SS - Darth Sidious (The Ellimist) vs. Valkorion (Valkorion)

And so it has come - The Super Fight to End All Super Fights.

The Clash of Titans.



vs. 



The combatants will be Darth Sidious and Valkorion.

Valkorion, who will be debating for his namesake, will make the opener. There will be a total of five standard rounds, including the opener, then followed by respective concluding posts. The standard posts will each have a character limit of 40,000 characters, and the conclusions will have a limit of 5,000 characters. Posts must be posted within two weeks of the previous, and the opener must be posted within two weeks of this OP.

Tentative judging list: Ant, Skillz, Harrison, Gideon, Azronger, Bart, ILS

The battle takes place in the empty Senate Rotunda, with each side starting on opposite ends of the ground level. Both combatants are aware of the other's abilities and have had time to concoct battle strategies.

Additional stipulations:

• All content that is a part of Legends continuity and would've been considered canon under the old Holocron system can be considered. The old canon hierarchy is not used, except to the extent that it would determine whether the source is canon at all.
  
• Further debating meta is up for discussion
  

And let one of the ultimate exchanges in Star Wars vs. debating history begin.

ayyyyy

glorious days ahead

will post opener soon

TAEP

TAEP

TAEP.

@IdrisianGraecus
@xolthol
@NotAA3
@DC77 (Reborn)


Gonna make a really short opener, but that's ok, emphasize key points

1. Scaling Chains

The only way to line up TOR and PT/post-PT scaling chains is to put Valk above Sidious.

• Valkorion ragdolls the Outlander who decisively beats Vaylin who ragdolls Arcann who ragdolls several versions of the Outlander all the way to the Act III HoT who then has several scaling chains down ragdolling Scourge all the way to crushing Vivicar who can destroy hundreds of jedi
  
• Valkorion is much above Vitiate who beats Revan who oneshots Nyriss who utterly dominates Meetra who dominates on DS nexus Traya who oneshots several Jedi council members who dominate Bastila who oneshots Jolee and Juhana who crush a Jedi master
  
• Valkorion is much above SWTOR Vitiate who is above novel Vitiate who is above novel Revan who is above KotOR Revan who is much above SF Malak who is much above Exar Kun who is far, far, far beyond early-TotJ Exar Kun who is far, far beyond Ommin who is far far beyond Arca Jeth who is far far far beyond Queen Amanoa who can TP dominate thousands of beast riders
  

Now in contrast, it's much harder to construct long scaling chains for Sidious's era. You can show that the chains are pretty short:

• RotS Sidious matches Yoda who can beat Dooku with difficulty who can comfortably beat Obi Wan who can comfortably beat Ventress
  

^ so if you line up RotS Sidious with Valk, you end up with Dooku being SWTOR Vitiate tier, Obi Wan at like Revan tier and Ventress dominating Exar Kun

Really? Dooku is on par with Vitiate? Ventress dominating Exar Kun? Look at Exar Kun's list of feats like TP'ing every scanning technician on a city-planet, TK'ing a cruiser, freezing the entire senate, etc. vs. Ventress's, there's no comparison.

Being generous to the Sidious era, you can say:

• RotS Sidious matches Yoda who oneshots Dooku (but he doesn't...) who oneshots Obi Wan (but he doesn't...) who oneshots Ventress (but he doesn't...)
  

And if you line up RotS Sidious with Valk, you get Dooku as Outlander tier, Obi Wan as Arcann tier, Ventress as early-KOTFE Outlander tier, Kit Fisto as Act III HoT tier (being generous), AotC Obi Wan as Act II HoT tier (reallyyyy generous), then we end up with TPM Obi Wan is like above Vivicar, as if TPM Obi Wan could destroy hundreds of Jedi.

If you shift Valk to DE Sidious, you don't get a very good answer either unless if you conclude that DE Sidious can oneshot like 5 RotS Sidious's or the average PT Jedi padawan can oneshot the average TOR Jedi master.

If you disagree, come up with a tier list where DE Sidious > Valkorion and try to fit the massive TOR power chains in. You can't do it. Two problems:

1. Dooku is too close to Yoda. Dooku's feats are so obviously below someone like Vitiate's, and he doesn't have the planetary stuff of someone like Revan, but you have to put Dooku really close to a guy who can drain entire planet to make it work.
   
