. He can be tired but due to no noticeable decline in power or any emphasis placed on it; along with all the writers putting him with Vader without including it, it doesn't seem to be too much of an issue. But sure, I've been allowing it because Vader's growth combats any appreciable drop. I don't think that's entirely accurate however because it isn't that Vader's growth makes up the gap between them, it's more like it's two people on the same tier and then Vader gets to run away with years of power growth. It shouldn't be a question of how Vader makes up the gap, but rather how Starkiller makes up the gap.

And if we ask you, you would say Starkiller makes up the gap because Vader can fight above his level to an almost even point. You would say Vader fights above his own level. So Vader is an example of a being able to fight far above his levels begs the question of why Vader multiplying in power doesn't just annihilate Starkiller if he starts anywhere near or even above his power? Apparently, Starkiller doesn't fight above his level. If anything Starkiller fights below his level when your argument revolves around him being far above Vader in power and speed but struggling and needing large openings against someone slower than ANH Vader. How exactly does Vader fighting above his level as you said earlier help Starkiller here?



And the last three points here before I summarize the argument are really simple:

You're probably thinking in your head that Luke was bashing Vader around in ROTJ. Now of course Luke comes off as better, but all of the quotes of the actual battle have it as a battle of equals, yet Luke was winning at every stage in the fight. ROTJ Luke was actually doing much better against Vader than Starkiller was in all three fights without having the advantage of Vader's weakness and yet all the sources put them as equals. If Luke and Vader can still be equals despite Luke completely showing him up then why would I have Starkiller dwarfing Vader in power after a hard-fought fight with no emphasis placed on his power being way higher than Vader's? The most powerful guy Starkiller beat was Vader in close fights, but actually, everyone was wrong and he can ragdoll a hundred Vaders.
I'm fine with Starkiller being more powerful because he won, but this giant invisible gap you're going off of doesn't exist in the stories. Even Starkiller himself talking with Haden thinks Vader was going to throttle him in a third game. I know you don't count that as proof, but it is proof that the people involved don't think the same way with "mega canon exhaustion he was so weak trust me" written by the guy who thinks it's 50/50.

And second, Dooku one-shot a near Tusken Rage AOTC Anakin with one blast of lightning. You keep admitting that Starkiller was creating openings and blasting Vader with his specific weakness to lightning and only putting him on his knees at best. Could I imagine Dooku blasting Vader with ultra-focused lightning into his suit and failing to drop him? Summoning a storm without exhaustion and using lightning rods to eventually get Vader to kneel?





As for your gay novel is the canon path thing you smugly think every time you see TFU mentioned, that's stupid.

It doesn't occupy a higher level of canonicity than the others.




Look at all the work they put into making the game:



And Haden and his team wrote the fucking story and gave it to Sean to use as a script while they did brunch with Lucas to talk about the game and Sean never talked to anyone. They even rolled Lucas' fat ass out of his king-sized bed to throw a launch party.




"Oh btw George, the guy who never wrote the story or met with you actually has the canon story of TFU overriding the game."

What it actually is, is simply telling the canon path which is important in a game with multiple endings. It tells you the actual canon ending. That's why it's a canon look at the story. It doesn't mean that the game doesn't count. And for all the minimal effort that Sean actually contributed it doesn't mean his novel is non-canon either since they occupy the same plane. However, for my money, the story written by the original writers with half the company and Lucas himself backing it carries more weight than some novel writer getting fed a script.

Let's say hypothetically you create a universe. Let's also say that as the Universe creator you have absolute say in everything to a point where they use the letter of your first name as a "Word of God" tier. Let's also say that for the sake of the argument that your underlings have extensive meetings with you on what they want to do in your universe. Ok, so now you're meeting with them multiple times a day explaining everything in full. Let's say hypothetically that what they were working on gets released and you go to promote it. Now that we've established that you have the final say in everything and you're still involved, then your involvement would be seen as a bigger deal than projects based on that original team, correct? As you are God, you would agree with me that you are now mad that your side project takes a bench seat to a novel from a guy you never heard of. As God, you have wasted your time and the team that walks on eggshells around you has betrayed you and must die.

