Relative performances vs 'Feats'/'Space cheese'

Yes, those are terms from herochat.

Now that we got that out of the way--

Which of these factors is decisive on your opinion concerning certain fights ? Say, is it more important how a character is viewed within the Universe he is from and his combat performances against various opponents, fellow heroes and villains alike, or if he has feats like.. smashing planets or going through black holes, which you take into consideration first and not his combat prowess against others (say he is not so great in this category) when he is put up against a character that, although doesn't have this kind of feats, is portrayed as one of the top characters in this Universe and thus effectivly winning the fight in your views ?

Beta Ray Bill seems to be getting more respect with his planet busting feats against an ill-defined character in terms of powerlevel compared to others, or Gladiator busting a planet more than a decade ago is brought in today as proof of him beating other characters, things like performances against the likes of Thor or Hulk being most of the time ignored in favour of 'space cheese'.

How do you (honestly) analyze the fights and why ?

Personally, I take multiple factors into consideration: character history, his standing in his universe, his relative interaction to others in his world(s), and how he conceptually compares with characters from other universes/settings. I also keep in mind that comics (especially) are a continuum and not fixed by any means; many characters have "high" and "low" interpretations - sometimes depending which book they happen to appear in, even in the same year/continuity, and cherry-picking is a major error in perception.

I apply relative performance in fights vs "feats"

ie... Let's say doomsday overpowers superman...
But doomsdays best strength feat puts him in the 200 ton range (whatever)
and superman puts him in the 300 ton range (again whatever)

I'd say doomsday is stronger or generally more powerful
cause superman wouldn't be "cheating" on hi strength feat by applying flight or speed... Etc...

If brb can consistently smash planets and manor cannot... But manor continually beats brb... I'd put Namor as the better overall...

I don't believe someone would strictly use one way or another to argue everything. I believe the debator will use whatever means to put the character in a better light in order to win a VS.

Depends on the character and the situations he's been in. Doomsday didn't have much in the way of impressive feats outside of "killing" DOS Superman at first, but I'm sure people didn't read it and then argue with their friends that Supes could beat DD easily since Supes had more feats.

I consider feats unless they are completely out of context. For example, Hulk thunderclapping away Dark Crawler's dimension-destroying blast, Superman beating Dominus, etc.

IMO I think more weight is towards how they are general viewed and considered by their peers. Feats are also a consideration and do carry weight to be sure. I guess for me personally I go more about how the character is perceived in his universe slightly more than busting planet feats.

Feat: batman got owned by darkseids oe... Superman did not...

:-)

One should look at space feats, area effect feats, Battle feats, context, character, history, CIS, PIS, Jobber effect and who else has fought the same character to make a reasonable assumption of victory. Herculese has never fought Gladiator to my knowlege. But based upon Glad's fights with Thor, and Thor's fights with Herc, one can get an approximation of how Herc would do. Thor was using high reflex speed, strength, his hammer and all sorts of tricks while He doesn't use nearly that much to stalemate Herc. Herc has next to no battle effect feats on his own. So then we look at his fights with people who do have battle effect feats. Like the Hulk. We also look at the character's powers and source and implied power.

Why you gotta bring up Herochat?

I'm bumping this because I recently was in a debate with someone that brought this up. Generally I try to take everything into consideration, showings, feats, portrayal etc. There isn't really one that necessarily overrides the other. Space cheese is generally used as a setting in comics where ultra powerful characters can really cut loose and do things that perhaps they wouldn't do in an Earth setting. Though imo it all evens out at the end of the day.