Doctor Fate Revamp

[ClassicNESfan]

I definitely have something to bring up about Superboy, but I don't think now is the best time. I think I'm going to continue focusing on the primary figures in this revision if it's all the same to you.

Remember, this isn't exactly an upgrade. It's a complete revamp. Doctor Fate is missing a ton of keys and distinctions that as far as I can tell, have just never been made on this wiki. It's aready a lot to handle, and I don't know if I can juggle Superboy in the same thread. Especially not if he's so tangentally related to the main point.

 

[LordTracer]

Well he would relate to some of the other characters you've brought up like The Time Trapper, the Emotional Embodiments, HJ Spectre, etc.

 

[The_Impress]

I'm still somewhat iffy on the whole 2-B thing, I'd preferably wait for other's opinion on the matter, as this scaling seems weirdly without consistency due to not having enough instances for the characters to compare...

 

[ClassicNESfan]

Yes, but he only relates to The Time Trapper in that The Time Trapper is a future version of him. Meaning a Superboy-Prime upgrade would only be relevant to this thread if he was upgraded to something beyond 2-B, which seems very unlikely. He is how we scale the Emotional Embodiments, but that only relates directly to Dr. Fate (Kent V Nelson), who I've admitted I'm not well versed on and would like to return to later if we even decide to give him a key at all (he's pretty obscure and short-lived). I don't really know how any of this ties into The Spectre (Hal Jordan) though. I'm already proposing at least a 2-B tier for him. So Superboy-Prime upgrades would again only have relevance here if he were being upgraded beyond 2-B- necessitating we do the same with Parallax and The Spectre (Hal Jordan)- which seems very unlikely.

 

[LordTracer]

Well the feat on his profile right now could be interpreted as 2-A. And as for how he relates to HJ Spectre, I was mainly going off the logic of SBP >=< Emotional Embodiments < ZH Parallax < HJ Spectre. Also again, ZH Spectre has harmed Corrigan Spectre, who you suggested be upped to 2-A, so that could be used.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

I don't really see how anything here is inconsistent. We've always known that every character in this revision (except for Kent V Nelso) had an AP yield consisting of multiple universes. There was just relatively little effort to quantify the exact number until now.

Dr. Fate's page is in poor condition, no offense. It's missing most of the Fate incarnations, a variety of hax, and is tiered objectively lower than it should be going by both independant feats and scaling to other characters indexed as higher on this wiki. I see no reason that these multi-universe wielding characters could not fit low into the 2-B categories. Furthermore, the 2-A feats for Fate's top tiers have been completely overlooked in the past and only apply to characters who take the stage too rarely for such showings to be considered outliers.

 

[Antvasima]

I'm referring to this sca, by the way.

That is just about how the original Crisis created inconsistencies in the history of the new merged universe. Superboy Prime's punches somehow resolved some of them. He still only affected one universe though.

Anyway, let's leave that for another thread.

 

[Antvasima]

I'm still somewhat iffy on the whole 2-B thing, I'd preferably wait for other's opinion on the matter, as this scaling seems weirdly without consistency due to not having enough instances for the characters to compare...

Agreed. As I keep saying, Marvel and DC Comics are insanely inconsistent. If we do not have a lot of consistent comparisons to scale from, that usually makes any statistics derived from them very unreliable.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

I really don't understand what part of the scaling is so worrisome. I don't say that to come across as dismissive, but I genuinely don't understand it. I mean, I kind of get the hestiation surrounding Trigon, because like I mentioned earlier, his power is always just vaguely "unstoppable" and "above everybody else in the story." I can understand why you might want to be careful with that. But the 2-B Fates in particular and those scaling to them are remarkably straight-forward.

I was able to find two feats from a run that barely lasted 25 issues- all written by the same guy- that say Eric and Linda can destroy 1001 universes. This run is both immediately preceded and succeeded by runs with Kent Nelson as Dr. Fate. In the Eric and Linda run, the fact that Kent Nelson was unfathomably more powerful than them comes up repeatedly, and it was even referenced again years later during the JSA run when all Fate incarnations essentially came together for a reunion. Throughout Kent Nelson's original run as Dr. Fate he had access to two universes he made himself, and he constantly went on about his importance to the multiverse and duty to keep the multiverse in balance and ability to fight multiversial gods and monsters, so none of that would be out of place either. He also repeatedly power scaled significantly beyond a 2-C Pre-Crisis Superman and comperable characters. Dr. Fate is also one of the only DC characters who did not change during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, making scaling him even more reliable than scaling most characters. Even when Hector Hall took up the mantel of Fate years later, he was described as having access to "thousands of worlds of magic." None of these things are out of place for 2-B, and they're all lined up right next to each other.

