Starkiller(TFU2) vs. Iron Fist(Danny Rand)

Fight to the death

Character morals apply

Force Fury is at Starkiller's disposal, as is chi usage with Iron Fist

Can Iron Fist's chi-emblazoned hands fend off against a lightsaber strike?

JXM is going to love this thread.

@JediXMan

Ha...ironically both of them have a good track record against giant ships....

Ha...ironically both of them have a good track record against giant ships....

Ha...ironically both of them have a good track record against giant ships....

@Silver2467 said:

@Dex_Starr said:

Ha...ironically both of them have a good track record against giant ships....

ROFL.

Lmao

bump

what stops starkiller from just force choking him, or crushing him?

Iron Fist's chi control seems logical.

I doubt chi embodied hands would block lightsabers. However since it is a battle to the death and from what I learned from JXM Starkiller tended to go into saber fights but he wasn't the best saber fighter at all. His force powers are strong, but IF holds the skill here and has the means to one shot him. I don't know any speed feats SK had so if it can counter Danny's skill he isn;t surviving a saber slash or stab if hit in the right spot. His force powers may give him a few wins though.

                   

I doubt chi embodied hands would block lightsabers. However since it is a battle to the death and from what I learned from JXM Starkiller tended to go into saber fights but he wasn't the best saber fighter at all. His force powers are strong, but IF holds the skill here and has the means to one shot him. I don't know any speed feats SK had so if it can counter Danny's skill he isn;t surviving a saber slash or stab if hit in the right spot. His force powers may give him a few wins though.

                   

               

@acer51: Key phrase "With his powers". The games really don't offer much feat wise tbh as far as skill goes and speed. He has a strength feat of tossing a Tied Fighter by using the force to amp his stats but that was it. If Starkiller does go into this using light sabers for a close fight without amping (which I assume he does not amp unless necessary ie throwing the fighter and if it is preference he will do so.) he isn't surviving a single shot from Danny. I will say though if he can compare to Danny's speed, Danny isn't surviving saber shots which can one shot him as well. As far as force powers go for wins, I am not using it as a majority if SK doesn't use them as a first resort.

@god_spawn: Just a small caveat: the following information is based on the FU1 novel. I haven't read FU2 yet (and most likely will not play the game) so I don't know if everything about the real Starkiller applies to the clone.

Starkiller is pretty liberal with his use of force powers, particularly Sith Lightning. He has no qualms at all about frying infantry with it, or force pushing them around, or hurling shrapnel into their midst. In one scene he is confronted with a squad of Stormtroopers, plus 6 Uggernauts (and 2 Shadow Guard) who all open fire on him; he blocks and dodges everything, then TKs a giant fan and smashes them all off the platform they're on in one sweep, so his defense is pretty good and he can still go offensive without dropping his guard enough to get killed. His lightning is also powerful enough to kill Rancors, drop AT-STs, and if the typing in a passage in the last chapter is right, even AT-ATs. His TK is also good enough to redirect TIE fighters in flight (and the aforementioned giant fan). He has force choke too (just throwing it out there; not like it's the greatest; he also has mind trick and such, but I can't imagine it working on Iron Fist).

I think his skill in the book is actually pretty good. I know XMan and Silver harp on him mercilessly, but I read the novel just within the last week and didn't really see what they were talking about. He was definitely superior to Jedi Master Rahm Kota, where he basically used Soresu (or a good imitation of it) to defend himself until Kota wore out, then switched to offense and overwhelmed him. He was far superior to Master Kazdan Paratus, crushing him easily once the junk golems were disposed of (and no, Paratus did not simply collapse in a sobbing heap after that, he was still fighting). He fought pretty much evenly with Shaak-Ti for a good while. She eventually launched a final desperate attack of 3 saber slashes, the last of which he barely blocked (with TK), but he impaled her at the same time, so roughly even but he still wound up winning. Of course, after that he is "betrayed" by Vader, and after he recovers the book makes several references to him being stronger.

So basically, at the end he's better than 3 Jedi Masters, 2 of whom were former Council Members. Of course, only 1 of them has feats elsewhere, so it's not as telling as it could be, but it's still not bad at all. And like I said, he is much better at the end of the book than the beginning.

