Originally posted by The_Tempest
👆He doesn't.
Qui-Gon refers to lightsaber combat as the Jedi arts in TPM.
The only applicable definitions of "golden age" and "heyday" to this timeframe would have to refer to power. It makes sense, therefore, that in the "golden age," "heyday," and/or "prime" of the Jedi... the specifically-named Jedi arts would be at their peak, no?
^ Quoted for the God of War.
It’s also hardly a coincidence that Stover ranks Yoda as the most powerful light sider to ever live, or other sources Palpatine as the most powerful sith, and labels practically every prominent Jedi as being one of the greatest in history. Aside from possibly the TOR era, all other epochs involve a small handful of powerful characters (Revan and Malak in KOTOR, for example), and then a bunch of canon fodder.
Originally posted by S_W_LeGenD
Lucas have explicitly stated once that he doesn't represents EU and he doesn't bothers much with EU either. He differentiates his works from EU; he regards EU as a parallel universe to that of his.
This is also very true. We know that George doesn't consider the vast majority of Star Wars EU canon in any event so it would be silly to consider his statements as being of any consequence to the happenings of the EU in the first place.
Originally posted by Master Han
It’s also hardly a coincidence that Stover ranks Yoda as the most powerful light sider to ever live, or other sources Palpatine as the most powerful sith, and labels practically every prominent Jedi as being one of the greatest in history. Aside from possibly the TOR era, all other epochs involve a small handful of powerful characters (Revan and Malak in KOTOR, for example), and then a bunch of canon fodder.
Or the movies have had just much more exposure than pretty much every other era out there.
Jedi and Sith from TNSW have had their fair share of accolades and with what, a hundredth of the exposure that the PT era has had?
Originally posted by ?YLLAER
I was referring to the Prime quote in the TPM commentary.
Yeah. The simplest explanation is that the Jedi are in their combative prime, not that George Lucas is deceptively only comparing the PT era Order to the two surviving Jedi in the OT. "golden age", "prime" and "heydey" don't mean "at least not as sucky as when only two of us were left!"
Originally posted by ?YLLAER
YouTube video
Welp, this solves it. Damn, Neb, it's almost as if you helped us out on purpose. lol
As for the other quote I'm guna have to agree with Temp's and Han's interpretation, because it makes the most sense. Lucas could have used better choice of words, but he couldn't have been referring to peace when he calls it the "golden age," because, well, the time in which he was referring too wasn't peaceful at all (it was the opening of the clone wars). And the term "hey day" was most likely meant to refer to combat ability, unless Lucas meant that the jedi of that era were better at fighting in groups rather than individually, which sounds kinda silly, so I doubt that. Or, unless he meant that the jedi of that era were more prone to fighting in groups, but that couldn't be what Lucas meant because he makes it clear that the battle of Geonosis was the first time we see the jedi fighting in large groups, which would suggest that the PT era jedi weren't yet used to doing.
Originally posted by ?YLLAER
Bane is certainly familiar with Makashi, and this unknown and likely imaginary skill in Jar'Kai (that you agree Dooku would not realistically be using in this engagement) certainly on paper will not have the same debilitating effect that Kas'im's comprehensive mastery did.
Why do you keep pursuing this silly strawman distortion? Cut out "the same".
Which is extremely vague and ambiguous and it's a bit of a stretch for you to try and quantify his technical precision in Makashi directly from those quotes. His ability as a duelist is not based solely on his technique, and being one of "the greatest" could mean anything from one of the greatest 100 Jedi in its history to one the greatest thousand Jedi in its history, as it's an entirely relative term. I'ts completely unquantifiable.
This is what Yoda had to say about Dooku:
"Hm." Yoda stirred again with his stick. "Then best of all would be the strongest student, yes? Wisest? Most learned in the ways of the Force?" He nodded. "Best of all, Dooku would be!"
His eyes found the other Jedi, one by one: and one by one, they looked away.
"Our great student!" Yoda's ears flexed, then drooped. "Our great failure."
So, out of his eight hundred years of taking padawans...Dooku was his greatest student. The complete Star Wars encyclopedia contributes by pointing out that Yoda took a "personal interest" in Dooku's abilities.
He's also been labeled a "consummate duelist".
Really, the accolades in favor of Dooku approach levels of wank. The difference here being that said wank is canon.
It isn't a requirement at all that the master train their padawan in their chosen form directly, that's what the lightsaber instructors are for and we see numerous cases where this doesn't happen.