Mordru is also indisputably equivalent to Fate tiers. He matches them blow for blow all the time. I can understand hesitation when it comes to activating a domino effect that upgrades a dozen new profiles that aren't really related to Fate, because sometimes DC doesn't have a grip on the far reaching consequences they're causing, but what is so concerning about 2-B Fates and Mordru? I swear I'm not trying to be controversial. I'm open to considering lower tiers for them, but I'd really like some kind of solid reason so I can be on the level with you guys. As far as I can tell, even when acting as conservatively as possible and keeping everything within half a Bacon number, the Fates and Mordru should be 2-B, and Nabu, peak Fate, and Corrigan should be 2-A.

 

[Antvasima]

It isn't the characters with explicit feats that I am concerned about. It is the domino effect as you said.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

So you're more concerned about The Time Trapper, The Infinite Man, Parallax, The Spectre (Hal Jordan), Trigon, Darkseid, and possibly The Phantom Stranger?

 

[Antvasima]

Yes, and Mordru as well, given that he seems to have comparable trouble with different versions of Fate.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

Well, I guess that's relieving. Those characters are mostly tangental. I only included them in the first place because I thought it was important to be forthcoming about all the characters these changes would affect.

I think SuperAPM made a solid suggestion for Mordru, though. Creating a separate key for his unbound form alluded to in JSA and presented directly in Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld kind of cleans up the problem pretty nicely. It explains why he's shown to fight on par with Fate despite considering himself a rival to Nabu. Hector Hall implied that Mordru was weaker when incarnating in a physical form.

 

[Antvasima]

I suppose that might be an idea then.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

I know this thread is already overflowing with my own opinions, but would you like me to give my two cents on who in the tangental scaling group is the most/least reliable in tiering to the Fates?

 

[Antvasima]

That should probably be fine.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

Without a doubt, Mordru scales to high tier Fates the most consistently. So long as there is a way of accounting for his relationship to Nabu, I think his 2-B tier is an easy sell.

The Time Trapper also definitely scales to Mordru's 2-B form, being either equivalent or slightly above it. This causes no inconsistency because none of our current justifications for The Time Trapper's tier would be out of place on a 2-B profile. They are not explicitly 2-C feats. They just involve manipulating an unspecified but seemingly large number of timelines, realities, and universes.

The Infinite Ma also definitely scales to The Time Trapper. In fact, our only two justifications for his current tiering are based on him matching The Time Trapper and Mordru teaming up with another wizard to steal his power to amp himself. This character has relatively few appearances compared to everybody else in this revision. He should essentially bound to whatever tier The Time Trapper is in.

I guess what I'm getting at is that Fate = Mordru is very consistent. And Mordru, The Infinite Ma, and The Time Trapper all being around the same range as each other is also very consistent. Those should be some of the easier characters to scale.

Parallax indisputably defeated The Time Trapper in Zero Hour. Twice. The defeats were both pretty undeniable, and they are also currently our only justification for his tiering on this wiki. You could argue that perhaps The Time Trapper's defeat was too important to the plot of Zero Hour and therefore should not be considered, but if we're going to do that, then we're also going to need to find a new justification for Parallax's tiering. Zark earlier suggested an At Least 2-C ranking because Hal claimed he could "shape the universes" when reflecting on Parallax a few years later. If we drop his scaling to The Time Trapper, I'd consider that a reasonable fix.

Whatever tier Parallax ends up at, I don't think it's controversial to say that The Spectre (Hal Jordan) should definitely scale above him. The scene comparing the two was pretty explicit.

Darkseid's current tiering relies upon casually manhandling Pre-Crisis Superma, scaling above Mordru, and scaling above a character who scales to Parallax. If Mordru is upgraded but Parallax is not, we can treat his Mordru feat as an outlier, but if both are upgraded, then Darkseid must be upgraded as well. At that point, he'd have two 2-B feats and one casual feat very deep into the 2-C category.

Trigo and The Phantom Stranger are the biggest wild cards of everybody being discussed in this thread. Both have very vague powers and a serious lack of benchmark limits.

In the case of The Phantom Stranger specifically, it is very likely that every writer has had a different idea about exactly how powerful he is because having no official backstory was kind of his schtick until Flashpoint. That being said, he is very commonly portrayed as at least superior to Dr. Fate if not Nabu himself. He is portrayed as peer to The Spectre far more often than he is peer to Fate (though he almost always admits that The Spectre outmatches him in raw power). True to this point, our wiki's current rating for The Phantom Stranger scales him from a feat wherein he briefly matched a form of magic that was repeatedly stated to be beyond the most powerful sourcerers in the universe. Our wiki currently argues that this should put him above Nabu. It's just that we don't currently rank Nabu particularly high. I think that this is a fair method of estimation that should necessitate a 2-A tiering for The Phantom Stranger after these revisions. It would not contradict anything and would actually fit quite well with The Phantom Stranger's relation to other characters. However, if you want to reject our current reasoning and be really conservative about it in light of these upgrades, I don't think it makes sense to put him any lower than the weakest Fate incarnations. So he should at a minimum qualify for 2-B.

