Ranking the most powerful Force users: an analysis
So this topic has been discussed many times before, but I would like to give my own, somewhat detailed analysis. I'm somewhat rushing this, so apologies if things are a little messy/there are typos/etc. Let me know what you agree/disagree with.
I'm using Legends canon, and a few epistomological standards:
Narrator accolades are taken for their word unless if they are
Sufficiently contradicted by other source material.
Utterly inane or nonsensical.
So completely contradicted by demonstrated feats and events that it would be pretty much impossible to reconcile them.
Out of universe authorial comments are taken under consideration. They are more trusted to determine the specifics of their own characters and storylines, but not necessarily how they relate to other individuals. We can also take with a grain of salt spurious email responses that seem to imply a lack of actual thought given to a topic.
Feats are used, but taken under consideration given their general inconsistency. Generally speaking, I'll try to compare characters' relatively higher tier showings, .ie I won't take into consideration Yoda's struggling to lift a pillar. That seems to be a reasonable safeguard against the power creep in more recent material.
If two sources contradict one another, there are a few ways to reconcile them:
Canon rating under Leland Chee's system prior to the Disney reboot.
Recency of the material.
Internal consistency and sensibility.
The source material's prior track record.
How many sources corroborate one another.
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OK, so here's my list. I'm considering overall mastery of the Force under characters' individual power.
Excluded: the Mortis Anchorites, Mortis Anakin, characters in Oneness, the Bedlam Spirits, Zonoma Sekot, Taalon, Nyax, UnuThul, and other one-off deus ex machinas.
I've also excluded Darth Krayt from the list due to not having really read or explored the Legacy comics, Talzin whose off-Dathomir feats I'm pretty ignorant of, and some characters of whom we know essentially nothing, like Ragnos/Nadd/Sadow/Hord.
1. Luke Skywalker - three reasons why I put him above Palpatine. Firstly, it's basically the most thematically important power-ranking in the mythos that Anakin could have been the most powerful Force user ever, and that Luke has the ability to become what his father never reached. Lucas pretty much states outright that he has inherited his father's potential to become twice as powerful as Sidious - at the very least, even if you don't think that his potential is literally equivalent to the Chosen One's, it's still greater than Sidious's, given that Lucas was speaking in the context of surpassing Palpatine. I think that by FotJ, Luke's had enough time to, given his ridiculously good growth curve, have unlocked enough of that latent power to have passed the dark lord of the sith.
Secondly, he does manage to defeat the reborn Emperor in a lightsaber duel. Granted, it is a duel and not a battle of the Force, but I do imagine that Palpatine would've tried to do something to Luke in that category were he capable, but he can only gain the upper hand via his Force storms. It is true that Leia is vaguely "unlocking hidden resources" within Luke, although Skywalker doesn't even seem to notice her doing so until she points it out. But Leia isn't incredibly powerful - would her battle meditation unlock potential in Luke that 30 or so years of improving wouldn't? I find that highly unlikely. He's likely surpassed his amped-Dark Empire version long before FotJ.
Thirdly, Luke does surpass Palpatine in feats when you compare them side-by-side. So he never matches Palpatine's Force storms, but this would make for quite the unfair comparison because he doesn't really want to. His telekinesis showings are superior - Palpatine has never matched manipulating dovin basals or immobilizing Darth Caedus with a gesture. He's demonstrated a greater affinity with illusions, Forve valor, foresight (his foresight in LotF: Invincible is scarily prescient), etc. All of Palpatine's superior showings come in categories that Luke would consciously avoid. At the worst, I would have to see conclusive demonstrations of Palpatine's superiority in the feats department to consider overriding the other two, more authorial indications of Luke's supremacy.
2. Darth Sidious - Look, it's reasonable to take with a grain of salt random, scattered proclamations of X character being the most powerful or whatever. But I'm pretty sure there've been close to a dozen or more sources that have all said this about Palpatine, and I think that consistent compilation of accolades is too overwhelming to be dismissed on face. You may argue that these sources predate Valkorion's creation - refer to the Plagueis analysis. To put the nail in the coffin on other Sith being stronger, Lucas himself considers Palpatine to be the most powerful of all time - you may consider his ignorance on future EU creations, but I would make the stronger claim that Palpatine's supremacy is of thematic importance, and he's supposed to represent the ultimate culmination of the Sith order, the one who is finally powerful enough to wipe out the Jedi. Whether Lucas knew about every individual sith lord who came before him, this status is of pretty intrinsic importance to the saga.
Even if it weren't, Sidious's feats speak for themselves. He's the only character confirmed to be capable of ravaging planetary surfaces purely on his own raw power, has dominated Windu/Dooku tier combatants with ease, mind-wiped trillions of people, made himself a walking dark side nexus, one-shotted 50 stormtroopers with lightning, etc.
People try to point to Valkorion. I don't buy the "Valkorion isn't a sith" BS, given that Palpatine has quotes placing him supreme among all dark side Force users (the Son and Abeloth are freakish enough anomalies and isolated enough from galactic events that their exclusion from these quotes is reasonable), and that this technicality doesn't really affect his thematic depiction as the ultimate evil. But he's also simply more impressive - if we take away the nexuses, the rituals (of which Valkorion has access to things like thousands of gullible sith lords that Palpatine doesn't), and the vague hype, Palpatine beats Valkorion in almost every side-by-side comparison. He has better raw destructive feats (Ziost may have been a ritual and doesn't compare to "tearing surfaces" off of worlds and ripping apart Eclipse super star destroyers), telekinesis (scaling from his dominating Vader), Force valor and even telepathy (dominating Luke and Vader >>> failing to dominate the Outlander). Valkorion's only clear advantage is in his abilities regarding cheating death, but he's had the advantage of the Nathema ritual that Sidious couldn't really replicate given his circumstances.
He's also more powerful than Yoda by RotS per the novelization and various other sources, and only grows stronger.
3. Yoda - Yoda being called the greatest foe the darkness had ever known isn't clearly written in third person omniscient, but sourcebooks echo that he's believed by most, including Dooku, to be as such. It's possible that the Jedi Order's consensus is wrong, but I'd say less probable than not - combined with his performance against Sidious, I'd buy it. I put Yoda above Plagueis somewhat roughly - he's close enough to Sidious in power given their duel that I think beats the 10 years of progression Sidious would have from TPM to RotS. TPM Sidious is already called the most powerful of all time, IIRC, so he's likely above Plagueis by then, and again, RotS Yoda is likely > TPM Sidious. It's also pointed out in some sources that Yoda is past his prime in the PT. His OCW feats seal the deal for me.
4/5. Darth Plagueis - he's called the most powerful sith lord who had ever lived in the publisher's summary. Taken at face value, this would put him above any sith prior to Sidious. I don't take publisher summaries as gospel, but given the difficulties in adjudicating these questions, they're better than nothing. Plagueis and Sidious both believe it to be so, and the novel comes out after Vitiate's creation and even mentions him. That being said, I'm not 100% sure that he's above Valkorion - that really depends on how seriously you take his claim that he's not a Sith, despite the codex saying otherwise. I do think he's above Vitiate - Plagueis' accolade could only really be overriden by very solid evidence to the contrary, and a feats war proves inconclusive. The areas where Vitiate exceeds him are in ones where Plagueis wouldn't have the interest or resources to replicate (he couldn't have emulated Nathema given the low number of Sith, for instance), or simply doesn't get put in situations to show off. Plagueis has enough high profile feats and powerscaling off of Palpatine to at least make it so that a feats war isn't conclusively in Vitiate's favor, and with that doubt, we can defer to the publisher's statement.
4/5. Valkorion - Vitiate is already stated by multiple sources to be more powerful than any Sith who came before him. None of these sources are solidly third person omniscient, but they're authoritative enough for me to take seriously barring very solid evidence to the contrary. The extent to which he is stronger than everyone else in his era, his planetary level destructive abilities, monstrous TK, ability to one-shot fairly powerful characters, and nearly unparalleled knowledge of the dark side put him over the likes of Caedus with respect to feats. Caedus's performance against Luke is impressive but somewhat circumstantial; when he engages him in Force contests, which are the subject of this thread, he is almost routinely humiliated.
Last edited by The Ellimist on Apr 29th, 2016 at 09:54 AM
6. Darth Caedus - a publisher's summary puts him above Vader, and again, it's not clearly contradicted by anything. It explains how he's able to remotely compete with Grandmaster Skywalker. Some may point to Vader/Galen Marek's greater Force feats, but this is just an absence of feats on Caedus's part - he's never put in similar situations. I don't think publisher's statements need explicit corroboration, just a lack of clear contradictions, and we get none of the latter and some of the former (like his performance against Luke). He's stated to be the second most powerful individual in the galaxy, which would put him above Kyp - granted, he seems to hold a huge advantage over Kyp as a duelist, but I don't think it's the most reasonable interpretation of the oft-repeat "second best" accolade to say that Kyp is actually more powerful than him but just less skilled with a blade. And given Caedus's inherited potential, all of this seems reasonable given his years of training.
7. Kyp Durron - his implied potential and growth rate are enormous. He's replicated Luke's dovin basal feat, one of the best TK showings in the mythos, and thinks that he's stronger than Luke - I don't take this very seriously given how every other character seems to contradict him, but I do think that he has to at least be more powerful than the somewhat restrained Luke we had normally seen to that point, as I don't think Kyp is outright delusional. Kyp has also used a freighter as a TK ramming weapon to the effect of wiping out capital ships, and he does this fairly effortlessly. I'd say his feats and accolades put him above the rest of this list.
8. Exar Kun - so it's pretty much stated outright and confirmed by the author that living Exar > spirit Exar, and I think it's a stretch to disentangle the latter from the Yavin nexus. Spirit Exar and an amped, DS nexus Kyp together could defeat JA Luke. It's implied that Kyp < Exar, so we know that spirit Exar and a sub-spirit Exar could defeat a guy who's pretty certainly stronger than Vader - Luke in JA seems to regress briefly in power from DE, but we can be reasonable in how much he does. Granted, he seems to blindside Luke from behind and uses powers Luke hadn't seen before, but taking all of this into account, I don't see how someone not stronger than Dooku could've pulled this off, and flesh Exar is stronger to a sufficient extent that I'd be willing to put him above Vader, and possibly JA Luke. He's also explicitly stronger than any prior Sith, including Freedon Nadd, whom Vitiate was worried about.
9. Darth Tenebrous - this is basically a guess from power scaling from the Banite line.
10. Darth Vader - He's presumably gotten stronger from TFU to ANH, and then gets two explicit improvements to ESB and RotJ. By that point, he's likely above Galen Marek.
11. Galen Marek - Marek feats in TFU are simply absurd and honestly better than a lot of people above him, who get by mostly on powerscaling. I put him above Revan, Jadus, Windu and Tyranus as none of them have managed to replicate his ridiculous showings like one-shotting hundreds of stormtroopers, redirecting falling star destroyers, disintegrating cruisers (granted this was his clone, but the same potential and memories), etc. Revan, in particular, doesn't have enough feats to win that war, and his powerscaling, giving novel Vitiate a good fight and ragdolling strike teams, doesn't clearly put him above Marek, who is able to catch Sidious's lightning and advance against him.
12. Revan - From both his performance against novel Vitiate and his hype, he's almost certainly above Jadus, or anyone sans Vitiate in TOR.
13. Darth Jadus - primarily for holding together a dreadnaught, and given Vitiate's calling him the greatest sith his empire ever produced. The former is a better telekinesis feat than anything Windu or Tyranus has done, and the latter signals enough of his power for me to put him 13th.
14. Mace Windu - I'd give him the edge over Tyranus for his vaapad. Dark Rendevous suggests that they'd be even fighters, and I don't see how we can evaluate their relative dueling abilities - yet Windu IIRC improves his vaapad over the course of the Clone Wars, and this likely gives him the edge. His OCW showings are also insane.
15. Darth Tyranus - I put him above other potential characters from his enormous hype (best Jedi produced in a few centuries of the prime of the Jedi is a very strong signal) and his lifting of like 100 tons of orbalisks.
There's always the chance that I'm forgetting someone.
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In terms of the separation between them, I'd say there's a pretty sizable gap between Palpatine and Yoda and Revan and Jadus, a modest one between Luke and Palpatine, and a relatively small one for the rest.
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Last edited by The Ellimist on Apr 29th, 2016 at 09:58 AM
An interesting list, however you forgot Darth Krayt, and Kyp Durron is way to high for an individual who has only one circumstantial showing above the majority below him. He really doesn't compare in any other way.
People also ignore that Kyp was only able to manipulate that freighter in space where there is no inertia, normal people are moving like tonnes with little difficulty under those conditions.
And when did he use it to destroy capital ships? It was consumed by a dovin basal.
And concerning Exar Kun, the idea that Kun > Spirit Kun > Dooku is easily the least compelling argument I've ever seen on that front.
Come on now, be reasonable.
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Last edited by Beniboybling on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:06 AM
He has two - the dovin basal manipulation and the freighter feat, along with believing himself to be more powerful than NJO Luke and having Luke himself speculate that he could surpass everyone else. His growth curve is also incredibly prodigious. There's also this quote IIRC that says he could become worse than Vader if he turned to the dark side. I do think that all of these together put him above Vader - he may not have as many showings and accolades, but they're more impressive IMHO.
There is inertia in space (and everywhere, for that matter). It's still pretty impressive to accelerate a freighter sufficiently to use it as a battering ram that doesn't just get shot down.
I'm too lazy to look it up - I thought that it overloads the dovin basal and destroys a coralskipper or something, but I might be wrong.
Do you imagine two Dooku-level Force users (keeping in mind that Kyp is pretty heavily implied to be weaker than Kun at this point) outright rendering Luke's lightsaber useless and then overwhelming him with the Force?
Like claiming there's no inertia in space?
It's also implied that Murr is greater than Vong Krayt, and somewhat more fallibly greater than pre-prime Vader, and given Kun's "greatest" accolade he's > her or any previous sith.
Last edited by The Ellimist on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:07 AM
EDIT: shit, I forgot about Nihilus. Meetra claims that Revan's command of the Force surpasses that of anyone she's ever met, which implies that he's above Nihilus, but Nihilus does have his ridiculous Ravager TK feat. He does this on a dark side nexus though, so I don't see it as convincing enough evidence to override Meetra's word. I would put him above Jadus, but it's tough - he has very little non-nexus feats.
I'm also not sure how to factor his Force drain and ability to encase his spirit in armor into his ranking. That probably does push him over Jadus, and by a decent margin.
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In space the freighter feat is a Dooku-tier showing, certainly not beyond individuals shaking dreadnoughts, pulling down star destroyers, lifting AT-ATs etc; Kyp is pretty delusional and obviously wrong; "everyone else" isn't on this list; most people on this list have a prodigious growth curve; that was Luke speculating and he only says he could become "another Darth Vader", a very vague claim and only if he turned to the dark side.
The dovin basal feat is the only substantive feat here, and to that I'd say the size matters not argument applies.Yeah I meant there is no gravitational resistance. As I said in space an average person can manipulate weight vastly greater than what they can on Earth, same should apply to Force users.
Its impressive, but its not more impressive that what the majority of those beneath him have done.Nah it just gets sucked in.Hmm? I don't really see what your getting at. But what I imagine is that Kun being significantly above Dooku-tier hardly puts him above Vader - which appears to be your argument.
That said? Zannah could have probably ****ed him over with her tendrils, consider what that means. See above fuggot. Sure but that was before his powers "multiplied", and I'm not convinced Spirit Muur & Corporeal Muur are equivalent.
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Last edited by Beniboybling on Apr 29th, 2016 at 10:35 AM
I think you're putting too much on the space-thing. Even without having to work against an Earth-like gravitational field, he'd still have to accelerate the freighter by a respectable margin for it to function as a ramming weapon. To function, here's the quote:
Once before, Kyp had seized a ship and dragged it out of the fierce heart of a gas giant. Now he reached out with the Force and took hold of the dead freighter.
It shot forward with astonishing ease, moving steadily through the vacuum of space toward the shielded coral-skipper.
Lan Rim's dark chuckle came through the comm. "Subtle as always, Kyp! Let's not let this one get away, Dozen!" he shouted.
The lieutenant spun off in a tight turn, his two surviving pilots following closely. They darted around the big coralskipper, cutting off its retreat, taking and returning fire from the other enemy skips. Their daring maneuvers soon exacted a price-lan's ship got caught in a Yuuzhan Vong crossfire. The double blast of plasma proved too much for his shields, and the ship dissolved in a bright splatter of plasma and superheated metal.
The pilots Lan had commanded doggedly held the course he'd plotted. The XJs continued to harry the big skip, forcing it to keep up its stuttering shields as the dead freighter closed in. At the last moment, the surviving X-wings shot away toward safety.
The freighter never got close. One moment it was there; the next it simply disappeared into a void. What happened next was not exactly what Kyp had had in mind.
He'd hoped for a physical impact, or, barring that, that the freighter might overwhelm the dovin basal's capacity, leaving the big coralskipper vulnerable to attack. It had never occurred to him that the skip's multiple singularities might merge into one and fold in on the Yuuzhan Vong ship like a glove turning inside out. But suddenly, the freighter was gone. So was the coralskipper.
How slow could he have been accelerating it? It must have been moving at a speed comparable to a starfighter for it to not just get shot down or laughed at, and it slams into the basal with enough velocity to shove singularities, lol. He's probably accelerating it faster than the 9.8 m/s^2 of Earth's surface gravitational field, given that otherwise it would only be moving at like 300 m/s after thirty seconds of constant force from Kyp, which would make it less energetic than large modern day ordinances (9 gigajoules or so of KE) if the freighter weighs around 100 tons, let alone anything that could make singularities collapse, and would be moving slow enough to be easily shot down or avoided (or even outright outpaced). This means that his feat is vastly more impressive than lifting a freighter on the Earth's surface would be, and frankly nobody has ever done something like that without a nexus (Nihilus).
More realistically, if the freighter's final speed is like 13 km/s after 30 seconds (still conservative given that this would make it about as energetic as Hiroshima given 100 tons -> mass term cancels out anyway, let alone something that could overwhelm singularities), Kyp is applying enough force to lift something like forty four freighters, and doing an exponential amount of work.
Pulling down, or rather directing already falling, star destroyers doesn't strike me as intuitively more impressive; if it's falling for like 20 seconds, you can nudge it by 1 m/s^2 and it'll already crash roughly 200 meters away.
Luke actually uses a device to measure his abilities. Kyp was considered as a candidate for the next sith lord by Lumiya; he was the only non-Skywalker mentioned. And as I explained, it's more reasonable to suggest that he and Skywalker has some basis to make their claims rather than both of them being literally delusional; Kyp is likely more powerful than what he sees restrained Skywalker doing. That's fairly reasonable given that he actually pulls off the dovin basal feat with less effort than Luke (who is granted seemingly out of practice in the early Vong war given his exhaustion at fighting like three Vong warriors vs. later soloing thousands).
I don't mean to be snarky, but you've got your basic physics wrong. "In space", the extent to which you can accelerate objects is still inversely proportional to its mass; Newton's laws still apply. That Kyp isn't moving the void against an external 9.8 m/s^2 field (although he is against the dovin basal's resistance) changes the math somewhat but hardly diminishes the feat.