Regardless, Dooku regularly sparred with Qui Gon Jinn to the point where he knew "every weakness of Ataru", as well as practically every notable duelist of his time. He chose makashi, a form that had little application outside of 1 vs. 1 duels, for a reason, and certainly not to only duel other makashi users (of which there were practically none).
Well maybe your view of "high-level knowledge" differs from mine but I personally wouldn't use such strong wording.
Except that Dooku "was among the most highly regarded lightsaber instructors" and made entries in the Great Holocron. He also trained Grievous and his magnaguards in all seven lightsaber forms, so clearly his skills were hardly limited to makashi.
As you can see, Dooku's accolades put him far above Bane as of Path of Destruction when it comes to technical acumen.
Not necessarily as there are multiple instructors and he could have simply been of the more specialized variety. In the RotS novelisation when talking about Grievous, Mace Windu casually remarks that he had been trained by Dooku and that Obi-Wan should expect him to be trained in Makashi (leaving it at that), for what it's worth.
Grievous didn't only know makashi, though. 😉
Well you're again just stating things that this forum likes to consider as facts. Nobody has ever adequately sourced the statement that it was the golden age of lightsaber dueling (which I believe originated as "the golden age of the Jedi" which GL states in the commentary for TPM), and Yoda and Sidious have not been proven to be the best; in Sidious's case there are certainly numerous Sith Lords who are more powerful on paper.
This has been taken care of since.
The darkside nexus would arguably be of greater benefit to offensive use of the Force, it's Asaaj Ventress, and if you look at the passage he clearly catches her off guard and she shows no active attempt at resisting.
Uh, what?
"Her face went pale. Dooku lifted that one finger, and this time he tapped it in the air, as if pushing a needle into a pincushion. Ventress crumpled to her knees. Her voice came out clotted with pain. Dooku made another little patting motion, and Ventress slammed to the tile floor. "
This appears to be quite the level of ownage.
Obi-Wan is not really ever demonstrated to be anything beyond average as far as Force power is concerned for somebody in his position, and if you're referring to the RotS duel you could argue that he simply outmanoeuvred him rather than directly breaking through his Force defences given they were engaged in a lightsaber duel.
Your fascination with your particular trilogy certainly seems to have made you ignorant about all other SW eras; although Kenobi prefers to rely on his lightsaber skills, he is extraordinarily powerful in the Force, as demonstrated (among other examples) by his stalemating Anakin/Vader in their push-of-war, Anakin having his own set of potent Force feats, such as crushing a room full of durasteel by screaming "nooooo!".
And this is how Dooku handles Kenobi:
"He gathered the Force once more in a single indrawn breath that summoned power from throughout the universe; the slightest whipcrack of that power, negligent as a flick of his wrist, sent Kenobi flying backward to crash hard against the wall."
I'm not sure being drugged would have reduced his powers and I don't believe there was anything even slighty noteworth about those nightsisters.
There was nothing noteworthy about those shadow assassins Bane fights in RoT (which he had dismissed in PoD as "no match for the Jedi"😉, yet one of them runs through his Force wave.
Bane's best feat arguably comes from PoD bro. His role in directing the Brotherhood's storm ritual involved him absorbing, containing and redirecting a level of electricity that literally spread across the entire planet and was consuming everything in its path, which is among the finer displays of power and mastery we've come across.
Ritual. I could just as easily argue that, aside from the one that died, the padawans that direct energy to push a star destroyer out of the Yavin system are stronger than Bane.
As I said, questionable interpretations aside, we have every reason to believe that the BoD, from a combat standpoint, were probably the finest organisation of Sith to have ever gathered.
LOL ROFLAMO WTF? What's your evidence to support this?
Vague, vague and no.
"One of the greatest legends of the Jedi Order"
-the complete Star Wars encyclopedia
"Best of all, Dooku would be!"
-Grand Master Yoda
"He was one of the most respected and powerful Jedi in the Order's twenty-five-thousand-year history"
-RotS novel
And whilst Bane is already past his prime by DoE:
"Physically, the Count's age was rarely a handicap. Deft as he had become with the Force-unimaginably more subtle than the boy who had watched water-skeeters in the Jedi gardens all those years ago-he wore his eighty-three standard years better than most humans half his age. He was still in superb physical shape, senses keen, health undiminished by even the memory of a cold."