And in the case of Trigo, he indisputably dips into the 2-C tier. The only question is how much further he goes. Estimates of Trigon's power are... basically singleminded. He's just portrayed as vaguely stronger than anybody else in the story. Because of that, there is no consistency to it. To my knowledge, the only time it's been suggested that he has a peer was when The Monitor compared him to The Spectre. The way I see it, you can either latch on to his consistent statements of At Least 2-C power or you can latch onto that comparison to The Spectre and use his apparent ability to kill Nabu and The Phantom Stranger as supporting evidence for 2-A. I know that second option might seem drastic at a glance, but I don't personally see it as any different from how SHuman-Gorath is treated on this wiki. Both are immensely powerful entities that scale above nearly everything in the mortal realm, but they both also have a historically difficult time manifesting in said realm and are extremely succeptable to BFR after doing so. I don't really have an opinion on whether Trigo should be 2-A or not because I can see the argument in either direction, but I do think these upgrades should at least qualify him to be At Least 2-C rather than 2-C flat. Simply ignoring four instances of him being compared to entities beyond the 2-C tier seems weird.

 

[SuperAPM]

I agree with these changes:

2-A Bracket: Nabu, Doctor Fate (Kent & Inza), Mordru (Unboud Lord of Chaos), Spectre (Jim Corrigan), Phantom Stranger, Trigon, Spectre (Hal Jordan)

2-B Bracket: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson, Hector Hall, Eric & Linda Strauss), Mordru (Physical form), Time Trapper, Infinite Man, Parallax (Hal Jordan), Darkseid, Highfather

2-C Bracket: Superman and everyone else on his level

 

[ClassicNESfan]

Technically speaking, Superman was never up for revision here, but I assume you're just using him as a reference point. Either way, thanks for the support. You've been helpful in these evaluations from the moment Ant recommended you.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that this seems to make sense, but somebody like PrinceOfTheMorning would be far better suited to evaluating this.

 

[LordTracer]

I agree with SuperAPM.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

It looks like we already have a few people from your proposed list in agreement, but I am willing to wait for more if they are. It's not as though I plan on going anywhere.

 

[LordTracer]

Actually, I think Parallax should have an At least 2-B, likely 2-A rating. 2-B for the reasons given above, 2-A for the reasoning of:

- Parallax fighting Jim Corrigan in Zero Hour.

- Parallax harming Jim in Zero Hour.

- The Spectre directly comparing Parallax to The Anti-Monitor in Brightest Day (?), although he did peg Parallax as slightly less impressive.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

You cannot scale a character to The Spectre without extinuating circumstances explaining The Spectre's current level, because he canonically varies in power even among a single host. The lore reasons for this are complicated, but that's why my revisions involving him only rely on scaling The Spectre from other characters. For example, since we can establish Nabu as 2-A, we can establish The Spectre (Jim Corrigan) as 2-A for being superior to Nabu. But we cannot scale Parallax to 2-A for managing to hurt The Spectre (Jim Corrigan) because we don't know if The Spectre (Jim Corrigan) was operating at 2-A levels during that fight specifically.

 

[LordTracer]

That would still warrant a '2-B, possibly 2-A' then, as for example Seven Soldiers Zatanna received a possibly 2-C (which btw would need to be 2-A now) for beating someone who defeated an inexperienced Jim. It's possible Jim was 2-A when he squared up with Parallax, and the Anti-Monitor comparison supports the idea that he was.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

If that's how the rules work around here, then I don't have any issue adhering to them, but I do not personally think fighting The Spectre (Jim Corrigan) should automatically necessitate a "Possibly 2-A" key. Like Constantine said, he goes up and down the occult league at the drop of a hat. It might be fair to assume you're dealing with universal power at an absolute minimum when fighting him, but it's a long walk from Low 2-C to 2-A.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

(Also, Zatanna's profile could use some clean up too, but that's probably best left for later.)

 

[Antvasima]

ClassicNESfan is correct about that scaling from the Spectre can be unreliable, given that he even canonically varies in power a lot. The Zatanna profile may not have been properly updated.

