My Little Pony FiM Revision Thread (Warning: Season 9 Spoilers) [Part 2]

[Js250476]

Rarity was able to stagger a off guard Tirek and could briefly clash with Chrysalis and even overpower her with Spikes help

And the shot back to her after the former implies new found strength she never had before.

 

[Lightbuster30]

.... When did The other Mane Six get stronger ? I honestly don't remember seeing that ?

Apprently people wanted a serious upgrade for the mane 6 for doing so well against the villains. Spike surviving an attack from Chrysalis. Rarity and him holding her back. Rarity and him surviving another blast from her. Fluttershy tanking a hit from Cozy Glow. Did better than the alicorns and Starswirl tbh.

Regardless, it's difficult to deny that Twilight fared much better against Sombra tier opponents at the end of S9 compared to at the start.

 

[The_2nd_Existential_Seed]

Oh. Not sure what to thinkaboutthat besides most are going to assume that's an outlier.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

You'll have to go into details with that.

Again, there's no proof of half dome shields being inferior. The only difference is their shapes. If anything, smaller shields should be stronger since you don't have to waste as much magic stretching it all the way around you. All of them defend against magic with equal. There's either proof of half domes being inferior or there isn't, and I'm not seeing any.

Um, no it isn't. Thats literally how stamina and durability are treated. A wall buster isn't going to tank a supernova because they have godlike stamina/pain tolerance. There isn't anything headcanon about it. Or did you mean Twilight underestimating Cozy Glow? It's a possibility she did judging on her later performances (Mind you, her half dome shield completely tanked Cozy's hit, which according to you isn't much stronger than the wielder compared to other shields).

I don't know how strong precisely she is, I just don't personally believe she is alicorn tier throughout S9. In part due to her massive improvement when faced against a similar tier threat to Sombra at the end. I also believe she got much stronger near the end because her friends also got much stronger. And they absolutley weren't alicorn tier at the start of S9.

I mean this scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GcbzV7R66A

But it would imply that it's less focused and full. Well, there have been times when half dome shields were broken by only somewhat superior opponents, but full dome shields were only ever destroyed by the pony of shadows, I believe.

I mean everything. Twilight just being knocked out briefly. Twilight being at Cozy's level when all 3 alicorns didn't feel confident in taking her on is pure headcanon. None of the villains were shown as inferior or equal to the Mane 6. No, knocking Tirek's teeth out that one time doesn't count. Also, I hadn't noticed that. Maybe the special pattern on the shield meant higher strength. Yes, that's headcanon too, but that kind of shield has never been used before.

Like I said, 1/2 Celestia tier is realistic.

 

[Lightbuster30]

I'm still not sure how letting fodder face her means all three alicorns were unconfident in fighting her? The only thing implying they are unconfident is combining their magic against Cozy, which at best implies she is around Sombra tier since he needed the same thing to be taken down.

No proof of being unfocused. No there hasn't. I can't recall a single instance of half domes being broken. Oh, and Twilight debatably broke Tirek's full body shield in S4 (the shield is no longer there after Twilight attacks him). You can even see the energy of the beam spreading through the shield and overwhelming it. I would also point out that the shield Sombra shattered on his first attack was conveniently a full body one. And again, you can't prove it was unfocused. If Twilight can go from no shield to instant shield (fully body no less) while a laser is mere feet from her face with no indication of shields forming, she can absolutely do it here.

What is even the point? Like, honestly, letting fodder attack first doesn't prove they are underconfident. They could've let them attack first for any number of reasons. Underconfidence being one of them is headcanon. It's not even a good argument since I can argue Cozy felt threatened enough by them to shield herself from their magic instead of tanking it outright. Ko-ed doesn't imply superiority. It implies Twilight has poor stamina and pain tolerance. Being comparable is more than enough to break someones durability. Except Twilight breaking his tooth does count? I'll backtrack and admit that Twilight being superior to Tirek for knocking out a tooth is pushing things, calling her close to his level for it on the other hand? Not so much.

