r/whowouldwin • u/FreestyleKneepad ​ • Jan 30 '21

Event Character Scramble Season 14 Tribunal

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[drumroll]

/u/morvis343, /u/GuyofEvil, /u/Voeltz, /u/Cleverly_Clearly, and /u/rangernumberx

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1

u/LetterSequence ​ Feb 07 '21

/u/doctorgecko

I lied I'm going for your touhou

Kasen Ibaraki

The main issue I have here is damage output. I thought it was fine on the low end at first, but the Rhea ruling showed that house busting was too low for the tier.

Kasen's best offense seems to be destroying a two story house "in a flash," probably in one strike. This is well below the tier offense wise. I don't think her striking will significantly impact Cage since the discrepancy between her strength and his is pretty wide. Overall, even if I bought the speed argument, and with the buffed durability, she's too weak to put down Luke Cage.

2

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 07 '21

I'd agree with you if the house busting was through physical strength but it's not.

It's through electricity.

For example the burning down of the house was done by a lightning lizard (who would be weaker than Kasen's dragon) that explicitely acts as ball lightning. In a similar vein splitting a tree like this through strength wouldn't be worth mentioning, but the damage is specifically descrbied as being caused by lightning causing all of the water in the tree to evaporate at once. I'm not going to go into details on numbers but that requires an absurd amount of energy, pretty much on the level of natural lightning.

And while Luke Cage is capable of resisting electricity I feel like the amount in natural lightning (which Kasen's pets can pretty explicitly create as demonstrated above) would do a fair amount of damage. Probably not enough to one shot, but enough that multiple strikes would bring him down. Add on the fact that Kasen can fly, use her fake arm to somewhat impede Luke, has strength that could affect Cage, and better resistance to her lightning attacks than he does (I only set her physical durability to tier) and I think she has a solid chance of taking the fight.

1

u/LetterSequence ​ Feb 07 '21

If the lightning split a tree by evaporating all the water inside, wouldn't that just instantly kill Luke Cage by doing the same to him?

2

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 07 '21

No I don't think so. It's not like her raiju has the power of "literally boil people alive".

My point was that the way her pet split the tree is pretty much how lightning causes trees to split in real life, as opposed to (for example) Pokemon where electric attacks have a more concussive effect.

Again my point is just that Kasen's pets utilize explicit natural lightning. While Luke Cage's electricity and heat resistance means it won't be an insta-kill, natural lightning being a lot more powerful than the electricity he tanked means it will still do a lot of damage.

1

u/Talvasha ​ Feb 08 '21 edited Feb 08 '21

I think the point is more 'if her lightning is that strong why wouldn't it just kill him' not specifically boiling him.

Cause like the lightning whip doesn't seem as strong as natural lightning, and the natural lightning striking those trees * {in that article}is blowing off bark or breaking off branches. Both of those trees are far smaller than the one in that the fairies lived in, and the damage done to it seems way greater, seeing as its split in half like an ax came down. Why wouldn't that just one shot luke?

Which is an issue if Kasen can fly and scales to people faster than sound.

1

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 08 '21

I mean the article was more just to describe the actual process. In terms of damage to trees it depends on a lot of factors and can be much more damaging.

As for the electric whip being weaker than lightning... yeah? Luke Cage the electric whips really don't do much to Luke Cage, even with a fair amount of contact, so you'd need something a lot stronger to reliably take him down.

And if the tree feat is really too much that can be stipped out, since I think burning down a house like this in an absurdly short period of time via heat/electricity is at a level of being able to do notable damage to cage.

1

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 09 '21

Talv and /u/LetterSequence Do you have any responses to my comment on her offensive power, or are you okay with it?

1

u/GuyOfEvil ​ Feb 08 '21 edited Feb 08 '21

/u/doctorgecko

Gonna piggyback off this to question the speed arguments

This seems meaningless so it just leaves you with Reimu scaling

Reimu scaling is bad

Reimu doesn't scale to Youmu meaningfully, this is dodging a sword attack, and pretty much every Youmu feat is her like flying, not swinging a sword, even if she did

Why is this fast enough for the tier, or fast at all?