Then there's his fight with Vader, which is the only other character he fights with enough feats elsewhere to really measure him. Starkiller is pressed hard by Vader for sure, but uses his speed and force powers to his advantage. So in pure skill probably a bit below him, but close enough that he can still defend himself. That's still pretty good, IMO.

In terms of speed I can't remember anything especially amazing , at least not like the blurring to invisibility type of speed that Maul and some others seem to have. I know in some of his fights with Proxy they seem to be zipping all over the place (plus speed was an advantage he had over Vader), so he's probably still superhuman, I'm just not sure to what extent.

drop AT-STs, and if the typing in a passage in the last chapter is right, even AT-ATs.

He was definitely superior to Jedi Master Rahm Kota, where he basically used Soresu (or a good imitation of it) to defend himself until Kota wore out, then switched to offense and overwhelmed him. He was far superior to Master Kazdan Paratus, crushing him easily once the junk golems were disposed of (and no, Paratus did not simply collapse in a sobbing heap after that, he was still fighting). He fought pretty much evenly with Shaak-Ti for a good while. She eventually launched a final desperate attack of 3 saber slashes, the last of which he barely blocked (with TK), but he impaled her at the same time, so roughly even but he still wound up winning. Of course, after that he is "betrayed" by Vader, and after he recovers the book makes several references to him being stronger.

Paratus lunged while the apprentice was momentarily distracted. The pike left a shallow cut down his left forearm before he could repulse the strange creature's attack. Part flesh and part machine, the renegade Jedi Master was proficient with the Force, and quick with it as well. Every blow the apprentice tried to make was instantly blocked by either end of the whirling pike. As fast as he lunged or retreated, the mechanical legs outpaced him. Paratus hopped around the dilapidated chamber like a deranged jumping spider.

Kazdan Paratus moaned as each junk Master fell, mourning them as though they were actually alive. When the last one went down, he was actually weeping. The apprentice reached out and caught the Jedi Aleena in a light Force grip. Paratus's artificial arms crumbled, unable to resist his power. Lifting the diminutive alien into the air, the apprentice swung his captive from side to side, smashing him into the window frames and roof until rubble rained down on them both.
He deflected the worst of it from himself and saved the damage for Paratus. Soon the aging Jedi was too weak to fight, but still the apprentice continued battering him. He remembered what had happened with Rahm Kota at the very last. Wherever that strange hallucination had come from, he would not permit a repeat.
Finally, the Jedi Master's strength was spent. The apprentice let him drop to the ground, where he was pinned by an avalanche of junk falling through the ceiling.
Clearly dying, he lay faceup and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, my Masters," he lamented. "I've tailed you." With those words, he expired.
For a moment the apprentice felt pity. But he quickly swallowed it down. Undoubtedly mad, Paratus was still a Jedi. His freedom had come to an end, along with his life.

Then her lightsaber was lit and she was spinning through the air toward him, striking downward as she fell. The apprentice simultaneously backflipped and blocked her opening blow. The force of it surprised him, and the recoil threw him backward. His hood caught on one of the sarlacc's teeth, and he tore it impatiently away before the snag could interfere with his defense. Shaak Ti's lightsaber was a jagged blue blur between them. He blocked her as best he could until he had his balance again. Then he jumped. Over her he spun and fell down two layers of teeth toward the mouth of the sarlacc. From there he jumped up again, angling away from her to avoid giving the Jedi the advantage of height, but she was there ahead of him, driving him back down with a series of blows so rapid he barely caught them all. In desperation, he summoned a bolt of Sith lightning and sent it down, into the flesh of the sarlacc. The beast roared and shook, giving him the opening he needed. Shaak Ti's right foot slipped, forcing her to flip elegantly out of reach of his blade. He leapt after her, swinging as he came.
The fight progressed around the sarlacc's center rings, blow and counterblow accompanied by the roaring of the beast. The apprentice cut off teeth and threw the fragments at his adversary's head. In return she took tighter control of the beast's distributed intelligence and sent its food-seeking tentacles flailing for him. He repulsed them and fought on.
Down they drove each other, closer and closer to the very lip of the creature's enormous mouth. The air was foul down there, heavy with digestive by-products and the stink of rotting meat. Ghastly exhalations rolled over them as the sarlacc roared on. 
The apprentice was running out of teeth to sever, so he resorted more and more frequently to Sith lightning and random slashes of his lightsaber to keep it twitching underfoot. Thick ichor leaking out of the wounds made the footing even more treacherous.

