Ranking the most powerful Force users: an analysis
So this topic has been discussed many times before, but I would like to give my own, somewhat detailed analysis. I'm somewhat rushing this, so apologies if things are a little messy/there are typos/etc. Let me know what you agree/disagree with.
I'm using Legends canon, and a few epistomological standards:
Narrator accolades are taken for their word unless if they are
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[*]Sufficiently contradicted by other source material.
[*]Utterly inane or nonsensical.
[*]So completely contradicted by demonstrated feats and events that it would be pretty much impossible to reconcile them.
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Out of universe authorial comments are taken under consideration. They are more trusted to determine the specifics of their own characters and storylines, but not necessarily how they relate to other individuals. We can also take with a grain of salt spurious email responses that seem to imply a lack of actual thought given to a topic.
Feats are used, but taken under consideration given their general inconsistency. Generally speaking, I'll try to compare characters' relatively higher tier showings, .ie I won't take into consideration Yoda's struggling to lift a pillar. That seems to be a reasonable safeguard against the power creep in more recent material.
If two sources contradict one another, there are a few ways to reconcile them:
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[*]Canon rating under Leland Chee's system prior to the Disney reboot.
[*]Recency of the material.
[*]Internal consistency and sensibility.
[*]The source material's prior track record.
[*]How many sources corroborate one another.
[/LIST]
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OK, so here's my list. I'm considering overall mastery of the Force under characters' individual power.
Excluded: the Mortis Anchorites, Mortis Anakin, characters in Oneness, the Bedlam Spirits, Zonoma Sekot, Taalon, Nyax, UnuThul, and other one-off deus ex machinas.
I've also excluded Darth Krayt from the list due to not having really read or explored the Legacy comics, Talzin whose off-Dathomir feats I'm pretty ignorant of, and some characters of whom we know essentially nothing, like Ragnos/Nadd/Sadow/Hord.
1. Luke Skywalker - three reasons why I put him above Palpatine. Firstly, it's basically the most thematically important power-ranking in the mythos that Anakin could have been the most powerful Force user ever, and that Luke has the ability to become what his father never reached. Lucas pretty much states outright that he has inherited his father's potential to become twice as powerful as Sidious - at the very least, even if you don't think that his potential is literally equivalent to the Chosen One's, it's still greater than Sidious's, given that Lucas was speaking in the context of surpassing Palpatine. I think that by FotJ, Luke's had enough time to, given his ridiculously good growth curve, have unlocked enough of that latent power to have passed the dark lord of the sith.
Secondly, he does manage to defeat the reborn Emperor in a lightsaber duel. Granted, it is a duel and not a battle of the Force, but I do imagine that Palpatine would've tried to do something to Luke in that category were he capable, but he can only gain the upper hand via his Force storms. It is true that Leia is vaguely "unlocking hidden resources" within Luke, although Skywalker doesn't even seem to notice her doing so until she points it out. But Leia isn't incredibly powerful - would her battle meditation unlock potential in Luke that 30 or so years of improving wouldn't? I find that highly unlikely. He's likely surpassed his amped-Dark Empire version long before FotJ.
Thirdly, Luke does surpass Palpatine in feats when you compare them side-by-side. So he never matches Palpatine's Force storms, but this would make for quite the unfair comparison because he doesn't really want to. His telekinesis showings are superior - Palpatine has never matched manipulating dovin basals or immobilizing Darth Caedus with a gesture. He's demonstrated a greater affinity with illusions, Forve valor, foresight (his foresight in LotF: Invincible is scarily prescient), etc. All of Palpatine's superior showings come in categories that Luke would consciously avoid. At the worst, I would have to see conclusive demonstrations of Palpatine's superiority in the feats department to consider overriding the other two, more authorial indications of Luke's supremacy.
2. Darth Sidious - Look, it's reasonable to take with a grain of salt random, scattered proclamations of X character being the most powerful or whatever. But I'm pretty sure there've been close to a dozen or more sources that have all said this about Palpatine, and I think that consistent compilation of accolades is too overwhelming to be dismissed on face. You may argue that these sources predate Valkorion's creation - refer to the Plagueis analysis. To put the nail in the coffin on other Sith being stronger, Lucas himself considers Palpatine to be the most powerful of all time - you may consider his ignorance on future EU creations, but I would make the stronger claim that Palpatine's supremacy is of thematic importance, and he's supposed to represent the ultimate culmination of the Sith order, the one who is finally powerful enough to wipe out the Jedi. Whether Lucas knew about every individual sith lord who came before him, this status is of pretty intrinsic importance to the saga.