 

[LordTracer]

I mean it's only logical. It's very possible you're fighting 2-A Corrigan, therefore 'possibly 2-A.' The only time I'd say you definitely shouldn't slap 2-A on is when the character is very clearly not supposed to be 2-A. Like, for example, if somehow The Flash managed to harm Corrigan, obviously he wouldn't get a possibly 2-A from that. So, I think the tierings should go:

2-A Bracket: Nabu, Doctor Fate (Kent & Inza), Mordru (Unboud Lord of Chaos), Spectre (Jim Corrigan), Phantom Stranger, Trigon, Spectre (Hal Jordan)

2-B, possibly 2-A Bracket: Parallax (Hal Jordan), Darkseid, Highfather, Seven Soldiers Zatanna (just cause I mentioned her earlier)

2-B Bracket: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson, Hector Hall, Eric & Linda Strauss), Mordru (Physical form), Time Trapper, Infinite Man

2-C Bracket: Superman and everyone else on his level

 

[LordTracer]

The Spectre (Crispus Allen) and The Emotional Embodiments could also scale to that '2-B, possibly 2-A' level, as Allen did manage to... sorta put up a fight against Parallax.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

I mean, I don't really have any authority around here at the end of the day, but I think the near total lack of 2-A feats between all the people you can scale Parallax to is kind of proof in and of itself that The Spectre wasn't 2-A in that fight. We have no independant reasons to believe that the new god eminations, Superboy-Prime, or Monarch for instance rank anywhere near those levels.

 

[LordTracer]

ClassicNESfan is correct about that scaling from the Spectre can be unreliable, given that he even canonically varies in power a lot. The Zatanna profile may not have been properly updated.

At least going by the thread that gave her the possibly 2-C, POTM was in agreement with the idea.

 

[LordTracer]

I mean, I don't really have any authority around here at the end of the day, but I think the near total lack of 2-A feats between all the people you can scale Parallax to is kind of proof in and of itself that The Spectre wasn't 2-A in that fight. We have no independant reasons to believe that the new god eminations, Superboy-Prime, or Monarch for instance rank anywhere near those levels.

I mean, Parallax was directly compared to The Anti-Monitor by Spectre himself and a weakened Superboy-Prime was affecting all different realities while explicitly being shown to have affects on other universes...

 

[ClassicNESfan]

If this is the scene you are referring to, then I do not think The Spectre claiming Parallax has "more blood on his hands" than anybody besides the Anti-Monitor says anything at all about power. That's just The Spectre discussing a body count. And a lot of people died during Zero Hour due to some chain reaction bull that Hal was pulling at the End of Time to constrict and manipulate the time stream. It's very different from The Spectre saying "Aside from maybe the Anti-Monitor, I have never faced a foe as mighty as you!"

And that Superboy-Prime feat is definitely not multiversal. At least not in the context I remember it.

 

[LordTracer]

Going by the wording on the scan itself, it says SBP is resolving all possible realities, and he is shown to be affecting an entirely different universe so you can't say he's only having universal effect.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

He was definitely only affecting a single universe. Only one universe existed in the entirety of DC both in the fuller context of that story and when that feat took place. The scan is explaining that when the original DC multiverse coaleced into one universe a bunch of continuity errors were left unresolved by virtue of merging infinite conflicting realities into one. Superboy's punches were resolving the paradoxes that had previously been left unattended by the writers. It was a major plot point in the storyline, and Superboy does it multiple times throughout the event comic. They used his punches to patch a bunch of conflicting plot points together, described as ripples in reality or opposing possibilities that conflicted with each other. It's still possible that Superboy was stronger than Low 2-C at the time, but it was hard for anybody to prove being more than universial in that era because only one universe existed.

 

[LordTracer]

If infinite universe are coalesced into one, I'm pretty sure that would still be a 2-A structure.

 

[ClassicNESfan]

Forgive my jargon. You misunderstand. Infinite 4 dimensional spacetime continuums were not coaleced into one during the crisis. Infinite 4 dimensional spaceime continuums were destroyed. The continuities were coalesced into one. As in the various histories and backstories of the surviving characters from the battle at the dawn of time were woven into reality as the universe was still healing around them, and it resulted in a number of paradoxes (read: continuity errors) that were revised by Superboy punching the universe years later to escape his pocket dimension.

 

[The_Impress]

Fellas, we can argue about Superboy at a later date, since he isn't directly affected by the changes. How about we focus on the Doctor Fate revisions at hand, preferably?

Has anyone contacted PrinceOfthemorning and Sandman311 yet? They tend to be the more important verifiers of the wiki in regards to DC and Marvel Revisions

 

[ClassicNESfan]

They have been contacted. We're just waiting.