"Once a great Jedi Master, now an even greater Lord of the Sith"
From an earlier debate:The text indicates that he's an extremely high level master of every form, so it's very much suggested that they are comparable, especially when you take diminishing returns into account. Out of the two of them, Kas'im is the only one who is explicitly described as making a dedicated attempt to perfect his skills to the highest level even after mastering the styles in the first place, and in fact went one step further and spent more time perfecting the styles than it took him to master them. Dooku cannot be said to have been quite as dedicated, and while it is true that Kas'im would have had to divide his time between all of his forms, if you look at the time it took him to master all 7 forms for all three primary styles of lightsaber (under ten years, less time than Cin Drallig claims it takes for the average Jedi to master a single form (10 years)) it isn't at all a stretch of the imagination to say that his vastly superior natural talent made up the difference.
Except that Dooku is a "consummate duelist", consummate implying perfection to the highest degree. Dooku chose to specialize in a form that had no advantages outside of lightsaber dueling, so to presume that he "cannot be said to be quite as dedicated" is simply absurd.
The forms have never been documented to have changed over that time period and had already existed for thousands of years. Even if you think they had room for improvement, it would likely have been minimal.
But it should still be noted that Kas'im does not necessarily know every technique that Dooku does. Especially since Jedi routinely create their own forms and hybrids, such as Obi Wan's mixing soresu and ataru, and doubtlessly some Jedi must have extended their inventions past the idiosyncratic.
Originally posted by Master Han
Ritual. I could just as easily argue that, aside from the one that died, the padawans that direct energy to push a star destroyer out of the Yavin system are stronger than Bane.
Yeah, but that one who died did so because he couldn't channel that much energy. They channeled all the energy through him, not the other padawans, hence why he suffered the strain. Whereas Bane was basically the same situation where they channeled all the power into him and he unleashed it, the difference being that he did it without any trouble.
I don't really think its that impressive or that its relevant to Banes combat abilities, but Bane did do better in an basically identical situation.
Originally posted by Master Han
Why do you keep pursuing this silly strawman distortion? Cut out "the same".
Bro I never said that you were definitively arguing the point but the implication was out there, Nephthys made that same observation which was what originally prompted me to address it.
To clarify, regardless of whether you were saying it or not, it is clear that Dooku does not possess that same advantage that enabled Kas'im to overwhelm Bane in such a manner.
This is what Yoda had to say about Dooku:
"Hm." Yoda stirred again with his stick. "Then best of all would be the strongest student, yes? Wisest? Most learned in the ways of the Force?" He nodded. "Best of all, Dooku would be!"His eyes found the other Jedi, one by one: and one by one, they looked away.
"Our great student!" Yoda's ears flexed, then drooped. "Our great failure."
So, out of his eight hundred years of taking padawans...Dooku was his greatest student. The complete Star Wars encyclopedia contributes by pointing out that Yoda took a "personal interest" in Dooku's abilities.
Nothing indicates that he is saying it is his best student ever. In present terms we already know he's approximately among the big 3-5 of his era so this doesn't really do much for him. Likewise with Yoda taking a personal interest in him. I acknowledge that Dooku stands out as being among the best of his time, it's from the context of the few very elite across history where he becomes a nobody.
He's also been labeled a "consummate duelist".
lol. What is it with you people thinking anything so subject to hyperbole actually means anything? 99% of the time anything labelled as "perfect" is an exaggeration given that it's conceived as being a nearly impossible position to attain in any truly advanced discipline. Unless you wish to argue that he was truly perfect as a duelist from whatever standpoint whether it is technical or practical of which you will find little backing (there's a world of difference between being truly excellent and "perfect"😉 it's best that you acknowledge it as hyperbole. As I said, all your quotes are incredibly vague and meaningless with regards to the point you're trying to make.
Really, the accolades in favor of Dooku approach levels of wank. The difference here being that said wank is canon.
lol. No.
Regardless, Dooku regularly sparred with Qui Gon Jinn to the point where he knew "every weakness of Ataru",
Were these his words or are you quoting something credible?
as well as practically every notable duelist of his time. He chose makashi, a form that had little application outside of 1 vs. 1 duels, for a reason, and certainly not to only duel other makashi users (of which there were practically none).
Ok but your point was that he has high level knowledge of every other form (which along with his high level Makashi made him comparably skilled to Kas'im). What you describe only relates to competitive measures against those forms with his own form (an area that Bane kills him in by the way but you don't hear me bragging), not the actual ability to use those forms, and while I agree it makes sense that he would perhaps have a very good understanding of the other forms from that respect you'll find it hard to quantify the extent to which he does so (he certainly cannot be said to be comparable to bane in his inside out understand of Kas'im's entire arsenal). Kas'im on the other hand is basically a confirmed high end master of all of them, and can and does use all of them in combat.
I'd also like to point out that it is one thing to be able to react to users of each style individually but something else entirely to react to a single user of every style that routinely switches between them and blends them together.
Except that Dooku "was among the most highly regarded lightsaber instructors"
Of when? His own time period? Big whoop lol. Of ever? It's all relative bro.
and made entries in the Great Holocron.
Are we certain that this is such a rare feat? And for what did he make entries?
He also trained Grievous and his magnaguards in all seven lightsaber forms, so clearly his skills were hardly limited to makashi.
That is not true, the magnaguards were programmed with the forms and Grievous's ability to mimic them is credited to the advanced combat algorithms in his brain.
As you can see, Dooku's accolades put him far above Bane as of Path of Destruction when it comes to technical acumen.
They really don't, they're entirely vague and unsubstantiated and Bane has his very own fair share of impressive but vague accolades to his name. The difference is that in terms of clear descriptions of their technical abilities Bane completely shits on Dooku.
Grievous didn't only know makashi, though. 😉
Sure but what I was saying is that Mace Windu strongly implies that Makashi would be the only thing Dooku would be in a position to teach him.
This has been taken care of since.
😂 No lol it clearly hasn't. Well it has actually but not in the way you would like. The only thing that would suggest as much are your ridiculous and subjective interpretations of George's commentary.
Uh, what?
"Her face went pale. Dooku lifted that one finger, and this time he tapped it in the air, as if pushing a needle into a pincushion. Ventress crumpled to her knees. Her voice came out clotted with pain. Dooku made another little patting motion, and Ventress slammed to the tile floor. "This appears to be quite the level of ownage.
Well you didn't post the passage before that but it if you did you would clearly see that he attacks without warning and any real justification so we cannot be sure she had her defences up in the first place. As said it's possible the darkside nexus would be of more benefit in using The Force for offence rather than defence, and I don't believe Ventress has ever been established to be particularly adept with the Force. Which is basically the story of Dooku's life. The only people he owns with the Force are people who can't be said to have been particularly impressive and most of the time he does it in a manner where we can't even be sure they were defending.
PoD Bane on the other hand used the Force to dominate, with laughable ease, Qordis, clearly one of the 4 most significant members of the BoD and it's explicitly stated that Qordis's defences were up. None of Dooku's Force Power-on-Jedi feats are remotely comparable.
Your fascination with your particular trilogy certainly seems to have made you ignorant about all other SW eras; although Kenobi prefers to rely on his lightsaber skills, he is extraordinarily powerful in the Force, as demonstrated (among other examples) by his stalemating Anakin/Vader in their push-of-war, Anakin having his own set of potent Force feats, such as crushing a room full of durasteel by screaming "nooooo!".
Anakin had the potential to be great but by RotS was not at all particularly powerful with The Force and there's a clear difference between focused use of Force powers in combat and unfocused use at times of high emotions. Kenobi is never depicted to be anything but mostly ordinary with The Force.
And this is how Dooku handles Kenobi:
"He gathered the Force once more in a single indrawn breath that summoned power from throughout the universe; the slightest whipcrack of that power, negligent as a flick of his wrist, sent Kenobi flying backward to crash hard against the wall."
What I said about being outmanoeuvred still stands.
There was nothing noteworthy about those shadow assassins Bane fights in RoT (which he had dismissed in PoD as "no match for the Jedi"😉, yet one of them runs through his Force wave.
For one we're discussing PoD Bane, RoT for the most part horribly underpowers him and his PoD incarnation, aside from learning a few new tricks, is clearly demonstrated to be the more impressive incarnation.
Secondly, a Force wave by its very nature is not a focused attack and the assassin would only have to defend himself against the portion that passed over his body. It's certainly not the same thing as defending himself against a focused attack.
You're also assuming a lower limit of ability for that assassin that we cannot be sure he possesses. For all you know he possessed a particularly potent Force Shield.
Ritual. I could just as easily argue that, aside from the one that died, the padawans that direct energy to push a star destroyer out of the Yavin system are stronger than Bane.
It makes no difference that it happened during a ritual, it called upon abilities that Bane would have just as ready access to in a combat scenario.
I'm not too familiar with what you're describing but I would imagine this is a textbook example of a false equivalence. Perhaps you could describe in detail exactly how the Jedi used their powers in that example.
LOL ROFLAMO WTF? What's your evidence to support this?
That as an order they had a greater emphasis on Jedi-on-Sith combat than any other that we've come across? They also had their fair share of impressive individuals (despite their extremely limited exposure) but the fact that they existed at the height of the largest war between the Jedi and Sith there's ever been would suggest that they had been conditioned for Jedi-on-Sith warfare to a greater extent than any other order of Sith. You're just assuming they were weak because it benefits your agenda.
