DE Sidious vs Sith Emperor

Originally posted by steveholt953
Why is it not comparable? It's your logic I'm disputing, and it follows your logic to some extent. If force user X has so much time to study yet is only marginally better than force user Y, user force X is a wimp. Extreme circumstances (son of the chosen one) aside, the logic follows.

Emphasis mine. You can't present a comparison that you concede is skewed and only partially-relevant and expect me to accept it.

Luke is a prodigy par excellence with a learning rate that dwarfs Sidious's own. Comparing Vitiate and Sidious with Luke and Sidious in this respect is untenable unless you are conceding that Sidious, as a natural Force user, dwarfs Vitiate as Luke dwarfs Sidious.

And, excuse the double post, but you're ignoring other critical details. I'm not suggesting X is a wimp if he rivals Y despite greater time to study. The saga is rife with examples of veterans succumbing to amateurs.

Vitiate is a remarkable example because the length of time he had is exponentially higher than the Sith Emperor in whose image he was made. More importantly, whereas Sidious consumed lives for dark side experiments, Vitiate leeched the power for himself and allegedly internalized it. Essentially, Vitiate is imbued with the essence of [dozens? hundreds?] of Sith Lords and has studied for nearly one-and-a-half millennia and, at best, can only be said to be "marginally better" than a Sith Lord who is imbued with the essence of zilch and has studied the Force for less than eight decades.

In no way is this a flattering depiction of Vitiate.

Can we say with certainty that at best he merely rivals Sidious though? I mean, what are his low showings and how conclusive are they?

Low showings? Losing to an exhausted, minor prodigy and R2D2-lite on a dark side nexus and knocked on his ass twice by Revan.

And Sidious has been dumped in a glorified garbage chute by a one-armed cyborg and got shot in the back by Han Solo.

Why are we comparing low showings?

Excuse me but "marginally better" happens to be an opinion among a few on this forum so that logic doesn't compute either. There's no authoritative source here, just us.

Originally posted by The_Tempest
minor prodigy

Lolwut?

Originally posted by steveholt953
Excuse me but "marginally better" happens to be an opinion among a few on this forum so that logic doesn't compute either. There's no authoritative source here, just us.

The evidence does not support the notion that Vitiate is fodder for Sidious and provides even less support for the idea that Sidious is fodder for Vitiate so I think "marginally better" represents an accurate and holistic examination of the evidence, unless you can show me where Vitiate is a lot better or a lot worse than Sidious overall?

Originally posted by Nephthys
Lolwut?

Referring to the Hero of Tython's alleged status as "one of" the strongest figures the order has seen in centuries. A fine accolade no doubt, but nothing compared to others.

Originally posted by The_Tempest
Low showings? Losing to an exhausted, minor prodigy and R2D2-lite on a dark side nexus and knocked on his ass twice by Revan.

And Sidious has been dumped in a glorified garbage chute by a one-armed cyborg and got shot in the back by Han Solo.

Why are we comparing low showings?

By low showing I mean a display of limitation, whereby we could assign an upper limit to his abilities and conclusively state that at best he merely rivals Sidious, as opposed to a lack of high showings that would suggest he was vastly superior.

Originally posted by Ben "cA" Risa
By low showing I mean a display of limitation, whereby we could assign an upper limit to his abilities and conclusively state that at best he merely rivals Sidious, as opposed to a lack of high showings that would suggest he was vastly superior.

Here is where Beefy's commentary becomes very relevant: We cannot state "conclusively" one way or another, particularly in this franchise, which is capricious and disparate on a good day. We can only observe trends and directions as dictated by the evidence.

Vitiate is shown to be a scholar par excellence who allegedly subjugated his Sith Lord father as an untrained adolescent and, under nebulous circumstances, leeched the life essence of [hundreds? thousands?] of Sith Lords on Nathema in an elaborate ritual that left a void greater than those left by Nihilus. In the time since, he plumbed the depths of the dark side for one thousand, four hundred years, during which time he mentally enthralled Revan and Malak, bound to him the wills of the Imperial Guard, and whatnot. As a fighter, he defeated Revan in combat and overpowered the Hero of Tython, Tol Braga, and their strike team.

That's a pretty impressive resume. Sidious's feats have been exhaustively detailed by everyone and their mother. Suffice it to say they're very much comparable.

Originally posted by The_Tempest

Of-course, Vitiate's story is not without its share of shortcomings; some aspects of it are badly written, IMO.

Sidious's story is also great until the DE part. I like GL's depiction of Sidious; intelligent (evil-genius); powerful; manipulative; mysterious.

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As far as the "command of the dark side" based argument is concerned in this thread, I think we need to focus on holistic picture of Vitiate's power/talent progression.

Both Sidious and Vitiate wielded devastating dark side power. However, they differed in their approach to projecting it. Vitiate packed innate talent for Sith Sorcery and honed his talents using this approach.

It is safe to claim that 1300 years of time spent on dark side studies didn't go to waste as Vitiate eventually became so well-versed in the dark arts that he was finally in the position to destroy the entire Galaxy with adequate preparations. No other Sith reached this point.

If Vitiate had succeeded in his plans, he would have transformed himself in to a Godlike being; capable of creating Galaxies himself. Thanks to timely betrayal, Vitiate was stopped.

What's SWTORE?

The Encyclopedia. Which, to be fair, was a fabulously well-written source guide.

Oh right, I have that.

What a nerd.

If the story that it wonderfully chronicled weren't so badly written, I'd have purchased it myself. It's better than anything, source material-wise, bar the Essential Atlas and Guide to Warfare.

Hmm, this is going to be a tough match. Vitiate could potentially retcon the strongest Sith statement.

It's also visually stunning.

Me, or the book?

Definitely not you. If I want to look at homosexual dudes, I'll go to San Francisco

Originally posted by The_Tempest
Referring to the Hero of Tython's alleged status as "one of" the strongest figures the order has seen in centuries. A fine accolade no doubt, but nothing compared to others.

It doesn't limit him to mediocrity among the greats. You can be 'one of' the strongest and still be 'the' strongest. The HoT has little in terms of source-backing, yet his/her actions speak for themselves. There nothing 'minor' about fighting through Kaas City and the Imperial Gaurd (the codex mentions that the Imperial Gaurd are the best trained, most elite force in the galaxy) and then defeated a Sith of Vitiates calibre in a darkside nexus.