And GG typically do not use a direct form, but rather just use a mix of all the forms. Not to mention Anakin also lacking physical feats compared to GG, but yet still managed to overpower Dooku.
Grievous is highly competent with every form. If it were as simple as utilising Djem So to overpower Dooku, then he would.
Anakin isn't lacking for physical feats at all. The only time he overpowers Dooku is in the RotS novel, where he's literally stated to be stronger than Yoda.
You certainly don't want to go hard down the feats route since I can always point out that Qel-Droma's skill feats are pitiful in comparison to the Count's. I've already said that I think it will be a decent fight in spite of that.
Let me first post the feat here. It is quite clear from the underlined part that Dooku is not massively superior duelist than GG without use of the force.
Maybe you should've underlined the preceding phrase "there had been moments when", which makes it clear that Dooku is not hard-pressed in the majority of scenarios. The one spar we see on-screen attests to that.
The predecessors dominate the population, they die, and their descendents come back and start the process all over again, it is quite clear. Doing so in the same manner and basing of their work is completely different. And nothing suggests that he did so with a ritual
There's nothing clear about that, since that isn't how nexuses work. Freedon Nadd's power and influence was a constant and the repulsion of his spirit was responsible for clearing Onderon of the dark side. People like Ommin were so heavily dependent on this that their feats inseparable from it.
During the height of the Great Sith War, Thule served as a base of operations for the Sith Warriors, and much of the planet's crust became imbued with the residue of the dark side of the Force.
This is again, vague, off-panel (we have no idea as to the duration and circumstances of it) and clearly the product of collective Sith influence - it literally mentions the planet being the base of operations for Sith Warriors in the plural.
Fair enough. And again, I highly doubt the amped state is included in the AOTC novelization, especially considering the sources for AOTC Dooku > all previous incarnation actually came out before the release of the cruiser feat iirc.
It's not from the AotC novel, it's from Legacy of the Jedi.
Continuity doesn't work that way. Quotes apply until they're retconned, and are not retconned by the mere publication of newer sources.
And there is also the cinnegar TP feat:
Are you just ripping things from AP's respect thread? lol
I don't think this quote exists. I'm looking through Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lord of the Sith and it's not there. I feel obliged to point out that this person has had a history of fabricating quotes and their citation of the Omnibus seems almost like a deliberate maneuver to make it difficult to track down.
All of this aside, Kun and Qel-Droma aren't the same character. We know Kun is more powerful than Qel-Droma and the latter doesn't have any feats of this scale.
ROTS Yoda is vastly above Dooku. Yoda's comparative to Dooku is only in AOTC. Even as of Vjun, Yoda is decidedly above an amped Dooku.
Yoda is equal to Dooku in AotC, but they both grow from there. Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars series span the period from AotC to RotS and his commentary indicates explicitly that Tyranus is almost as powerful as Yoda. There's even a fight in a comic where Dooku defeats Yoda.
On Vjun, Dooku actually contends very well, and they're both amped since the Vjun nexus is written oddly in the novel. Even if Yoda clearly exceeds Dooku by RotS, Dooku's own growth is noticeable and he's repeatedly affirmed in every comparison and fight they have since to still be comparable.
We know that RotS Dooku is at least decidedly more powerful than AotC Yoda. He doesn't need to be on par with RotS Yoda/Sidious. Consider that Sidious is more powerful than every Sith Lord before him as of TPM — including Kun, who in turn is more powerful than Qel-Droma — a full 13 years prior to RotS.
AotC Yoda only has a 3-year growth until he matches RotS Sidious. Even if we estimate that Tyranus only managed half that growth, that still looks pretty favourable compared to Kun and especially Qel-Droma. Unless for some reason, you think that Yoda grew vastly more in 1.5 years than Sidious did in 13 — despite the latter being younger and having almost ten times the period of growth.
And Yoda also casually choked Dooku holographically. So he doesn't have proximity of any kind against Sidious
You mean Sidious? He clearly catches Tyranus off-guard and the latter doesn't resist in deference to his master. Sidious is explicitly stated to have been watching Tyranus to safeguard himself.
Anakin is stated to preform perfectly in the Mustafar duel until the hill by Gillard and several other sources. A single mistake is made in that fight by him.
And Obi-Wan didn't (and couldn't) win until he did.
Kenobi matched a full blown 9 fighting as his peak. There's no way around it.
There's plenty of ways around it. Both Gillard and a number of other sources question Anakin's mental state in that fight, and the gap between yourself and an opponent shrinks drastically when you know everything they can do (again, supported by Gillard, the RotS novel and junior novel, etc).
