- 15,998
- 12,446
It's been a while since the last thread, but we got all the feats approved and so we can finally start applying the downgrades that happened a few months ago. In this thread we'll be replacing basically every feat, and then in the next one we'll do Samus' updated P&A- to then finish things with the other revised profiles in a third thread.
I'm gonna go through every key Samus has in order, as well as some other tiers of power that she isn't directly related to, and explain what the feats they scale to are.
Also, as another quick note, while multipliers get Samus above her starting tier very often, the profile would look positively hideous listing all of that (One tier would be "At least 7-C, possibly Low 7-B, at least High 7-C, possibly Low 7-B with stronger weaponry and Rage Power, possibly up to at least Low 7-B, possibly 7-B with Rage Power") so I would personally just list the multipliers as "higher", and explain how much they grant in a Notes section at the bottom of the profiles.
I'm gonna go through every key Samus has in order, as well as some other tiers of power that she isn't directly related to, and explain what the feats they scale to are.
Zero Suit Samus/Pre-Legendary Suit
- Zero Suit Samus (& Joey):This is easily the weirdest key to scale, I'm gonna be real with you.
- Attack Potency: The reason this key is weird as hell is that none of ZSS' feats really scale to her AP, she barely fights bare-handed without the suit, and the best she really has besides that is a Street level+ jump, backed up by stuff like overpowering soldiers with ease. Joey (who's a weirdly strong but ultimately human kid, whereas Samus is an adult super soldier, reasonably she upscales from anything he does) doesn't have any "real" Striking Strength scaling either, because his weapon enhances his punches (Up to like, near Varia Suit level at peak) so they're both stone walls AND glass cannons at the same time I guess.
- Paralyzer: Samus' Paralyzer gun is capable of breaking through blocks (not even the fake ones you can break with standard power beam, the one in the calc is a bomb block) which gives it a nice Building level rating. This actually is sort of a godsend for the low tiers of the verse who all unanimously upscale from this dinky ass gun that can't even hurt Space Pirates, but it does cause some weirdness with her.
- Durability: So Samus already has some durability scaling via Joey's durability feats as well as her own ability to tank long falls, the weird thing is that in ZSS she tanks hits from Space Pirates who scale to the Paralyzer. The reason this is weird is that these attacks deal 99 damage to her, which means that without E-Tanks, she'd be one-shot by them. I suggest therefore rating her durability as "At least Wall level, Building level with Energy Tanks".
- Lifting Strength: This one's easy- got two nice Class 5 calcs for it.
- Speed: Joey has a cool Supersonic+ feat that ZSS upscales from.
- Attack Potency: The reason this key is weird as hell is that none of ZSS' feats really scale to her AP, she barely fights bare-handed without the suit, and the best she really has besides that is a Street level+ jump, backed up by stuff like overpowering soldiers with ease. Joey (who's a weirdly strong but ultimately human kid, whereas Samus is an adult super soldier, reasonably she upscales from anything he does) doesn't have any "real" Striking Strength scaling either, because his weapon enhances his punches (Up to like, near Varia Suit level at peak) so they're both stone walls AND glass cannons at the same time I guess.
- ZM Power Suit: Before we talk about what she does scale to, I have to address the profile's claim that in this key she "Survived her encounter with Ridley, despite succumbing to her PTSD within the match". It's true, but that doesn't mean she scales to him. In that fight Ridley surprises her, starts smacking her around and very quickly has her at his mercy while she begins having a breakdown from PTSD, and eventually loses control of the suit. It's possible she may have fared better if she was in a good state of mind, but as things are she never really puts up anything even resembling a fight. The only reason she survives is that Gray Voice manages to convince him that she's still useful.
- Attack Potency/Durability: Building level, scaling off the Charge Beam Beast being capable of digging through a lot of stone. The Paralyzer is nice support too.
