Where Do You Have SW On The Cosmic Powerscale?
As you might have guessed from the title, I'm curious to see where you put Force users in comparison to the rest of fiction. Feel free to use any metric you like but the CV method works well too ( street level: Batman and below/low tier: Spiderman and below/mid tier: Iron Man and below/high tier: Hulk and below/herald tier: Silver Sufer's the general benchmark/skyfather: Odin and below.
For me, I view Star Wars the most powerful characters as high tier-low herald. My reasoning for this is that Plagueis as of TPM ( being more powerful then Sidious ) put in more then 50% of the power necessary to shift the balance of the Force on a cosmic scale. And not just a slight shift but one that could be felt by every powerful Force user in the Galaxy. Now, some might consider this a universal feat as the Force has been confirmed to be universal but we'll stick with it being a Galactic level feat for now.
According to TFU, normally planets experience constant shifts between the Dark and Light sides and this is caused by the passive Force energy given off by the planet's population leaning torwards one or the other. Using the Milky Way Galaxy as a measuring stick, we know we have at the very least, 100 billion planets in our Galaxy. Assuming the main SW Galaxy has a similar number of planets, Sidious and Plagueis would have needed to have exceeded the passive Force energy given off by ( at the very least ) millions of planetary populations.
Consider then that Plagueis grew in power after this and TPM Palpatine was essentially an equal. Fast forward to RotS and Sidious is his confirmed superior ( likely by a fair margin ). Fast forward again to RotJ and he's collected knowledge of the Force from millions of worlds and has been draining Byss for nigh on 2 decades.
Imo, Sidious's energy manipulation should around herald tier.
This is why I don't it's far fetched to assume that he was moving at relativistic speeds in RotS. Anakin could perceive sub light fighters as dots of light yet Anakin ahd trouble perceiving Palpatine moving in combat. This isn't a one off perception feat for Force users as a Rebellion era Luke has percieved sub light fighters ( TIE's ) in motion.
"Luke reached out. The Force was here, as it was everywhere, and it was no harder to touch deep in space than it was in the swamps on Dagobah. He let it fill him. The TIE fighters suddenly seemed to be moving slower. Luke’s hands flew over the controls; he moved the stick with sharp and precise movements. Swung to his starboard and lit the lasers, double-tapped the fire button. Lines of fire lanced out and shattered one, two of the four TIE fighters. The explosion spat a hard spray of wreckage at him as Luke looped away. Shards of the destroyed TIEs sleeted against the X-wing’s transparisteel canopy, a meal and plastic hail." - Shadows of the Empire.
As I'm sure anybody reading this knows, there are many other examples of enhanced perception in SW.
As Obi Wan has dodged/blocked hundreds ( possibly thousands ) of hypersonic blaster bolts before as well the scaling for Sidious being this fast is not only precedented but supported.
The biggest argument against Force user's being this fast is of course that they would either burn themselves up moving this fast or damage their surroundings. This is of course easily explained by passive Force defenses. Starkiller was able to shield himself from the heat of atmospheric reentry without slowing or stopping his descent or affecting his surroundings. I don't see why this wouldn't function in the same manner for heat and force generated by a Force user's speed.
There's also the fact that the Force is stated to be "mystical" in the Book of the Sith by Witches like Talzin and the existence of things like Sith Sorcery which further lends credence to the "Force is Magic" dynamic.
TLDR: I think the most powerful Force user's are herald level and that the Force being "mystical" allows them a high degree of viability against bricks with weaknesses to magic.