1

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 08 '21

I'll take these points one at a time.

This seems meaningless so it just leaves you with Reimu scaling

This is just to establish that she can fly, and is quite mobile while doing so. But her being able to fly and maneuver herself quite a bit in the air means her speed doesn't need to be quite at Luke Cage's level, especially if she has ranged attacks (which she does).

Describing this as "sound" seems wrong, the actual description sounds like shes using compressed air to manipulate danmaku, it is also very loud, but I don't think the sound itself has anything to do with the attack

The person using the attack explicitey calls it sound and says they were echoing it over and over again which you can see by it bouncing around, and by definition echoes require sound.

As for the description of it being air bullets, that can 100% fit with it being sound. Sound is a longitudinal wave moving through a medium, so while the mechanics are a bit different it can very much look like a mass of air moving towards the target. Add in that there's no rule against single peak waves, nor any rule in regards to what shape sound have to take and yeah sound projectiles can definitely be air bullets.

And even if it's not sound... could you please explain to me how a mass of compressed air could reliably kill a person if it's not moving extremely fast?

Reimu doesn't scale to Youmu meaningfully, this is dodging a sword attack, and pretty much every Youmu feat is her like flying, not swinging a sword

...no

That's just like objectively untrue. For example in this gif you see her raise her blade, then change positions with her blade lowered and slash patters in front of her. And if you want to say "well there's no evidence those are actually slashes", it has the exact same art as an attack explicitly described as her cutting around her.

The vast majority of Youmu's speed feats are her leaving straight lines with her slashes or slashing her foe even more explicitly.

Plus like Youmu's whole thing is using swords in combat, and she creates danmaku with her sword slashes, so I think it's fair to say that almost any of her speed feats Reimu can scale reliably to.

Youmu moves faster than literal shouting bro what the fuck does this mean what is this showing shes just like doing Touhou attacks???

Okay let's break it down

And even if that's not satisfactory for you there's other speed scaling we can do off of being explicitely FTE to Aya, like Aya being able to completely reverse direction in a double digit millisecond time period, or her being fast enough to create shockwaves that displace rain with her flight while simultaneously being able to dodge an attack from an exact copy of herself.

FTE and afterimages dont really mean anything meaningful

Maybe for the "creates multiple after-images feat" (though it does show she's supposed to be really fast, and lends at least some more credence to her having bullet level slashing speed), but you can actually get something out this gif.

Let's just take the first sequence

Basically each attack pattern she does has eight sword slashes (and yeah, this is again basically the same pattern as the attack described as her cutting around her). By my count she does about 16 of these patterns in about a 3.4 second period, or on average a slash every 25-26 milliseconds.

But Youmu clearly accelerates her attack as it goes on. For example I count about 6-8 attacks in the last second, or a slash every 15-20 milliseconds. Add in the fact that she's not just slashing and also moving decent distances with every attack pattern, and that these are longer slashes than what she attacked Reimu with, and it's completely possible to get her striking speed into the single digit millisecond range based on this gif alone.

To summarize

Youmu can pretty consistently slash at bullet like speed. Reimu is capable of dodging her without too much trouble, and can also dodge through sound.

Kasen scales to this level of speed.

Add in Kasen's ability to fly and maneuver herself in midair, and her speed is absolutely no issue for the tier.

1

u/GuyOfEvil ​ Feb 08 '21

Dodging Sound

the sound and the bullets in this description seem completely separate. She describes it as "echoing over the mountains" and someone else describes it as "noisy", I don't think the compressed air really relates to the sound being created, and even if it did, these bullets very very obviously do not behave like sound would.

And even if it's not sound... could you please explain to me how a mass of compressed air could reliably kill a person if it's not moving extremely fast?