- We can also start applying multipliers! According to Adam, the Super Missile is three times as strong as her early game kit [bombs, power beam and standard missiles] in Fusion. This is going to consistently apply to Power Suit keys in the series and to mostly nothing above it, since by that point Samus always has other weapons that are also stronger than the early game stuff, like power bombs, upgraded beam weapons and so on. We can also apply the >5x rage power stuff from Joey, though I would be hesitant in saying the two stack, maybe just as a possibly rating? Anyways, the latter alone gets her right into Large Building level, and both combined would get her to City Block level.
- Speed: There's a nice Supersonic+ feat from early in her career (as well as the Speed Booster being a nice consistent Supersonic statement), but it's actually slower than Joey's, so just upscaling here.
- Lifting Strength: ... Also just upscaling. Unfortunately Zero Mission is pretty light on feats.
- Attack Potency/Durability: Building level, scaling off the Charge Beam Beast being capable of digging through a lot of stone. The Paralyzer is nice support too.
- ZM Varia Suit: Almost just had to upscale from the Power Suit, but thanks to Other M (a sequence of words i feel truly dirty for uttering) it actually gets to upscale from the Legendary Power Suit, because adolescent Ridley manages to immobilize and potentially deal some serious damage to her in that state, whereas in Zero Mission she can obviously fight him as an adult (who's obviously stronger) with the Varia Suit. So she just scales to everything the legendary power suit does.
Legendary Suit/Fusion
- Power Suit: Some nice stuff here, mostly courtesy of Samus & Joey.
- Attack Potency/Durability: There's two "main" calculations here. First off, Samus powering a massive rocket/ship (technically neither, see blog) to move at incredible speeds, which gets "At least Town level+, possibly Small City level", and then blowing up a big 'ol undersea volcano and causing a Town level explosion as nice support [the feat is a bit sketchy given it was a chain reaction and while she was near the explosion she may not have tanked all of it? but it's support so as far as I'm concerned it's good to list]. Some more support for the higher rating is this High 7-C+ calc which does come with the caveat of it knocking Samus out, so it's kinda sus on its own, but as support, eh it's aight. There's also another 7-C KE calc which is very sus but like, it's lower than all the other ones so might as well. With multipliers, 7-C gets up to High 7-C, and Low 7-B to Low 7-B+.
- Speed: Samus jumping away from the Super Power Bomb gets all the way to Massively Hypersonic+ which is very nice.
- Lifting Strength: Got a Class M feat from the same chapter as the 7-C/Low 7-B feat, where Samus manages to just barely stand up at the bottom of the acid ocean. I do however want to list it as "At most Class M", because it's a feat that she just barely pulls off, possibly tapping into her rage power.
- Varia Suit: I'll just quickly note that the Gravity Suit and all the Prime suits just upscale from this, they don't have anything unique to them.
- Attack Potency/Durability: The main calculation is perhaps unsurprisingly, the nuke feat from Samus & Joey, which gets Samus to Small Country level (Country level with Rage Power). There's a lot of nice support feats, though, a 7-A+ one from Dread, a High 7-A one from S&J, Samus causing a volcanic eruption that caused the entire sky to go black with soot [possibly a chain reaction but still cool], Metroid Prime exploding with enough force to destroy the impact crater [only scales to the Prime games' suits], and a Federation Force boss causing seismic activities.
- Lifting Strength: Samus tearing apart metal blocks in Dread gets her much higher into Class M. Besides the Power Suit feat, there's a nice amount of support, like the Vorash feat being recalc'd at Class K.
- Speed: Samus scales to her ship's flight speed thanks to the Joey space race [which itself acts as a supporting feat- could be higher but we don't exactly have a timeframe]. While the best calc we've got for the ship's speed is only MHS+, right before that race we're told that the ship's 30% faster than it used to be, which gets the feat nicely into Sub-Relativistic.
- Animus: Gets up to literally 96.99% of Star level. I think we're fine to just upscale to Star level given there were a lot more black holes that we didn't see, not exactly unlikely one was like 0.5% bigger than the one we saw, which was also constantly growing so it probably was just 4-C by the time Samus actually took care of it.
