Distortion Detective cleanup

[Wokistan]

It's neat to see other people making Project Moon files, but I have noticed some quality control issues. Let's start with Distortion Detective. I'll probably pretty the pages up later, but for now this CRT will just mention stats and abilities since no thread's needed for cosmetic stuff. The pages in question are Moses, Ezra, and YuRia. It's a book, and I've got notes, so citations for anything can be provided on request.

Part 1: Moses
Statistics

• My suggested Attack Potency for Moses would be "9-A, varies from 9-A to 8-B with E.G.O., 8-B with Ezra's weapons." I don't think the current reasoning for Moses being a splitter is sound. The fact she used to be Captain of the Udjat means nothing when her current strength is explicitly not there anymore, and the easiest way to demonstrate this is how back then she could break Ezra's hand by squeezing it too hard while nowadays she believes certain things in Ezra's ballpark would reduce her to gore with one solid hit. Modern day Moses is a grade 5 fixer, and she demonstrates no physical feats to the contrary of such a rating. She and Ezra share weapons so often that I do support her having them as optional equipment. The loss of the 8-A will be discussed more when it comes to Ezra's scaling.
• My suggested speed is just supersonic. I wouldn't find it crazy if something like the BLACK rifle had projectile speed more in the upper echelon, but I do not believe we have any evidence to substantiate that. We know that Ezra really is just way faster than Moses and that their strategies often revolve around Ezra leveraging her superior speed and strength to set a foe up for Moses' much slower hax attacks, as noted in chapters 9 and 16. The electric distortion I don't believe supports what the page uses it for. He was puppeteering corpses and hopping from corpse to corpse at the speed of light, but the corpses themselves weren't moving that fast. Moses' guilt ensnaring them all just makes the distortion falter for a moment at which point he's killed by Vespa, and this is more because she got every single one of them at once. I guess her guilt propagates at the speed of light but that seems a bit too esoteric for attack speed.
• My suggested lifting strength is (Whatever the limbus boat calc is, it hasn't been done yet). However, in lieu of such a calc (unless I end up just doing it real quick) I think she should just be superhuman, I don't think it makes much sense to assume that her combat augs are magically going to forget that with all the weapon clashing and stuff. I think I'm fine with Class M BLACK E.G.O., but that's the kind of thing that should have a written justification. An easy thing to use to justify this is chapter 32, where her BLACK chains can restrain the amped Smiling Faces corpses which were capable of harrying Ezra and Vespa. It's also noted in Chapter 40 that when it comes to E.G.O., mental image is much more important than actual physical aptitude.
• Striking strength goes with AP. 9-A Moses, 8-B with a few weapons which tear her body apart when she uses them I guess.
• Durability wise, Moses should just be 9-A. Having her bones broken from a flailing and not exactly lucid Ezra isn't evidence of scaling, it's the opposite. We know that Fixer stamina is amazing, and I think it makes much more sense to attribute things like Moses arm being annihilated by the backlash of Ezra's gauntlet and this not taking her out to stamina rather than durability. As for the Dias arm, it depends how literally people want to take it being "one of a kind." Given who Dias is, I would not personally find it unreasonable to say the arm has 8-A durability, but a flat 8-B is much safer if that's how people want to go.
• Moses' stamina should mention some of her own feats. I've got some down on my notes, but I like the arm explosion, her impalements, and apparently not having her movement impeded by a broken back. The fact she's maimed but not killed by 8-B hits is pretty relevant when on the wiki she's usually going to be fighting people actually in her tier for once.
• Range should go out to hundreds of meters, she made a rifle.

Abilities and Resistances

• Getting this out of the way, we need to decide exactly how boilerplate certain resistances are supposed to be. I don't feel too strongly on this one way or the other, and could argue either side if so inclined, but we should set some standard if all the Ruina stuff is assumed to apply by default to people who are unconnected since 99% of them don't have special fancy reasons to be getting those types of resistances. If yes, then Moses and Ezra get a bunch of things ported over.
• Moses doesn't just have "likely" enhanced senses, she has access to her own distortion detecting and YuRia's night vision. Her ESP should be explained in more detail, because profiles are ideally written for people without context on the characters. You may know what "seeing the process of the Distortion phenomenon" means, but the average patron of the wiki does not.
• She should have heat manipulation via the Stigma Workshop sword, provided sharing with Ezra is accepted.
• Abilities cannot be justified by Moses being a former Udjat captain. We know she's not as strong anymore, which would mean she doesn't have the same proprietary augmentations she had at the time.
• Moses should have ice manipulation via that time she used the Koori gloves to freeze a wall solid in chapter 3.
• The BLACK damage resists don't need to be a "likely," that backlash is unambiguous.
• The fact Moses can bestow mental shielding upon her allies should be noted, but there's like four different powers the wiki could accept for that. Note her resistances are not completely contingent on this as we see from things like the distortion river and the depressed girl aquarium.
• Moses should have healing via the HP tablets. They take too long to really matter in 99% of matches, but it's still noteworthy that Ezra took one to sleep off having three arm sized holes in her body.
• Chapter 24 describes her WHITE smoke as having some sort of truth divining abilities, though I'm not sure what to classify that as.
  Spoiler: Quote

  I stared at the cigarette smoke I had just puffed out. If I had my smoking pipe, I could have used the white breath to grasp the truth of this festival and the situation a bit more easily. The pipe… And Vespa. It’s like thinking about overdue homework you procrastinated on the whole night. I walked back to the town hall.
• I believe a good way to demonstrate the abstract nature of PALE's idea of death would be a description of how it worked on the corpses which explicitly were not resurrected, and were only having their muscles manually stimulated with substitute electricity. The fact it shuts even that kind of thing off is helpful in bypassing certain forms of immortality.
• Moses should have a minor resistance to info analysis, since her pipe doesn't register as any kind of weapon.
• The PALE stuff might involve time manipulation, with Edgar's frozen state being described in chapter 40 as being on a "temporal treadwheel," but this isn't something I feel too strongly about.
• It should be noted that Moses' white mind control has bypassed a J Corp lock on a guy's brain. It wasn't the highest tier of lock, but it was certainly good enough for Moses to note whoever did it was pretty loaded.

