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Alr, so this is another continuation of the chainscaling shenanigans in Honkai. This thread covers two feats in question, the Giant Sting in Argenti's quest and the Phantylia Boss Fight.
That's it for now. After this I might make another post about how specifically we are to treat Irontomb scaling and then apply the verse-wide changes across profiles.
Votes:
Emirp sumitpo (Agree)
Planck69 (Agree)
Vietthai96 (Agree)
So, this feat concerns this right here, in which we see a Giant Sting supposedly swallowing an entire starry sky. Now, this doesnt serve to question the legitimacy of the feat, but of who would even scale to the Sting to begin with. I have, in fact, multiple reasons why it'd be extremely inconsistent.
Firstly, though, let's investigate why characters even scale to it to begin with. The reasoning for it, as seen in Aventurine's AP section, is that:
1) The "overlord" is a smaller bug that is supposedly stronger than the Giant Sting
2) Aventurine one-shotted a Gnaw Sting, which would be superior to the Giant Sting.
Immediately, an issue that comes up is this: Why is the Gnaw Sting equivalent to the "Overlord"? Coincidentally enough, we aren't actually told that the "mini-insect" in question is a Gnaw Sting. This is completely made up. Nor would it even make sense for it to be a Gnaw Sting because we know that'd it's an insect small enough to fit inside of armor... yet we can clearly see the Gnaw Stings are much bigger than that. (Velite in question here is just a normal human btw)
And then ignoring that; why would all Overlord's scale the same anyways? It's not like Giant Stings are necessarily the same size. The scans say that they "can" grow to that size, not that all are that size. (Starnought here btw is just a big spaceship, not a starry sky)
So then, if not all beings of the same species are the same power & size, then it follows not all "Overlords" are the same power as well. Consequently, it's also important to acknowledge that the Overlord in question is only juxtaposed to that specific Giant Sting, as in, the Giant Sting is at the bottom of the ladder in comparison to 1 specific Overlord, and not of any others. So it's quite possible that each grouping of the Swarm have their own specific power levels. So no reason to arbitrarily cross-scale.
Then, we have the statement itself to put into question: Why is the statement taken to refer to explicit powerlevel? It itself is merely (and explicitly) talking about "rank", with the Giant Sting being placed at the bottom of it. Also, we see a "Swarm Mother" who is much, much smaller (not even planetary) in Firefly's trailer, which would be extremely weird for it to be towards the bottom of the hierarchy lol. Also, Skarakabaz [an Emanator/(Starcrusher) Swarm King] isn't that big either in the two instances we see it, so it would make zero sense for it to be lower in powerlevel than an average small bug, so itd be very very wack to take this statement at face value lol. Which if it then were to refer to powerlevels would also mean that all the other small bugs would also be stronger than the Giant Sting, which would be narratively absurd since none of the characters were so worried about them (when they beat them up multiple times) as much as they were about the Sting.
To quote some lines:
You can read this entire section as well and this part where it's made a pretty big deal of Argenti trying to pierce the bugs' stomach and how it could be exceedingly dangerous for him. Literally calling it a "suicide mission". Stupid Argenti! Aren't you supposed to be one-shotting it???
Also even Dan Heng comments about how March is rarely ever this worried:
So yea. Totally the normal reaction to something you supposedly "scale" to. Wonder why they also didn't worry the same about the normal bugs they were beating up earlier. Aren't they supposed to be stronger?
What about this guy in Firefly's trailer? Doesn't he know the Swarm Mother is weaker than the little mfs he was one-shotting a few seconds ago? Why did he need to suicide bomb? How stupid.
So yea. Noone scales to this guy. Well, except Emanators since they still have the Emanator > Pathstrider thingy. Everyone else goes down to Dan Hung's (
) Star level feat. For now.
Firstly, though, let's investigate why characters even scale to it to begin with. The reasoning for it, as seen in Aventurine's AP section, is that:
1) The "overlord" is a smaller bug that is supposedly stronger than the Giant Sting
2) Aventurine one-shotted a Gnaw Sting, which would be superior to the Giant Sting.
