The Great Debate Season 16 Finals!!!

[u/Verlux]

Rules

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Out of Tier Rules

• For Out of Tier requests, simply ping myself and/or Chainsaw__Monkey and state your case for why you believe someone's combatant is out of tier, then proceed with the debate as per normal. We will evaluate that request individual of the debate itself and make our decision in judgments. Reminder: the Head Judges maintain the right to DM any user we believe to be skirting OoT lines and make our own OoT accusation, with said user having 48 hours to defend themselves.

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Battle Rules

• Speed will not be equalized for this tier.

• All combatants are aware of the basics of their allies' combat abilities but are in the blind on their opponents (unless they have canon knowledge of said person via sharing a fictional universe)

• Battleground:

[*"The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena. The Parthenon is 45 feet tall, with an interior chamber that is 98' x 63' and a total area of 240' x 112'. For our purposes, the Parthenon has been fully restored, meaning the interior chamber is enclosed and contains a statue of Athena.

The arena of Great Debate Season 16 AKA Wonder Woman is the fully restored Parthenon.

Of note:

• For our purposes, the total arena is Athenian Acropolis, which is 7.5 acres. This area cannot be left by participants. The area extends into the sky ~400 meters
• Participants start inside the Parthenon interior chamber, on opposite sides.
• The chamber walls are normal stone walls, and thus extremely destructible to participants; however, the columns of the Parthenon have the middle 80% made of untamperable WhoWouldWinium, making them detachable from the building but still usable as a weapon by the sufficiently strong.
• The statue of Athena is behind the "team 1" side start. Destruction of this statue will make Wonder Woman very angry and substantially reduce her restraint.
• Recreation of the Parthenon interior for reference
• Recreation of the Parthenon front exterior

Opponents will start 90ft across from each other, in the central chamber of The Parthenon. Teammates are spaced 10ft apart from one another.

*All numbers are rough approximations and may not stand up to pixel calcing.

Submission Rules

• Tier: Must be able to win an unlikely victory, draw/near draw, or likely victory against Wonder Woman in the conditions outlined above. All entrants will be bloodlusted against Wonder Woman, meaning they will act fully rationally and put down their opponent in the quickest, most efficient manner possible regardless of morality, utilizing any and all possible techniques/tactics/attacks if necessary. The bloodlust does not give any foreknowledge of Wonder Woman or his capabilities.

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Debate Rules

• Rounds will last approximately 5 and a half day days, hopefully from Monday until Saturday at noon of each week of the tourney; there is a 48 hour time limit both on starting (we do not care who starts, you and your opponent can figure that out) AND on responses, AND ADDITIONALLY each user MUST get in two responses or else be disqualified. If one user waits until the very last minute to force this rule to DQ their opponent without any forewarning to their opponents or the tournament supervisors, they will be removed from this tournament, no exceptions.

• Format for each round: the one to go first gets an Intro + 1st Response, their opponent replies in kind, then both get a 2nd response, then a 3rd response in a back-and-forth style, and a closing statement individual of one another that can be posted any time after both 3rd responses are complete. FOR THIS ROUND, EACH DEBATER'S RESPONSES MUST CONSIST OF NO MORE THAN ONE FULL 15K CHARACTER-LONG REDDIT COMMENT FOR THE FIRST RESPONSE, AND 20K CHARACTERS FOR EACH FOLLOWING RESPONSE!!! You are allowed an intro post as stated above, which can include basic feats, of up to 5000 characters, but no arguments or comparisons may be made in comparison to the opponent.

• Rounds will either be a full 3v3 Team Match, or 1v1 single matches. 1v1 matches are determined by randomization. Match format will switch every round, with Team Matches always followed by single matches, and vice versa.

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Brackets Here

As this is the final match, the contestants in question will get to utilize their entire roster, making this:

4v4 Team Melee, utilizing their backup entrants

The Final Round ends Sunday, June 1st, 12:00 CST

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Special Note: Don't forget that combatants are spaced apart based on the reach of their striking capabilities. If you have a 10 foot long spear pointed at the Tier Setter, you start with the tip of the spear 10 meters away from him; if you are riding a giant monster, you start with the end of the monster's arms/shoulders/head at the 10 meter away point, etc etc.

Links to:

Tier Setter Page

Sign Ups

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

[u/feminist-horsebane]

I am so lonely.

