Homestuck: Overhaul^2 (Act 1)

This is my first time doing a CRT and I’m very aware of how overly ambitious this is, so please bear with me.
This CRT is one part of a planned series of CRTs meant to overhaul the Tier 9/8 characters of Homestuck, and if I'm being hopeful for a second, finally breathe some new life into this carcass of a verse if the general discussion thread is anything to go off of. As things are the current statistics and overall scaling is incredibly lackluster at best. Reading through the character profiles it's clear to me that all of the none God-Tiers (literally) of the verse are basically stapled together with two to three calculations and a big handful of poor reasoning. To show what I'm talking about, let's (in proper Homestuck fashion) methodically go over every piece of evidence for the ratings.
Please note that nearly everything I’m gonna show is up to the end of Act 5 Act 2. The whole of Act 6 is far more character focused so there's less stuff to use and scale, and the majority of the cast are God-Tier and blah, blah, blah you get the point. Also sorry in advance for this being ridiculously long and/or poorly organized, no matter what way I tried doing this it inevitably devolved into something not to dissimilar to what your about to read, then again why expect anything else from Homestuck.

Tier 9-A Scaling​

The main source of scaling for all of the 9-A characters is them fighting giant monsters who apparently reach this tier “via sheer size”. According to the Large Size Calculations page, the monsters would need to be at least over 20 meters tall in order to qualify for 9-A. Looking at the scan provided in John’s Profile and taking into account that John should be roughly 1.5 meters tall because of his age, it should be obvious that they aren’t that large. If you need further proof, here is a wizard statue stated to be 20 feet tall (6 meters), this is what it looks like compared to Rose, and this is what an Ogre looks like compared to Rose. so the Ogre is roughly 6 meters tall which would be baseline wall level via size but far from Small Building level.

Lets address the rest of the evidence for 9-A Attack Potency/Durability

• Dave cuts a pillar but that's obviously just wall level, and the other scan is either a lifting strength feat or the pillar just falling over.
• Jade’s durability feats make no sense because she didn't fall, she was teleported. Even if you want to argue otherwise this and the other fall would be wall level. The only one that works is the Jadebot explosion however there was a ceiling between Jade and the explosion so her durability would likely be wall level anyway unless someone wants to calculate that.
• Dirk slicing through the imperial drones is uncalculated and even then none of the other kids scale to him for reasons I’ll get to whenever the speed revision comes.
• Jake was launched over the horizon however there's no link/scan to that happening and even then it would be wall level.
• Aradia breaking the statue is calculated to 9-A, but something funny is that the calculation isn’t listed on her page . . . it’s listed on nepeta’s page . . . WHAT!, WHY?!
• Karkat’s scaling to MSPA Reader and his durability feats are all wall level.
• Marvus Xoloto survived his limo exploding, this is 9-A however because of the rules for tanking explosions his durability would inevitably get sent to wall level anyway.

As you can see the trolls do have a 9-A feat, however it very consistent for the Kids to be 9-B and there still more

• John crashed through Rose’s house and was completely fine immediately after.
• Jane was unharmed from this explosion which made this hole in the house.
• Roxy can jump very high.
• Dave sliced through a chunk of ice.
• Rose blew up an Ogre's head.

there is even an anti-feat against the Kids being 9-A, as Clubs Deuce (Beta) made an explosion using a few bundles of dynamite and 1 Ton of shaving cream, killing her. Looking at this page and keeping in mind that Jade should roughly be 1.5 meters in height for her age it's easy to tell that the explosion wasn’t that large yet it still killed her. (additional shoot of the roof), this would also go against her durability feat involving the Jadebot explosion.

the only reasonably way I see the kids be 9-A is to scale to the trolls but currently I don't see a reason for that to be the case.

Tier 8 Scaling​

The whole scaling chain for the trolls is nothing but an ouroboros of faulty logic and self contradiction, having little to nothing of substance that actually supports the ratings.

Back end of the scaling
The entirety of the Tier 8-B scaling comes from Aradiabot who together with Sollux was throwing around meteors that were comparable to the one Bro Strider cleaved in half so they apparently scale to him. Now let me tell you why this is dumb, they didn’t break the meteors, they were redirecting them, so they scale to the meteors kinetic energy which according to the calculation is 6.5 Megatons aka 7-B.

“wouldn’t that make all the Tier 8 trolls 7-B?”, no because nobody (with one exception) who isn’t already 2-A scales to Sollux or Aradiabots psionic powers. Not even Sollux scales to his own powers as he’s consistently shown to be greatly harmed by much lesser things.