I feel like "they are clearly not moving fast" is the way stronger argument here, but descriptions on other danmaku have said "these don't actually hurt but one hit will still kill you" I think it's a massive stretch to say that these things that don't look like or act like sound in any way are sound, and that this is thus a bullet timing feat

Youmu Scaling

I still don't think this scaling is valid at all, Youmu is drunk here, and whoever she's scaling to dodges two normal looking slashes

The speed feats for Youmu are her raising her blade, then moving to somewhere else with her sword lowered, which does not demonstrate how fast she swings her sword

This is her using a specific attack pattern, and even if it wasn't, it's still not very good. The fact that she speeds up is obviously irrelevant because she wouldn't have sped up in the manga feat, and the first slashes here are her doing 2 slashes in 50 miliseconds

Even if you assume a drunk Youmu is slashing as fast as a Youmu using a specific ability where she slashes a bunch really fast, the starts of these gifs don't really indicate relevant speed at all.

"Youmu is faster than sound"

This just seems out of tier as fuck if it's true, Aya can dodge attacks that are literally sound but can't even see Youmu move, and your character is like two degrees of scaling faster than Youmu.

But again like, this really does not seem like a sound based attack, she's drawing something in and then launches it outwards. The description of this says that she is screaming, and that her screams are loud and destructive, but doesn't really indicate that the actual thing you have to dodge is her screaming. Which seems like a dumb quibble but again, this attack behaves literally nothing like sound.

Overall

These feats all seem way too jank to demonstrate Kasen has in-tier speed, they're all long scaling chains to wack looking non-feats

1

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 08 '21

On the sound bullets

The sound is completely relevant to the actual attack. Kyouko outright says

"I echoed it over and over again, completely saving up the sound"

And in the gif of the attack we see the projectiles being repeatedly reflected (echoed) just like she describes

As for your argument about why it's not fast, both of your claims are flawed.

For the "it's not moving at that speed" statement... it's a bullet hell game. So regardless of how fast the attack actually is in lore, in gameplay it will be moving at a speed that the normal human player can react to. I'm not a fan of "visually slow" in most circumstances, but it's completely nonapplicable here when having it move at any speed beyond what a normal human could react to would make the game unplayable.

As for your comparison to Mokou's spell card, they're not at all comparable. In the Grimoire of Marisa page there's absolutely no reference to dying. She just says you'll lose, since just touching a bullet regardless of the power will result in an agreed upon loss.

But with Kyouko's attack, it's straight up called lethal with Sakuya having to protect the normal human audience from the attack, something they don't have to do for most other spell cards during the first half of the spell card fireworks festival.

So I'd like to ask again, how exactly are you going to kill someone with a compressed air bullet without it moving really fast.

On Youmu Scaling

First of all Youmu isn't actually drunk here. She was driven berserk by Clownpiece's ability to induce madness. Everyone just assumed being drunk was the reason she was slashing at them. So it should be relevant to her other speed feats.

Also I really don't get your point for this feat. She delivers two slashes in a time span too short for Aya to react to. That alone gives us an idea of how fast Youmu can deliver her slashes.

And even if the speed of scaling is too much (the whole point of that was just to show Kasen can tag people generally on the level of bullet timers), there's still other options for scaling. Just to give an example.

1

u/GuyOfEvil ​ Feb 09 '21

Sound Bullets

What we know about this attack is that the bullets are made of compressed air, don't move or propagate with sound, and the people that apparently dodge it comment on it's sound. It seems extremely clear cut to me that these aren't mach 1 projectiles.

The arguments for is "it echoes like sound" and "they're moving with lethal force" but I think both are pretty weak. The "explosion that'll echo over the mountains" is immediately followed up by "everyone'll be shaking in their minds" That, along with the comment that the attack is "Noisy" seem to pretty clearly imply that the sound and danmaku aren't the same thing.

As for lethal force, compressed air can be lethal anyways, although that's a fairly wack argument, so I'd also say that something definitely doesn't need to be moving at Mach 1 to kill a human, and it could easily just have lethal force behind it without having any speed because its a bullet hell attack.