It's not superior to her standard shields becuase of some pattern. I'm not accepting any shield being superior to another based on how it looks. There are a multitude of shields with different patterns, shapes, and brightnesses, and at the end of the day they all do their jobs just fine. Twilight's smaller, not as bright, half formed, more faded, and not as complex looking shields, were shielding her from Starlight's lasers just as good as her fancy shield she used against Starlight right before she ran into the caves.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

Sure. Sombra tier seems fine.

Or he just released it after the explosion happened. Also, I don't think the first shield she used against Sombra was full. It's hard to see from that angle.

I can't think of any reason to put fodder ponies in a dangerous situation where they could potentially die if the alicorns thought they could take Cozy. Also, why would Celestia and Luna have screamed when Cozy blasted them if they knew she was weaker than them? And Cozy's confidence throughout the whole scene really makes me feel like she was stronger than any of them individually. Sure, you could argue the Sombra thing, but Cozy is more of a thinker compared to Sombra's season 9 self, and way less overconfident generally. Still pretty overconfident, but much less so. And she's one of the smartest villains in the show too. So she would know if her situation was dangerous at all.

Also, Cozy definitely just used a shield to mock them. Unless you really think she could be hurt by at most a tier 6. And it's just the casualness with which Cozy defeated Twilight that makes me think she's at least a little bit stronger.

Well, that's because it was against an equal opponent, not a superior one. What's the point of a shield if it's durability is less than that of the user?

 

[EMagoIorSouI]

I might do Twilight VS. Superman, either Post-Crisis or Post-Flashpoint.

 

[Lightbuster30]

Lets do first key post Flashpoint. You should probably make it bloodlusted so Twilight uses her better hax and therefore has a chance at winning (no one in MLP is touching hundreds of kilofoe with AP and what hax she does use in character isn't good enough).

 

[EMagoIorSouI]

Good idea. That and Twilight like any other unicorn usually starts with energy blasts as their first methods of attack.

 

[Js250476]

with how well the 4-B thread went maybe we should try again with 3-A Discord when the finale airs.

 

[EMagoIorSouI]

4-B Discord is all I need in my life....

 

[EMagoIorSouI]

https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/3565437

It begins.

 

[EMagoIorSouI]

Honestly we should replace the images on some of the character profiles, some are good but it'd be nice to have a change of view on them, y'know? A close friend of mine has a ton of images for such a deed.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

So since Twilight scales in season 9 to like half of Celestia to around her level, should she get an at least 4-B key?

 

[Lightbuster30]

She scales fully to Celestia at the end of season 9 for her showings against the villains. Half is at the start of S9. I'll say it again: Sending fodder to Cozy doesn't mean anything and there's nothing proving your version of events is the right one. For all we know they started attacking before Celestia and Luna could respond. That is of course headcanon, but no more than yours is. We're arguing semantics by this point.

 

[Lightbuster30]

As for your other points: Why would Tirek release his shield when the beam is still being fired? The order of events is as follows: Twilight gets pissed, Twilight blasts Tirek, Tirek puts up shield, gets pushed back, magic starts forcing it's way through the shield, the screen becomes covered completely in magic, and we cut to a trench with an explosion in the background.

We only see magic engulf the screen and then an explosion. There is not a single frame after the whiteout where the explosion isn't already on screen. When the whiteout ends, all we see is the explosion, which indicates the beam kept firing until it exploded. What does this mean? Well it makes it impossible for Tirek to have put his shield down between the whiteout and the explosion, since the beam presumably (and my assumption is rightfully assumed based on order of events) was still happening mid-whiteout and the explosion had already happened afterwords.

Thinking Twilight's shield wasn't fully formed doesn't mean it wasn't. She's created shields that got hit by beams as the shield was forming before and it held up fine.