Miscellaneous

• Moses should be a genius. She displays a high degree of proficiency in multiple fields in the line of her work, since understanding and resolving distortions tends to involve what's essentially a combination of psychoanalysis and literary analysis. She's got a good success rate and understands the distortion better than almost anyone, while also demonstrating aptitude in normal forensics in chapter 36 (and really quickly, at that.) She'd also still have the combat skills of an Udjat Captain, as we know from Vergilius' statements that skill's one of those things that doesn't just go away or get added with augments. I think professional level abilities in varied fields such as those should qualify for her, and she thinks quick on her feet even when outside her areas of expertise such as in negotiations (which are usually left to Ezra.)
• Moses should have other Ezra items and YuRia made glasses as optional equipment while she should have her Fairy, HP Tablets, first aid kit and strong painkillers as standard.
• Edgar getting out of the PALE isn't really a weakness for Moses, that's just a resistance feat for Edgar. We know it works on foes in his speed bracket, like the very robodog thing he was using as armor.

Part 2: Ezra
Statistics

• Ezra's AP should be "8-B, Higher with gear and partial E.G.O." The pianist comparison was misremembered, the quote doesn't really imply that the gestalt distortion and the pianist are on the same level in terms of strength. Here's what she says:

Spoiler: Quote

At least 3 meters in body size. Six arms. Massive muscles that look like they could burst any moment. A skeleton head. Blue flames spurting from its gaping mouth. Red eyes staring at me. The shape was complete. The creature assumes a bizarre pose.

This is a completely hostile entity.

Instinctual fear overwhelms us. YuRia grabbed my sleeves tight. Ezra’s eyes changed.

“Ezra… What we’re about to face is something completely different from anything we’ve dealt with before.”

“Yes, detective!”

Ezra puts her dimensional bag on the floor.

“YuRia, observe me to your heart’s content.”

“Of course I will~”

I held my pipe between my lips.

I closed my eyes, and began breathing in…

This Distortion has the same scent as ‘The Pianist’.

A Distortion dedicated to slaughtering people…

One moment of carelessness means death.

Yet I am beginning to feel excited.…

I suppose this old habit will die hard.

• The comparison seems to be much more in terms of the distortion's type than the distortion's strength. Given the Pianist was considered the worst distortion ever pre Phillip (they didn't know Elena was one, and her kill count is lower regardless) I don't think we really have backing to assume that this early experiment was such a slam dunk that it was equal to something that important.
• As for Ezra's "higher," it should be noted that her gravity gauntlets have allowed her to punch straight through the head of bears which just before had matched her strength, and that her axe chopped off three arms from the gestalt distortion at once (which was a foe that was actually a bit stronger than her). Partial EGO let her fight on par with Vespa and she actually seemed even stronger than him, given her ability to snap his arm and the moment against smiling face corpses where she had an easier time taking them out than Vespa. Vespa himself was chopping through legions of Ezra tier bears and was gonna kill 17 Soldatos, so it's quite a strong "higher."
• I don't think Ezra needs a 9-A end. She's a grade 3 fixer, yes, but that's a rule of thumb and actual showings take precedence. Ezra is identified as being unusually strong even for what she is, being able to survive a tussle with Vespa pre-E.G.O., consistently being portrayed as extremely beyond Moses physically and fighting foes Moses says would instagib her despite her stamina, and one-shotting Thumb Soldatos if she can get a solid hit (with her arms broken, no less). She's just 8-B flat out.
• Speed wise, I think Ezra's just straight up comparable to Vespa. He's faster, but not to an absurd degree. Allas gauntlets jacked her hand speed up 5x, and in chapter 19 it's noted she jacked her acceleration up to 10x for her jump kick on Vespa. Speedy girl.
• Durability should match her AP.
• Ezra's stamina should mention some of her own feats, because they're some of the best we've got. She gets hit by four charged attacks at once without missing a step, then she gets impaled by three arms from a giant bigger than she is and doesn't slow down at all, then those arms vanish and she's just got huge holes gushing blood and this isn't treated as a concern. Moses says she's bandaging that up just to be extra safe, and that Ezra is in general not threatened by injuries at all. She also has her fight with Vespa, once he starts stabbing her, where Moses says she'll die if this keeps up but there's no degradation within the fighting itself. Also fighting after having her arms broken by Edgar.
• I did not find anything which justifies the exoskeleton range of several meters.

Abilities

• Same resistances question as Moses.
• Ezra's ability to see through Moses' smoke should be noted under enhanced senses.
• Ezra's healing should note the HP tablets.
• Ezra's threat assessment might break into information analysis, given the time she'd only really seen a glance of Vespa and quickly appraised that she wouldn't be able to take him.

Miscellaneous

• Ezra should be gifted, intelligence wise. Her intellectual strong suits include financials, contract creation and negotiation, threat evaluation, and her knowledge on weapons and workshops of the city. She's a skilled combatant, giving her managing to match up with Vespa when she's got her strength buff, and she's had Udjat training of her own. Her silly personality doesn't actually mean she's dumb and she pretty much says that it's a coping mechanism for her trauma from the Smoke War.
• While technically in the vein of cosmetic stuff I don't need a CRT for, I'd definitely like to improve the way her equipment is set up. The profile should mention relevant but unintuitive things like her bag's voice commands or the fact she can stack multiple pairs of gauntlets at once somehow.
• It's not true that Ezra cannot manifest partial EGO at all without Yuria's pendants, as can be seen against the Smiling Faces corpses. Moses surmises that Ezra has an easier time manifesting it in defense of herself, or involuntarily.