Even if it weren't, Sidious's feats speak for themselves. He's the only character confirmed to be capable of ravaging planetary surfaces purely on his own raw power, has dominated Windu/Dooku tier combatants with ease, mind-wiped trillions of people, made himself a walking dark side nexus, one-shotted 50 stormtroopers with lightning, etc.
People try to point to Valkorion. I don't buy the "Valkorion isn't a sith" BS, given that Palpatine has quotes placing him supreme among all dark side Force users (the Son and Abeloth are freakish enough anomalies and isolated enough from galactic events that their exclusion from these quotes is reasonable), and that this technicality doesn't really affect his thematic depiction as the ultimate evil. But he's also simply more impressive - if we take away the nexuses, the rituals (of which Valkorion has access to things like thousands of gullible sith lords that Palpatine doesn't), and the vague hype, Palpatine beats Valkorion in almost every side-by-side comparison. He has better raw destructive feats (Ziost may have been a ritual and doesn't compare to "tearing surfaces" off of worlds and ripping apart Eclipse super star destroyers), telekinesis (scaling from his dominating Vader), Force valor and even telepathy (dominating Luke and Vader >>> failing to dominate the Outlander). Valkorion's only clear advantage is in his abilities regarding cheating death, but he's had the advantage of the Nathema ritual that Sidious couldn't really replicate given his circumstances.
He's also more powerful than Yoda by RotS per the novelization and various other sources, and only grows stronger.
3. Yoda - Yoda being called the greatest foe the darkness had ever known isn't clearly written in third person omniscient, but sourcebooks echo that he's believed by most, including Dooku, to be as such. It's possible that the Jedi Order's consensus is wrong, but I'd say less probable than not - combined with his performance against Sidious, I'd buy it. I put Yoda above Plagueis somewhat roughly - he's close enough to Sidious in power given their duel that I think beats the 10 years of progression Sidious would have from TPM to RotS. TPM Sidious is already called the most powerful of all time, IIRC, so he's likely above Plagueis by then, and again, RotS Yoda is likely > TPM Sidious. It's also pointed out in some sources that Yoda is past his prime in the PT. His OCW feats seal the deal for me.
4/5. Darth Plagueis - he's called the most powerful sith lord who had ever lived in the publisher's summary. Taken at face value, this would put him above any sith prior to Sidious. I don't take publisher summaries as gospel, but given the difficulties in adjudicating these questions, they're better than nothing. Plagueis and Sidious both believe it to be so, and the novel comes out after Vitiate's creation and even mentions him. That being said, I'm not 100% sure that he's above Valkorion - that really depends on how seriously you take his claim that he's not a Sith, despite the codex saying otherwise. I do think he's above Vitiate - Plagueis' accolade could only really be overriden by very solid evidence to the contrary, and a feats war proves inconclusive. The areas where Vitiate exceeds him are in ones where Plagueis wouldn't have the interest or resources to replicate (he couldn't have emulated Nathema given the low number of Sith, for instance), or simply doesn't get put in situations to show off. Plagueis has enough high profile feats and powerscaling off of Palpatine to at least make it so that a feats war isn't conclusively in Vitiate's favor, and with that doubt, we can defer to the publisher's statement.
4/5. Valkorion - Vitiate is already stated by multiple sources to be more powerful than any Sith who came before him. None of these sources are solidly third person omniscient, but they're authoritative enough for me to take seriously barring very solid evidence to the contrary. The extent to which he is stronger than everyone else in his era, his planetary level destructive abilities, monstrous TK, ability to one-shot fairly powerful characters, and nearly unparalleled knowledge of the dark side put him over the likes of Caedus with respect to feats. Caedus's performance against Luke is impressive but somewhat circumstantial; when he engages him in Force contests, which are the subject of this thread, he is almost routinely humiliated.