Um, no, your assumption only works if we assume Twilight is only half as strong as Celestia when she blatantly isn't. Your assumption only works if we ignore the blatantly poor stamina that the major characters are consistiently shown to have when it comes to taking hits.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

She scales fully to Celestia at the end of season 9 for her showings against the villains. Half is at the start of S9. I'll say it again: Sending fodder to Cozy doesn't mean anything and there's nothing proving your version of events is the right one. For all we know they started attacking before Celestia and Luna could respond. That is of course headcanon, but no more than yours is. We're arguing semantics by this point.

That's what I mean. Either way, as all of Season 9 Twilight scales directly to a portion of Celestia's power, she should be at least solar system level with a new key for just the final season.

They still just stood back and watched until they had no choice.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

As for your other points: Why would Tirek release his shield when the beam is still being fired? The order of events is as follows: Twilight gets pissed, Twilight blasts Tirek, Tirek puts up shield, gets pushed back, magic starts forcing it's way through the shield, the screen becomes covered completely in magic, and we cut to a trench with an explosion in the background.
We only see magic engulf the screen and then an explosion. There is not a single frame after the whiteout where the explosion isn't already on screen. When the whiteout ends, all we see is the explosion, which indicates the beam kept firing until it exploded. What does this mean? Well it makes it impossible for Tirek to have put his shield down between the whiteout and the explosion, since the beam presumably (and my assumption is rightfully assumed based on order of events) was still happening mid-whiteout and the explosion had already happened afterwords.

Thinking Twilight's shield wasn't fully formed doesn't mean it wasn't. She's created shields that got hit by beams as the shield was forming before and it held up fine.

Um, no, your assumption only works if we assume Twilight is only half as strong as Celestia when she blatantly isn't. Your assumption only works if we ignore the blatantly poor stamina that the major characters are consistiently shown to have when it comes to taking hits.

I mean he released his shield after the explosion and right before he stood up.

Again, was that from an equal or superior opponent?

I'm not sure what you're responding to with your last statement. Can you clarify?

 

[Lightbuster30]

If he had to stand back up that implies his shield broke and he got knocked over by the beam. We saw that with his shield up the beam could only push him back, not actually knock him over and force him to stand after it ended all while he still has the shield up.

First off: Equal. Second of all: Why the does it matter? Why are you trying to push for shields in MLP acting like wards in Skyrim that need to charge to full power? Literally no shield has ever been portrayed this way.

My argument is that Twilight scales completely to Celestia by comparing her performance against Sombra tier opponents in the S9 premier and finale. Doing much better against Sombra tiers in the finale than the priemer.

You wanted to bring up getting ko-ed as a pure anti-feat, which completely ignores that stamina does not correlate to AP/Durability and ignores how consistiently major characters in MLP are portrayed as having poor stamina/pain tolerance.

 

[Lightbuster30]

Ok? So they stood and watched? Are we going to assume Celestia can fly at slower than falling speeds because she did nothing while Rarity and the Wonderbolts were falling to their doom? Because using your logic we could easily say something along the lines of "She didn't do anything because she wasn't confident she could catch up" all while completely ignoring how even fodder can fly high enough to reach clouds in mere seconds or the variety of abilities Celestia had that could've let her do something.

Why would they imagine fodder could do much better than them against a Sombra tier? Maybe the authors just felt like showing off Cozy's power and had them stand around for the plot? Seriously, you're extrapolating one scene to mean something that could've happened for any number of reasons.

 

[Lightbuster30]

Off-topic, but even before the downgrades, Rainbow Power is treated as a seperate power from your typical Elements of Harmony and thus doesn't get any of it's abilities. I kinda find that stupid.

Twilight Sparkle: You're wrong Tirek! I may have given you my Alicorn magic, but I carry within me the most powerful magic of all!
She's pretty obviously referring to the Rainbow Power as the Magic of Friendship. Same power she used every other time she used it. It looks the same, it uses the exact same magic, is stated to be the exact same magic, and is activated by the Mane 6 using a key which corresponds to the Element they embody. Really the omly difference is that it's a transformation and more powerful than normal. But other than that, it's literally the same power. Occam's Razor more in support of scaling their abilities to the Elements rather than against them.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

If he had to stand back up that implies his shield broke and he got knocked over by the beam. We saw that with his shield up the beam could only push him back, not actually knock him over and force him to stand after it ended all while he still has the shield up.
First off: Equal. Second of all: Why the does it matter? Why are you trying to push for shields in MLP acting like wards in Skyrim that need to charge to full power? Literally no shield has ever been portrayed this way.