- Metroid Fusion: To make this one quick, the Gravity Suit key and the one where she absorbs the SA-X just scale to Legendary Varia Suit stuff. As for the Fusion and Varia keys, neither unfortunately has speed or LS feats beyond Supersonic+ and Class 5, however they do have nice AP feats, in the BOX' Large Building level destruction feat for Fusion (Which benefits from all the multipliers since it's fought before you get the Super Missiles), and Nightmare's Multi-City Block level scouring of Sector 5. Once could argue Nightmare scales much higher thanks to Other M, but I think that's pretty weird given that's Samus with the Legendary Gravity Suit, so Fusion Varia Suit being relative to that makes no sense when just Legendary Varia is still way too much for her to handle.
- Metroid Dread: So the base Power Suit here just upscales from Fusion's power suit, we know it's much stronger and odds are it's closer to the the Legendary one, but we don't really know that it is so playing it safe that's where it gets (I don't think there's any better feats in Dread for it, but I could be wrong). The Varia Suit upscales greatly from Zero Mission's Varia Suit because you fight Chozo Soldiers at this point, who wield much more advanced versions of the ancient armor Gray Voice used to fight Mother Brain (and Ridley, though he loses that one) back in the Zero Mission manga. Gravity Suit straight-up scales to Legendary Gravity Suit's levels, Samus is the most powerful Metroid of all according to Raven Beak, which puts her above Queen Metroids and those are a good match for Gravity Suit Samus. I don't think that statement includes Metroid Prime though, given that, well first off it's not really a "natural" Metroid or one that Raven can hope to replicate, but also we don't even know that the Tallon IV even knew it was a thing, the only reference in the canon script I could find is the very vague "Worm" prophecy which they don't really seem to be able to interpret.
- Metroid Suit/Raven Beak/EMMIs: Even at max power, Samus would not at all be able to destroy the EMMI, which puts them above even her rage-boosted state. This means that Raven Beak, who can destroy EMMI, scales to that 6-B rating, and Metroid Suit Samus far upscales from that. Gravity Suit is however going to stay at Low 6-B, she can only barely compete with Raven Beak and her scaling to the thing that's upscaling from her would be circular. There's a support feat exclusive to these ratings, also: The Zero Mission explosion getting 6-C+ should scale to the EMMIs, being that they're made of the toughest material in the universe which should be toughed than whatever Mother Brain's lair and the rest of Tourian (which albeit pretty banged up, did survive that explosion) are made of.
Also, as another quick note, while multipliers get Samus above her starting tier very often, the profile would look positively hideous listing all of that (One tier would be "At least 7-C, possibly Low 7-B, at least High 7-C, possibly Low 7-B with stronger weaponry and Rage Power, possibly up to at least Low 7-B, possibly 7-B with Rage Power") so I would personally just list the multipliers as "higher", and explain how much they grant in a Notes section at the bottom of the profiles.
Other Characters
- Samus' Ship: Ok, not really a character, but this thing is weird so we're starting with it. Samus has had like, five ships throughout the series? The one in ZM and the one in Fusion/Dread are both basically featless, and the one in Metroid Prime 1 and Hunters also has basically nothing besides some neat P&A. That leaves the one in Prime 2-Metroid 2-Super Metroid-Other M-Joey, which is comparable to her in durability but has no weaponry that we know of and finally the MP3-FedForce-MP4 Gunship, which is a model custom-built by Samus and does straight-up scale to her, being capable of destroying blocks she can't on foot, one-shot a Federation Force boss, carrying objects she can't and withstanding a beatdown from Ghor, which does leave it unable to fly but that's not too bad when you think about the fact that he was trying to destroy it for a few minutes straight and only managed to do somedamage. So that one ship is "At least Low 6-B".
- The really weird bit is that the Corruption scan for the Gunship says that it's "based on the previous model" which is just weird, given that model would end up replacing it again. If the Corruption ship scaled to the classic one, that would actually be fairly relevant scaling-wise, but for that I'd wait for Metroid Prime 4, since that ship is back there and maybe they explain why she switched (they probably won't).