Youmu Scaling

Regardless of the reason here, it still seems like she is not at max effectiveness here, considering she knocks herself out after three slashes, but even if she was, the scaling doesn't really work.

Watching this gif again for the 100th time I noticed the thing you're arguing isn't actually even true. She completes the slash in full visible view, with there even being a couple animated frames of her mid swing, and then after that she moves with her sword in the same position it was in her previous location. This gif has nothing to do with the speed at which she swings her sword.

Using this as a reaction time feat seems like a massive stretch, especially when she's not even flying with 100% accuracy. But even if it was, scaling to faster than somebody who's faster than somebody who's FTE to somebody with 10ms reaction times is not in-tier speed.

Conclusion

I don't think this character has in-tier speed, and am unwilling to pour over the same two gifs and one spellcard description any longer. Respond to this and then I think we should give the people on the offense end of this chain a bit to respond and then call judges.

1

u/LetterSequence ​ Feb 09 '21

For what it's worth my main issue with the offense is I don't think it's good enough, I don't know how much heat you'd need to burn down a house instantly and apparently the attacks come from real lightning which is definitely too fast for the tier, I don't even know if we're judging off heat resist or electric resist in that regard.

Essentially from my point of view, Kasen's strikes are house busting in a building busting tier. I don't have much else to add so I'm fine just going to judges after doc gets a word in.

1

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 09 '21

In that case I'll go ahead and make my final statement and then call in the judges.

Attack Power

Kasen was called out in the first place because of the Rhea feat being deemed too weak for the tier. However I'd argue that Kasen's feat is far better than this.

Kasen's pet completely destroys an entire two story house in an instant, with presumably no clear windup. Add in the fact that it was done with more esoteric damage in the form of heat/electricity means it has a much more reliable means of damaging Luke Cage. Add in the fact that Kasen is capable of attacking in tandem with her pets with strikes that would at the very least affect him, in addition to the ability to bind him means that she would reliably be able to damage and bring down Luke Cage.

Speed

Kasen is able to tag people with in tier speed. I'd also like to put out that Guy's statement about this gif ignores that the most important part, the actual slashes Youmu delivers, very much happen instantly. Whether or not she moves her sword beforehand, her actual striking is consistently extremely fast.

But whatever. What happens if we say "no Aya" scaling in terms of speed? I still think Kasen can work.

Her main method of offense is ranged attacks, she capable of flight and is quite mobile while doing so, even if it's not bullet timing she still scales to be able to tag characters that are pretty damn fast (even if you look at only the first slash Youmu delivers a double digit millisecond time period), and even she's grappled (one thing that wasn't brought up in the argument) she could straight up just disappear from his grip.

So with a ranged attacker who is not as fast as Cage but is capable of flying and teleporting strikes me as someone who is capable of reliably fighting against him.

Okay that's all I have to say on the matter. I'll leave the rest to the judges.

/u/rangernumberx /u/cleverly_clearly /u/voeltz

1

u/Cleverly_Clearly ​ Feb 10 '21

The fact that the in-tier offense was done completely off screen bothers me. It seems like it was done instantly in one strike, but we don't know how fast Kasen's pets are. We don't know how fast her dragon let out that lightning bolt, or how fast the lightning bolt is (if it's as fast as natural lightning, that would be an issue for Cage). Furthermore, I think this is actually weak for the tier, despite the fact that it was done casually. Kasen doesn't really have any offense that is both capable of hurting Cage and can be provably done fast, and she already needs a durability buff, so I have to call it not in-tier

1

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 10 '21

If I'm not allowed to bring in new scans just ignore this, but Kasen's dragon does have a feat of catching Reimu by surprise

1

u/Voeltz burrunyaa~ Feb 12 '21

Durability is being buffed to tier and I think that move is necessary. Not being harmed by an attack of this level is well below the building busting attacks Luke Cage can take; it's more like column busting than building busting. That leaves the primary stats of the discussion, speed and offense.