...and that's everything bar one final section:

Special Credit To...


Special credit to @KingofBlades for single-handedly pissing me off enough to make me write this much. Seriously, though, bro I dislike constantly being nagged to about rebuttals, so, please fuck off, and don't doubt my ability to reply ever again.

Yes, let's all thank KoB - who I had nothing to do with that - because it helped you unload with your very big post from a very big boy on all the Starkiller misconceptions and helped clear the air and show how wrong I was. I should thank KoB I guess too for me the error of my ways. Why did you have to push him that far bro?!?

I just hope HP is happy now with things being tough all over and getting his confidence back that KoB lacks. KoB isn't giving a lot of Starkiller fans choices these days. He needs to speak with his chest like you are now. It would appear KoB was the biggest obstacle here but glad you climbed the KoB hill and showed that piece of shit.  

Optional is Ethan's Shaak blog, but I would say to read it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qxDaYzCE6h8iyfM18jsyfEkYewYD_uY0kdKIiFD0i3Y/edit

To Summarize though. And I will admit I had Ethan help me co-write this summary. I'm sure the discerning eye can pick out what parts he wrote and what parts I wrote, but I won't tell you who did what. That's half the fun. : >

So to encapsulate the deliberation hitherto:

All of the feats attributable to Starkiller have virtually been caricatural in sum and substance by you. You have found yourself melodramatical in the description of his expenditure and thou have been attempting to immanentize the eschaton of Starkiller's conservations by employing Vader performing prosperously against the former which truly only facilitates Vader; the cyborg you're engaging in a pettifog against. You're neglecting the heuristics concerning the counter to Starkiller's enervation in the form of Vader's aggrandizement, and you have the impertinence to catechize me to elucidate Vader's proliferation of endowment. You have unreservedly blackballed the digital interactive simulation and instead concentered on the narrative to manifest that Starkiller is far above Vader by laboring against Vader, consequently Vader is in excess of PT Duelists. Vader has never been friable against Starkiller; the chap just made miscalculations against a bedraggled duelist which you're using as self-serving logic to ask if anyone is more conversant than Vader when your only exemplar is him being undexterous himself. Chekhov's Gun may be important but I have not at any span said his enfeeblement didn't exist only abated the magnitude of it. With the two duo having multiple hairbreadth engagements , Occam's razors dictates the two are likely commensurate in cogency, as all involved seem to decree. It's not as byzantine as you're making it where Starkiller's totality of power from his adumbration casts a penumbral irrumation, or perhaps even a degringoladal penilinctus that Vader can't writhe himself disenthrall. You have engaged in a Pascal's Wager with Starkiller as the ante as to whether or not he was insupposable and pretended there was no antipode to his prodigiousness.

Starkiller's circumscribed senescence and consequent termination leaves any allocution of his potentiality as simply superfluous and palaverous. It's irreprehensible if you yearn to be garrulous about his non-canon alter-egos, but those procure apocryphal limitations while Vader's power is a Hickam's dictum of per contra he desires... nay, it's a desideratum to luxuriate exclusively because of Luke yet his lasciviousness individualistic nature to germinate after Starkiller was lugubrious in juxtaposition. There was no perpetuity to his power associated with his Purge ascetic and it appeared abstemious once he descried his son.

You have inspirited the intrepidity to also try to militate his might to Palpatine in efficacy while he was discharging lightning that Kota was soon disencumbered by and then gormandized Starkiller's most efficacious attack in his face while you strive for exculpation from being his full avoirdupois to bear. Your animadversion to state it being a spheroidal blast was the sole rationalization he was zoetic yet you didn't excogitate about his insufficiency to omphalos this epitome of puissance in one, and your obliviousness to his repulses being his most consequential assailments. This apotheosis of his exponential state and his inadequacy are directly congruent as much as you attitudinize otherwise. One can't guilelessly use his magnanimous feats from the same antecedent of power and paroxysm and then gloss over a replete inadequacy in his most superlative state like "Oh it's because he used the power he got all his best feats from but get this... it's a sphere haha!"