Part 3: Loose Ends
I wasn't actually aware YuRia had a profile at the time of doing my note taking, but from what I see I don't really like the citation standards it's abiding by. She's treated as a total noncombatant, unlike some other workshop people such as Yae, so I'm not really sure about the stats she's given scaling to super low grade fixers off implications which are never elaborated on or furthered. Besides that, it's of note that Yuria's workshop can't be breached by Moses' Fairy, I guess.

When making images for the verse page, just open an image editor and crop a pic to the character's upper body and use that. It's like a couple minutes of trial and error and it looks so much better than character boxes that are zoomed in on people's crotches. Don't be lazy.

 

[DMUA]

• Moses should have a minor resistance to info analysis, since her pipe doesn't register as any kind of weapon.

Is there like, an instance in universe where someone scans for weapons and that doesn't work or

 

[Wokistan]

I misread my notes, it's a physical inspection. Fixers are weird so you can judge for yourself, but it's probably not that. https://www.postype.com/@projectmoon/post/9727518

Spoiler: Passage

“I can keep this smoking pipe, can’t I? I’ll make sure to smoke outside.”

“Mr. Rusk, please examine that pipe to ensure that it has no capability to kill. Ms. Moses, may we trouble you for a second if you don’t mind?”

I passed my pipe to Rusk.

“That’s an expensive-looking pipe.”

He inspected the smoking pipe from several different angles.

“I found no problems with it, Mr. Rute.”

The manager nodded.

“Have a comfortable night’s rest, then.”

 

[DMUA]

Yeah I wouldn't really take it not technically being an item as a resistance to information analysis

The rest seems fine, though

 

[Yasuda_144]

Personally, I do think that Moses should be "possibly 8-B" in terms of durability, but everything else seems reasonable. Being slammed directly into the ground by someone who isn't in a state of mind to be holding back and "only" getting a bunch of your ribs broken is definitely evidence of not being hundreds of times less durable than they are. Stamina alone doesn't mean much if you're facing something so far above your durability that anything short of Type 2 Immortality amounts to still getting one-shot.

On the other hand, there's also statements of Ezra level opponents being able to do exactly that, so I'm not 100% sold on Moses downscaling from Ezra. I haven't read Distortion Detective yet, but would there be anything else that would put Moses' dura on a level somewhat similar to the 8-B characters?

 

[CrimsonStarFallen]

Moses gets mogged by 8-Bs all the time. Pretty much every time she fights someone on that level she’s either blitzed or on the verge of being gored in one hit. I’d say she just got lucky with Erza slamming her.

Agree with the thread btw.

 

[Wankbreaker]

Project Moon has a fanbase here?

Agreed

 

[InfiniteDay]

Few things:

I'm not sure if we agree, but Moses' range should be "Varies, up to hundreds of meters" as not everything she can turn her pipe into can go as far as her rifle.

I disagree with Edgar breaking out of PALE smoke as a feat for his resistance. I'm fairly sure he broke free of PALE's speed slow by using an explosive burst to accelerate faster than it could slow him down. Anyone who could be capable of accelerating like he did could break free of it.

Other than that I agree.

 

[MysticBrawler]

Hello there, profile maker here. First of all I'd like to say thanks for double-checking the profiles I made, second there is a reasonable basis for why I made things the way they are which I will explain below.(For the sections that I say nothing about it means that I'm okay with it.)

Part 1: Moses
Statistics

• My suggested Attack Potency for Moses would be "9-A, varies from 9-A to 8-B with E.G.O., 8-B with Ezra's weapons." I don't think the current reasoning for Moses being a splitter is sound. The fact she used to be Captain of the Udjat means nothing when her current strength is explicitly not there anymore, and the easiest way to demonstrate this is how back then she could break Ezra's hand by squeezing it too hard while nowadays she believes certain things in Ezra's ballpark would reduce her to gore with one solid hit. Modern day Moses is a grade 5 fixer, and she demonstrates no physical feats to the contrary of such a rating. She and Ezra share weapons so often that I do support her having them as optional equipment. The loss of the 8-A will be discussed more when it comes to Ezra's scaling.

I was presuming that a fixer doesn't lose the augmentations that they gained when they get demoted, which when coupled with the fact that she was able to withstand getting slammed by Ezra was enough for a "possibly" rating.

• My suggested speed is just supersonic. I wouldn't find it crazy if something like the BLACK rifle had projectile speed more in the upper echelon, but I do not believe we have any evidence to substantiate that. We know that Ezra really is just way faster than Moses and that their strategies often revolve around Ezra leveraging her superior speed and strength to set a foe up for Moses' much slower hax attacks, as noted in chapters 9 and 16. The electric distortion I don't believe supports what the page uses it for. He was puppeteering corpses and hopping from corpse to corpse at the speed of light, but the corpses themselves weren't moving that fast. Moses' guilt ensnaring them all just makes the distortion falter for a moment at which point he's killed by Vespa, and this is more because she got every single one of them at once. I guess her guilt propagates at the speed of light but that seems a bit too esoteric for attack speed.

There is a reason for why I think this is valid. At the start of Chapter 33 Moses says this-"Neurosis: a spear of stress, harmful radiation, a prison that constricts oneself at the same time, a symptom that exacerbates the more one hurts others; the temperamental cerebral stimuli and irritation are given the physical form of electricity. When that electricity flows through the body, it burns with an uncontrollable wrath. It’s not quite explosive; it’s sharp, rather. From light proddings to thrusts that create cavities in the mind. Neurosis flows through nearby conductors. It changes the atmosphere of one’s surroundings. One’s hysteria is poured on others. It gives a false impression that it will make things better. However, it only causes one’s own mind to smoulder and invoke impatience. All the while burning others more severely. This property must be understood. An endless release of irritation and anger, megalomania and victim mentality; it actively moves around, gnawing at those nearby and steering them. And it moves fast"- and later when she uses her fully-empowered Violet breath she says- "In an instant, my violet neurosis flowed through all the corpses at the speed of light". She also says this "Not even a second has passed, but so much physical and mental pain is being inflicted on my body that it could end my life". With all that said, I think it's pretty clear that Moses' fully-empowered Violet breath has the same speed as the Human Thunderbolt.