• He gets slammed into a wall which knocks him unconscious, draws blood, and leaves him permanently blind.
• He later gets dropped down a flight of stairs which knocks some of his teeth out.
• In Pesterquest he started to panic once his precognition foresaw that the train he was on was going to crash. Believing that he and MSPA Reader were going to die if they didn't get off.

The ONLY exception would be Eridan when using either Ahab's crosshairs and the Empiricist's Wand because he used both to clash with Sollux, and the wand overpowered him. Also Eridan one-shotted Feferi using the wand, who Hussie in the commentary books says is “maybe close to Equius-strong” further proving that nobody scales to these three.

the other part of the back end
The “Likely 8-A” part of the rating comes from Eridan surviving the destruction of his ship which is the survive of a few city blocks however he didn't take the direct impact and his durability section saying "claimed that he would've survived direct impact from the mall" is a bit sketchy, if you watch through the video for a few second he says that if he didn't blast himself out of the way of the mall that was thrown at him he would have been buried under a lot of rubble and doubts that he would have been able to escape. then says "I was actually pretty close to biting the dust there huh". so him saying that was just him being full of himself before thinking about it a realize he probably wouldn't have survived.

this should be "At most 8-A" and this would only apply to Eridan and those superior to him (Equius & Ferferi)

Nobody but Feferi scales to Equius
The reasoning for anyone but Ferferi being even remotely comparable to Equius is beyond baffling as it relies on faulty logic and more ouroboros scaling. In nearly every piece of evidence given for the characters to scale to him, he made no attempt to retaliate and was never harmed through brute force. Let's break whatever little credibility this ever had bit by bit.

Aradiabot
“Slapped around Equius like a ragdoll”
he clearly wasn't fighting back and the next page shows that he was in no way harmed, even Equius’s page acknowledges this as his durability section says “Was only scuffed up after being slapped around by Aradiabot” so this just doesn’t work.

“Wasn't hindered in the slightest by ripping her own heart out of her chest”
This isn’t a durability feat, this is an endurance feat

Also as a sidenote Equius’s page is self contradicting when talking about Aradiabot, how is she supposedly his “equal in strength” when he is definitively the strongest. Additionally there is no link or any given justification for why she would in any way be on par with him in strength. before anyone says it, no just because she has blue blood running through her doesn't mean she is as strong as Equius because its known that he is freakishly strong even among his own caste, rather she would be comparable to the robots that Equius has one-shotted.

Nepeta
“Able to fight incredibly well alongside Equius”
If you pay attention when they fight side by side Nepeta takes the underlings down with a few attacks while Equius just one-shots everything. This isn’t Nepeta fighting Equius level monsters, this is Equius one-shotting Nepeta level monsters.

“able to knock him over when surprise tackling him”
It's a running gag that Equius hurts anything he touches no matter how gentle he’s being and he’s aware that he has incredibly poor control over his own strength. What likely happened was that he saw what she was doing and simply let it happen because he knew that if he tried to stop her or resist in any way he would have accidentally harmed her.

“Equius' lusus is one of the strongest on Alternia, yet bruises when Equius so much as touches him. However, he is able to interact with Nepeta without any sort of issue”
This doesn’t mean that she is remotely as strong or as durable as Equius, this just means that she’s tougher than almost any Lusus on Alternia. This would include Vriska’s lusus aka the giant spider and considering how much it dwarfs Vriska I’m 85% confident it might actually be 9-A because of how giant it is. Still this in no way means she scales to him because this isn't her tanking a punch or slap or even a flick from Equius, this is Equius being as gentle as he physically can in order to not harm her; for context in pesterquest this is the first time they have meant in person and Nepeta is someone that Equius by far cares more about then anyone else.

Gamzee
“Was able to harm and kill Equius, however Equius was being passive because of his superiority complex and chucklevoodos.”
This sentence and the scans backing it are literally self defeating!, Gamzee only killed Equius through asphyxiation with Equius making ZERO attempt to fight back. How does this in any way correlate to Gamzee being as strong as Equius, this is so stupid. for anyone who even has a shred of doubt, In the Homestuck Act 5 Act 2 commentary book Hussie says that Equius could have easily punched Gamzee into space at any point and that even a flex from his neck would have broken the string.

Equius being stronger!
in a paradox space comic he punches an enemy so hard it gets sent flying and causes an massive explosion that blows away a few sugar cube mountains, it is a paradox space comic so I'm not going to fight this one but I do still feel like it was worth at least mentioning.