Immediately, an issue that comes up is this: Why is the Gnaw Sting equivalent to the "Overlord"? Coincidentally enough, we aren't actually told that the "mini-insect" in question is a Gnaw Sting. This is completely made up. Nor would it even make sense for it to be a Gnaw Sting because we know that'd it's an insect small enough to fit inside of armor... yet we can clearly see the Gnaw Stings are much bigger than that. (Velite in question here is just a normal human btw)
And then ignoring that; why would all Overlord's scale the same anyways? It's not like Giant Stings are necessarily the same size. The scans say that they "can" grow to that size, not that all are that size. (Starnought here btw is just a big spaceship, not a starry sky)
So then, if not all beings of the same species are the same power & size, then it follows not all "Overlords" are the same power as well. Consequently, it's also important to acknowledge that the Overlord in question is only juxtaposed to that specific Giant Sting, as in, the Giant Sting is at the bottom of the ladder in comparison to 1 specific Overlord, and not of any others. So it's quite possible that each grouping of the Swarm have their own specific power levels. So no reason to arbitrarily cross-scale.
Then, we have the statement itself to put into question: Why is the statement taken to refer to explicit powerlevel? It itself is merely (and explicitly) talking about "rank", with the Giant Sting being placed at the bottom of it. Also, we see a "Swarm Mother" who is much, much smaller (not even planetary) in Firefly's trailer, which would be extremely weird for it to be towards the bottom of the hierarchy lol. Also, Skarakabaz [an Emanator/(Starcrusher) Swarm King] isn't that big either in the two instances we see it, so it would make zero sense for it to be lower in powerlevel than an average small bug, so itd be very very wack to take this statement at face value lol. Which if it then were to refer to powerlevels would also mean that all the other small bugs would also be stronger than the Giant Sting, which would be narratively absurd since none of the characters were so worried about them (when they beat them up multiple times) as much as they were about the Sting.
To quote some lines:
Welt: I see. If the Express has been swallowed...Welt: ...then perhaps we could try pushing the Express's engine into a temporary state of overload... and use the momentum to burst out of the Giant Sting's body.
Why don't we just warp out of this place?
Dan Heng: Warp jumping requires a lot of preparation, and it might alert the Swarm.
Welt: It would be risky — the engine might overheat and burst into flames... Still, I don't have any better ideas
.Argenti: I am not fond of this idea.
March 7th: C—Could it fail?
Welt: In a word... yes.
Welt: The outer components of the Express... may well be melting in gastric acid as we speak.
Argenti: It would seem our enormous, hideous enemy... is right outside!
March 7th: No... So my teddy bears and bunnies are gonna be liquefied by stomach acid? I've had them for ages... I need to find a way to save them.
Welt: Let's stay calm — I need some time to check the engine with Himeko. For now, just try and take your minds off the situation.
Dan Heng: It's alright. We're in this together.
You can read this entire section as well and this part where it's made a pretty big deal of Argenti trying to pierce the bugs' stomach and how it could be exceedingly dangerous for him. Literally calling it a "suicide mission". Stupid Argenti! Aren't you supposed to be one-shotting it???
Also even Dan Heng comments about how March is rarely ever this worried:
So yea. Totally the normal reaction to something you supposedly "scale" to. Wonder why they also didn't worry the same about the normal bugs they were beating up earlier. Aren't they supposed to be stronger?
What about this guy in Firefly's trailer? Doesn't he know the Swarm Mother is weaker than the little mfs he was one-shotting a few seconds ago? Why did he need to suicide bomb? How stupid.
So yea. Noone scales to this guy. Well, except Emanators since they still have the Emanator > Pathstrider thingy. Everyone else goes down to Dan Hung's (
) Star level feat. For now.First of all:
Secondly, let's look at Dan Heng's performance in regards to Phantylia. He has two feats.
The first one is this. Second one would be... this.
Now, for some background on the fight, Phantylia by-herself is a Lord Ravager, but her body is that of a Heliobus (pure energy). The Phantylia we see here is an artificial body made by the Arbor. So it is in fact separate from her actual Emanator powers, at least intrinsically so (without powering herself up like she does in the last phase and whatnot).
To continue, Phantylia was playing around the entire fight. First of all, she says she "wants to put to use her body". Then she "indulges" in seeing an ant try and get crushed by a star. She also says she's indulging another time after that. And around here is also where she gets defeated since shes experimenting and trying to turn Jing Yuan into a Voidranger.