My argument is that Twilight scales completely to Celestia by comparing her performance against Sombra tier opponents in the S9 premier and finale. Doing much better against Sombra tiers in the finale than the priemer.

You wanted to bring up getting ko-ed as a pure anti-feat, which completely ignores that stamina does not correlate to AP/Durability and ignores how consistiently major characters in MLP are portrayed as having poor stamina/pain tolerance.

You can get knocked back with a shield still around you. Like when Twilight got knocked back by Tirek through the mountain. She still had her shield up, but she was obviously knocked away from her position.

I'm saying not full shields should be able to completely block against equal or inferior opponents, while full shields should have significantly higher durability than that of the user. The better question is why you're pushing for shields to not be stronger than the user. Like I said, what is the point of a shield if it isn't any tougher than the user? At least a little bit?

Um...yes.

I don't know if it's that consistent. Mind giving a few examples?

 

[MinatoSparkle]

Ok? So they stood and watched? Are we going to assume Celestia can fly at slower than falling speeds because she did nothing while Rarity and the Wonderbolts were falling to their doom? Because using your logic we could easily say something along the lines of "She didn't do anything because she wasn't confident she could catch up" all while completely ignoring how even fodder can fly high enough to reach clouds in mere seconds or the variety of abilities Celestia had that could've let her do something.

Why would they imagine fodder could do much better than them against a Sombra tier? Maybe the authors just felt like showing off Cozy's power and had them stand around for the plot? Seriously, you're extrapolating one scene to mean something that could've happened for any number of reasons.

Those are completely different situations. Though I do concede that PIS is a possibility. Either way, Cozy should at least be a little stronger than the alicorns, considering Luna and Celestia felt like thy had to combine their powers to fight Cozy.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

Off-topic, but even before the downgrades, Rainbow Power is treated as a seperate power from your typical Elements of Harmony and thus doesn't get any of it's abilities. I kinda find that stupid.
Twilight Sparkle: You're wrong Tirek! I may have given you my Alicorn magic, but I carry within me the most powerful magic of all!

She's pretty obviously referring to the Rainbow Power as the Magic of Friendship. Same power she used every other time she used it. It looks the same, it uses the exact same magic, is stated to be the exact same magic, and is activated by the Mane 6 using a key which corresponds to the Element they embody. Really the omly difference is that it's a transformation and more powerful than normal. But other than that, it's literally the same power. Occam's Razor more in support of scaling their abilities to the Elements rather than against them.

I'm pretty sure RP's only function is a one time instant win beam.

 

[Lightbuster30]

I'm pretty sure RP's only function is a one time instant win beam.

That discredits literally nothing I said.

 

[Lightbuster30]

Sombra; and by extension Cozy Glow, is only alicorn tier because they felt the need to combine their powers. Not above it as he clearly wasn't superior to Celestia in a fight in the war timeline. They were stalemated which implies the same level of power.

But they are though. Both times had Celestia stand around in a crisis instead of doing anything. The only thing "different" about them is that one has people falling and another had her guards shooting beams at a villain, but it's the same contextually.

 

[Js250476]

Something important to consider is obviously the main reason Celestia and Luna rarely help out directly is there just not the main characters of the story, Twilight and the Mane 6 are. So ofc the spotlight will be given to whoever the story is focusing on (RD in Sonic Rainboom's case).

In Cozy's case the exact reasons are anyone's guess. But the most likely answer is they let the guards handle it at first while Cozy is making fools of them. Realizes that was ineffective decides to stop her themselves.