All the other debaters are scared of me. Everyone drops against me. No-one wants to debate me-- They think I am cringe.

They send me from tourney to tourney edwardposting new shitters in their name. And as I get better at it, they fear me more and more.

I am a victim of my own success. Feminist-Horsebane. I don't even get a real name, only a reddit handle. I am capable of so much more and noone sees it. Some days I feel so alone I could cry, but I don't. I never do. Because what would be the point? Not a single person in the entire discord chat would care.

Take it to your grave.

Overview

In TDM's version of events, all 4 of TDM blitz Orochi while Orochi & all of 5BB stand there & let it happen.

5BB hits far more often than they're hit, amplifying their superior offense & defense even further. Paragon in particular is virtually always less than the sum of his parts in his actual showings & isn't able to pull so far above his weight class that end accounts for his teammates deficits.

Orochi spams everyone here, requiring their full attention to defend- yet the rest of 5BB is also demanding their full attention. TDM can't keep up with both at once.

Landing Hits

Behavior

Mik frames TDM's speed as "TDM keeps up enough to land the hits they need to land"- ergo, their offensive speed is high. But their ability to use whatever speed they have to defend themselves is lower.

TDM almost never dodges, even vs. slower enemies.

• Adam lacks a single feat of dodging. When pressed about this, Mik pointed out a time he broke a scythe- this is the same as admitting there are no dodging feats.
• MM using skill to dodge & attack at the same time is something he virtually never does per Batmans' narration.
• Paragon is consistently tagged, & never even makes an attempt to evade damage.
• Darkseid suffers this worst of all.

5BB not only has speed & skill, they actively abuse it.

• Alita & Garou reposition, counter, deflect, and dodge constantly.
• Even SM & Orochi will make evasive maneuvers more regularly than TDM does.

5BB would land more hits on TDM than vice versa even if the fight were even, because TDM is more willing to accept hits than 5BB are.

Speed

TDM's Speed is defined by three metrics: FTE, Projectiles, and bullet timer Interactions 5BB is superior in these metrics.

• 5BB responds to faster bullets.
  • 5BB all either deflect or scale cleanly to deflecting automatic fire from rifles & miniguns. These bullets move in the range of +800m/s.
  • TDM are instead each scaled to handgun, revolver, & submachine gun bullets. These bullets move closer to 300-400 m/s.
  • Each member matches bullets 1:1, maintaining that speed across multiple moves. Nothing in TDM is comparable to something like Alita's 400 punches per second.
• 5BB fights faster opponents.
  • TDM are scaled to fighting bullet timers, whereas 5BB is scaled to fighting supersonic opponents.
  • Bullet timing can be supersonic, but you do not need to match the speed of a bullet in order to intercept it. In MM's chief feat for instance, virtually no movement is require on his behalf.
  • Each member of 5BB outpaces characters that are supersonic bare minimum.
• Using "FTE" as a metric, 5BB is superior yet again.
  • Mikhail uses "FTE" as a shorthand for "accomplishing actions in millisecond timeframes". This is obviously vague & infers little more than a range.
  • 5BB each blocks a supersonic attack from a ~5ft distance, showing them to at least be able to react/act in 5ms>. TDM can't claim the same just by being in the "millisecond" range.
  • 5BB are each spoiled with "FTE showings", notably vs. superhumans & not regular joes like TDM.

TDM isn't so slow they would never be able to tag 5BB. But they won't land the initial hits, they're certainly going to land hits less than 5BB, & they aren't "equivalent" as they're argued to be.

Skill

Both 5BB & TDM are skilled. Yet TDM doesn't capitalize on their skill in the way 5BB does.

• Last round, I showed that Paragon maintains access to a variety of skill in all of his fights via exposure to Canary, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, & Superman. In the majority of his fights, he never employs so much as a single skilled move, always acting as a bruiser.
  • Mik frames this as "obviously he would use skill if he were going to lose"- but Paragon loses all the time & never uses skill to prevent it from happening.
  • Having Nobel Prizes doesn't change this. Malala Yousafzai has Nobel Prizes, I wouldn't trust her combat instincts.
• MM's skill needs to be sufficient to overcome the difference between lifting 100 tons & lifting thousands of tons- Yet he never uses his skill, to the point that Miller Batman- who has studied MM's entire career- is shocked that he even has it.

Virtually every fight 5BB has shows them abusing their skill.