Miscellaneous Stuff​

Karkat gets downgraded to 9-B
he is by his own admission the weakest troll so he doesn't scale to Aradia, and all of his other feats including scaling to MSPA Reader are wall levell

Tavros gets upgraded to 9-A
he should be comparable to Aradia by the logic of higher bloods being stronger than lower ones, even then the reasoning for him being 10-C “being a cripple” is dumb, just because he’s a cripple doesn’t mean he loses all of his upper body strength.

Vriska’s durability loses “possibly Higher”
She was slammed through a small wooden building and a bridge, knocking her unconscious and giving her fatal injuries. why would she potentially have higher durability, the only other reason would because those hits were from Aradiabot, who claim they could snap her neck with a twitch. and for an additional anti-feat a small explosion that was made when the cue ball blew up blasted off her arm and didn't seem to damage anything else in the room.

Conclusion​

The beta kids, alpha kids, and Karkat: become 9-B
Aradia, Tavros, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, and Vriska: stay or become 9-A
Gamzee: At least 9-A; Far Higher with Rage powers
Kanaya (Rainbow Drinker), Equius, Eridan, and Feferi: “At least 9-A possibly At most 8-A”
Sollux and Aradiabots: 9-A physically; 7-B with psionics
Eridan would also be 7-B with Ahab's crosshairs and Higher with Empiricist's Wand

I think the main problem, as I mentioned a few times through this post is that there are simply a lack of calculations if there were more then I think the kids could be 9-A via some miscellaneous feat or something but until I or someone else does that this is what I think the current ratings should be. I'm fine if anyone wants to debate this, this is VSBW after all and I might being missing a few things here and there, but if your going to do so can you please at least proved links and/or scans to what your talking about (for everyone's sake).

Agree:

Disagree:

i agree with a lot of the scaling and the primary issue with 9-A, but the main thing we need to deal with is separating the characters from pre and early sburb and later/pre god tier, because the echeladder increases their stats justifying higher scaling later

we need to calculate the energy they took from the meteors they arrived on, surface area and all but it would probably still be above 9-B, Jade throwing john out of the prospit moon impact zone could also be pretty high considering she was also early game from what i recall

karkat's statement doesn't really work because it is post-sburb, he should be far above how strong he was at the beginning of the game where aradia also was, and besides, karkat's opinion on himself is pretty negatively biased, we see him fight alongside terezi on S Make her pay and they actually seem to fight on par with each other

there is even an anti-feat against the Kids being 9-A, as Clubs Deuce (Beta) made an explosion using a few bundles of dynamite and 1 Ton of shaving cream, killing her. Looking at this page and keeping in mind that Jade should roughly be 1.5 meters in height for her age it's easy to tell that the explosion wasn’t that large yet it still killed her. (additional shoot of the roof), this would also go against her durability feat involving the Jadebot explosion.

Looking at the scene, Jade seems to be caught off guard by the dynamite, she only seems to have noticed the shaving cream before the thing landed and immediatelly exploded, even Bec Noir who was around and protective over her did nothing, so i think the intention was that she was blasted out of nowhere, especially cuz this is an end game jade who should scale to the tier 8 stuff at least, i mean she tanked the huge blast becsprite did against the uranium imp which was faaar larger than this early in the game even, it could also just be an inconsistency lol

if he didn't blast himself out of the way of the mall that was thrown at him he would have been buried under a lot of rubble and doubts that he would have been able to escape. then says "I was actually pretty close to biting the dust there huh". so him saying that was just him being full of himself before thinking about it a realize he probably wouldn't have survived.

this seems to be talking about him lacking the lifting strength to free himself, and thus he would suffocate to death there, so i disagree, even Sollux considered that attack as "sending a message", saying that he didn't intend to kill him and that he knew he would be about to die if that happened, implying that he believed Eridan could survive the attack as well

He gets slammed into a wall which knocks him unconscious, draws blood, and leaves him permanently blind.

okay this is ridiculous, it wasn't the wall slam that messed him up, he had used a lot of psionic energy (which is dangerous to him) and got hit directly by the Empiricist's Wand (which scales above the Ahab's crosshairs), he was obviously weakened when hitting the wall after overexerting himself, the same wand killed Feferi latter as well and Eridan wasn't holding back when his plan was gonna get everyone killed

He later gets dropped down a flight of stairs which knocks some of his teeth out.