2. It makes more sense to accept one outlier (Valkorion) than shift the entire TOR era's average Jedi to being oneshotted by the younglings of the PT era, because one involves having one outlier and another involves having a huge gap among like tens of thousands of force users, so the second is so much of a bigger leap.
   

Again, come up with a not-stupid tier list if you can

reserved

reserved

2. Ziost

Ziost is one of the most potent feats ever, and far beyond anything Sidious has done.

It's beyond RotS Sidious without question. He is so obsessed with Force storms:

“This technique can be increased into a Force Storm

[...]

It may take decades to master this art, but once I have perfected it, I will be invincible.”

--Darth Sidious, Book of the Sith

And he most talks about its destructive power:

“It must be understood that anger can funneled through the body and released near the heart at the ‘vital gate.’ The destruction can can be unleashed by this method is immense. Thousands of enemies can be annihilated in a single act of malice.”

--Darth Sidious, Book of the Sith

Thousands? Pffft. Ziost oneshotted billions, and it was a weakened spirit Vitiate (the nexus + possessions couldn't have put him back to full power...or else he'd already be at full power and wouldn't need the death field)

Even RotJ Sidious hasn't shown anything like planetary destruction. Byss was done in aid with dark side adepts and propaganda over like 20 years, and they even had to learn about force drain or something.

If Sidious could absorb planets, why wouldn't he? He couldn't.

Force storms even in DE could swallow like a few kilometers at once. It would take like days for it to do to a planet what a weakened Vitiate did to Ziost.

And Force storms aren't even on Sidious's own power - as quotes you are familiar with say, he tears open a hole in space to release energies, aka energies from hyperspace. Did Sidious create hyperspace?

"The Force Storm is truly an awe-inspiring demonstration of pure natural energy. After using the Force to open a hyperspace wormhole, tremendous shockwaves will ripple through the fabric of space.”

--Luke Skywalker, The Jedi Path

He's using the Force to open a wormhole - and then the wormhole does the damage. And it was taught to him by the Ancient Sith:

The moment the Emperor "died" at the Battle of Endor, Droga fell into an inexplicable insanity, butchering his crew and causing the Emperor's Shadow to plunge into Kaal's oceans. Even as he perished, Palpatine used the dark side knowledge the Sith Lords had granted him years earlier to rend space itself and transmigrate his essence across lightyears to Droga's body.

--Gamer #5

So no, Force storms do not compare to Ziost. Ziost is a planetary feat; Force storms swallow a few kilometers.

And Vitiate could do Ziost with a fraction of his power as a weakened spirit; Sidious only got to use Force Storms by his very strongest, at DE. Even if they're equal, that means sub-Vitiate ~ DE Sidious.

-------

That's all for now. Sorry for the sloppy editing and grammar - this is just to get the key ideas out (some of them - more will come later).

The shape isn't so great but this is still a decent post.

Nice opener (especially the first part). I'll have mine up in time.

Good post, @Valkorion.

Nice.

Interesting approach.

@The Ellimist Did you forget about this?

Debunking the scaling chains argument:

If you shift Valk to DE Sidious, you don't get a very good answer either unless if you conclude that DE Sidious can oneshot like 5 RotS Sidious's

Wait...but why is that weird? You’re fully willing to accept that Valkorion can do this to lesser opponents in your scaling chains, so why can’t Sidious?

It’s not even some sort of weird scaling chain if you want to use the intuition case - even a casual EU fan looking at DE Sidious creating massive hyperspace wormholes that can tear apart entire fleets would not really flinch at seeing him dominate a team of earlier Sidious’s.

One of the main issues with your argument here is that you haven’t placed any sort of limit on how strong Sidious grows after RotS. Given that he has intense study of all aspects of the Force over the course of more than 30 years, drains a planet of billions, and is like coming in DE with hyperspace wormholes and needing all Jedi in history to take him down, etc., there isn’t any clear limit.

So even if you could establish Valkorion > RotS Sidious, you can’t use this scaling chain logic to put him above DE Sidious.

Dooku is too close to Yoda. Dooku's feats are so obviously below someone like Vitiate's, and he doesn't have the planetary stuff of someone like Revan, but you have to put Dooku really close to a guy who can drain entire planet to make it work.