• Alita, Garou, Orochi each are using skill to target internals. Paragon, Adam, and Darkseid struggle with internal damage.
• Alita & Garou uses deflection & combining moves in virtually every fight he has. Mik seems to understand how useful these skills are based on his argumentation of Paragon. Even Orochi uses skill via copying the moves of his opponents.
• SM's lack of grappling skill is called out- I don't think SM has judo training, but he'll regularly use "grappling" in as much as "I grab the person i'm fighting & charge them around", & whether he'll use a grapple seems less relevant anyway when MM's is argued to grapple him.

TDM may have "skill" in that there are skill feats you can post for them, but they don't actually fight using it in any noteworthy capacity.

5BB's Offense vs. TDM's Defense

Piercing

5BB spams piercing checks that carve through multiple meters of stone. Mik is more or less arguing these feats simply don't exist in most places:

• Garou absolutely uses piercing attacks.
  • Vs. Darkshine- "Water Stream Smashing Fist in the left hand. Whirlwind Iron Cutting Fist in the right hand."
  • Vs. Bomb, who invented this style & tries to use it vs. Garou, Garou matches his blow exactly.
  • Vs. Bang- we see him literally say that he's using the whirlwind fist.
  • Darkshine & PuriPuriPrisoner not being pierced is due to their durability. Bang & Bomb know how to interact with these techniques without being cut, due to dozens of years of training and inventing them, including teaching Garou those techniques.
• Orochi's horns are clearly piercing.
  • Piercing isn't a binary of "it's either piercing or it's blunt force." A great deal of force channeled into a small surface area is a piercing attack.
  • When Orochi uses his building crushing force to shove his horns through enemies, he's piercing them.

[u/feminist-horsebane → u/feminist-horsebane]

TDM is argued to each be able to resist "attacks that carve through multiple feet of metal".

• Adam can't resist attacks that carve through multiple feet of metal. He takes a sword that once cut through the skin of a generic bot, and responds terribly to bullets.
  • These bullets & scythes having some "magical" component doesn't make them better at piercing.
• MM being "the man of steel" is obviously figurative language rather than an actual assessment of his biology. I would like to assure Mik that winners of the Ironman Triathalon are not bulletproof.
• Darkseid is only piercing resistant on his armor. Mik doesn't refute this.
  • Darkseid withstanding a piercing attack to the head doesn't mean he could survive something like this from Orochi. Even if he could, Darkseids utility in this fight is his eye beams, which he can't produce without a head.
• Paragon doesn't have anyone here he can copy to resist this degree of piercing. His power copying does not save him if there aren't relevant durabilities to copy.

"My team resists metal cutting & your team only cuts stone" is reductive. 5BB is cleanly piercing multiple body lengths worth of thick concrete/granite. This obviously evidences some ability to meaningfully engage with metal in smaller quantities.

Heat

5BB checks opponents with heat that destroy concrete & metal on contact.

• Alita's plasma instaslags armored plating. She fires this through opponents & imbues it into her strikes.
• SM's unwillingness to use heat vision is overstated, it hasn't caused him issues since early in his career.
• Orochi slags this concrete as soon as his beams touch it- & he does indeed melt the floor he interacts with.

TDM isn't necessarily instantly ashed from this sort of attack, but they don't no sell it. TDM is each left screaming or in non fighting shape from the blasts they take.

Concussive Force

TDM is asserted as being so durable that they have nothing to fear from 5BB's offense, even while being disadvantaged in speed/skill. But Mik doesn't compare stats here so much as broadly asserts his team as durable.

There's no mention of any of 5BB's strength in his last response, so there's no comparison going on with which to base this claim.

The tier draws comparison to large craters in concrete, destroying or launching 50+ ton vehicles, & busting large structures like buildings or small portions of mountains to gauge physicals.

• Alita busts airships, giant stone slabs, and scales above those who destroy hilltops.
• Superman busts giant trains, sections of skyscrapers, and mountain peaks.
• Garou scales to or above Darkshine, Tank Top Master, PPP, and the Hammerhead Gang, who destroy large mechs, sections of buildings, and huge sections of ground.
• Orochi destroys hundreds of feet of stone, and scales above those who easily crush buildings.

TDM needs to not just be superior to these feats, but demonstrate such superiority that they can be on the losing end of the "who is hitting who more".