Your mobilization of criticality attenuating the sovereignty is integument of Wittgenstein's Beetles. You operate like you have savoir-faire in nuclear physics  as if you endured a blast but only subsisted by virtue of nihil ad rem yet you reject that it's the only passageway to emancipate aforesaid endowment and the target is unerringly the quintain it's furloughed on -  in this case Sheev Palpatine - and everything else is remuneration for propinquity. You repudiate the potency of armaments, of nuclear strife. To sequester that eruption of power concomitantly into an eremetic object is to embarkation the point of convergence inside that individual. You masquerade like it coheres that it capitulates ardor and then endeavor to inveigle auxiliary bourgeoisie who have never authenticated bombs the same. The beetle is withal conspicuously avowed deriving out of everyone's panorama barring yours which little lagniappes your brannigan. It's been inveterated much to your chagrin and discomfiture that Sheev Palpatine took the chockablock astriction of the ubiquitous detonation.

The net happiness participatory of all delineations of a circumscribed dramatis personae like Starkiller is unrefined utilitarianism. That is the desideratum cardinal morality in a curtailed stratum canon source like The Force Unleashed. George Lucas' entanglement and the architect imparts onto us we shouldn't haphazardly show insouciance and scrutinize that  like undistinguished peccary. It is a felicitous thoroughfare to go about with aphorism preferably over only appropriating the novelization and the dissimulating demeanor you have conglomerated apperception that you'll perpetually importune. The elocutionists are guilelessly a Laplace's Demon in that we can excogitate what subtle metamorphose does to the apologue and what the reverberations transubstantiate into. Your trembling repudiations about enumerating the virtual fictive escapades are regarded as moiety theorized with an all aquivered metacarpus whilst an cerebrate like me aggrandize recountals and parses through the orientation as it educes. You need to espouse utilitarianism antecedent to your net felicitousness abates subjacent unobjectionable levels and you catch dysuria, though I suspect with your lack of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds that is already a disquietude. This isn't a Schrodinger's Cat in which we're unconversant if a diminutive variable disarticulates, we procured an unexpurgated parable in superfluity. This languorous adjournment is so macabre while it would be bounteously more adroit to reconnoiter the aggregate communique and figure out dexterous loopholes. This boulevard will only chaperone to a disconsolate proviso antecedent to complete dissolution of you and your consanguinity.

The superincumbent echelon Prequel Trilogy pugilists absolutely jettison excrement on Starkiller and placing in juxtaposition to Dooku is jocular. Any introitus Starkiller has would be debased like a median pebblestone courtesan. Starkiller's caterwaul purlieu are inured verisimilitude to who he's actually engaged in fisticuffs with and when you capitulate that Darth Vader is subsidiary to multitudinous personage it orchestrates interrogations as to how altitudinous you delegate Starkiller. With proletariat Shaak Ti having an immoderately anemic ethos to the point of dramaturgical reciprocation to soupçon corporeality and aristocrats like Kenobi and Yoda percolate in power, and additional minutia in Ethan's blog substantiates her subjugating him impugn his scimitar endowment even acheiving decumbent Convocation hierarchy in limpid facility. That's the botheration when you relinquish that deuteragonist and antagonist Darth Vader are dissatisfactory but you also want Starkiller to preponderate him in donnybrooks established by contiguous contested altercations. He unreservedly can't dedomicile himself to the amplitude you yearn and covet and the perspicuity is conspicuous without any unfeigned vicissitude to your inexorableness.

