Ranking Sidious without his Force Storms?

For those of you who are unaware, in a recent interview Tom Veitch, the creator of Dark Empire, basically retconned the Force Storm ability as not something Sidious can do at will, but something that came as a result of his mental struggle with Luke.

Now the DE version of Sidious is considered the strongest, and his Force Storm is the main reason for it. It's the one ability that his fans claim puts him above any other Force user, or at least any other Sith.

So where would you rank Sidious without it? Does he still have a claim to the title of strongest Sith if his strongest ability is his Lightning and not something on the scale of Nihilus/Vitiate's drain or Naga Sadow's star busting ritual, or even Exar Kun's esoteric abilities and Krayt's Dark Transfer?

Link the interview?

BTW, here is the interview:http://www.starwarsunderworld.com/2016/08/interview-with-dark-empire-writer-tom.html?m=1

And here is the direct quote:

Note on "Force Storms": The Emperor can't create Force Storms at will. They are in fact a phenomenon that occurs rarely, when the minds of two great Force users meet and struggle with each other at a distance.

Damn, brutal.

As I said when I posted the interview earlier, it's irrelevant. Not only is Veitch's claim non-canon but it is contradicted by other canon materials.

The authorial intent dudes can jizz over this all they want, but is it actually seen in the source material?

Originally posted by ares834
As I said when I posted the interview earlier, it's irrelevant. Not only is Veitch's claim non-canon but it is contradicted by other canon materials.

Originally posted by DarthAnt66
Or rather other canon sources misinterpreting Veitch's original work? mmm

Which is irrelevant.

Not to me. mmm

Originally posted by ares834
As I said when I posted the interview earlier, it's irrelevant. Not only is Veitch's claim non-canon but it is contradicted by other canon materials.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Either way that's beyond the scope of this thread. I'm not asking if you agree with the statement or not, I'm just asking where would you rate Sidious assuming the statement is true.

Originally posted by DarthAnt66
Not to me. mmm

That's fine, but it is irrelevant for all canonical discussion.

Seriously. An author saying something later on doesn't make it true especially when its contradicted in the work itself.

Originally posted by ares834
Which is irrelevant.

The extra material is there to conjecture upon and interpret the primary source mateiral. So where are the quote's that contradict his notion? Because I'm reading Dark Empire at this moment and it's looking very possible that Veitch's theory could be the cause of the Force Storm phenomena and it would also explain why they're completely unusable to Palpatine in combat.

To support his theory, we have this statement here from Luke :

The next page of course, is the storm.

Without it I'd rank him at!!!!!!!!!!!!

RotS Sidious level.

He definitely wouldn't be on Nihilus or Valkorion's level.

Interesting, but directly contradicted by numerous canon sources.

Originally posted by NewGuy01
Interesting, but directly contradicted by numerous canon sources.

Please bring them, references would be nice also.

Originally posted by Ziggystardust
Please bring them, references would be nice also.

Originally posted by ares834
As I said when I posted the interview earlier, it's irrelevant. Not only is Veitch's claim non-canon but it is contradicted by other canon materials.

When I read this on TFN, I chuckled: Sheev whips out a Force storm right in front of Luke at the end of DE.

There is no inherent contradiction as far as i'm concerned.

Looking at things closer, the in-universe source for the statements that Sidious could summon the Force Storm is his own "Dark Side Compendium".

So even if we discount Veitch's claim completely, we have to consider exactly what the Compendium was.

Its stated purpose was to be the ultimate collection of Dark Side lore, but that doesn't make sense because:
a)that's what holocrons were for
b)Sidious allowed his followers access to it. That goes against his policy of feeding his followers scraps and keeping the real Dark Side goodies for himself.
...unless the books were not what he claimed they were.

Rather they were a self-aggrandizing work where Sidious to espouse his philosophy, propagandize and brag about his achievements, not give every average Joe darksider a road map to power.

tl;dr Sidious claims he can summon Force Storms in his version of Mein Kampf but I would take his claims with a grain of salt.