• My suggested lifting strength is (Whatever the limbus boat calc is, it hasn't been done yet). However, in lieu of such a calc (unless I end up just doing it real quick) I think she should just be superhuman, I don't think it makes much sense to assume that her combat augs are magically going to forget that with all the weapon clashing and stuff. I think I'm fine with Class M BLACK E.G.O., but that's the kind of thing that should have a written justification. An easy thing to use to justify this is chapter 32, where her BLACK chains can restrain the amped Smiling Faces corpses which were capable of harrying Ezra and Vespa. It's also noted in Chapter 40 that when it comes to E.G.O., mental image is much more important than actual physical aptitude.

When I gave Moses the Class M rating for her Violet breath I was thinking of using "Chapter 31: The Laundry of Dreams" wherein she restrained Ezra using her Violet breath, but I guess I forgot to put that in.

• Durability wise, Moses should just be 9-A. Having her bones broken from a flailing and not exactly lucid Ezra isn't evidence of scaling, it's the opposite. We know that Fixer stamina is amazing, and I think it makes much more sense to attribute things like Moses arm being annihilated by the backlash of Ezra's gauntlet and this not taking her out to stamina rather than durability. As for the Dias arm, it depends how literally people want to take it being "one of a kind." Given who Dias is, I would not personally find it unreasonable to say the arm has 8-A durability, but a flat 8-B is much safer if that's how people want to go.

Well that's why I put the 8-A rating it as a "likely", which I think is good enough to account for the it came from Dias.

• Range should go out to hundreds of meters, she made a rifle.

Abilities and Resistances

• She should have heat manipulation via the Stigma Workshop sword, provided sharing with Ezra is accepted.

The only thing I remember Ezra lending Moses are the Koori gloves though.

• Abilities cannot be justified by Moses being a former Udjat captain. We know she's not as strong anymore, which would mean she doesn't have the same proprietary augmentations she had at the time.

I'm only using that as supporting evidence though.

• The BLACK damage resists don't need to be a "likely," that backlash is unambiguous.

The reason why I put it as a "likely" rating is because Moses also has Supernatural Willpower and Superhuman stamina so I wasn't sure if this could qualify for a full rating or not.

• The fact Moses can bestow mental shielding upon her allies should be noted, but there's like four different powers the wiki could accept for that. Note her resistances are not completely contingent on this as we see from things like the distortion river and the depressed girl aquarium.

I already mentioned that in the description of her resistance: Greater Resistance to Mind Manipulation, Madness Manipulation, Fear Manipulation, and possibly Morality Manipulation(She is shown to be the most resistant to mental damage among her group. With her best displays being: Retaining her sanity after entering the tide of flesh in Chapter 11, being able to withstand the mental corrosion from Fei Lei's(The Carp) pocket dimension for a prolonged period of time after losing her White breath's protection in Chapter 18, and withstanding The Marksman of the Mist's bullet in chapters 36 and 37. She can further protect herself by shrouding herself with her White smoke.) The can bestow mental shielding for her allies is listed under her optional equipment.

• Chapter 24 describes her WHITE smoke as having some sort of truth divining abilities, though I'm not sure what to classify that as.
  Spoiler: Quote

  I stared at the cigarette smoke I had just puffed out. If I had my smoking pipe, I could have used the white breath to grasp the truth of this festival and the situation a bit more easily. The pipe… And Vespa. It’s like thinking about overdue homework you procrastinated on the whole night. I walked back to the town hall.

Is she not just talking about her Mind Manipulation ability?

• The PALE stuff might involve time manipulation, with Edgar's frozen state being described in chapter 40 as being on a "temporal treadwheel," but this isn't something I feel too strongly about.

This seems like it would be too speculative to add in.

Miscellaneous

• Moses should have other Ezra items and YuRia made glasses as optional equipment while she should have her Fairy, HP Tablets, first aid kit and strong painkillers as standard.

I did list Moses' Fairy as a part of her abilities, but I wasn't sure whether it should fall under her standard or optional equipment. Are the HP tablet actually something they normally have? Cause I thought the one who gave them that was YuRia.

• Edgar getting out of the PALE isn't really a weakness for Moses, that's just a resistance feat for Edgar. We know it works on foes in his speed bracket, like the very robodog thing he was using as armor.

I share the same sentiments as InfiniteDay, this seems more like a weakness anyone could exploit based on the description provided.

 

[DMUA]

I was presuming that a fixer doesn't lose the augmentations that they gained when they get demoted

It's an augmentation, a thing implanted and evidently possible to de-implant into someone. Of course they're going to take their high power stuff back if they want to demote one of their members.

She also says this "Not even a second has passed, but so much physical and mental pain is being inflicted on my body that it could end my life"

Literally nothing of any notable speed even by human standards would require an entire second to sink in, that's not very helpful as support.

 

[MysticBrawler]

Part 2: Ezra
Statistics

• Ezra's AP should be "8-B, Higher with gear and partial E.G.O." The pianist comparison was misremembered, the quote doesn't really imply that the gestalt distortion and the pianist are on the same level in terms of strength. Here's what she says:

Spoiler: Quote

At least 3 meters in body size. Six arms. Massive muscles that look like they could burst any moment. A skeleton head. Blue flames spurting from its gaping mouth. Red eyes staring at me. The shape was complete. The creature assumes a bizarre pose.

This is a completely hostile entity.

Instinctual fear overwhelms us. YuRia grabbed my sleeves tight. Ezra’s eyes changed.

“Ezra… What we’re about to face is something completely different from anything we’ve dealt with before.”

“Yes, detective!”

Ezra puts her dimensional bag on the floor.

“YuRia, observe me to your heart’s content.”

“Of course I will~”

I held my pipe between my lips.

I closed my eyes, and began breathing in…

This Distortion has the same scent as ‘The Pianist’.

A Distortion dedicated to slaughtering people…

One moment of carelessness means death.

Yet I am beginning to feel excited.…

I suppose this old habit will die hard.