 

[Lightbuster30]

See, now thats an example of two situations not being the same. Twilight's shield that got rammed through the mountain is an aura shield. it's subtle but when we see the shield shrunk around her body we can see the shield moving with her wings as her wings flap in the wind. The shield is clearly more flexible than standard shields as opposed to a shell/wall of magic.

You strongly give me that impression. Why even bring it up if it isn't what you're implying? To answer your question: Which is better: Having to tank a hit with your own body, or summoning a wall of energy equal to your durability to take the damage for you? The energy is going to cushon the impact naturally since a lot of the energy will have already imparted itself onto the shield. To an extent I do kinda buy into shields are superior to AP, but not by a huge margin.

If you agree then why did you bring up getting knocked out by Cozy Glow as an anti-feat?

Celestia getting momentarily knocked out twice to name examples. She serves as the best example I have at the moment since she's one of the few ponies I can think of who took direct hits from magic. Essentially, she serves as a reference since we don't really have one for the heroes.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

That discredits literally nothing I said.

Didn't you say it has all the same abilities as the elements? Cause that certainly does more than just blasting, even if that's the main purpose.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

Sombra; and by extension Cozy Glow, is only alicorn tier because they felt the need to combine their powers. Not above it as he clearly wasn't superior to Celestia in a fight in the war timeline. They were stalemated which implies the same level of power.

But they are though. Both times had Celestia stand around in a crisis instead of doing anything. The only thing "different" about them is that one has people falling and another had her guards shooting beams at a villain, but it's the same contextually.

Well, Celestia and Sombra ever fought directly, at least not on screen, so you could just say Celestia's troop advantage balances things out. It would make sense. If Celestia and Sombra had the exact same amount of power, who would win? An army with the combined forces of all of Equestria, or an army of mindless goons just from a single city?

The main difference is that falling speed was considered fast by the writers at that time, but the writers know how strong Celestia is by season 9, at least comparatively within the verse.

 

[Lightbuster30]

Right, so the first paragraph may be a bit hard to understand. I'll try to visualize it for everyone. Basically, an aura shield moves with the user. So if the user gets knocked to the ground, the shield is going to follow them. It's kinda latched/attached to their body in a sense.

But shell and wall shields are seperate from the user. They aren't latched to the users body like an aura shield. Remember Tirek's shield visibly getting pushed back? Think of it like a car or container. You move with it because the thing containing you is being moved. It's physically impossible for Tirek to get knocked down by his own shield since he moved with his shield not against it. And if Tirek isn't being pushed against his shield, what other force is there to knock him over? The only other force is the magic blast and the only way for it to directly affect him is to break his shield.

And you can't say he got knocked over inside shield either. See, that implies his shield wasn't strong enough to block all the force of the magic, which demonstrates superiority of Twilight's ap over his shield. Plus there's also the fact that he moved with his shield. Why would the magic randomly stop pushing his shield and push him at the last second instead?

 

[Lightbuster30]

Just for the record, this was in response to one of my comments since I felt I didn't go into enough detail. I did not notice your other comments at the time of posting,

 

[Lightbuster30]

That discredits literally nothing I said.

Didn't you say it has all the same abilities as the elements? Cause that certainly does more than just blasting, even if that's the main purpose.

It doing one thing /=/ being the only thing it can do. You're making the assumption that it's limited only to blasting (which conviently the EoH do do). It's honestly pedantic as hell to assume something that is literally called the exact same power as something else, cannot do what that something else can do based on seeing it once in action and then never used again.

Also, blasting is not all it does, otherwise no one would have their magic back.

EDIT: Yeah, no, the "It jsut blasts" argument is a lot more wrong than I realized. Luna's Nightmare that created the Tantabus proves it wrong. Luna's own self torture involves the Mane 6 repeatedly using the Rainbow Power to purify her of Nightmare Moon. And how did they purify Nightmare Moon the last time? Oh. Right.