Likewise Savage Maul don't make mistakes either in their engagement.
The entire encounter is riddled with mistakes. They get taken by surprise by Obi-Wan's attack and then maneuver clumsily within the cramped space. Savage exposes his knee over and over again.
Both of these fights involve factors that wouldn't apply here.
And the physical feats I already posted for Ulic such as barely being hold down by Qrrrl Toq and 2 others while Qrrrl Toq can hold a massive Beskar tank with one hand is enough to do so
Not really beyond someone like Grievous.
Wrong, the only time when they are shown sparring GG is making Dooku having severe trouble and him barely getting and advantage
I have no idea what you're talking about. The one time they spar on-screen is in OCW, where Dooku microanalyses all the flaws in his technique and verbally reprimands him while controlling the fight the entire time.
Dooku having "severe trouble" is in his fights against Yoda where he's out of breath. Here he's lecturing Grievous throughout the duel and can see his every flaw. He wasn't "barely getting an advantage", he could've ended the fight anytime he wanted.
LoE confirms that Dooku is only troubled in a minority of their fights.
The only "ritual" part of the feat regarding Kun is he is amped, and in that case so is Dooku's feats of throwing cruisers. And nothing suggests a ritual for King Ommin.
Everything suggests that Ommin's showing is ritualistic in nature. His entire repertoire is driven by ritualistic sorcery, and he built off the work of centuries of predecessors.
King Ommin rose to power in the same manner as his ancestors of the last three centuries: by dominating the populace of Onderon with the dark side.
Source: Tales of the Jedi Companion
He never displays planetary telepathic domination off-hand. The vast, vast majority of ancient alchemy and sorcery-related feats are circumstantial and don't pertain to direct power scaling in a fight.
I never said anything about Kun's showing being ritualistic. Dooku being amped is irrelevant as we know Dooku on Geonosis alone to be more powerful than the iteration on Korriban, to say nothing of later versions who were even more powerful.
Besides, Kun himself managed to corrupt the planet of Thule, so it doesn't matter.
Source? Planetary corruption feats are almost always circumstantial as well.
Such as?
We know Dooku remains comparably powerful to somebody like Yoda, whose proximity to Sidious puts him decidedly above Ulic.
@darthor: Djem So isn't an inherent advantage in of itself, only if you already carry the greater physicals to make it work.
I don't see any reason to believe that Ulic has vastly greater physicals. He doesn't have any feats beyond someone like Grievous, who knows Djem So and whom Dooku routinely outspars with ease.
Ommin's domination is ritualistic in nature and Dooku threw around 215 metre ships while pre-prime as well. You need a significant Force disparity for it to make a difference and this isn't it.
Dooku also scales relatively closely to characters who are considerably more powerful than Ulic.
It's pretty hard to imagine Luke beating them both, but there was the one time he was winning against a weakened Abeloth and a party of Lost Tribe Sith simultaneously.
@darthor: Contests between comparable characters largely come down to the blade, and the Count simply enjoys the vastly better feats, accolades and scaling in that regard. I'm willing to bet that it'd be closer than the feats and accolades suggest, but I can't see any feasible way for Ulic to win.
He isn't powerful enough in the Force for that to change things, either. I actually doubt he's as powerful as Dooku in the first place.
Obi-Wan punching above his weight class still depends on his opponents being unstable and making mistakes (Savage and Maul, Anakin, etc.) That's unlikely to happen here.
Mace has a habit of comparatively underperforming, but mostly because the narrative calls for it. He has the consistency of accolades to put him definitively above Obi-Wan, and Plo is outclassed worse than TPM Obi-Wan against Maul.
I concede my argument on the Mace front. It seemed to have lasted around 10 seconds, which isn't nearly enough for Maul to evince any sign of superiority to Dooku.
Given Dooku being 50 years older than Maul, its only logical for Mace to assume Dooku to be the master and Maul to be the apprentice.
Age is only a number in Star Wars, which goes both ways. If Maul was noticeably more powerful than the Count, Mace wouldn't hesitate to reverse his presumption.
As we both know, Dooku had two decades on his own master, Sidious. If Mace sensed both of their Force presences, he wouldn't hesitate to doubt Tyranus' apprenticeship.
Maul fighting the random Jedi was in S5, not S4. Maul's and Obi Wan's hinderances are evened out in S4, where Maul beat Obi Wan. In S5, Maul was driving back Obi Wan, showing superiority. Yet only after Obi Wan's "amp," was he able to tag Maul, again indicating he was amped.
Correction noted.