Even postliminary to Vader's readily apparent improvement, hindmost to becoming far more redoubtable his expertism regardless lacks years of burnish ameliorated out of possession of inquisition under perennial Masters, his style can be apprised, typified and perforated by Luke in the course of their affair of honor, after only exiguous scrimmageroonies. Howbeit we juxtapositize that to Anakin's internalization of Count Dooku, even in their terminating fisticuffs Dooku can schlepplize hocus-pocuses that pidgeonhole the Skywalker, and Anakin has superlative perspicacity generally and with regards to his litigant than Luke does Vader. Luke can do to Vader with 4 years of colloquial chalk talk and a doublet of fights that Anakin can't do to Dooku after over a semesters worth of truculent affairs, a well rounded proselytism, and nearly a decemvirate and a moiety of dueling experience that puts Luke's yesteryears to opprobrium. From a purely technical perspective, Vader's endowment is garden-variety coterminous to the bona fide Masters of the lightsaber, but they are plenteous to sideline and bounteously impute Starkiller onto the ebb, and then we tote that Vader is far phlegmatic and less sanguinary than even the proemial spirits of the prequel ternion. Starkiller is in ministration with a dim spook of a far subordinately punctilious, velocious, and tigerish oppugnant than a spirit who meliorates for a decade, salubriously concenters on fencing and substitutes his manner over to an far amassedly efficacious style of pugnactrication, and is subsequently absolutely manhandled by a dandling Count Dooku. Vader and Starkiller are kibitzing in part of 2D Chess, Count Dooku is cavorting through 8D Nine Men's Morris.

This is all translated apexwise when we consider Starkiller’s own slapdashidliness and teeterability. He fracas like a vagabond with three sheets to the wind, a rupture with every strut, Dooku would pounce upon  those gulches in Starkiller’s parapet as the omphalic rackteer would sauced Hasidic bairns. Luke’s persentimentivity is sufficient to act as both bulwark and storm against the aggrandized Vader, where the same as well as Anakin’s experience and skills do not fare equally against the Count. This is the irrefutable rebuttal to your Hickam’s Dictum, with as many decrepititudes as Starkiller is in possession of, he’d find more windfall in triangulating Roko’s Basilisk in a China Brain than proving perdurable against the Count. Starkiller’s only hope is a derivative of the infinite monkey theorem, and is thusly irrelevant to our discourse.

Dark Apprentice was a consummate replication with no vitiations and was in finer feather than The Force Unleashed One Galen Marek when he was walloped by Vader. Ve should be more stalwart and hearty than Lord Starkiller and not one or the auxiliary in the non-decretus cessations cooked up to snuff against shabbily strapped Skywalker kids. DA withal made camp under the durasteel concatenate of Darth Vader and they weren't at fingertips to take the field against zie a quincunx years later. When vis press into service that off-the-touchstone abstraction you consigned to oblivion their sumptuousness, as years later ve retain zie buttered-fingers but xir bearing of a non-assized crank-queer trail-blazes into an extant screed wack-duck being as C₂₁H₂₇C₁₃N₂O₃ as to  C₉H₁₃NO₃ The Force Unleashed One Galen Marek and for all that down from or close at hand to Darth Vader's slant which discomfits xir plenary theorem.

---

I was actually almost done with the reply within a couple of days and was going to wait a full week to post it just to make you wonder if you got away with it but then something happened to me that no man should have to endure so I didn't. Seeing as it was you though, the longer wait time is probably for the best. I'd make excuses, but I stopped caring while knowing full well I'd get to it eventually, not unlike it taking you like a year to reply to any Starkiller criticisms.

Also, it took longer and required much more effort doing the brief summary than it did to write the response. Even with splitting the workload, it was admittedly a toughy, but it needed to be said and it needed to be concise so people who didn't read the replies could get the gist of the counterpoints.

Special thanks to Ant who talked me through a lot of these points and basically helped with most of this.  




But that's really it. Besides those few minor conundrums, I pretty much agree with everything you said. But you know me, I needed that clarity in the waters haha. Starkiller rox.

And as always

abraham lincoln wrote this

LOBENZO