Revan runs the PT gauntlet

@The Ellimist: I'll respond within a few days. I'm at college now so my free-time is limited, and I rather not rush a response to so many false and baseless contentions.

@KingofBlades There’s still no reason to think that it implies combative parity (given that Vitiate oneshotted Revan...). Everyone was certain that Revan would lose to Vitiate in SoR. The duration of his resistance seems to be a combination of his willpower (which may be correlated with power, but is obviously different given that Force power isn’t necessary to have willpower), Meetra’s reserves, and his telepathic defenses being sufficient to guard against Vitiate and the dread masters. Only the latter is directly related to Force power, albeit imperfectly, but we know from plenty of examples that you don’t need to be exactly as powerful as the attacker to defend against TP, or even that close. As for influencing Vitiate’s decisions, that seems to be as much a feat of manipulation as it is one of the Force.

@KingofBlades Those are the Emperor's Wrath words asking Malgus about Revan and the Emperor.

 @The Ellimist

We don't know if a spirit getting the power of the former self is sufficient for revival. It's not just a matter of power. It could easily require a lump of extra "activation energy" to overcome the gap.  Exar Kun's spirit was more powerful than Corran Horn, but Corran Horn could do things as a physical being that Exar Kun could not. 

Again, there's no reason to think that's how it works. Darth Bane revived himself by killing a random family whose Force energies couldn't have approached his own. Healing isn't necessarily a symmetrical process where Valkorion would need the exact power of Nathema to get back to his former power.

Revan planned to funnel a planetary super nexus filled with hundreds of Force users to resurrect Vitiate, and it's unlikely that Revan would have gave Vitiate any more power than what was needed to do the job (given he then planned to defeat him in combat). And I'm not entirely following your Corran Horn and Exar Kun analogy, but there's no comparison between Darth Bane's powers being at ebb and Vitiate's essence being greatly weakened and wounded. Recall that Palpatine required extensive draining of the twenty billion-strong Byss populace to recover from the latter. Moreover, to quote from my fourth post: 

It's even stated that Vitiate wasn't “revitalized” until "after" he obliterated Ziost: “Meanwhile, an older threat still looms: the former Sith Emperor, revitalized after annihilating all life on the planet Ziost, has similarly vanished without a trace” (link). "Vitalize" means "give strength and energy to" (link), but "revitalize" means to return to a state of vitality (hence the prefix "re" in "revitalize"). Vocabulary.com stresses, "In all cases, when something is revitalized, it has been restored to a better state" and, "Since vital things are alive, strong, and flourishing, when something gets revitalized, it is returned to health or life" (link). Ergo, if you are being "revitalized", you are being "restored" or "returned" to a previous state, and that said previous state is "better" or filled with "health or life" compared to your non-revitalized state. This is true "in all cases." Note the codex is not using "revitalize" to refer to the possession of Valkorion because it emphasizes it's unknown what happened to Vitiate after the Ziost cataclysm. Thus, Vitiate was weakened when he gobbled a planet, and only after doing such was his power restored to his previous and better state that Revan rivals.

And please don't give me one of those "that's just hyperanalyzing." Why wouldn't we scrutinize everything rather than study the feat for two seconds and hand-wave dismiss it due to some unknowns? Curiously, you've never had any issues for Palpatine or Vader though. 

The fact that Vitiate can't instantly ragdoll Revan doesn't mean that Vitiate and Revan are "comparable".

That's a bad faith strawman. My argument was that Vitiate had to supercharge his telekinesis until the last possible moment across a substantial stretch of time to push back Revan, and said attack did not even do any physical damage. That's indicative of some measure of comparability, yeah. 

Consider this hypothetical: Vader and Starkiller stand one-hundred feet apart. Vader rushes Starkiller, and Starkiller charges a mega TK blast. Just as Vader reaches Starkiller, Starkiller releases the attack, but the attack doesn't hurt Vader one bit, and Vader even lands solidly back on his two feet. Then, a sourcebook later confirms that Starkiller didn't just allow Vader to get within reach of striking distance -- Starkiller needed every iota of power to blast Vader back. There's absolutely no way you would handwave that feat. We both know you've argued in support of far less to argue Vader's far better. 