Obi-Wan's fighting style naturally lends itself to being driven back, even against opponents who are only even with him (Mustafar Vader) or opponents who are inferior (Ventress, Grievous, etc.)
Savage was "astounded," with Maul's power growth, confirming he grew vastly. Meanwhile nothing indicates Obi Wan grew to the same extent.
Well, Obi-Wan kept moderate pace with Anakin, who we know grew vastly in the final months of the Clone Wars alone. You could also arguably point to the drastic difference in his performance against Tyranus on Oba Diah and the Invisible Hand as indications of a significant growth.
Was referencing dark-sider's. And since rage amps make dark-sider's stronger I:E Savage in S3, by default they would increase the user's force barrier.
I don't think it's default at all, since rage is virtually always related to users lashing out.
Savage in S3 was enraged to the point of being able to TK both Ventress and Tyranus, yet Ventress could still send him flying with TK. However, I'm more than happy to move on from this point, for reasons you'll see below.
No source states that dark-sider's can't tap into the same level of anger under normal circumstances as they can under extreme circumstances yet its widely accepted that its the case. There's no reason for why focus amps won't affect lightsider's the same way.
I don't disagree, but I don't think this relates to my point.
However, if we're talking about rage amps under extreme circumstances, we can point to Maul's final TKing of Obi-Wan on Florrum being such an instance:
-- The Clone Wars: Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy
Given that Maul literally lost control of his emotions and was experiencing a surge of animal rage, he was clearly under the influence of such a rage amp when he sent Obi-Wan flying.
As for Gillard, his words are famously unreliable and contradictory, thus hold little to no weight. For instance, he claims AOTC Anakin stomps TPM Maul despite having TPM Maul at tier 8 and AOTC Anakin at tier 7, even at tier 5 in some interviews.
While I agree with you regarding his general reliability, Gillard has said this on more than one occasion, making it one of the few remarks he's given consistently.
Technically, Gillard never explicitly identifies Anakin as a level 5 in AotC, so he could easily just be saying that Anakin was going to some higher levels (he identifies Anakin as the equivalent of a 10 in one quote).
In either case, he qualifies the levels by saying that they are indicative of how much you've learned and not how well you fight. That suggests that you can win despite not being as well-learned as an opponent. Anakin would probably be the prime candidate for that, so it isn't necessarily a contradiction.
It's noted that Dooku knowing Obi Wan's style was the reason for him managing to catch Obi Wan off guard and rag doll him:
This doesn't say that Dooku's ragdolling was conditional on his familiarity with Obi-Wan's style, but asserts two facts: that Dooku benefitted from knowing Obi-Wan's style, and that he managed to better Obi-Wan.
Unfortunately, it doesn't help ascertain the nature of the ragdoll much since it would be true that Dooku was familiar with Obi-Wan's style regardless of whether he needed it to overcome Kenobi.
I'm also not sure how much this quote holds up in a Legends context since Obi-Wan's style changes from AotC to RotS. The novel, which is the only source dealing with their styles at all, has Dooku being surprised by Obi-Wan's transition to Soresu and no mention of an equivalent familiarity of it to Ataru. The comic does have Dooku predicting Obi-Wan's moves easily and knocking him out, but that was with a kick.
Since Maul didn't share the same advantage, they aren't comparable. And Dooku not having to bypass Obi Wan's force barrier means he has far more power to rag doll Obi Wan to the point of unconsciousness. Breaking out of a force grip is much harder than being powerful enough to not be rag dolled. I:E, Maul keeping Sidious pinned, despite the latter obviously being more powerful. Obi Wan being weaker than Dooku would only make it harder for him.
That's if we don't take Sidious as simply permitting Maul's pinning for enjoyment, since it runs counter to everything else we know about them and that particular fight.
While you're right about the relative difficulties of breaking out of a grip, there's no real difference that they have overpowered each other's defences. It's just holding a body in the air and then throwing it. There's no need to attempt to conjure so many circumstances just to try and circumvent an extremely clear and direct comparison.
Also, Obi Wan had a platform knocked on him which would obviously further injure him which would increase the duration for him being unconscious. Now yes, while Obi Wan was unconscious after hitting the wall, since Maul too sent Obi Wan into unconscious on Florrum, there is no reason for Maul to not be able to do the same.
I'm not comparing the duration of unconsciousness, I'm contesting that Obi-Wan was really unconscious on Florrum at all. He was dazed, not knocked out cold.
Note again that Maul was also enraged while performing this feat, while Tyranus was trying to remove Anakin from the equation at the same time.
Especially considering Maul, unlike Dooku had to power through Obi Wan's force barrier as well.