- Bounty Hunters: Currently we don't scale the bounty hunters in Hunters and Corruption to Samus, but I think that's a mistake. First off, Sylux is straight-up stated by the strategy guide to be possibly even equal to her (and I'm sure he'll be a match for her in MP4). Also, the early chapters of Samus & Joey see her fighting with two other bounty hunters, and while she beat win both fights, each of them nearly kills her at some point and is definitely portrayed as comparable (Later on the Federation even hires both of them to [successfully, given we see they survived a few chapters later] battle Production-Model Integras, which are probably weaker than the model that nearly stomped her before the rage boost, but gave Samus some trouble anyways). Hunters is basically the same story, while Samus can beat the Hunters every time (although, she can actually also lose without getting a game over, that causes them to steal one of the plot items from her and force her to get them back), they still come back for more, which I think would be a bit silly of them if she'd just blitzed and one-shot them the first time. In the Corruption intro Ghor 1v1s a Berserker Lord, who's a full boss battle in the same game (which IMO is definitely enough to assume it's a threat to Samus). Rundas can also destroy Space Pirate ships, which in gameplay are immune to Samus' attacks outside of their weak spot, though I recognize this isn't the strongest evidence. They're also likely stronger than PED troopers, given the Federation went out of their way to hire them and assigned them their most difficult operations, despite already having PED troopers serving for them. All things considered, I think there's enough reasons to take it at face value that these people are comparable to Samus and rate them as "likely Small Country level" (though it's pretty consistent that she's still the best one, with the possible exception of Sylux).
- Gorea: At his peak (doesn't scale to Samus, who only fights him, at a significant disadvantage, with some of his power sealed), Gorea was initially mistaken for a comet by the Alimbics, which if we take as it having comparable mass and speed upon making impact with their planet, would put him at Country level. It's a bit questionable given he was still in gaseous form at that point, but I think it's at least enough for a possibly/likely rating.
- Federation Force: Listen, you don't like this game, I don't like this game, I don't think anybody likes this game, but we gotta face the hard truth that the Federation Force... probably maybe kind of scales to Samus i think a little bit maybe? Their profile says that they "defeated a possessed/mind controlled Samus via deactivating her shielding (which can only be deactivated via Shock Shots or hitting one of the two yellow spots on the side of Samus' Morph Ball), and then knocked her into the environment to deal damage (the Mechs Power Beams cannot damage Samus directly [...]. It is unknown if they can defeat her at her best since Samus stayed in Morph Ball form the entire fight [...] Furthermore, Samus had some control, resisted possession, and held back throughout the entire fight. And she was merely helped from purging the possession rather than actually damaged" but while most of that is true, I don't think it really means they don't scale to her. First off, she absolutely was hurt during the fight, given she drops to her knees immediately afterwards and can't dodge rubble falling from the ceiling, and I don't think it's ever implied that she's actually resisting the possession. It is true that Samus is in Morph Ball the whole time (because actually fighting Samus would just have been too cool for this piece of shovelware, I guess), but the Morph Ball isn't that much weaker than the rest of Samus' arsenal. Furthermore we actually know that the size enhancement beam used to control her augments the power of those it's used on, so what they dealt with was a good bit stronger than the "normal" Morph Ball's power level.
- What I suggest is scaling the FedForce to >1/3rd of the Low 6-B rating, because she's not using any of the strong weaponry she has access to, which means it's all stuff that the Super Missile and her other endgame gear would be 3x the power of (Her durabililty would still be Low 6-B but that actually works out because as stated they can't really directly hurt her, only break down her shields and knock her around a bit), and the implication is that Samus is still a good deal stronger than they are, given she one-shots a group of enemies that were implied to be threatening them.
- Ridley: Ridley's a bit inconsistent, in that his "normal" adult state varies a lot in power, going from brawling it out with ZM Varia Suit to fighting Leg!Gravity Suit Samus in Super Metroid and Leg!Varia Suit in Other M, back to fighting and losing to Fusion Gravity Suit in... well, Fusion. That's Low 7-B to at least Low 6-C to lower Low 6-C to 8-A, so I think the safest bet is to just rate each appearance based on its own feats, Ridley dies and gets resurrected between literally all of these instances, with the later two being clones of him, so I think it isn't the worst thing to assume he just did genuinely change in power between those instances.
Last edited: