I honestly feel like when you're dealing with characters like Maul, Vader, Dooku, Obi-Wan, Ventress and so on, combat/reaction speed feats become pretty negligible. If we were to literally go by who has the best feats, Obi-Wan has deflected omnidirectional blaster fire from thousands of droids simultaneously, which is a far cry faster than anything, say, Darth Maul has done. But when you look at how they're portrayed in duels against similar opponents, combat speed tends to be one of the least important factors. Which is essentially why I see characters like those listed above as more or less equal in combat/reaction speed. It's only when you started going up to characters like Yoda, or down to characters like Qui-Gon Jinn, that you start seeing disparities in speed.
__________________ “The galaxy must experience the pain of death and the rapture of rebirth as I have. I will bring chaos. It is time for war.”
Registered: Mar 2014
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Vader is more durable and is more powerful in the Force than either of them. But Dooku and Maul are more skilled with the lightsaber than Vader. But they are only marginally better than Vader. And Vaders strength would play to his advantage against Dooku.
What Neph means is that in the movie none of the droids fired upon Kenobi, meaning the passage is contradicted by a higher canon source and thus never happened.
"I was looking for a kind of swordfighting that was reminiscent of what was in the movies that we'd already done, but a more energised version of it, because we've actually never seen real Jedis at work, we'd only seen - you know - old men and crippled, half-droid, half men and young boys that had learned form these people. So, to see a Jedi fighting in the prime of the Jedi, I wanted it to be a much more energetic and faster version of what we've been doing."
It highly suggest, that even ROTJ Vader was inferior to Maul as a swordmaster.
Vader has far greater hype then Maul or Dooku. His non-duels showings are also far superior. But in a fights against Jedi or other Force sensitives, Vader looks poor. Even "Jedi random" like Kai Hudorra could notice Vader's lack of speed.
Vader - unlike Shaak Ti - couldn't find an advantage over Starkiller in pure lightsaber duel.
Vader couldn't hard-press rusty Kenobi.
Vader was loosing to Maul's clone.
Vader had a very hard time against Dark Woman.
Luke supported by Ben was able to compete with Vader during their fight of Mimban. And - as Marco pointed - his lack of speed enabled Luke to find advantage over him.
Despite his raw power in the Force (which was still great, even after Mustafar), and his physical advantage, he wasn't able to defend himself properly against enraged Luke during their fight on DS2. Luke's powerful blows exhausted him, and he almost fall on the round even before Luke cut off his hand.
You know that's the second time I've seen an analysis of the SW Lightsaber fights on SW.COM, and both times they state the end of the Mace vs Sidious fight is still debatable if Mace legitimately won or if Sidious threw the fight.
As for Obi-Wan deflecting multiple blaster fire, that is because of his mastery. As a master of Soresu, that is his speciality, Soresu style is created for deflecting blaster bolts, just like makashi created for lightsaber duels.
That is why he can even deflect a blaster bolt while his back is turned.
On the other hand, Kit Fisto can speedblitz more droid or creatures than Obi-Wan, due to his superior speed and Shi-cho mastery. Style is important on this one as well.
__________________ ''You are no warrior, Maul thought. You know nothing of the dark side.'' ★_Darth Maul Respect Thread_★
But, Maul is not a half machine like Vader is. The reason Vader is slow because of his breathing apparatus and heavy armor. Maul just got new legs, he doesn't have breathing apparatus and any armor to make extra weight.
Obi-Wan also said Vader is more machine than man, you can't say the same thing about Maul.
__________________ ''You are no warrior, Maul thought. You know nothing of the dark side.'' ★_Darth Maul Respect Thread_★