"One of the greatest legends of the Jedi Order"-the complete Star Wars encyclopedia
Page number and entire passage please.
"Best of all, Dooku would be!"-Grand Master Yoda
[Darth Sexy]No.[/Darth Sexy]
"He was one of the most respected and powerful Jedi in the Order's twenty-five-thousand-year history"-RotS novel
Already addressed.
And whilst Bane is already past his prime by DoE:"Physically, the Count's age was rarely a handicap. Deft as he had become with the Force-unimaginably more subtle than the boy who had watched water-skeeters in the Jedi gardens all those years ago-he wore his eighty-three standard years better than most humans half his age. He was still in superb physical shape, senses keen, health undiminished by even the memory of a cold."
That isn't technically saying that Dooku isn't physically past his pirme either, just that he's incredibly adept at using the Force to compensate for his natural physical abilities.
Aside from this being a very arbitrary comparison (it wouldn't be of any impact in this scenario and sometimes Force users are just disproportionately good or bad at certain things) wasn't Bane being past his prime due to the effects the darkside had on his body, just as it has done on numerous other extraordinarily powerful darkisiders? Dooku wouldn't possess the same handicap.
I'd also like to limit this to PoD if we could. Drew did a terrible job of accurately scaling his power between the books.
"Once a great Jedi Master, now an even greater Lord of the Sith"
OK....
Except that Dooku is a "consummate duelist", consummate implying perfection to the highest degree. Dooku chose to specialize in a form that had no advantages outside of lightsaber dueling, so to presume that he "cannot be said to be quite as dedicated" is simply absurd.
I'm not sure this last bit follows.
But it should still be noted that Kas'im does not necessarily know every technique that Dooku does. Especially since Jedi routinely create their own forms and hybrids, such as Obi Wan's mixing soresu and ataru, and doubtlessly some Jedi must have extended their inventions past the idiosyncratic.
But you cannot prove that the forms changed in any technical capacity during that time (the only documented change was Juyo to Vaapad and that was purely mental and not technical) or that Dooku had his own personal unique moves so it's nothing more than speculation and even if Dooku had some techniques that Kas'im was unfamiliar with he would still be extremely familiar with his techniques for the most part. Kas'im himself used a hybrid of the different forms so he would be completely familiar with them on that level.
Originally posted by ?YLLAER
That as an order they had a greater emphasis on Jedi-on-Sith combat than any other that we've come across? They also had their fair share of impressive individuals (despite their extremely limited exposure) but the fact that they existed at the height of the largest war between the Jedi and Sith there's ever been would suggest that they had been conditioned for Jedi-on-Sith warfare to a greater extent than any other order of Sith. You're just assuming they were weak because it benefits your agenda.Aside from this being a very arbitrary comparison (it wouldn't be of any impact in this scenario and sometimes Force users are just disproportionately good or bad at certain things) wasn't Bane being past his prime due to the effects the darkside had on his body, just as it has done on numerous other extraordinarily powerful darkisiders? Dooku wouldn't possess the same handicap.
I'd give Swtor-era the nod over them personally. Far more examples of impressive Jedi and Sith than Banes-era.
Yes and the orbalisks horribly wrecked his body and accelerated the effects of aging.
Full quote
He can even mimic Vaapad on the fly.
"
There is an understated elegance in Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber technique, one that is quite unlike the feel one might get from the other great swordsbeings of the Jedi Order. He lacks entirely the flash, the pure bold elan of an Anakin Skywalker; there is nowhere in him the penumbral ferocity of a Mace Windu or a Depa Billaba nor the stylish grace of a Shaak Ti or a Dooku, and he is nothing resembling the whirlwind of destruction that Yoda can become. He is simplicity itself. That is his power. Before Obi-Wan had left Coruscant, Mace Windu had told him of facing Grievous in single combat atop a mag-lev train during the general's daring raid to capture Palpatine. Mace had told him how the computers slaved to Grievous's brain had apparently analyzed even Mace's unconventionally lethal Vaapad and had been able to respond in kind after a single exchange. "He must have been trained by Count Dooku," Mace had said, "so you can expect Makashi as well; given the number of Jedi he has fought and slain, you must expect that he can attack in any style, or all of them. In fact,
Obi-Wan, I believe that of all living Jedi, you have the best chance to defeat him.
"
Originally posted by ?YLLAERAnakin had the potential to be great but by RotS was not at all particularly powerful with The Force and there's a clear difference between focused use of Force powers in combat and unfocused use at times of high emotions. Kenobi is never depicted to be anything but mostly ordinary with The Force.
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