• The comparison seems to be much more in terms of the distortion's type than the distortion's strength. Given the Pianist was considered the worst distortion ever pre Phillip (they didn't know Elena was one, and her kill count is lower regardless) I don't think we really have backing to assume that this early experiment was such a slam dunk that it was equal to something that important.

No I didn't misremember what Moses said, in fact I actually double-checked this entire chapter to make sure that I wasn't misremembering things. I simply presumed that she was being literal in her comparison as the other pieces of evidence seem to support this being the case. To recap what we know about this Distortion is that 1It has enough physical strength to pound a Grade 4 Fixer to a pulp, 2) Ezra needed to use her exoskeleton to be able to match it, and 3) Even with her exoskeletons the Distortion is still somewhat stronger than Ezra. With all that said, I think it's safe to say that the Distortion would be in the WAW-ALEPH range.

• As for Ezra's "higher," it should be noted that her gravity gauntlets have allowed her to punch straight through the head of bears which just before had matched her strength, and that her axe chopped off three arms from the gestalt distortion at once (which was a foe that was actually a bit stronger than her). Partial EGO let her fight on par with Vespa and she actually seemed even stronger than him, given her ability to snap his arm and the moment against smiling face corpses where she had an easier time taking them out than Vespa. Vespa himself was chopping through legions of Ezra tier bears and was gonna kill 17 Soldatos, so it's quite a strong "higher."
• I don't think Ezra needs a 9-A end. She's a grade 3 fixer, yes, but that's a rule of thumb and actual showings take precedence. Ezra is identified as being unusually strong even for what she is, being able to survive a tussle with Vespa pre-E.G.O., consistently being portrayed as extremely beyond Moses physically and fighting foes Moses says would instagib her despite her stamina, and one-shotting Thumb Soldatos if she can get a solid hit (with her arms broken, no less). She's just 8-B flat out.
• Abilities
  • Ezra's threat assessment might break into information analysis, given the time she'd only really seen a glance of Vespa and quickly appraised that she wouldn't be able to take him.

These 3 points would actually further support the Gestalt Distortion being in the WAW-ALEPH range. As if Ezra will be flat out 8-B and she can assess someone/something's strength at a glance then she knew that she was no match for the Gestalt Distortion with her usual kit, and thus decided to use her exoskeletons, and even then she still would have lost to the Distortion if Moses didn't finish it off.

• I did not find anything which justifies the exoskeleton range of several meters.

It comes from the fact that in Chapter 9 the distortion they fought was said to be at least 3 meters in size, and when she used her exoskeleton Moses said "Ezra’s big, bulky body was made even bigger, her size now comparable to that beast we’re facing", and she can further extend her range by using her two-handed battle axe which is also stated to be of enormous size.

Miscellaneous

• It's not true that Ezra cannot manifest partial EGO at all without Yuria's pendants, as can be seen against the Smiling Faces corpses. Moses surmises that Ezra has an easier time manifesting it in defense of herself, or involuntarily.

I presumed that Ezra still has the pendant that YuRia gave to her which is why she's still able to manifest her partial E.G.O. as from what I can tell she doesn't seem to have mastered using it yet.

 

[MysticBrawler]

It's an augmentation, a thing implanted and evidently possible to de-implant into someone. Of course they're going to take their high power stuff back if they want to demote one of their members.

Literally nothing of any notable speed even by human standards would require an entire second to sink in, that's not very helpful as support.

This was neither shown nor implied to be the case so I don't see why we should go with this assumption.

True but that is only just support, so it not being able to stand on it's own isn't that big of a deal. The fact that Moses Violet breath managed to flow through every corpse in an instant, of which there are stated to be 500 in total(or maybe around 450-480 as I think it's safe to say that Ezra and Vespa were able to take out some of them while Moses was charging up her Violet breath), coupled with her statement "in an instant, my violet neurosis flowed through all the corpses at the speed of light + the supporting statement is I think enough for the rating to be valid.

 

[MysticBrawler]

Bump. Sidenote: Would you mind also checking these two Project Moon CRTs of mine? I haven't gotten any staff input for months now.

 

[Yasuda_144]

Actually, why would Ezra's EGO allowing her to fight on par Vespa just make her "higher" rather than likely 8-A, if Vespa is in the 8-A splitter category?

 

[MysticBrawler]

Bump

 

[Wokistan]

MysticBrawler
To recap what we know about this Distortion is that 1It has enough physical strength to pound a Grade 4 Fixer to a pulp, 2) Ezra needed to use her exoskeleton to be able to match it, and 3) Even with her exoskeletons the Distortion is still somewhat stronger than Ezra. With all that said, I think it's safe to say that the Distortion would be in the WAW-ALEPH range.
Being stronger than a grade 3 fixer does not warrant being in the splitter range that the pianist got for being called "either the strongest WAW or the weakest ALEPH," even with Ezra being stronger than average 3s this is a description that applies to the majority of grade 1 fixers tout there.

I was presuming that a fixer doesn't lose the augmentations that they gained when they get demoted, which when coupled with the fact that she was able to withstand getting slammed by Ezra was enough for a "possibly" rating.

(...)

This was neither shown nor implied to be the case so I don't see why we should go with this assumption.

We've seen this happen before, with Queequeg being the example. We also know that the likes of Ryoshu and Gregor are not as powerful as they used to be, in the latter's case due to lack of use, and that sometimes fixers retire and augmentation beyond a certain degree isn't legal without the proper licensing. Even without that, it doesn't really get any clearer than "Udjat Moses broke Ezra's hand by squeezing it, current Moses would get pasted by Ezra tier foes, therefore she's weaker now." She doesn't do anything in the modern day beyond our generic assumption for a grade 5 and is explicitly weaker than when she was Udjat captain, so there shouldn't be any remnant of that on her page outside combat skill and experience.