Specifically, it shoves the singularities together. That implies that the freighter is moving pretty ridiculously fast, given that these singularities have to mass at least multiple super star destroyers.
Spirit Kun is outright stated to be pretty drastically below his mortal incarnation.
No, it's made pretty clear that Luke was overwhelmed by a combination of the esoteric Force abilities, spirit Kun's raw power, and Kyp's own efforts. But I would factor having esoteric Force abilities into one's mastery of the Force anyway.
Seriously though, you do realize that you can calculate how much force you need to push things in the absence of a significant gravitational field, right? If you're accelerating it by more than 9.8 m/s^2, it's more impressive than lifting it from Earth's surface, especially if you look at the work done.
Huh?
By precedent corporeal Murr should be stronger.
Last edited by The Ellimist on Apr 29th, 2016 at 11:02 AM
It is not a good list when Valkorion is ranked below Darth Plagueis & Yoda and Revan is ranked below Darth Vader & Galen Marek. And I don't get the reason for Luke Skywalker being ranked # 1.
Exar Kun above Darth Vader is the only good aspect of this list.
Last edited by S_W_LeGenD on Apr 29th, 2016 at 12:21 PM
What do you mean by Valkorion matching Yoda's OCW feats with his own power? Valkorion have vastly superior showings then Yoda in many areas/spectrum of abilities.
These are pointless dick measuring comparisons.
Tell me! Did those feats translate to something meaningful against Darth Vader and/or Palpatine in a confrontation?
Darth Vader doesn't have equal showings either but he was able to affect Galen Marek with his powers and Palpatine could do more.
Luke Skywalker is the most over-hyped character of the mythos. Literature promotes him as the most powerful Jedi of his era. Only some fans perceive him to be # 1.
Last edited by S_W_LeGenD on Apr 29th, 2016 at 12:49 PM
They were both listed as 4/5. Unless if you were literally referring to Plagueis's being physically placed above him on your computer screen, you're wrong.
Which ones, Legend? I just asked you to produce these sources, not to assert that they exist. Valkorion can perform rituals and draw on nexuses and other people's energies to do things for him; he has never ragdolled control ships and levitated portions of mountains on his own power. But ooohhh, he can oneshot Darth Marr!
A comparison of feats is a "pointless dick measuring" comparison, of course, unless if Legend is the one doing it. But then what do you want to use? Accolades? We both know how much you hate those, given that they put Sidious above Vitiate. So what do you want to use, exactly, if it isn't feats, and it isn't accolades?
No, because they're both extremely powerful Force users with comparable feats.
Is this really your analysis? That Galen having better feats than Revan doesn't matter, and that we should instead use...what, exactly?
Vader's equal showing is affecting Galen Marek, and Palpatine goes without saying. Revan has no such showing, ergo he is inferior.
Do you realize how pointless and nihilistic your rebuttal is? You're literally saying "Galen has better feats and showings than Revan, but that doesn't matter! Revan is better because I say so!"
Your completely ignoring my arguments to the contrary because you couldn't understand them (lol) aside, Luke Skywalker's inheritance of Anakin's potential is a huge f*cking plot point of the entire saga, roflamo. As Lucas himself puts it, Luke could have become what Anakin never did, someone more powerful than Palpatine. That's a far more meaningful accolade than any of the BS that you can pull about your own favorite character.
If you can tell me how manipulating singularities, defeating thousands of Vong, cloaking capital ships, rendering oneself literally immovable, TK'ing a guy with the Force potential of an entire colony of billions, and pinning a guy more powerful than Darth Vader to his chair without gesturing pales in comparison to your favorite farmer-torturer, you're going to have to provide actual feats and then comparative analysis rather than your continued vague objections about how awesome Valkorion is.
Last edited by The Ellimist on Apr 29th, 2016 at 12:59 PM
Apr 29th, 2016 09:51 AM
See above fuggot. 
Sure but that was before his powers "multiplied", and I'm not convinced Spirit Muur & Corporeal Muur are equivalent.