It isn't clear that this is the case at all, since Maul has only ever Choked Obi-Wan mid-attack, mid-speech or while the latter was injured.
Since Maul's chokes occur in visual media, we don't get statements regarding whether Obi-Wan's defences lapsed — the one textual representation of their fight (Shadow Conspiracy) completely omits Maul choking Obi-Wan at all. However, if the standard for Obi-Wan getting caught off-guard is as low as choking him after he attacks, then choking him mid-attack or mid-sentence is almost certainly Maul catching him off-guard as well.
It's pretty understandable that characters of similar standing (Dooku or Maul and Obi-Wan) rely on exploting lapses in an opponent's Force defences as opposed to being able to simply overpower them at will.
All of this aside, you seem to have forgotten that you've already conceded that the junior novel's depiction is at odds with the film, at which point Dooku's feat isn't conditional on Obi-Wan being caught off-guard.
Gillard merely stated that Dooku was more skilled than the TPM duelists, which I don't disagree with. Though skill isn't that relevant here since duelists of their calibre rarely if ever mess up their technique. And this is referencing TPM Maul who is demonstrably weaker than SoD Maul.
No, he calls them better "swordsmen", which is all things considered. After all, his levels are cited as overall ratings and not merely skill-based ones.
And nowhere has Gillard stated the gap was huge. Him saying that the gaps between the tiers as a whole were massive in no way means Dooku > Maul.
In the same quote where he calls them both 8s, he qualifies it by saying that the difference within the numbers (not just between) is huge. Given that we know who he has on top, we can deduce who Gillard thinks the gap is in favour of.
As for Filoni, he has honestly butchered Maul far more so than Dooku.
I think they've both been butchered, both as characters and in terms of showings.
Were they?
Given that he never responded to me despite making the promise to do so, yes. If you think otherwise, you're welcome to take up the discussion in that thread.
Except Obi Wan saying he had never met someone of Dooku's power is in direct reference to Dooku overpowering him more so, since that's where he got the view of Dooku's combative level which again, was due to the skewed circumstances against Maul. "He had never met such a power in battle before," can easily mean him never being dominated to the same extent more, not necessarily force power.
No, it's not. They're two separate sentences. He had never encountered an opponent of Dooku's power before, and he had never been so completely overpowered.
Literally does. If Obi Wan is fighting with someone else or is amped then he wouldn't have a reliable view of how much Maul would dominate him under normal circumstances which is his reasoning for Dooku > Maul. If Dooku, unlike Maul has a form advantage against Obi Wan alone, then he would overpower him more than Maul.
Knowledge advantages have nothing to do with overpowering somebody.
You're reaching. You can perfectly assess how skilled or powerful somebody under a range of circumstances, particularly since Obi-Wan's preceding sentence was a statement on Dooku's power generally and not just how the degree of domination.
Dooku had already attacked Yoda at that point, so no, the fight had already started and Yoda didn't want to hurt Dooku at the beginning of it. Nothing indicates he changed his mind the next second.
He attacked, but Yoda evaded and didn't strike back. The fight proper had not begun yet, as I said. He was asking Dooku to stop attacking one last time, before it became a true fight where he knew he'd have to resort to killing Tyranus if necessary.
That's certainly a more plausible and supported interpretation than your idea that Yoda held back for half the duel and then randomly decided not to. Why did he change his mind, again?
It's entirely possible for Yoda to have still wanted to save Dooku during that instance, especially given their previous conversation during the novel.
I don't care much for self-serving speculation in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary. If there were nothing else, maybe, but Yoda himself confirms in the book that he was willing to destroy Dooku if it came down to it.
Not to mention Yoda being stated to have been able to "annihilate," Dooku after he was noted to have stopped holding back, while before being noted as only slowly pushing Dooku back.
I wonder why, now that the entire fight has already occurred and Dooku is now exhausted. That's like saying Yoda had to struggle to lift the crane in AotC because he struggled to do so after the fight with Dooku.
The use of "annihilate" is just a fancy way of saying he was going to take Dooku's life at that point.
If Yoda is holding back then he is weaker than he usually is, meaning he becomes tired easier.
That's not how it works. Holding back means you refrain from utilizing your full set of skills. It doesn't arbitrarily diminish your Force reserves also, lmfao.
Please stop reaching.
Not to mention Dooku straining much more after Yoda "stopped holding back," than beforehand also reinforces Yoda stopping holding back at that moment.
Or he's straining more because the fight has gone on for a while, just like you're more tired near the end of a race than you are at the start.
