spetznaz
Senior Fanboy Killer
Let me try to digest this a bit for you .....speed can be VERY key in anything (in a comic book fight, in an olympic event, in sealing a major trans-continental business deal) for much the same reason ...it enables you to make a move while your opponent/antagonist/competitor is slack and unresponsive!
On the side of fights, imagine a case whereby I am fighting you. Also imagine that I am ten times faster than you are. What does that mean? It means that whatever your skill level, I can act, react and counter-react ten times faster than you can. What does that mean? It means that if I move you will not be able to do anything about it, and if you move I will be able to see what you are doing (you will be moving at a tenth of my given speed) and take mitigatory measures against it.
Now, imagine if I can move a hundred times faster .....it just went from a beating into a whole other realm.
Now, imagine if I can move one thousand times faster .....now you are starting to catch my drift.
Now ...to make it interesting ....let's look at two scenarios:
1) Imagine that I can move several million times faster (say I am the Flash), and not only that but I can also leach speed from you making you slower (not only am I much faster by a magnitude of magnitudes, I just froze you in time). You are ABSOLUTELY no threat to me. On top of that, via the speed force i can hit you at that speed with no damage to myself .....it is stated he can hit with the mass of a white dwarf star. I just dumped the kinetic mass of a compressed star onto your face, at a speed that is so quick that i am totally invisible to you, and there is nothing you can do about it! That is not getting pwned ....that is getting hopelessly obliterated!
2) The second scenario is similar ....imagine that I am around a million times faster (not as fast as the first scenario, but at that level of speed it makes no difference to you since you wouldn't be able to perceive any difference). However imagine (ala Superman) I have the strength of a titan (planet-shifting levels of strength), I have the ability to fly (thus attack you from a 3-D angle of inference), and I have the powers of an entire X-men team that has been amped on steroids (ranging from fire from my eyes to ice from my breath). And i am doing this so fast that i am attacking you from everywhere at the same time ......although that is unnecessary since i only need to tag you once, and my already PRODIGIOUS STRENGTH will be amplified by my exceptional speed! And to make it worse, you are not even able to SEE me (Superman has vibrated so fast that not only is he invisible, but he is also intangible).
Either scenario is a total and utter defeat for you, especially if all you have is strength and nothing else.
You cannot see me.
You cannot touch me.
You cannot hit me.
You cannot win.
It is a total and utter mismatch unless PIS is involved.
It would be tough ENOUGH facing a character with the speed level of QuickSilver (Exodus had major problems with him), but bring in people like Superman and the Flash and their speed levels (magnitudes greater than Quicksilver's .....QuickSilver might as well be standing still next to the Flash) basically make them impossible to defeat by one-dimensional bricks (need I say the Hulk). It is not impossible to beat the Flash or Superman (particularly Superman, because a full-power Flash with full access to the SpeedForce is an omni-dimensional god), and there are a good number of characters that can defeat Supes and Flash ....BUT NONE OF THOSE CHARACTERS ARE ONE-DIMENSIONAL BRICKS!
You need a certain set of powers to defeat such characters (e.g. superior speed, cosmic awareness, long-tenor prescience, high level reality manipulation that is coupled with long-tenor precognition, etc) ....but if you are a one-dimensional one-trick pony (e.g. 'I have great strength, watch me roar.....'😉 you have already lost the fight before it starts.
Because (barring PIS/CIS) you will not even be able to SEE your opponent, let alone HIT them.
While to your opponent you will seem like a statue, frozen in time, as helpless as a deer frozen in the headlights of a ten ton adamantium truck travelling at 99.9% the velocity of light .......