So basically, at the end he's better than 3 Jedi Masters, 2 of whom were former Council Members

Then there's his fight with Vader, which is the only other character he fights with enough feats elsewhere to really measure him. Starkiller is pressed hard by Vader for sure, but uses his speed and force powers to his advantage. So in pure skill probably a bit below him, but close enough that he can still defend himself. That's still pretty good, IMO.

In terms of speed I can't remember anything especially amazing , at least not like the blurring to invisibility type of speed that Maul and some others seem to have. I know in some of his fights with Proxy they seem to be zipping all over the place (plus speed was an advantage he had over Vader), so he's probably still superhuman, I'm just not sure to what extent.

@Silver2467 said:

@Freefa11 said:

drop AT-STs, and if the typing in a passage in the last chapter is right, even AT-ATs.

You need to provide more context on this, because it sounds better than it is. His Lightning stopped walkers because it shorted them out. This is a very common aspect in Star Wars where electricity shuts down machinery. The whole concept of ion cannons is based on that.

I would imagine that it still takes a lot more electricity to fry an AT-AT than it takes to kill someone like Iron Fist. And it would be a fairly ridiculous oversight for the Empire not to provide such massive and expensive war machines with some basic electrical insulation (there's actually an AT-ST earlier in the book that proves it is at least possible). I'm sure it's easier to break one with electricity than to blow it up with blasters, but all I said was he could drop them, not that they were melted to slag or exploded. I suppose that could be a little unclear to someone who didn't read the passage though; I did not mean to overstate it, but I still consider it impressive.

He also pushed it over telekinetically, which is a lot of weight to move, even if it wasn't resisting.

Having just reread through these sections to check, the only accurate part about them is Kota, but it seemed to me that Starkiller used Soresu because Kota drove him onto the defensive, which hardly seems to indicate an even level of skill between them. As well, Starkiller repeatedly relied on Force attacks in their duel, and he still only won by telekinetically choking Kota, hurling an object at Kota's feet to trip him, and then abusing the distraction Kota had when he experienced his vision.

And having read it again myself, I disagree with your assessment:

The duel raged all across the control center, which shook and rattled as the facility around it broke apart. The apprentice ignored
everything else-Juno's voice, the wildly fluctuating gravity, the never-ending explosions, the rising temperature of the floor beneath
him-in order to concentrate solely on this one vital battle. Kota wouldn't beat him, but could he beat Kota? He had to. He would rather
go down with the ship than break off and admit failure. Darth Vader's secret apprentice knew which fate would await him if he did.
The general was wily and strong and possessed some moves the apprentice had never seen before. But he was older and willfully
ignorant of the dark side of the Force. He attempted his charge attack two more times, obviously hoping to force a mistake or wear out
his opponent, but it was he who started to show the effects of the duel, he who took hits.Soon his cloak was a smoking rag and one of
his shoulder pads was glowing red-hot.

That seems to be all or largely saber-based; certainly the damage Kota is taking at the end sounds like the results of saber strikes. Kota begins to wear down and is losing even before Starkiller uses Force Choke on him. Kota is also already on his knees and being forced back before his vision actually begins.

I also don't see what is wrong with using Soresu. It seems to me to be a perfectly valid style. Starkiller uses defensive tactics elsewhere as well (against Proxy at one point and I think against Maris as well), so it's not like it's something he only uses as an absolute last resort. He is adaptable and well-rounded enough to employ different tactics as needed.

The parts about Paratus and Shaak Ti though are completely wrong, and I have no idea, given how recent you said you read the book, that you reached these conclusions. It was made incontestably clear that Paratus and Shaak were better duelists than he was.

I think "incontestable" is a pretty strong word here. I mean, I am contesting it, after all.