• Adam takes a building busting blow, & is limp in his enemies arms before being slashed. The stones that Adam take are comparable to his own frame- every member of 5BB is destroying several times over a human sized mass worth of stone.
• MM's durability is largely compared to missiles- missiles do not transfer their force in the same way that punches do. Snyderman can be worse at taking missiles while better at taking blows, which is the case here, as MM never takes nearly as much force as SM did here.
  • Snyderman pretty easily shrugs off missiles anyway.
• Paragon takes a handful of blows from opponents two tiers than he is himself & is left with such bad internal damage that he nearly dies.
• Darkseid's durability is simply not competitive at the tier. He never takes a building busting blow & is stunlocked by far weaker blows.

To draw a comparison to the tier -TDM perhaps has showings vs. the lower or middle end of WW's strength, but little showings vs. the sort of damage her more exerted strikes do. When they willingly take attacks, don't use any skill, & aren't particularly fast, this is a big problem.

TDM's Offense vs. 5BB's Defense

Concussive Force

IDM's offense is nerfed by the landing hit ratio problem that they have.

• Alita+Garou's prediction & redirection will grant less opportunities to hit them.
• SM & MM are fighting, with SM dominating the grapple due to strength so superior that a barely used skill differential won't matter.
• Orochi demands so much attention to evade that there are simply less opportunities to hit him. If TDM does not focus on evading Orochi and focuses instead on trying to hit him, they just get skewered.
• As shown- All 4 have supersonic+ speed, 5ms> reactions, & the willingness to abuse those advantages.

This means they could afford to have lower durability vs. opponents that land less hits. Comparing to that same tank busting/building busting/building sized solid masses, 5BB is durable enough.

• 5BB takes blows that bust large vehicles with no real damage.
• 5BB each takes blows that cause buildings or similar structures to topple, or scale above those who do.
• 5BB's more durable members withstand impacts that destroy multiple buildings or building sized masses.

TDM is a group of brawlers that bust tanks & have some showings of busting larger masses with charges.

• The sort of massively telegraphed "blitzes" that Adam, MM, & Paragon are argued to do are all the exact sort of thing that's easily predicted & reacted to by more skilled & faster opponents like 5BB. We went over this last round and it went unrefuted.
• The basic blows they throw out rarely get past generic tank busting. Generic tank busting is the very low end of the tier, it's not something that will put down people with the tier relevant durability that 5BB has in short order.

Mik primarily disparages 5BB for being "staggered" by this tier of damage- but staggering someone doesn't equate beating them. 5BB is hitting far more than they're being hit due to the differentials in speed, skill, & characterization. They can afford to be briefly staggered.

Orochi in particular also deserves some attention here:

• Orochi is stated multiple times to be the strongest monster in the monster association, with no contradictions ever made apparent. OPM is a singular series with barely 200 issues written by one author.
• Mik mostly disparages Orochi's durability on the back of "it's scaling" without giving a reason why the scaling is bunk.
• It certainly isn't as though Mik isn't using scaling to Power Girl, Hawkman, a Superman from a different universe, DCAMU Darkseid's DCAMU bullshit, & Paragon as a character.

Lightning

Last round I argued that 5BB would be able to redirect lightning infused attacks. Mik pointed this out but didn't really give a reason why this wouldn't work.

• Alita uses electromagnetic control to redirect lightning at enemies. She has a supercomputer for a brain, a wormhole reactor as a power source, & electromagnetic senses. Adam is a screaming man with a lightning bolt on his chest & lightning for hands.
  • (this implies she runs at such a high level of power that I can't imagine a lightning bolt is more than a rounding error respectively).
• Similarly, Adam's lightning is infused into strikes that are redirected back at him or Paragon. If Adam's lightning is the "real lightning" that Mik insists it is, this has every reason to work.

[u/feminist-horsebane → u/feminist-horsebane]

Orochi & SM are too durable for this to be relevant.

• A taser does more damage than a lightning bolt because you're exposed to the electricity for 5 seconds, instead of the microseconds that a lightning strike lasts for.
• Superman is physically superior to WW who takes massive lightning bolts that shatter structures, has cells that cannot die, resists attacks that vaporize city blocks, and is considered unkillable by the military who presumably know about electricity.
• Orochi is easily 10x the size of the largest thing that Adam has killed just by comparing to human frames, and is considered by far the strongest monster and virtually unkillable. Massive electrical attacks exist in his world, and are never considered as a trump card by people who are familiar with his biology.