There is a reason for why I think this is valid. At the start of Chapter 33 Moses says this-"Neurosis: a spear of stress, harmful radiation, a prison that constricts oneself at the same time, a symptom that exacerbates the more one hurts others; the temperamental cerebral stimuli and irritation are given the physical form of electricity. When that electricity flows through the body, it burns with an uncontrollable wrath. It’s not quite explosive; it’s sharp, rather. From light proddings to thrusts that create cavities in the mind. Neurosis flows through nearby conductors. It changes the atmosphere of one’s surroundings. One’s hysteria is poured on others. It gives a false impression that it will make things better. However, it only causes one’s own mind to smoulder and invoke impatience. All the while burning others more severely. This property must be understood. An endless release of irritation and anger, megalomania and victim mentality; it actively moves around, gnawing at those nearby and steering them. And it moves fast"- and later when she uses her fully-empowered Violet breath she says- "In an instant, my violet neurosis flowed through all the corpses at the speed of light". She also says this "Not even a second has passed, but so much physical and mental pain is being inflicted on my body that it could end my life". With all that said, I think it's pretty clear that Moses' fully-empowered Violet breath has the same speed as the Human Thunderbolt.

Not really, given her description isn't talking about the physical side of what it's manifested as. She's describing the mental aspect of the violet weapons, basically giving a closer look at exactly how BLACK damage functions, and the easiest way to know this is the fact she doesn't actually manifest a spear in this scene yet uses a spear as a metaphor for what's happening under the hood. Ensnaring a bunch of guys in less than a second is already doable at supersonic, and I'm not really sure how much you'd actually list attack speed based off of the ability propagating at the speed of light once it actually hits, since it's not even really the speed of the attack but rather the speed of the onset at that point.

The only thing I remember Ezra lending Moses are the Koori gloves though.

I covered the night vision in the OP, and in chapter 25 she uses Ezra's gauntlet briefly and obliterates her arm in the process. Ezra's very much deferential towards Moses and they use her bag to carry lots of things because of the pocket dimension stuff, Moses can only safely use the Koori gloves and the Stigma sword but she could unsafely use the others if she really wanted for whatever reason. As such, I think Ezra's stuff fits the bill for optional equipment due to shared ownership, and I'd note in weaknesses that most of it can't be safely used.

I'm only using that as supporting evidence though.

It shouldn't be used at all for acrobatics, because she's not with the Udjat anymore and is overtly much weaker and slower now.

I did list Moses' Fairy as a part of her abilities, but I wasn't sure whether it should fall under her standard or optional equipment. Are the HP tablet actually something they normally have? Cause I thought the one who gave them that was YuRia.

I didn't find any mention of them with regards to YuRia, and even if that was the case given YuRia works for them now they'd be standard regardless.

These 3 points would actually further support the Gestalt Distortion being in the WAW-ALEPH range. As if Ezra will be flat out 8-B and she can assess someone/something's strength at a glance then she knew that she was no match for the Gestalt Distortion with her usual kit, and thus decided to use her exoskeletons, and even then she still would have lost to the Distortion if Moses didn't finish it off.

Well, no. You don't get the next tier bracket up just for being stronger than someone in your own tier. Without the Zena feat the entire top end would all be in the same tier and nothing would change about the scaling despite that. There are 9-As that are stronger than other 9-As, 8-Bs stronger than other 8-Bs, splitters stronger than other splitters, and so on. Some examples of this would include how the rest of the fourth pack shuts up when Nikolai starts threatening them physically, yet she'd share a tier with them, and how Roland's explicitly stronger than present day Olivier yet Olivier's still able to hold his own in a duel and as such would inhabit the same tier despite the fact Roland is ultimately superior. There's more variance between these characters in context than vbw tiers are ever going to really represent.

I presumed that Ezra still has the pendant that YuRia gave to her which is why she's still able to manifest her partial E.G.O. as from what I can tell she doesn't seem to have mastered using it yet.

Moses mentions after seeing Ezra pull it out in the L Corp disaster zone that she and Yuria never got to finish their foray into that department due to their unexpected time constraints, and Yuria's pretty much hibernating at the moment. There's no mention of her using the special pendants, and seemingly no time for Yuria to have made them offscreen, but we do have Moses theorizing about how Ezra's doing it anyways and it matches up with meta information we have as the audience.

InfiniteDay

I disagree with Edgar breaking out of PALE smoke as a feat for his resistance. I'm fairly sure he broke free of PALE's speed slow by using an explosive burst to accelerate faster than it could slow him down. Anyone who could be capable of accelerating like he did could break free of it.

This doesn't seem to be the case. Moses' personal theory was that his momentum was somehow stored and preserved while he got stuck, and we know the pale worked just fine on the back alley gestalt distortion that's within the Ezra and Vespa speed bracket that Edgar also inhabits.


Yasuda_144

Actually, why would Ezra's EGO allowing her to fight on par Vespa just make her "higher" rather than likely 8-A, if Vespa is in the 8-A splitter category?

Vespa would be in such a category scaling off her, as it turns out. He doesn't directly fight the first Gestalt distortion, but he's a lot stronger than Ezra is in a similar way and even manages to contend with her own EGO. However since the wording is not what it was thought to have been, that avenue of scaling is closed.

 

[MysticBrawler]

MysticBrawler
To recap what we know about this Distortion is that 1It has enough physical strength to pound a Grade 4 Fixer to a pulp, 2) Ezra needed to use her exoskeleton to be able to match it, and 3) Even with her exoskeletons the Distortion is still somewhat stronger than Ezra. With all that said, I think it's safe to say that the Distortion would be in the WAW-ALEPH range.

Being stronger than a grade 3 fixer does not warrant being in the splitter range that the pianist got for being called "either the strongest WAW or the weakest ALEPH," even with Ezra being stronger than average 3s this is a description that applies to the majority of grade 1 fixers tout there.

See I was thinking that since Ezra's exoskeleton allows her to take on the Gestalt Distortion, a foe significantly stronger than her and her base kit(which would include the Namir Workshop gauntlets ) that it would be comparable to her partial E.G.O which allows her to take on Vespa.