Well, the Dooku vs. Yoda scaling is odd because while Yoda seems to perform disproportionately bad against Dooku, every other line of scaling has Dooku way below Sidious:

Gillard tiers have Dooku at an 8 and Sidious at a 9, and the 8 vs. 9 gap is supposed to be far larger than the 7 vs. 8 gap, and so greater than Dooku’s advantage over Kit Fisto (7), TPM Maul (8), RotS Obi Wan (8), etc.

In the S6 vision fight (which is accurate enough to fool Yoda), Anakin stomps Dooku in seconds but then gets ragdolled by a version of Sidious that still seems weaker than Yoda, who fully expected Anakin to get ragdolled.

Sidious stomps Maul and Savage while Dooku struggles against Savage and Ventress.

Sidious by supremacy quotes scales above Knightfall Vader who scales above Zonakin who absolutely annihilates Dooku.

Given every other line of scaling favors Sidious >>>>>>> Dooku, it’s more likely that either Yoda has a beyond-peak performance in RotS, or (more likely) he doesn’t really tap into his true power against a former apprentice he’s hesitant to kill as opposed to against Sidious.

It makes more sense to accept one outlier (Valkorion) than shift the entire TOR era's average Jedi to being oneshotted by the younglings of the PT era, because one involves having one outlier and another involves having a huge gap among like tens of thousands of force users, so the second is so much of a bigger leap.

You haven’t really established your scaling chain logic down to random Jedi. You’re saying that TOR Jedi can take on armies of normal Force users more easily, but this isn’t true for all PT mediums. In OCW we see plenty of Jedi taking on massive groups of magnaguards and droidekas, both of which are arguably above knight tier.

So basically, there isn’t a clear limit to how far above Dooku RotS Sidious is just because Jedi-restraint Yoda doesn’t ragdoll him. O66 Sidious is above the version of him that overwhelms Mace with lightning, and that Mace is far beyond Mace’s baseline levels. There’s no other relativity, and no clear answer as to how many Cin Drallig’s Sidious could ragdoll.

Debunking Ziost comparison:

I mean, if you’re going to get into the finer mechanics of force storms to try to decouple it from Sidious’s raw power, why not do that with Ziost?

Given that Vitiate knows planet-draining rituals, why would he use his raw power instead of using the rituals he knows that require less raw power, when he was trying to get to that threshold level in time?

(the nexus + possessions couldn't have put him back to full power...or else he'd already be at full power and wouldn't need the death field

That’s not necessarily true. The power needed to specifically return him to physical form may be more than just “become as powerful as you once were”.

If Sidious could absorb planets, why wouldn't he? He couldn't.

Why doesn’t Vitiate do it more than Nathema and then out of desperation to Ziost?

Thousands? Pffft.

That scaling doesn’t work as it’s not an analogous comparison - for one thing, Sidious can do this with a thought.

Force storms even in DE could swallow like a few kilometers at once. It would take like days for it to do to a planet what a weakened Vitiate did to Ziost.

It lets him destroy entire fleets, or warp them across the galaxy. A single ISD’s hyperspace jump consumes more energy than a planetary civilization would in its lifetime, yet Sidious outdoes that by literally tearing a hyperspace wormhole in spacetime. Even if we accept the premise that the radius of AoE isn’t as large, in terms of overall power it’s far beyond the level of “devastating surface of a planet” (and even if it weren’t, it’s done with a mere thought while Vitiate needs vast prep for Ziost).

What’s to stop Sidious from teleporting away and using a Force storm? Or heck, just he can just use Force storm on the battlefield and shielding himself like he did to Luke to teleport him through it, or that he uses to shield the fleets of capital ships that he can transport.

And it was taught to him by the Ancient Sith

There’s zero evidence they could use it to Sidious’s extent; they almost certainly can’t, given all the situations in which they could’ve benefited from using it.

Sidious’s advantages:

Firstly, he has multiple supremacy statements, including “most powerful master of evil the galaxy had ever known”, and then scaling over Knightfall Vader who is the “most powerful enemy ever faced by the Jedi”, and also “greatest master of evil ever to use sith power”.

He can survive as a spirit without an anchor or even losing his powers, while Valkorion loses most of his power and needs an anchor.

All Jedi ever across 25,000 years waited just to gang up on Sidious - that doesn’t happen to Valkorion (we started this debate before his EoO version, and even if we use EoO, that’s just all of his own personal enemies and happens inside Satele’s head).

He’s an infinitely more competent combatant.

He is a walking dark side nexus whose presence tears apart the fabric of spacetime around him.