DarthDuelist9
Senior Member
Originally posted by DarthAnt66
Skywalker was dominating Dooku even before his "Zonakin" state. 😬
Dominating? Let's take a look at the Revenge of the Sith novelization, shall we? Obi-Wan & Anakin found it necessary to sucker Dooku in a trap which costed him a valuable amount of energy to then both, at the same time, fight him. Anakin in this scenario had every advantage possible, he faced an opponent who already losted a great deal of energy, had Obi-Wan to help defeat Dooku and this same Obi-Wan would cover any mistakes he made. Yet Dooku could still land numerous hits on both Obi-Wan and Anakin, even to the point that the former could take out Obi-Wan while Anakin could any watch helplessly. The only thing Anakin put against that was that he could pressure a Dooku who had direct tactic, had already lost a good amount of energy and was also focusing on Obi-Wan, and even then Dooku could change his tactics to the point that he could let the fight shift in his favor again. Does that seem to you the makings of a tier 9 fighter like Yoda, who dominated the Count without any favorable circumstances or help?
The accolades putting Windu and Dooku on the same level are generally all prior to the start of the Clone Wars (with Yoda's musing as an exception). Windu destroyed over 100,000 B1 battle droids even prior to the Outer Rim Sieges, let alone other models. I operate under the assumption he grew in power.
You assume that Windu would make a huge jump from tier 8 to 9 during the Clone Wars? Well it's quite obvious that the Windu that fought Sidious was performing under a unique set of circumstances perfect for his fighting style. Gillard never made a distinction between a normal circumstances Mace and the one we saw in RotS while the RotS novel, which was edited by George himself, does. That this Windu, under very specific circumstances, is a tier 9 duelist is kind of undisputed since we did see him take on Sidous but under normal circumstances? No, everything points in the other direction.
Besides, he's stated as tier nine, and Dooku's state as tier eight, so I have no clue why you're trying to dispute this when it's already set in stone for this thread.
Because Gillard's quote is made under very specific circumstances, he's only looking at the movies without acknowledging the circumstances, which other sources actually do, of the fights and the character's level of performance. This context is very different from the context used on the boards where 'we' prefer to rank characters who are under the influence of the same circumstances.
If this thread is only made to blindly follow Gillard's context and neglect any of the above mentioned circumstances then you're absolutely right and I will take back everything I said, no problem. However if this thread also leaves room for a critical look at Gillard's system then I stand by everything I've said, it's easy to pick a quote, rip it from it's context and make a conlcusion which is the complete opposite from the general accepted opinion and call it a day.
Note that I don't say Gillard's system is 'wrong' and everything he says is abolsute trash, no, his way of ranking characters is right form his perspective (under a very specific context) but looking at how characters are normally evaluated and ranked on this board (or CV) then I think I can safely conclude that his way isn't the best way to compare characters.