Galan007
|Quantum Observer|
Originally posted by Darthadi
The knowledge thing still doesn't make sense when you look at Anakin's growth pre Mustafar when he had even less knowledge than he had as Vader (Luke's growth is another example of this). Based on his performance against Dooku he was already Yoda/ROTS Sidious tier or at least close. Yet during the OT he was stomped by Sidious.
RotS Anakin was Sidious/Yoda-tier in sabers, perhaps. In the Force, however, Palpatine would have trounced him.
But again, Palpatine didn't remain stagnant and at a fixed level over the years. He spent the decades between RotS and the OT incessantly hoarding knowledge and expanding his power... Hence the ease in which he raped Vader in the ESB era.
But even if we highball OT Vader, and assume that his power increased to the point where he was beyond RotS Palpatine, the scaling would still be:
OT Palpatine >> prime OT Vader > RotS Palpatine > RotS Vader.
As mentioned: Vader's power did increase significantly after RotS... Palpatine's power simply increased [a lot] more. The gap between them couldn't be bridged, because Palpatine just didn't allow it. He only gave Vader an appetizer(at the most), while keeping the main course all to himself. IOW, Vader's growth was limited/governed by the small trickle of knowledge that Palpatine was actually willing to provide from time to time, while Palpatine himself was obviously not restrained in such a way.
The notion that Vader's insane potential means that his power can just perpetually creep to infinity without any sort of "continuing education" has always been weird to me. /shrug
Originally posted by Darthadi
Not to mention that knowledge doesn't mean power as evidentiated by Jocasta Nu.
Jocasta was basically a human archive/computer who retained the knowledge she acquired, but never attempted to use it in any meaningful way(increasing her power was never Jocasta's prerogative.)
Palpatine, however, was knowledge-hoarding for the sole purpose of massively expanding his power -- and he absolutely had the prowess to apply that knowledge in a practical way.
That said, we do know that knowledge = power in cases where the Jedi/Sith in question is actively using that knowledge in an effort to further their power/skill. Aside from Palpatine, we've seen it mostly in prodigies like Dooku, Luke, and Rey, as well as certain characters in the High Republic.
Originally posted by Darthadi
This coupled with Palpatine's dialogue in the comics (both 2015 and 2017) make me belive that Vader lost potential. It's the only way the story makes any sense imo.
Certain aspects of Vader
were diminished after RotS. He lost the ability to produce FL, for example, and also lost mobility due to the armor's bulk.
But in terms of his raw/latent Force potential? No, nothing explicitly suggests that it was gimped. To the contrary, a few sources heavily imply that his potential was still intact.