Starkiller could never manage anything against Paratus in their duel. This is the entirety of the duel. After this, Starkiller just started firing Lightning at Paratus, and then the mannequins attack him.
Paratus lunged while the apprentice was momentarily distracted. The pike left a shallow cut down his left forearm before he could repulse the strange creature's attack. Part flesh and part machine, the renegade Jedi Master was proficient with the Force, and quick with it as well. Every blow the apprentice tried to make was instantly blocked by either end of the whirling pike. As fast as he lunged or retreated, the mechanical legs outpaced him. Paratus hopped around the dilapidated chamber like a deranged jumping spider.--Taken from The Force Unleashed

True Starkiller couldn't hit him. On the other hand, the only blow Paratus lands was while Starkiller was distracted, and even then it is described as a "shallow cut." That is not a duel fought to a conclusion; neither of them were seriously injured, incapacitated, or dead from that brief clash, nor were either being strongly pushed back or forced on the defensive. I do not view this as Paratus being "incontestably" better, I view it as indeterminate, basically a stalemate. There's also this a little further down:

Still, it had taken him by surprise. The apprentice acknowledged the gambit before blowing the mannequin to pieces and reaching out
for his fallen lightsaber. The hilt arrived in his hand just in time to deflect another blow from Paratus, fully recovered from the waves
of Sith lightning he had just endured.

So Paratus launches another attack at Starkiller, again while he is distracted, and this time fails entirely to hit him. Nor does Paratus strike him while Starkiller is dealing with any of the other mannequins, although for the subsequent ones it is not explicitly clear if Kazdan is still trying or not.

As for the statement that Paratus was still a threat after the mannequins were destroyed, this is false.

Kazdan was barely even a threat before the mannequins were destroyed:

Outside his droid golem shell, however, Paratus was more vulnerable to Sith lightning. What he couldn't absorb into the junk metal
burned him and left him writhing in pain. The apprentice sent bolt after bolt hurtling into the tiny figure. It almost seemed that the
fight would be over before it had really begun.

I just said he didn't collapse in a heap and give up altogether, which I believe you have argued before.

Kazdan Paratus moaned as each junk Master fell, mourning them as though they were actually alive. When the last one went down, he was actually weeping. The apprentice reached out and caught the Jedi Aleena in a light Force grip. Paratus's artificial arms crumbled, unable to resist his power. Lifting the diminutive alien into the air, the apprentice swung his captive from side to side, smashing him into the window frames and roof until rubble rained down on them both.
He deflected the worst of it from himself and saved the damage for Paratus. Soon the aging Jedi was too weak to fight, but still the apprentice continued battering him. He remembered what had happened with Rahm Kota at the very last. Wherever that strange hallucination had come from, he would not permit a repeat.
Finally, the Jedi Master's strength was spent. The apprentice let him drop to the ground, where he was pinned by an avalanche of junk falling through the ceiling.
Clearly dying, he lay faceup and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, my Masters," he lamented. "I've tailed you." With those words, he expired.
For a moment the apprentice felt pity. But he quickly swallowed it down. Undoubtedly mad, Paratus was still a Jedi. His freedom had come to an end, along with his life.

While Kazdan is helpless in the face of Starkiller's Force powers, nowhere does it say he simply gave up, and the bolded parts state his strength didn't give out until after Starkiller had bashed him around for a bit, suggesting at least some attempt to resist, just not enough to matter. I don't really see what the point would be of saying when his strength gave out if he had already stopped making any attempts at all to defend himself.

And as for Shaak Ti, she was his obvious superior. How this can even be said to be even is beyond me. He had to employ desperate tactics with the Force to avoid her and exploit the environment just to keep up.