After he got weakened, yes, he only later uses his psionic powers to move the meteor which further ***** him up, and when moving it the final time to the next session he finally dies, he has surprisingly good stamina but is clear his body was severely weakened

“wouldn’t that make all the Tier 8 trolls 7-B?”, no because nobody (with one exception) who isn’t already 2-A scales to Sollux or Aradiabots psionic powers. Not even Sollux scales to his own powers as he’s consistently shown to be greatly harmed by much lesser things.

actually nah, one thing i wanted to do in the future when revising their scaling was the black king fight, it is described, even by karkat (who would be brutally honest on either or not they helped) that everyone contributed to it, so everyone should downscale to its durability, but this only applies to when they are at the top of their echeladder anyway, where we have stuff like dave cutting the derse chains (ranging from 8-A to tier 6) and all, and uh, half of throwing the meteor at near lightspeed which would be high 6-A uuuh we can deal with that later XP

She was slammed through a small wooden building and a bridge, knocking her unconscious and giving her fatal injuries. why would she potentially have higher durability, the only other reason would because those hits were from Aradiabot, who claim they could snap her neck with a twitch. and for an additional anti-feat a small explosion that was made when the cue ball blew up blasted off her arm and didn't seem to damage anything else in the room.

agreed except for the cueball, that was an explosion from doc scratch, its size doesn't correlate to its power and IIRC he needed her alive for his plan, as for the neck threat, i'm kinda skeptical on using it cuz it was against god tier vriska, and while we don't scale her to the other god tiers, logically she should tbh, every god tier seems to just jump into the 2-A tiers when they ascend, aradia herself being a big example of this, Vriska would be a massive outlier here, which is why i think this might be a inconsistence, or she could just be the only weak god tier womp womp

he should be comparable to Aradia by the logic of higher bloods being stronger than lower ones, even then the reasoning for him being 10-C “being a cripple” is dumb, just because he’s a cripple doesn’t mean he loses all of his upper body strength.

agreed, i was pretty mad i couldn't touch the stats on the first overhaul because this is an outdated borderline ableist reasoning, but i'm not sure on the logic of the bloods, mainly cuz i don't recall where it was shown in the comic, like i think i recall it being implied here and there but i can't recall where, but is irrelevant, he goes through sburb just like everyone else and thus he should scale to the other trolls just fine

This sentence and the scans backing it are literally self defeating!, Gamzee only killed Equius through asphyxiation with Equius making ZERO attempt to fight back. How does this in any way correlate to Gamzee being as strong as Equius, this is so stupid. for anyone who even has a shred of doubt, In the Homestuck Act 5 Act 2 commentary book Hussie says that Equius could have easily punched Gamzee into space at any point and that even a flex from his neck would have broken the string.

Agreed, scaling him to an Equius clearly being subdued and not fighting back is stupid, but i think he can still scale to him due to his blow to the king being so huge that everyone, including the king, was seemingly stunned by it and karkat believing no one else dealing as much damage besides vriska's final blow, but i think the explanation is simple, Gamzee's base stats just don't scale to Equius, while his rage stats do, he only seems to kill Equius after he starts channeling his rage powers, which would be the same as the ones he used on the king, so if anything him taking so long to kill is actually a feat for Equius durability, and you could argue this rage strength either doesn't increase his durability or that he would've just survived being sent to space (but like, space here is the furthest ring so he would be gone lol), the rope being weak is weird though cuz i'm pretty sure it should snap regardless of equius reacting atp

anyway overrall i agree that the pre-god tier scaling is severely outdated and full of inconsistences in logic and such

since it would take a bunch of calculations to be made and evaluated, i'm fine with the main premise but we really need to be wary of where in the story the feats and scaling are happening, anything happening in alternia and earth is pre-sburb, anything in sburb is somewhere in nevada i mean sburb and anything in the meteor is post-sburb where they are at the top of the echeladder

The beta kids, alpha kids, and Karkat: become 9-B (Agreed pre-sburb/early except for karkat, for the time being)

Aradia, Tavros, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, and Vriska: stay or become 9-A (Agreed pre-sburb/early)

Gamzee: At least 9-A; Far Higher with Rage powers (i think his rage powers should scale to Equius and such)

Kanaya (Rainbow Drinker), Equius, Eridan, and Feferi: “At least 9-A possibly At most 8-A” (disagree, they should scale to 7-B by this point, pre sburb/early i agree though, probably not 8-A tho idk)

Sollux and Aradiabots: 9-A physically; 7-B with psionics (agreed pre-sbrub/early, i don't recall any reason evidence of them scaling to them before the final eridan vs sollux fight, but since this is not at that point, i think they would probably be lower actually, since their feats would be sollux vaporazing part of his hive and shaking it...then again sollux did clash with the Ahab even while in the middle of the game so uh idk we don't know how strong either were when that happens and the pesterquest fight has no one tank anything so i think is fine)

Eridan would also be 7-B with Ahab's crosshairs and Higher with Empiricist's Wand (while i disagree with him not physically scaling to the ahab after the black king fight for what i said before, i agree with the thing being 7-B before that)

i might have missed some stuff tho