We've seen this happen before, with Queequeg being the example. We also know that the likes of Ryoshu and Gregor are not as powerful as they used to be, in the latter's case due to lack of use, and that sometimes fixers retire and augmentation beyond a certain degree isn't legal without the proper licensing. Even without that, it doesn't really get any clearer than "Udjat Moses broke Ezra's hand by squeezing it, current Moses would get pasted by Ezra tier foes, therefore she's weaker now." She doesn't do anything in the modern day beyond our generic assumption for a grade 5 and is explicitly weaker than when she was Udjat captain, so there shouldn't be any remnant of that on her page outside combat skill and experience.

Queequeg's enhancements are tattoos though, and she removed those herself.
We don't really know how the Limbus Company weakened the Sinners so I'm not sure if that's a good example. Also this is the first time I've heard of augmentations requiring licensing, I thought only guns had that restriction.
Yeah fair enough regarding Moses, too bad there's no 8-C to High 8-C calculations for the Fixers as that would have been the best fit for her. Speaking of which, if my "The Light is a Universal Energy System" CRT passes do you think we can give Moses the "High 8-C" value that the Lobotomy Corporation RED damage users have?

Not really, given her description isn't talking about the physical side of what it's manifested as. She's describing the mental aspect of the violet weapons, basically giving a closer look at exactly how BLACK damage functions, and the easiest way to know this is the fact she doesn't actually manifest a spear in this scene yet uses a spear as a metaphor for what's happening under the hood. Ensnaring a bunch of guys in less than a second is already doable at supersonic, and I'm not really sure how much you'd actually list attack speed based off of the ability propagating at the speed of light once it actually hits, since it's not even really the speed of the attack but rather the speed of the onset at that point.

See what I was thinking was that Moses' empowered Violet breath wasn't targeting the corpses but the Human Thunderbolt itself, and that this attack was literally chasing the Human Thunderbolt while it was in the middle of body-hopping. Also description seems to imply that the attack only started after she stabbed the corpse rather tha after she finished charging.

I covered the night vision in the OP, and in chapter 25 she uses Ezra's gauntlet briefly and obliterates her arm in the process. Ezra's very much deferential towards Moses and they use her bag to carry lots of things because of the pocket dimension stuff, Moses can only safely use the Koori gloves and the Stigma sword but she could unsafely use the others if she really wanted for whatever reason. As such, I think Ezra's stuff fits the bill for optional equipment due to shared ownership, and I'd note in weaknesses that most of it can't be safely used.

Fair enough, though aside from the Koori gloves, night vision glasses, and the healing bandages, I think the rest should be listed as a possibly as those 3 are the only ones that Ezra actually lent.

I didn't find any mention of them with regards to YuRia, and even if that was the case given YuRia works for them now they'd be standard regardless.

In Chapter 14 this was said:
“Detective Moses, your wounds have been all bandaged up. And don’t forget to take this HP tablet before going to bed tonight.”

The teddy bear places a pill in front of me.

“And here’s yours, seonbae.”

YuRia waddled across the table and put one in front of Ezra as well.

“…Thanks.”

There is no mention of her getting these from Ezra's bag and Ezra was never shown to have these before and after, so it probably comes from YuRia.

Well, no. You don't get the next tier bracket up just for being stronger than someone in your own tier. Without the Zena feat the entire top end would all be in the same tier and nothing would change about the scaling despite that. There are 9-As that are stronger than other 9-As, 8-Bs stronger than other 8-Bs, splitters stronger than other splitters, and so on. Some examples of this would include how the rest of the fourth pack shuts up when Nikolai starts threatening them physically, yet she'd share a tier with them, and how Roland's explicitly stronger than present day Olivier yet Olivier's still able to hold his own in a duel and as such would inhabit the same tier despite the fact Roland is ultimately superior. There's more variance between these characters in context than vbw tiers are ever going to really represent.

All of the R. Corp Captains are in the "At least 8-B, likely 8-A" tier though, and I'm pretty sure that all of the Hana Association's members would be as well so I'm not sure if that's the right comparison to make.

Moses mentions after seeing Ezra pull it out in the L Corp disaster zone that she and Yuria never got to finish their foray into that department due to their unexpected time constraints, and Yuria's pretty much hibernating at the moment. There's no mention of her using the special pendants, and seemingly no time for Yuria to have made them offscreen, but we do have Moses theorizing about how Ezra's doing it anyways and it matches up with meta information we have as the audience.

Yeah I suppose that is plausible.

 

[Yasuda_144]

Vespa would be in such a category scaling off her, as it turns out. He doesn't directly fight the first Gestalt distortion, but he's a lot stronger than Ezra is in a similar way and even manages to contend with her own EGO. However since the wording is not what it was thought to have been, that avenue of scaling is closed.

Huh, so would that mean that his superjump feat is more worth calcing in that case, given that it would scale to more people than was previously thought?

Yeah fair enough regarding Moses, too bad there's no 8-C to High 8-C calculations for the Fixers as that would have been the best fit for her. Speaking of which, if my "The Light is a Universal Energy System" CRT passes do you think we can give Moses the "High 8-C" value that the Lobotomy Corporation RED damage users have?

The High 8-C calcs haven't been valid for ages, every single character who previously scaled to them is just 9-A (or an 8-B splitter in the case of the HEs).

 

[Wokistan]

See I was thinking that since Ezra's exoskeleton allows her to take on the Gestalt Distortion, a foe significantly stronger than her and her base kit(which would include the Namir Workshop gauntlets ) that it would be comparable to her partial E.G.O which allows her to take on Vespa.

Vespa was actually scaling from her in the first place. He doesn't have a direct feat or non Ezra scaling of his own.

Speaking of which, if my "The Light is a Universal Energy System" CRT passes do you think we can give Moses the "High 8-C" value that the Lobotomy Corporation RED damage users have?