Dooku isn't even noted to be straining at all until after the comment on Yoda's heavy breathing, making it clear that it was mutual.
Your interpretation relies on extremely flimsy cherry-picking and the imposition of illogical mindsets onto characters (why does Yoda hold back for half the fight and then then go out, again?)
It's abundantly clear that Tyranus held his own but was exhausted by the end of the fight, hence forcing Yoda to make the choice between taking his life or saving Obi-Wan and Anakin's. That's also how it went down in AotC, which is entire narrative parallel in the first place. And in that fight, Yoda was after Dooku's neck once the fighting started.
Not really. An inferior opponent can still take advantage of a superior opponent's weakness. Maul's form being vulnerable to counterattack allowed for Grievous to kick him.
Where is Juyo said to be vulnerable to counterattack? I've only seen it being said to be vulnerable to Force attacks.
Yes. So Maul easily driving away Grievous happened at the same time as Talzin possessing Dooku. Chronologically, the force push only happening after Talzin was removed from Dooku's body.
Your links are all dead, but I'm already forgetting why you're trying to use this as some meaningful feat when Dathomir is a potent dark side nexus... one where even Ventress could defeat Grievous with a blade, and much more decisively than Maul allegedly did at that.
Unless Ventress now scales over Dooku as well, this entire line of scaling is pointless and far-fetched.
Also, I'm curious to know why you seem to be so eager to hop aboard this quote saying that Maul drove Grievous away easily after refusing to accept the quote stating that Sidious defeated Maul easily?
Gillard stating Dooku is more skilled than TPM Maul doesn't mean Dooku as a whole > TPM Maul. Gillard's reliability is also questionable.
Gillard does not say Dooku is just more skilled but that he is the better in lightsaber combat generally.
Gillard worked together with Lucas to develop the narrative framing of characters' power levels. Comments in relation to those are reliable.
Grievous being able to fight evenly with Mace in LOE while hindered places him on Dooku's tier since Base Mace is a peer/slight superior to Dooku per the Lucas/Gillard tiering system. This also places TPM Maul on their tier. SoD Maul >> TPM Maul. This scales SoD Maul over Dooku.
Not really, they fought evenly for a brief period of time and Mace wasn't interested in fighting for longer. Mace is a bit of a jobber if I'm being honest, and Dooku has a long history of significantly outperforming Mace against mutual foes. So this ABC logic doesn't really fly.
On their own, sure, physicals won't be enough however Maul has direct scaling above the Count in both duelling and force power. I will touch on this more later.
You tried to scale Maul above Dooku as a duelist using something that makes Maul look worse than Ventress, and then never said anything about Force scaling.
Anyway, my point wasn't just about Marek's Oneness blast, so much that he clearly made the Emperor "desperate" and was advancing on him, something Yoda was not capable of, being pushed to his limits by a far weaker Sidious.
Disagreed. Per the junior novel, Palpatine was desperate to the point of being unsure he could win against Yoda and was disarmed at a later point. It was very much a life-or-death contest for him. Even in the RotS novel where he outright defeats Yoda, he's left in a comparable state to post-Marek despite shocking himself and enduring the suicidal explosion in the latter scenario.
Are you suggesting that Marek wasn't pushed to his limits by Sidious? Even before the Oneness blast, he was prepared to lay down his life to buy time for his friends.
Being no match simply means Marek was not an equal to the Emperor, but then again neither was Yoda, given that he lost, and it doesn't indicate any kind of vast disparity between them. You might argue that Galen died, but that happened because he was trying to give his friends the opportunity to flee, whereas Yoda was alone, and it doesn't change what happened before the blast anyway.
Per the film and junior novel, Yoda lost by circumstance (being smaller and knocked further without anything to break his fall). The novel and comic depict Yoda being outright beaten, but they appear to be based on an earlier script.
A number of quotes do state that Yoda was a match for the Emperor, with quotes often simply stating that the Emperor was too strong to defeat, as contrasted to simply being "no match" for him.
Sidious factually wasn't really harmed by Yoda either, just pushed back, and the fact remains that Vader tanked an attack far above the grandmaster's power level given Palpatine's growth between ROTS and TFU, and mind you we have examples of lesser Force users like Zannah growing hugely in even less time, yet Vader endured such an attack in a gravely hindered state, ergo beings far below TFU Sidious can't really harm him with the Force, which was my point.
He wasn't, but he was exhausted by the fight, which is at best an inference from the TFU fight. I'd accept Sidious having grown significantly, but the nature of the feats are different enough for me to think that Marek was not replicating Yoda's showing at all.
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