Your absolute certitude in your position is a little beyond me. First, we can change the emphases a little to point out a few things:

Then her lightsaber was lit and she was spinning through the air toward him, striking downward as she fell. The apprentice simultaneously backflipped and blocked her opening blow. The force of it surprised him, and the recoil threw him backward. His hood caught on one of the sarlacc's teeth, and he tore it impatiently away before the snag could interfere with his defense. Shaak Ti's lightsaber was a jagged blue blur between them. He blocked her as best he could until he had his balance again. Then he jumped. Over her he spun and fell down two layers of teeth toward the mouth of the sarlacc. From there he jumped up again, angling away from her to avoid giving the Jedi the advantage of height, but she was there ahead of him, driving him back down with a series of blows so rapid he barely caught them all. In desperation, he summoned a bolt of Sith lightning and sent it down, into the flesh of the sarlacc. The beast roared and shook, giving him the opening he needed. Shaak Ti's right foot slipped, forcing her to flip elegantly out of reach of his blade. He leapt after her, swinging as he came.
The fight progressed around the sarlacc's center rings, blow and counterblow accompanied by the roaring of the beast. The apprentice cut off teeth and threw the fragments at his adversary's head. In return she took tighter control of the beast's distributed intelligence and sent its food-seeking tentacles flailing for him. He repulsed them and fought on.
Down they drove each other, closer and closer to the very lip of the creature's enormous mouth. The air was foul down there, heavy with digestive by-products and the stink of rotting meat. Ghastly exhalations rolled over them as the sarlacc roared on.
The apprentice was running out of teeth to sever, so he resorted more and more frequently to Sith lightning and random slashes of his lightsaber to keep it twitching underfoot. Thick ichor leaking out of the wounds made the footing even more treacherous.

The sarlacc is huge, so having a fight progress around its rings suggests that this fight is taking some time, so obviously neither can have that big an advantage, and that they are fighting blow for blow just makes this clearer. It also says they are driving each other down, again suggesting a level of equality to their battle. Shaak Ti is employing the force as well, not just Starkiller.

There's also a little more

"You can't keep this up forever," he taunted Shaak Ti as they dueled.
"Neither can you," she said. "You are wasting your strength too quickly."

This I'm mostly printing just to indicate that they are, in fact, still dueling. You're acting almost like they stopped completely as soon as force powers came into it.

Here she admits to his strength

"Your strength is prodigious," she admitted,

Here he comes close enough to damage her outfit a little. Note that she hasn't actually done any better than that against him this whole time. She also seems to admit the fight could go either way:

He slashed at her own feet as they spun by overhead and sent one of her ribbons twirling down into the sarlacc's gaping mouth. "Spare
me the philosophy lesson, Jedi," he snarled. "I'm only here for your blood."
"And you may yet have it, or I yours."

And then the fight concludes:

On her last three words, she struck three blows that each partially found their mark. The first burned a sizzling line down the
apprentice's left shoulder. The second scored diagonally across his chest. The third would have skewered his right eye had he not held
her back at the last minute with a desperate telekinetic block that stopped her lightsaber barely a millimeter from his skin. He could
feel his eyelashes and eyebrows burning. The right side of his sight was entirely blue.
She gasped and staggered backward. Her lightsaber and her gaze dropped. A full half meter of red blade emerged from her stomach,
then the rest came free with a hiss.

The final, desperate attack is launched by her. And she fails. Two light wounds and a deflection, while his blow lands cleanly, killing her. He won. Even if you want to discount the final block due to him accomplishing it telekinetically (though that feels nitpicky to me), they would have just wound up killing each other, i.e. stalemate. And just in case we are going to be nitpicky, skewering an eyeball doesn't even necessarily mean death, just the loss of the eye. So depending on just how much thrust she had on that last strike, he still might not have actually died, just been disfigured.

So out of their whole fight, she has a slight advantage at the beginning, which she loses, then has another slight advantage shortly afterwards, which she loses again, and then they go at it for a good while until she launches her last volley and he kills her. Getting the advantage twice is good for her, but she also lost it both times, which should not have happened with a much weaker opponent, and in the end he did beat her.

So, sorry, but despite everything you posted, I stand by my reading that the book does not make him ever remotely as pathetic against his opponents as you and XMan have argued. He was flat out beating Kota, he held up well against Shaak Ti for a good while and did eventually defeat her, even if it was close (never said he was better than her, just roughly even), and the "duel" part of the fight with Kazdan was too brief to be especially meaningful, and neither character actually gained a great advantage over the other.

Shaak Ti was the only Council member Starkiller fought, and he was losing to her. Neither Paratus nor Kota were ever members of the Council, if that was what you meant (not sure where you gained that impression in the first place).