Offense

Kasen attacks with her pets and her pets can burn down a house "in a flash". If this attack were concussive it would be pretty weak for tier, but it was done with fire. Luke's fire resistance is at about the level of a metal wall, not at the large building tier his blunt force and piercing resistance is at. The house looks to have been made out of wood instead of metal, but it's a lot bigger than a wall.

I know that the fire was started by lightning and there was some discussion of whether Luke has enough electric durability to survive a lightning strike. Luke is able to easily withstand electric attacks strong enough to knock out a person, and I know people can and do survive being struck by lightning all the time, so I feel as though there's nothing to suggest Kasen's lightning is very far beyond what Luke can take. The more critical part of the equation is the fire, and the fire should be in tier. I considered Nemesis' fire attacks to be just barely in tier, and they were less impressive than this, so I would consider this attack to be in-tier offense.

Speed

I don't want to delve into all the weird Touhou scaling, but I will discuss whether this attack is a sound attack. The person casting the attack describes it as sound, as do several of the... judges? Commentators? The last commentator described it as "more than just sound, it was highly compressed air," and then the summary also describes it as compressed air. Guy's argument for the attack not being sound drew solely from the summary at the end. But I think the full context of the page points to the attack as being both sound and compressed air, which would match with Gecko's scientific explanation about how such a thing is possible. It's a series about magic, though, so I'm less concerned with the science and what the text itself says. I think with the attack's user and multiple commentators describing the attack as "sound," it's fair to consider it sound.

The scaling from there is pretty simple. Reimu dodges the sound attack, and Kasen can hit Reimu. As Gecko pointed out after Clev's judgment, Kasen's pet also grabs Reimu, so I think the concern that Kasen's pets won't be able to hit Luke is unfounded.

The main point of concern is the projectile speed. As mentioned previously, the house-burning feat was caused by lightning. Cage won't be able to dodge an attack of that speed at all. However, the one feat that actually shows her pet attacking with electricity indicates it takes a few moments to "charge up" before the attack is unleashed, with the charging being visually obvious. Luke would thus have time to prepare for or "aim dodge" the electric attacks, even if the attacks themselves will move much faster than Luke can move.

Overall

Kasen and her pet have in tier speed via Reimu scaling. Kasen's pet's electric attacks can produce fire damage that is in tier. And Kasen is having her durability buffed. I do think that Kasen attacking with an esoteric that Luke is somewhat weak to (fire) is aiding her offense when it would be pretty low if we only consider the actual damage caused (i.e., a small house destroyed). But other characters have already been ruled in tier via weaker fire attacks, and most characters in general are weak to esoterics in general, so I think it's fine. Overall, I rule Kasen In Tier.

1

u/rangernumberx Feb 12 '21

Two Touhou with feats? Now that's just crazy talk. Also I didn't notice the mini RT until I was already almost done with the full one, so...fuck me, I guess.

Pets

Now let's go through these one by one, seeing how useful they can be.

  • Koutei - Can create local thunderstorms with lightning capable of quickly incinerating a house. I have concerns about how directable this is, but I'll see if this gets explained later.
  • Mukou - More lightning, capable of splitting a pretty big tree, and doing so by evaporating its water is pretty neat. Also makes people lethargic, so once Cage has been hit it's going to be easier to keep laying down on him
  • Kume - ...flight, I guess. Can't Touhous fly by default?
  • Kande - Fuck all
  • Houso - Even you don't know what to make of this one, and I'm not seeing any Marisa feats to really put this around Cage level. Best to ignore it.
  • Manzairaku - Will distract Cage with its cuteness
  • Other Animals - Nothing of note, but they also don't seem to be used offensively, so they aren't really worth talking about.
Abilities

If we assume disappearing is some form of teleportation, that might be a neat trick up her sleeve. Summoning a tidal wave of skeletons would definitely distract Cage, though not actually harm him in any way. That's all I'm really seeing of worth here, though. The fake arm doesn't get anything that really tells me it can hold Luke.