Beam Attacks

Darkseid & Superman are both argued to have beam attacks. Darkseid's are useless

• Darkseid's omega beams are not "phasing through targets to explode", why would they be blockable if they phase directly into your flesh?
• Shazam, WW, Superman etc all take these beams without having their organs exploded.
• Even if they did- Alita is specifically immune to internal attacks, Garou fights with a shattered ribcage without duress, & Superman's cells are immune to death, & Orochi lacks any human weakpoints.

In terms of actual collateral- say that each of those 13 vehicles weighed 2 tons, & each of those parademons weighed 1 ton, for roughly ~40 tons worth of material being busted, with the material being cheap car grade aluminum, generic alien flesh and unquantifiable metal. A generic tank like WW busts easily is nearly double that mass of more durable materials. Note that the beams are easily redirected.

MM is overwhelmingly likely to be targeted by SS.

• SM shrugs off heat vision from a stronger version of himself. MM is argued not to open with his heat vision previously- we can't have this both ways.
• This heat vision carved buildings on contact & slags I-Beams , before getting an amp.
• Nothing melts in this scan is because the blast is hitting SM, who is resistant. The existence of concussive force can't disprove heat elements.

To whatever degree Garou or Alita or Orochi are targeted, they'll be fine.

• If Alita needs to block heat vision or electricity with her own plasma fields, there's no reason she can't do so. If anything, this just presents her with the opportunity to hertz haeon MS in the eyes.
• Beams that slag concrete as soon as they hit it bathe Garou with no challenge to his durability. We literally do in fact see that the floor is melting in these scans.
• Orochi is obviously not less durable than Garou is,or any other monster that takes massive heat attacks.

Paragon

Alita & Orochi can't be copied.

• Paragon doesn't copy artificial powers.
• Paragon requires extended contact with an inorganic being to even interact with their powers.
• Paragon does not directly copy physiology- when he copies Superman, he doesn't gain the ability to absorb yellow sun radiation into his cells, he just gets strength. If Paragon copied Godzilla, he'd get atomic breath, but he wouldn't turn into a 200K ton lizard.

Alita is artificial.

• Alita is made of Imaginos Cells. Imaginos Cells are a structural imitation of organic cells, but they're machine cells themselves.
• It is further clarified that the Imaginos Cell simply imitates human life.
• In Imaginos 2.0, Alita no longer even resembles the biological design and is something else altogether.
• Alita has wires, damascus steel blades, electromagnetic brain chips, & wormhole reactors inside of her body. These are obviously not things that Paragon mimics.

Orochi just doesn't make sense to copy.

• The cited scan of "Orochi can shrink his form" is Orochi going from being 500ft tall to 100ft tall.
• Paragon would destroy his suit attempting this.
• If Paragon is nerfed by inexperience while fighting someone like Superman, I have no clue how he'd function when he's grown 500x bigger & has 40 heads.

Broadly, Paragon fights by speccing into a powerset rather than using multiple simultaneously. He might use Firestorms powers vs. Superman, & then WW's vs. Green Lantern- but you'll never see a scan of Paragon using something like Canary's skill+ Superman's power+Firestorms blasts+whatever.

Overall, he's a bruiser. There's no doubt that Paragon is regularly exposed to skill that he isn't copying.

• When Paragon has the skill of Superman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, & Canary, Paragon gets stunlocked by a blow from Red Tornado that Canary calls out to do, is unable to respond to an arrow, & left dizzy & unable to concentrate by a 4 hit combo.
• Paragon, while in possession of Supermans skill, is left nearly dead & full of internal injuries by a handful of blows from Daxamites that are two tiers removed from him in strength, speed, durability, & skill.

The margin by which Paragon copies an opponent isn't so dramatic that extended fights can't happen. Canary & Paragon have an extended 1 vs. 1. Superman is still able to hurt, outrace, & dodge Paragon. Daxamites weaker than himself kill Paragon.

Ultimately, Paragon:

• Can't improve powers by a margin that matters in short timeframes. Being 101% of your enemies doesn't matter when you suck at using the powers effectively.
• Can't resist him or his suit being carved apart, by either Orochi or the rest of 5BB.
• Can't handle internal or piercing damage well.

Whether he dies to a stray piercing attack or just has to get ganged up on by everyone last, he doesn't act as the "wall" TDM needs him to be.