Yes, my mistake. It was an impression I somehow got from the database on the Rogue Shadow my first playthrough of the game, and somehow I never realized the mistake until I checked just now. It actually says he was only a Jedi Knight and General in the Clone Wars. It might have been his obsession with the Council Members that somehow gave me the impression he had been one. It also points out that with his harness and saber-pike, he had enough skill, speed, and agility to "destroy legions of Confederacy droids alone." I know that's not especially impressive as far as high ranking Jedi Masters and Council Members go, but it's not bad either, and is pretty much the only indication of his prowess outside of his fight with Starkiller. I figured it was at least worth mentioning.

He was able to fight with Vader because he had practiced with him for years and knew his style of combat. As such, this is not an objective showing of skill that would be applicable in a duel against a character he has no familiarity with.

Well, for one that should cut both ways, with Vader having trained with him as much as he trained with Vader. For another, I think the book makes it about as clear as possible that this is actually not the case, and neither has a strong advantage due to their previous relationship.

The apprentice knew exactly what to expect. They had dueled many times before. He had learned how to fight at the hands of the man
in the black suit-the man whose face had been forever hidden from him. He knew the intimacies of his refined version of Djem So, a
fighting style that incorporated elements of Ataru, Soresu, and Makashi. He had fended off many wild, slashing attacks that would
have overwhelmed even an extraordinary Jedi Knight. He had borne the brunt of many psychological battles.
He thought he was ready-and so the sheer severity of the opening blow took him by surprise.

This is basically Starkiller thinking to himself what you were saying above, that he knows Vader's style and had practiced for years, so he should have an advantage. The part in bold makes it clear that this assumption was dead wrong. Then a little further down Williams expands on this a bit more:

The apprentice understood that, until this moment, they had never truly fought as equals. His Master had either held back, or he
himself had capitulated. Now, for the first time, they would see each other's true potential.

Like I said, it seems pretty clear to me that the author is actually going out of his way to show this is a fair, legitimate battle.

And ultimately, the battle with Vader is what counts the most, because Starkiller grows significantly in strength and ability throughout the book. The Starkiller who fought Kota was puny compared to the one that fought Vader. Even the one that fought Shaak Ti shouldn't be much of a match for what he eventually became (not unless Shaak Ti herself is comparable to Vader).

The FU novel very rarely described speed, and when it did, it was always a brief description rather than something elaborate. That I remember, Starkiller had very few speed feats in it, but there could be something I forgot about. As a whole, we can assume he is around the same speed level of the characters he fought.

There is a reference to him having inhuman agility at the beginning, but that's about it, and is kind of vague:

The men leapt and tumbled with inhuman agility. When they gestured, metalwalls buckled and engine parts flew like missiles.

That's in chapter 2, while Juno is observing his first battle with Proxy. There's a slightly better reference in Chapter 16

Starkiller opened his eyes but didn't move until PROXY had activated a bright green lightsaber and raised it vertically in a balanced, two-handed pose on the right side of his body. Then Starkiller was up and defending himself so quickly that Juno had hardly seen him move.

And another brief one in Chapter 21

He spun, lightsaber back in his hand and lit in less time than it took to think about it.

Otherwise, he has better combat speed than Vader (it is mentioned a couple of times that speed is his advantage in their fight), and defensively he was capable of deflecting enough blaster fire to "encase" him at one point in Chapter 19

A blistering barrage of energy fire encased him. He began directing some of it back at the approaching AT-STs, leaving black scorch marks on their forward armor.

And also deflected a barrage of enemy fire by spinning his lightsaber like a propeller, and could even close his eyes for a moment while doing it (again in Chapter 19; and while 1 second may sound short, the Walkers are only about 33 ft away, which means those blaster bolts are probably covering the distance in 1/20th of a second or less, and he's being fired upon from 3 directions)

When the two AT-STs were within ten meters of him, forming an equilateral triangle with the stormtrooper cannon emplacement, he
stopped. His lightsaber spun like a propeller, moving without his conscious thought. The Force streamed through him like a lightning
bolt, fueling his instincts and filling him with strength. For a full second he closed his eyes and let his arms move in perfect synchrony
with the energy bolts. He wasn't even part of the equation anymore. He was a spectator, a privileged observer in a deadly but beautiful
ballet.