By that logic, Yoda and Dooku might be "comparable".

If Yoda did what Vitiate did and Dooku did what Revan did, damn right they'd be comparable. 

This doesn't make much sense. Revan was prepared for Vitiate's telepathic attack - that was probably the single variable he was preparing most intently for - while Vitiate was utterly unprepared for Revan's own attack.

The fact Revan anticipated Vitiate might use telepathy just means he was ready for the attack to come and engage in a war of wills, not that he was circumstantially resistant to it. That's stated NOWHERE. Likewise, all the SWTOR Jedi who fought Vitiate were likewise aware of his telepathic potency yet no one told anyone about gathering your psychic energies or whatever beforehand. All Scourge said to the Hero was that, "Only you are strong enough to resist his direct influence." 

Oh, and to throw one of your lovely "coulds" back at you: Vitiate heard Revan and co. fighting for a decent period before Revan entered the throne room. Revan feared that Vitiate might begin cooking up a telepathic assault if Vitiate had prep, and indeed Vitiate had some time to prep, so it's easily plausible Vitiate had already began cooking up the attack. 

There's no reason to think that Revan's prepared defense against Vitiate's telepathy weakened his telekinesis proportionally to Vitiate's lack of preparation weakening his own defenses.

Except I never said it's directly proportional. In fact, if it was, then Revan's actually better than Vitiate. I just said that Revan clearly also had to divert much of his mind and power to fend off Vitiate's telepathy, yet Revan could still render Vitiate  "heap" on the floor with his remaining focus and energy. That's particularly impressive considering, as I said in the post you quoted, Revan's attack did far more damage to Vitiate than Vitiate's super charged, super elongated attack did to Revan.

Going by Ant's same logic of offense and defense magically scaling proportionally, we should expect Revan's prep time in gathering his own defenses to cancel Vitiate's time in gathering his lightning. 

"LMFAO what?" Vitiate started charging up his attack before Revan, and he's amplified by two super powerful dark side nexus'.

when he had external aid,

Revan: Received an insignificant "trickle" of energy from Meetra -- so insignificant he never consciously realized it.

Vitiate: Enlisted the help of six "incalculably powerful" Dread Masters in joint meditation on Dromund Kaas.

What a joke.

And when it usually takes a large gap for the attacker to telepathically overwhelm the defender.

Not necessarily, but it's fortunate that Vitiate had three centuries, amps, and powerful aid to overwhelm Revan then. 

when insane willpower is part of Revan's character, 

Revan's willpower became stereotyped as relatively insane due to the mental war feat. There's no indication he was previously disproportionately mentally strong.

The fact that everyone in SoR, including OOU sources, makes it clear that Revan would not stand a chance against the Emperor is evidence that this idea is nonsense.

No out-of-universe sources says Revan is no match to Vitiate. And every character commenting on the subject falls under one of the three categories:

A.) Explicitly profess to be speculating on Vitiate's full power,
B.) Never met Vitiate whatsoever,
C.) Only know Revan's power based off the Foundry battle.

Also, playing the Imperial side after knowing the events from the Republic side, it's obvious their commentary is deliberately slanted. For example, Nox says, "Even at his weakest, you are no match for the Emperor," despite the Hero defeating a far more powerful Vitiate than the one Nox is describing. 

Moreover, for what it's worth, the game developers described SOR as "The player is pulled into this struggle of two of the most powerful Force users, like ever, in the history of the Old Republic, if not beyond - Revan and the Emperor," months after the expansion release. Describing it as an active struggle between two supremely powerful Force users doesn't exactly reek of this "The Emperor is far more powerful than Revan" idea. 

---

I want to first focus on the basic fundamentals you missed before we get into the more complex arguments below, though note I have every intention to address the below and convince you on them. I just want to avoid super long walls of texts, so splitting this discussion up seems optimal.

We have no idea what the death wave is, or how it works. It could be a ritual; there are similar surface-busting rituals, and Vitiate loves using rituals. It could be a technique he developed over a thousand years that wouldn't scale to Revan's power.

This attempt to hyper-analyze that exchange, down to finding the dictionary definition of "heap", conveniently ignores the fact that Vitiate then proceeded to incapacitate Revan with a single attack. 

In either case, were the two combatants comparable, Vitiate would not have been able to overwhelm Revan and put him helpless on the floor with a single attack.

Willpower and Force power may be correlated, but in a case like this you cannot possibly draw a one to one conclusion that Revan battling wills with Vitiate means he's literally as powerful

 I guess that PoV character from the Death Star novel is as powerful than Vader because she resisted his TP?

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TenebrousWay wrote:@KingofBlades Those are the Emperor's Wrath words asking Malgus about Revan and the Emperor.

Well, Malgus responds saying, "It would appear so," or something along those lines.

"So it would seem."

It's worth mentioning that Charles Boyd said that Revan was a legitimate threat to Vitiate.

KingofBlades wrote:Most examples of attempting telepathic domination occur in very short time intervals. Vitiate tried and failed for 300 years to telepathically dominate Revan. Such a feat should be near impossible to do if Revan was far weaker than Vitiate. In the words of Malgus, "The Emperor had three hundred years to break this man, and he never succumbed?"

Uh, didn't he have a immortal force ghost keeping his head afloat?

@DarthAnt66 

Revan: Received an insignificant "trickle" of energy from Meetra -- so insignificant he never consciously realized it.

He didn't realise it because he was in Vitiate's head and the sorcery the Emperor implemented around his prison all but muffled his senses. He had no idea what was going on beyond what he could see from Vitiate's mind. Meetra's energy is described as revitalising him every time he tired and explicitly states it enables him to continue his mental battle with Vitiate and the Dread Masters. That "trickle" is described as a lifeline and is credited in the text as being how Revan was able to influence Vitiate. If something is described as a "lifeline he could cling to in the dark ocean of his imprisonment", it's definitely not insignificant. The text establishes that:

• Meetra's power was a "lifeline" in Revan's imprisonment.
  
• It's explicitly stated that it was because of the power she was giving him that Revan was able to influence Vitiate ("Because of her, Revan was able to do more than just fight to keep the Emperor at bay").
  
• The arcane magic and tech around Revan's cell made it impossible for him to sense anything going on outside of his cage ("She couldn’t speak with him; whatever arcane Sith sorcery the Emperor had used to bind Revan in his cell made that impossible. She doubted Revan was even aware she was there").
  
• Revan was heavily reliant on Vitiate being distracted, including when he was absent for a huge amount of time while building up the Eternal Empire ("There were brief moments—times when the Emperor was intently focused on something else—when he could subvert their relationship by planting seeds in the Emperor’s thoughts. He had to be careful, lest his enemy discover what he was doing. But he was able to push and nudge the Emperor’s own thoughts and beliefs, subtly manipulating them in ways that could have profound effects"). 
  

Vitiate: Enlisted the help of six "incalculably powerful" Dread Masters in joint meditation on Dromund Kaas.

We also know Vitiate was busy with Zakuul for a considerable amount of this time - which he confirmed was his main focus for centuries and he hadn't spoken for a long time before Revan was freed - as well as planning for his galaxy wide ritual, as well as doing a load of other things. It was essentially a fraction of Vitiate's focus plus the Dread Masters, who are pretty inconsistent as far as their TP feats go. 

What a joke.

Actually, it's a fair counter. It's not saying it's not a very impressive feat, but that it's been wanked to death without acknowledging the context surrounding it.

While I don't think my point was really addressed (aka that reviving from being a spirit doesn't necessarily take no more energy than the power of the original being), I'm cutting most of the parts about ziost vs. SWTOR Vitiate because, as I said, it's probable that SWTOR VItiate could do the same. It isn't exactly clear what the magnitude of difference between Ziost! Vitiate and SWTOR Vitiate is though, and whether Revan has parity with Ziost! Vitiate, particularly in the context of pulling off an arcane power that may be a ritual, and in either case not a mainstream technique.

(And trying to scale linearly from the size of the populace Vitiate dominated wouldn't work. As we've discussed offline, the scale of your abilities, particularly in this arena, scales faster than linearly relative to your power)

DarthAnt66 wrote:That's a bad faith strawman. My argument was that Vitiate had to supercharge his telekinesis until the last possible moment across a substantial stretch of time to push back Revan, and said attack did not even do any physical damage. That's indicative of some measure of comparability, yeah. 

Only if you think Revan moves really slowly for a Force user who can allegedly annihilate planetary civilizations (how long do you think a really urgent Revan took to cross 40 meters? Modern olympic runners can do it in under 5 seconds). It's very difficult to overpower a prepared Force user's barriers with telekinesis. It's also very, very difficult to severely injure a Force user with a single Force push - it's hard to for me to even think of an example. Maul and Oppress get up immediately after Sidious ragdolls them.

Consider this hypothetical: Vader and Starkiller stand one-hundred feet apart. Vader rushes Starkiller, and Starkiller charges a mega TK blast. Just as Vader reaches Starkiller, Starkiller releases the attack, but the attack doesn't hurt Vader one bit, and Vader even lands solidly back on his two feet. Then, a sourcebook later confirms that Starkiller didn't just allow Vader to get within reach of striking distance -- Starkiller needed every iota of power to blast Vader back. There's absolutely no way you would handwave that feat. We both know you've argued in support of far less to argue Vader's far better. 

Funnily enough, Starkiller basically does this when he supercharges lightning at a defenseless Vader for like 30 seconds and Vader isn't severely injured, but anyway.

Oh, and to throw one of your lovely "coulds" back at you: Vitiate heard Revan and co. fighting for a decent period before Revan entered the throne room. Revan feared that Vitiate might begin cooking up a telepathic assault if Vitiate had prep, and indeed Vitiate had some time to prep, so it's easily plausible Vitiate had already began cooking up the attack. 

It's "plausible", but hardly definitive given Vitiate's poor track record and the clear fact that he underestimated Revan (or else he'd have resorted to the lightning-charge at the start).

Or are you really arguing that Revan was so great, Vitiate needed to charge for multiple minutes to knock him back?

Except I never said it's directly proportional. In fact, if it was, then Revan's actually better than Vitiate. I just said that Revan clearly also had to divert much of his mind and power to fend off Vitiate's telepathy, yet Revan could still render Vitiate  "heap" on the floor with his remaining focus and energy. That's particularly impressive considering, as I said in the post you quoted, Revan's attack did far more damage to Vitiate than Vitiate's super charged, super elongated attack did to Revan.

How can you quantify the difficulty of knocking back Vitiate when he was explicitly unprepared? Revan was using some sort of special Force power, he wasn't just using telekinesis, so I wouldn't expect a passive barrier alone to be enough anyway (if Vitiate even had a passive barrier) - can you think of examples of passive barriers working against Force attacks beyond standard TK? Vitiate needed an active barrier just to stop T3's flamethrower, so I suppose we can scale {distracted} Revan below that flamethrower.

"LMFAO what?" Vitiate started charging up his attack before Revan,

How long does it take the tactical genius Revan to react to Vitiate charging his attack? So ~1-2 seconds of extra charging time is enough to completely incapacitate him?

But anyway, your proportional scaling thing is nonsense, so to be fair it doesn't work that way. But it's still not really a sign of parity when Vitiate just needs to charge for maybe a few seconds to incapacitate Revan.

and he's amplified by two super powerful dark side nexus'.

You've previously expressed serious doubts over the relevance of nexuses that aren't emphasized in fights, but anyway; this is true, though it's also true that there's a 300 year gap between novel and SWTOR Vitiate.

Revan: Received an insignificant "trickle" of energy from Meetra -- so insignificant he never consciously realized it.

@BreakofDawn addresses this neatly.

Vitiate: Enlisted the help of six "incalculably powerful" Dread Masters in joint meditation on Dromund Kaas.

Weren't the Dread Masters insignificant in power compared to Vitiate anyway? They're weaker than Revan as well; trying to mentally dominate a prepared Force user more powerful than yourself is nearly impossible.

Not necessarily,

Can you think of an example of a character outright telepathically dominating another of comparable power?

It's true that Vitiate had centuries and the Dread Masters, but he was also distracted (something that Revan explicitly noted as a weakness).

Revan's willpower became stereotyped as relatively insane due to the mental war feat. There's no indication he was previously disproportionately mentally strong.

