I'm never so close minded as to ignore part of somebody's argument. Now that I think about it, it seems that characters can still have combat skill that goes that high, but we can't have fighting skills make someone Extraordinary Genius all around.
Here's the part where the gloves come off and I start not being so nice about peoples' VS opinions. It's like you want Halo to lose its VS matches. I say I want to upgrade Master Chief's combat skill on the site and you're like, "OMG he's just a guy that shoots!! He's very physically strong so that means he's not that skilled!! He takes huge risks and he only survives every time because he's lucky!! He only wins because he talks to Cortana and and Dr. Halsey!! He also doesn't think his plans through!!" Like dude, where is this even coming from, and more importantly where am I supposed to go with that? He's fought human soldiers, every race in the Covenant, the Flood, Forerunners, the Prometheans/Created, the Banished (to the point of their civilization starting to crumble), yeah, that plus the fact that informationally he's among the apex of his race and he's stomped others who can say the same, plus the fact that he can expertly drive almost every single vehicle in the entire verse, many of them sky- and space-faring, it's no surprise that I'm looking to upgrade his currently very poorly worded Intelligence.
I don't care about Vs Threads generally speaking, it's been years since I actually participated in Vs Threads to my knowledge and I have seen profiles get edited left and right that may or may not change outcomes drastically. But whatever works, works. I am simply here to make sure standard wiki protocol is followed; nothing more and nothing less. I do not think of any specific match up in mind when Standard Battle Assumptions or Vs Thread rules get changed or when characters get upgraded or downgraded.
Regardless of personal opinions, points 1 and points 2 still forbids any of the above following getting upgraded to "Genius" or "Extraordinary Genius" via "Being a skilled hand to hand combat fighter" or even being a weapons/vehicle master. Every feat you listed is still only "Gifted" at best, our qualifications for genius is being comparable to among the smartest people who ever lived. This includes being in par with the likes if Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Stephen Hawking, or Albert Einstein. Which Katherine Halsey qualifies, but none of the Spartans really do reach those levels. With Extraordinary Genius at its baseline requires a level of intellect basically considered "Impossible for any human being to reach." Which basically means Composite Human was the baseline for Extraordinary Genius.
The rest of your paragraph is also pure strawmanning. I never said that he "Wasn't skilled" or "Wasn't intelligent," I am just saying that one, our standards for Genius let alone Extraordinary Genius are much higher than you realize. Second, as said earlier, each and every feat listed is simply not as impressive as you're making it out to be and still something easily achievable by those with merely Gifted level intelligence. Owning a licenses to drive a car, a forklift, a battle tank, a speed boat, and various single pilot aircraft does not make anyone qualify for genius. Otherwise, everyone in the USSF, when Gifted more than qualifies. I give more on topic and more easier comparisons, all the feats you listed are withing things
James Bond or
Numbuh 1 are more than capable of. In the latter's case, he not only pilots every type of vehicle or space craft well, he actually builds them from scratch. But both of them are simply Gifted by qualification. Thirdly, if using whataboutisms happens to be the ultimate basis of your argument, that's just a very frowned upon practice. It may not be against the rules to bring up random verses/comparisons, but it's still considered an overall shady practice. The preferred method is simply facing facts and logics while staying on topic instead of focusing on a personal agenda, appeal to emotion, or simply wanting your favorite character and/or verse to be rated higher than certain characters or verses with rivaled fandoms. While I can acknowledge people get upset that their favorite character(s) and or verse(s) get downgraded or have commonly repeated upgrade attempts get rejected again and again, downplaying competition out of spite is just never a good practice.
I was calling you out not because of this topic; I acknowledge that it isn't even the worst Halo related argument. But I still keep on hearing from your side all the constant rinses and repeats of literally everything that has already been brought up and attempted to death and gets more annoying each time. For example,
when you proposed Supernatural Luck despite the fact I and many others discussed a thousand times the difference between regular luck and Supernatural Luck. Which Master Chief is literally the number one most common character where fans keep trying to give that to him despite it clearly being stated on the Supernatural Luck page that characters like him fail to qualify. You also on multiple occurrences attempted to break our traditions against circular/loophole scaling such as upgrading fodder weapons to be the same tier as the heavy anti-vehicle weapons via reverse powerscaling. Because it raises too many Loaded Questions, such as how can pistols that do 0 damage to vehicles that chip damage soldiers who can survive more than one rounds from heavy rocket launchers that oneshot vehicles that oneshot those same soldiers via ramming not have any inconsistencies and contradictions? As for other intelligence feats, no one said Superhumans can't be geniuses, only that you don't need to be a genius to win fights against foes many times weaker than yourself. As is the case of him fighting ODST soldiers. It be a different story if a really strong character like Superman was able to knock out many times weaker characters without accidently killing them though. And most of those aliens he fights often consists of soldiers who are brawns over brains or their commanders literally have cavemen level politics; yes this is canon amongst Covenant Empire. And I have a lot more details and not denying that he has a lot more details or has some otherwise really good skill feats, just that they're not flawless and ultimately, there is not a single one exceeding Gifted all things considered.