I'm still not sure just how fast IF can throw punches out, but it seems like trying might be a good way to lose his hands.

I would imagine that it still takes a lot more electricity to fry an AT-AT than it takes to kill someone like Iron Fist. And it would be a fairly ridiculous oversight for the Empire not to provide such massive and expensive war machines with some basic electrical insulation (there's actually an AT-ST earlier in the book that proves it is at least possible). I'm sure it's easier to break one with electricity than to blow it up with blasters, but all I said was he could drop them, not that they were melted to slag or exploded. I suppose that could be a little unclear to someone who didn't read the passage though; I did not mean to overstate it, but I still consider it impressive.

He also pushed it over telekinetically, which is a lot of weight to move, even if it wasn't resisting.

That seems to be all or largely saber-based; certainly the damage Kota is taking at the end sounds like the results of saber strikes. Kota begins to wear down and is losing even before Starkiller uses Force Choke on him. Kota is also already on his knees and being forced back before his vision actually begins.

I also don't see what is wrong with using Soresu. It seems to me to be a perfectly valid style. Starkiller uses defensive tactics elsewhere as well (against Proxy at one point and I think against Maris as well), so it's not like it's something he only uses as an absolute last resort. He is adaptable and well-rounded enough to employ different tactics as needed.

True Starkiller couldn't hit him. On the other hand, the only blow Paratus lands was while Starkiller was distracted, and even then it is described as a "shallow cut." That is not a duel fought to a conclusion; neither of them were seriously injured, incapacitated, or dead from that brief clash, nor were either being strongly pushed back or forced on the defensive. I do not view this as Paratus being "incontestably" better, I view it as indeterminate, basically a stalemate. There's also this a little further down:

There's also this a little further down:

Still, it had taken him by surprise. The apprentice acknowledged the gambit before blowing the mannequin to pieces and reaching out
for his fallen lightsaber. The hilt arrived in his hand just in time to deflect another blow from Paratus, fully recovered from the waves
of Sith lightning he had just endured.

So Paratus launches another attack at Starkiller, again while he is distracted, and this time fails entirely to hit him. Nor does Paratus strike him while Starkiller is dealing with any of the other mannequins, although for the subsequent ones it is not explicitly clear if Kazdan is still trying or not.

Kazdan was barely even a threat before the mannequins were destroyed:

Outside his droid golem shell, however, Paratus was more vulnerable to Sith lightning. What he couldn't absorb into the junk metal
burned him and left him writhing in pain. The apprentice sent bolt after bolt hurtling into the tiny figure. It almost seemed that the
fight would be over before it had really begun.

I just said he didn't collapse in a heap and give up altogether, which I believe you have argued before.

I just said he didn't collapse in a heap and give up altogether, which I believe you have argued before.

Kazdan Paratus moaned as each junk Master fell, mourning them as though they were actually alive. When the last one went down, he was actually weeping. The apprentice reached out and caught the Jedi Aleena in a light Force grip. Paratus's artificial arms crumbled, unable to resist his power. Lifting the diminutive alien into the air, the apprentice swung his captive from side to side, smashing him into the window frames and roof until rubble rained down on them both.
He deflected the worst of it from himself and saved the damage for Paratus. Soon the aging Jedi was too weak to fight, but still the apprentice continued battering him. He remembered what had happened with Rahm Kota at the very last. Wherever that strange hallucination had come from, he would not permit a repeat.
Finally, the Jedi Master's strength was spent. The apprentice let him drop to the ground, where he was pinned by an avalanche of junk falling through the ceiling.
Clearly dying, he lay faceup and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, my Masters," he lamented. "I've tailed you." With those words, he expired.
For a moment the apprentice felt pity. But he quickly swallowed it down. Undoubtedly mad, Paratus was still a Jedi. His freedom had come to an end, along with his life.

While Kazdan is helpless in the face of Starkiller's Force powers, nowhere does it say he simply gave up, and the bolded parts state his strength didn't give out until after Starkiller had bashed him around for a bit, suggesting at least some attempt to resist, just not enough to matter. I don't really see what the point would be of saying when his strength gave out if he had already stopped making any attempts at all to defend himself.