I can't say I'm too fond of the idea judging by the title, though I'd have to read the thread later, but even if that were to be the case it wouldn't work like that. Red's just a category, and the category for all physical damage at that. That doesn't mean every single person in the verse scales to everyone. The rats do red damage. Finn does red damage. Tripping and falling down the stairs would do red damage. Even if you stipulated that the light was undeniably a universal system, the only thing in common is that it's the same category of damage and that has no bearing on the actual strength behind the attack.

See what I was thinking was that Moses' empowered Violet breath wasn't targeting the corpses but the Human Thunderbolt itself, and that this attack was literally chasing the Human Thunderbolt while it was in the middle of body-hopping. Also description seems to imply that the attack only started after she stabbed the corpse rather tha after she finished charging.

Doesn't seem to be the case to me. This reads to me as though Moses stabs a corpse, then her power propagates through all the rest of the corpses. This kicks the thunderbolt out of the network, and while he's stunned Vespa kills him.

Spoiler: Passage

I stabbed the heavy and sharp needle into the arm of the crawling corpse. In an instant, my violet neurosis flowed through all the corpses at the speed of light.

Every corpse stopped dead at once. The chain moved from body to body and tied them together. The longer the thread becomes, the more my heart bleeds. The sensation of barbed wire squeezing and crushing my brain. I have to withstand it. Not even a second has passed, but so much physical and mental pain is being inflicted on my body that it could end my life.

Vzzz—

The powerful buzzing of a bee.

The yellow harpoon soared through the air and pierced the Human Thunderbolt’s chest as it paused between corpses.

“It is done. Doctor Moses.”

There is no mention of her getting these from Ezra's bag and Ezra was never shown to have these before and after, so it probably comes from YuRia.

They'd just met her at the time, I'm not sure she'd have the time to custom make any for her. Though like I mentioned, she's part of the team now so it's not really relevant whether she's their supplier or not, they'd be standard regardless.

All of the R. Corp Captains are in the "At least 8-B, likely 8-A" tier though, and I'm pretty sure that all of the Hana Association's members would be as well so I'm not sure if that's the right comparison to make.

It's not a comparison that cares about the specific tiers of the guys in question, that's the whole point. The idea is that people can be substantially stronger than others according to the narrative and this does not automatically mean they jump a tier.

Huh, so would that mean that his superjump feat is more worth calcing in that case, given that it would scale to more people than was previously thought?

Not really, it's definitely not 8-A.

 

[MysticBrawler]

Vespa was actually scaling from her in the first place. He doesn't have a direct feat or non Ezra scaling of his own.

Oh really? I thought Vespa was downscaling from Edgar since he managed to hold him off for a bit when they fought in Chapter 38-39, with Edgar stating that Vespa lost because the latter was holding back.

I can't say I'm too fond of the idea judging by the title, though I'd have to read the thread later, but even if that were to be the case it wouldn't work like that. Red's just a category, and the category for all physical damage at that. That doesn't mean every single person in the verse scales to everyone. The rats do red damage. Finn does red damage. Tripping and falling down the stairs would do red damage. Even if you stipulated that the light was undeniably a universal system, the only thing in common is that it's the same category of damage and that has no bearing on the actual strength behind the attack.

Fair enough.

Doesn't seem to be the case to me. This reads to me as though Moses stabs a corpse, then her power propagates through all the rest of the corpses. This kicks the thunderbolt out of the network, and while he's stunned Vespa kills him.

Spoiler: Passage

I stabbed the heavy and sharp needle into the arm of the crawling corpse. In an instant, my violet neurosis flowed through all the corpses at the speed of light.

Every corpse stopped dead at once. The chain moved from body to body and tied them together. The longer the thread becomes, the more my heart bleeds. The sensation of barbed wire squeezing and crushing my brain. I have to withstand it. Not even a second has passed, but so much physical and mental pain is being inflicted on my body that it could end my life.

Vzzz—

The powerful buzzing of a bee.

The yellow harpoon soared through the air and pierced the Human Thunderbolt’s chest as it paused between corpses.

“It is done. Doctor Moses.”

Hmm, I guess either one could be a plausible interpretation, so I guess this isn't usable then.

 

[Wokistan]

Oh really? I thought Vespa was downscaling from Edgar since he managed to hold him off for a bit when they fought in Chapter 38-39, with Edgar stating that Vespa lost because the latter was holding back.

Edgar doesn't have a feat of his own either, the only method I could think of for him in a vacuum is assuming he's similarly powerful to Xiao because she's the only other section 1 grade 1 fixer we've seen. Given how Xiao is portrayed as unusual and how she's the director of her section, I don't really like assuming this based off so little information.

Besides that, do we have much contention left to hash out? The big thing I'm noticing is we haven't figured out the resistances situation. I didn't say anything definitive on it yet, I just said we should figure out what we're doing there. Otherwise, given these quote chains are getting smaller and smaller each time we seem to be moving things along.

 

[Wokistan]

Bump. In addition to resistances, Yuria and the ambiguous pale weakness still need to be figured out.

 

[Wokistan]

Bump. Considering starting the application of the things we've already reached agreement on, what do others think?

 

[MysticBrawler]

Bump. In addition to resistances, Yuria and the ambiguous pale weakness still need to be figured out.

From what I can tell, the justification for the resistances that all of the "Library of Ruina" enemy characters use is that they can withstand getting hit by the Librarians who use those abilities and vice versa. With that said, I think Moses is the only one in her group that could have some of those resistances since she's the one who got hit by a few of those.
YuRia is being scaled to the Grade 9-8 fixers, which is also the the same tier that the Rats are in, so if you're saying that even that won't do then the only option is to make all of her stats unknown. Which to me doesn't seem right as it's pretty obvious from her character image alone that she has her own augmentations as someone with a small stature no muscles like her needs to have the bare minimum level of augmentations to be able to lift something like a giant wrench.
The way that the Pale breath's weakness is described seems more like an inherent flaw in the ability rather than an ability/resistance in Edgar's part, as he didn't really do anything special to break out of it nor was the ability implied to be less effective on him.