And in SoR. But the point is that it's not completely a matter of raw power. Revan was noting that he could subtly influence Vitiate's thoughts when he was distracted, but had to be careful and strategic about it - that sounds like he's employing his manipulation skills and arguably superior intelligence rather than having a contest of "who can make a bigger death wave?". Trying to go from this to thinking that Revan could annihilate the surface of a planet seems a tad ridiculous.

No out-of-universe sources says Revan is no match to Vitiate.

They say he'd lose, but OK I guess.

Moreover, for what it's worth, the game developers described SOR as "The player is pulled into this struggle of two of the most powerful Force users, like ever, in the history of the Old Republic, if not beyond - Revan and the Emperor," months after the expansion release. Describing it as an active struggle between two supremely powerful Force users doesn't exactly reek of this "The Emperor is far more powerful than Revan" idea. 

If you want to talk about OOU intentions, the idea that Revan alone could challenge the Emperor (and maybe win with some assistance) completely negates the urgency and storyline behind SoR, which was that Revan's plan was insane and would get everyone killed. Why not wait for Revan vs. Vitiate to end, and if Vitiate wins he's going to be weakened according to you, and then the protags alone were able to beat Revan so they could just come in and beat a weakened Vitiate, amirite? Having Revan ~ SWTOR VItiate clearly wasn't the intention of the writers.

Anyway, when you say "comparable" I feel like you mean something closer to Yoda vs. Dooku (in lists with a much closer gap between Yoda and Dooku than I do). But that's not enough to scale environmental feats really. Environmental feats get exponentially greater, and one could argue that it explodes as it approaches the Plagueis/TPM Sidious tier, so you can't say that Revan can do like 70% of Ziost just because he can give Vitiate a decent fight before losing. Do you think Dooku can replicate Sidious's feats because of Yooku scaling?

@darthant Didn't a forceghost keep revan from getting mind fucked?

Just to add to the above, Vitiate didn’t drain the planet at the weakened level he was at (who even then Marr, Satele, the HoT/Wrath/Nox and light Revan believed would beat Revan). He began controlling small numbers of people, building up his control, and expanded his control beyond New Adasta once he reached a certain point. The entirety of Rise of the Emperor was about stopping him from gaining more power. Agent Kovach sums it up perfectly, actually:


“The more powerful he becomes, the more people he can control. He will keep on killing until nothing’s left.


It’s not possible to scale Revan off the Ziost feat because Vitiate became more and more powerful during the events of ROTE until he was able to do so. He couldn’t do this the moment he arrived on Ziost.

It’s not possible to scale Revan off the Ziost feat because Vitiate became more and more powerful during the events of ROTE until he was able to do so. He couldn’t do this the moment he arrived on Ziost.

The argument is that Revan's stronger than Vitiate as of the time he triggered Ziost per a multitude of reasons. Everyone knows that Vitiate couldn't do it when he got to Ziost.

I'll address your other points and The Ellimist's soon in a more comprehensive rebuttal.

@DarthAnt66 Even light Revan said he wouldn't be able to kill Vitiate and would only strengthen him by reviving him, so it's basically arguing that an implication > Revan himself.

BreakofDawn wrote:@DarthAnt66 Even light Revan said he wouldn't be able to kill Vitiate and would only strengthen him by reviving him, so it's basically arguing that an implication > Revan himself.

Quote me where I said Revan is more powerful than Vitiate or even equally powerful to Vitiate?

DarthAnt66 wrote:

BreakofDawn wrote:@DarthAnt66 Even light Revan said he wouldn't be able to kill Vitiate and would only strengthen him by reviving him, so it's basically arguing that an implication > Revan himself.

Quote me where I said Revan is more powerful than Vitiate or even equally powerful to Vitiate?

I misread what you said, my mistake.

Assuming SoR, he clears

EmperorCaedus wrote:Assuming SoR, he clears

Out of curiosity, how does he beat Sidious?

WalkingInCircles wrote:

EmperorCaedus wrote:Assuming SoR, he clears

Out of curiosity, how does he beat Sidious?

Scaling to Valkorion puts him beyond RoTS Sids, although I'd say RotJ Sids beats SoR solidly

How does he scale off Valkorion? 

actually, how does valk scale above ROTS sheev lmaoooooooo

lorenzo.r.2nd wrote:actually, how does valk scale above ROTS sheev lmaoooooooo

Feats.