The sarlacc is huge, so having a fight progress around its rings suggests that this fight is taking some time, so obviously neither can have that big an advantage, and that they are fighting blow for blow just makes this clearer. It also says they are driving each other down, again suggesting a level of equality to their battle. Shaak Ti is employing the force as well, not just Starkiller.

This I'm mostly printing just to indicate that they are, in fact, still dueling. You're acting almost like they stopped completely as soon as force powers came into it.

Here she admits to his strength

"Your strength is prodigious," she admitted,

Here he comes close enough to damage her outfit a little. Note that she hasn't actually done any better than that against him this whole time. She also seems to admit the fight could go either way:

He slashed at her own feet as they spun by overhead and sent one of her ribbons twirling down into the sarlacc's gaping mouth. "Spare
me the philosophy lesson, Jedi," he snarled. "I'm only here for your blood."
"And you may yet have it, or I yours."

And then the fight concludes:

On her last three words, she struck three blows that each partially found their mark. The first burned a sizzling line down the
apprentice's left shoulder. The second scored diagonally across his chest. The third would have skewered his right eye had he not held
her back at the last minute with a desperate telekinetic block that stopped her lightsaber barely a millimeter from his skin. He could
feel his eyelashes and eyebrows burning. The right side of his sight was entirely blue.
She gasped and staggered backward. Her lightsaber and her gaze dropped. A full half meter of red blade emerged from her stomach,
then the rest came free with a hiss.

The final, desperate attack is launched by her. And she fails. Two light wounds and a deflection, while his blow lands cleanly, killing her. He won. Even if you want to discount the final block due to him accomplishing it telekinetically (though that feels nitpicky to me), they would have just wound up killing each other, i.e. stalemate. And just in case we are going to be nitpicky, skewering an eyeball doesn't even necessarily mean death, just the loss of the eye. So depending on just how much thrust she had on that last strike, he still might not have actually died, just been disfigured.

So out of their whole fight, she has a slight advantage at the beginning, which she loses, then has another slight advantage shortly afterwards, which she loses again, and then they go at it for a good while until she launches her last volley and he kills her. Getting the advantage twice is good for her, but she also lost it both times, which should not have happened with a much weaker opponent, and in the end he did beat her.

So, sorry, but despite everything you posted, I stand by my reading that the book does not make him ever remotely as pathetic against his opponents as you and XMan have argued. He was flat out beating Kota, he held up well against Shaak Ti for a good while and did eventually defeat her, even if it was close (never said he was better than her, just roughly even), and the "duel" part of the fight with Kazdan was too brief to be especially meaningful, and neither character actually gained a great advantage over the other.

Well, for one that should cut both ways, with Vader having trained with him as much as he trained with Vader. For another, I think the book makes it about as clear as possible that this is actually not the case, and neither has a strong advantage due to their previous relationship.

The apprentice knew exactly what to expect. They had dueled many times before. He had learned how to fight at the hands of the man
in the black suit-the man whose face had been forever hidden from him. He knew the intimacies of his refined version of Djem So, a
fighting style that incorporated elements of Ataru, Soresu, and Makashi. He had fended off many wild, slashing attacks that would
have overwhelmed even an extraordinary Jedi Knight. He had borne the brunt of many psychological battles.
He thought he was ready-and so the sheer severity of the opening blow took him by surprise.

This is basically Starkiller thinking to himself what you were saying above, that he knows Vader's style and had practiced for years, so he should have an advantage. The part in bold makes it clear that this assumption was dead wrong. Then a little further down Williams expands on this a bit more:

The apprentice understood that, until this moment, they had never truly fought as equals. His Master had either held back, or he
himself had capitulated. Now, for the first time, they would see each other's true potential.

Like I said, it seems pretty clear to me that the author is actually going out of his way to show this is a fair, legitimate battle.

And ultimately, the battle with Vader is what counts the most, because Starkiller grows significantly in strength and ability throughout the book. The Starkiller who fought Kota was puny compared to the one that fought Vader. Even the one that fought Shaak Ti shouldn't be much of a match for what he eventually became (not unless Shaak Ti herself is comparable to Vader).