Strength

It's really hard to get a proper gauge on her strength, given the best feat comes from something we're explicitly told is slow but is also far below Cage's strength. I don't think I can really take this as anything of worth for the tier setter fight.

Durability

Set to tier, which is good, because I've just spent the last five minutes looking at it all and wondering how I could make any Reimu scaling work.

Speed

She scales to Reimu who can dodge through sound attacks and avoid hits from a character that attacks FTE with their sword. I'm happy with this stat, no matter what Guy says. The extra feat of her dragon surprising Reimu does help with animal speed, too, even though they're unlikely to brawl with Luke.

Conclusion

God...it has to come down to the lightning, doesn't it? It's not that I don't think she would use Koutei and Mukou, given how fast she can pull out her animals and how there's only maybe three or four she'd really attack with (including the seal, for some random reason). But it's whether the lightning can reliably strike Cage a few times while playing keepaway to take him down, because I'm happy with their strength. But if Mag is happy to use Mukou's charge up attack as a baseline proof, as well as evidence that Luke can effectively aim dodge the lightning (this being harder, again, after he's hit with the lethargic bolt), I'm happy to rule likewise. In tier.

1

u/GuyOfEvil ​ Feb 12 '21

I never talked about this character's damage output, I think it's extremely jank for the tier. This building is tiny, made of wood, and not even close to completely destroyed, I also think the interpretation that it was burned down instantly is really, really jank. They say the fire started at dawn, and essentially the entire thing caught fire. If every part of a wooden house caught fire, no shit it would burn down fast, they also refer to the fire "starting at dawn" which implies that this didn't happen anywhere close to instantly. If any of the wood was actually like turned to ash you might have something, but it seems to me like all the lightning did was set the entire house on normal fire strength fire.

I also think her speed is still extremely jank, either she is one-two scaling chains faster than somebody who is FTE to somebody who can perceive and dodge sound or she has nothing.

As such, I am going to appeal this one to /u/morvis343 and /u/FreestyleKneepad

1

u/morvis343 ​ Feb 12 '21

Durability set to tier.

Damage output is the wall punch, which probably hurts Luke a little but it's not enough on its own, and burning that house down in a flash, which feels good enough based on it being done via heat and not blunt force.

Speed is... honestly I look at Touhou gameplay feats and they all look incredibly fake but hey if that's just how the medium is then I can give the benefit of the doubt. I can buy that the attacks are supposed to be literal sound, and she's dodging them.

In tier.

1

u/doctorgecko ​ Feb 09 '21

I can definitely see we won't see eye to eye on the speed argument (I basically disagree completely with everything you've said here), but there's also another angle that I'd at least like to check if it would work.

What is your opinion on using the major change on her speed (so basically doing nothing to it) and instead have her go with her actual durability feats.

For reference that would be her being completely unharmed by an attack of this level (Sanae is considered nothing special for Gensokyo humans, so Reimu is likely at least this strong), with a stronger attack stinging but not doing much damage. Maybe with a minor change to assume Reimu's attacks are dealing physical damage.

1

u/GuyOfEvil ​ Feb 09 '21

My feeling on this is that the scaling here is really wack. A single statement about a character being "nothing special" and then scaling that to a totally unrelated character's totally unrelated attack seems extremely wack, especially since it seems like Reimu is supposed to be sealing her and not dealing physical damage. I would also question if this even hits her, she does something to avoid this attack and then says it wouldn't hurt if it hit her, so you'd be scaling like, a statement about an attack that consists of throwing paper cards to a completely unrelated attack from a completely unrelated character.

And even if the scaling was legit, I don't really think its relevant. The tiersetter stone golem feat is a way larger amount of stone that's being broken into way more pieces, and even if the argument is "well she's only slightly hurt by an attack of this level" I don't think it scales up in a way that would make it in tier.

I think there are too many issues across the board on this character for there to be a good way to resolve them