The sequence of events that follows is this (of the second Dan Heng feat): She traps JY and tries to turn him into a Voidranger, Dan Heng then stabs Jing Yuan (not Phantylia), which stalls her by abusing a connection Phantylia herself made (which JY admits is the only reason they had a chance at victory btw) which severed her connection to the Arbor (powersource of her body), and then Lightning Lord stabs Phantylia, with LL already being an Emanator-level power so it alr scales to Phantylia anyways.
Later, Phantylia admits that it's just "a body stolen on a whim" and nothing was really lost. So obviously nobody but LL would really scale to Phantylia.
As for the first feat, that's still when she was playing around and as we have established, the Arbor is very different from Phantylia herself. So Dan Heng dealing some damage to it in some arbitrary way is not an issue since it's not scaling to Phantylia nevertheless. And she doesn't actually get serious until the phase after that (which is when we are "defeated" before tricking her).
Which basically just means that noone but Lightning-Lord should scale to Phantylia here at best. And Dan Heng gets to be downgraded to his previous feat (star level).
Also something to take note is that it would also be highly contradictory for Dan Heng to scale to an Emanator here but then heavily job against later characters like the Giant Sting in 1.6 (the guy above) or even get speed diffed by Phainon in 3.0 (same guy who got nodiffed by another Lord Ravager in his strongest form btw). Its also funny how he wasnt even remotely in the conversation when Acheron was talking about how you need an Emanator power to counteract another Emanator power like Dominicus in the Sunday boss fight. So basically it would js be extremely inconsistent, and generally also can be considered an outlier if the proof above isn't damming enough.
HOLYYYYYYY HEADCANON.
Secondly, let's look at Dan Heng's performance in regards to Phantylia. He has two feats.
The first one is this. Second one would be... this.
Now, for some background on the fight, Phantylia by-herself is a Lord Ravager, but her body is that of a Heliobus (pure energy). The Phantylia we see here is an artificial body made by the Arbor. So it is in fact separate from her actual Emanator powers, at least intrinsically so (without powering herself up like she does in the last phase and whatnot).
To continue, Phantylia was playing around the entire fight. First of all, she says she "wants to put to use her body". Then she "indulges" in seeing an ant try and get crushed by a star. She also says she's indulging another time after that. And around here is also where she gets defeated since shes experimenting and trying to turn Jing Yuan into a Voidranger.
The sequence of events that follows is this (of the second Dan Heng feat): She traps JY and tries to turn him into a Voidranger, Dan Heng then stabs Jing Yuan (not Phantylia), which stalls her by abusing a connection Phantylia herself made (which JY admits is the only reason they had a chance at victory btw) which severed her connection to the Arbor (powersource of her body), and then Lightning Lord stabs Phantylia, with LL already being an Emanator-level power so it alr scales to Phantylia anyways.
Later, Phantylia admits that it's just "a body stolen on a whim" and nothing was really lost. So obviously nobody but LL would really scale to Phantylia.
As for the first feat, that's still when she was playing around and as we have established, the Arbor is very different from Phantylia herself. So Dan Heng dealing some damage to it in some arbitrary way is not an issue since it's not scaling to Phantylia nevertheless. And she doesn't actually get serious until the phase after that (which is when we are "defeated" before tricking her).
Which basically just means that noone but Lightning-Lord should scale to Phantylia here at best. And Dan Heng gets to be downgraded to his previous feat (star level).
Also something to take note is that it would also be highly contradictory for Dan Heng to scale to an Emanator here but then heavily job against later characters like the Giant Sting in 1.6 (the guy above) or even get speed diffed by Phainon in 3.0 (same guy who got nodiffed by another Lord Ravager in his strongest form btw). Its also funny how he wasnt even remotely in the conversation when Acheron was talking about how you need an Emanator power to counteract another Emanator power like Dominicus in the Sunday boss fight. So basically it would js be extremely inconsistent, and generally also can be considered an outlier if the proof above isn't damming enough.
That's it for now. After this I might make another post about how specifically we are to treat Irontomb scaling and then apply the verse-wide changes across profiles.
Votes:
Emirp sumitpo (Agree)
Planck69 (Agree)
Vietthai96 (Agree)
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