So to recap: It is considered by Twilight to be the same power as the magic of friendship, she very strongly implies that it is the magic of Friendship, it fires a rainbow beam like the magic of friendship, it uses the exact same magic, and Luna thinks it can be used to purify evil like the OG magic of friendship. I'm sorry, but the implications are far far too blatant to be ignored. We do not need to have the show or writers go "Yeah, it's the same thing." Implications are a thing. The only difference between Rainbow Power is that it gives the user a transformation. Thats all it is: A transformation version of the Magic of Friendship.

 

[Js250476]

I'm honestly wondering if Twilight should gain the EOH abilities herself in a EOS key. The finale implies she doesn't need the Elements anymore to access them.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

Right, so the first paragraph may be a bit hard to understand. I'll try to visualize it for everyone. Basically, an aura shield moves with the user. So if the user gets knocked to the ground, the shield is going to follow them. It's kinda latched/attached to their body in a sense.
But shell and wall shields are seperate from the user. They aren't latched to the users body like an aura shield. Remember Tirek's shield visibly getting pushed back? Think of it like a car or container. You move with it because the thing containing you is being moved. It's physically impossible for Tirek to get knocked down by his own shield since he moved with his shield not against it. And if Tirek isn't being pushed against his shield, what other force is there to knock him over? The only other force is the magic blast and the only way for it to directly affect him is to break his shield.

And you can't say he got knocked over inside shield either. See, that implies his shield wasn't strong enough to block all the force of the magic, which demonstrates superiority of Twilight's ap over his shield. Plus there's also the fact that he moved with his shield. Why would the magic randomly stop pushing his shield and push him at the last second instead?

I didn't say he got knocked down by his own shield. I'm saying that the blast pushed him backwards strongly enough to throw him backwards fast enough to take him off his legs momentarily. That doesn't necessarily mean his shield got destroyed, considering the explosion, probably the strongest part of the attack, didn't scratch him an iota. There's simply not enough proof to solidly argue either way though.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

It doing one thing /=/ being the only thing it can do. You're making the assumption that it's limited only to blasting (which conviently the EoH do do). It's honestly pedantic as hell to assume something that is literally called the exact same power as something else, cannot do what that something else can do based on seeing it once in action and then never used again.

Also, blasting is not all it does, otherwise no one would have their magic back.

EDIT: Yeah, no, the "It jsut blasts" argument is a lot more wrong than I realized. Luna's Nightmare that created the Tantabus proves it wrong. Luna's own self torture involves the Mane 6 repeatedly using the Rainbow Power to purify her of Nightmare Moon. And how did they purify Nightmare Moon the last time? Oh. Right.

So to recap: It is considered by Twilight to be the same power as the magic of friendship, she very strongly implies that it is the magic of Friendship, it fires a rainbow beam like the magic of friendship, it uses the exact same magic, and Luna thinks it can be used to purify evil like the OG magic of friendship. I'm sorry, but the implications are far far too blatant to be ignored. We do not need to have the show or writers go "Yeah, it's the same thing." Implications are a thing. The only difference between Rainbow Power is that it gives the user a transformation. Thats all it is: A transformation version of the Magic of Friendship.

Well, we haven't seen RP do most of the things the elements have done. Sure, that's because it was only used once, but because of that there's no evidence.

True. Blasting, and removing/distribution of magic are the abilities RP has been shown to have.

...that's Luna's imagination.

The magic of friendship isn't automatically the same thing in relation to each other. The elements are artifacts used to manipulate the magic of friendship into being able to perform more complex abilities, while the magic of friendship itself being channeled through ponies seems to be more simple, just being a simple fix everything boom. One thing that really does imply that the elements are different from every other form of friendship magic is that when the elements were used to blast Discord from their position, upwards and then down onto him, it turned him into stone, but when the same thing was done in the finale, it just defeated the villains, and the princesses and Discord had to manually turn them into stone afterwards. If the writers didn't want the villains turned to stone, it could easily be chalked up to PIS, but since they intended to turn them into stone anyways, why didn't they just have the beam do it? Sure, that friendship power and Rainbow Power are different, but they both share the same general idea, in that ponies, instead of artifacts, were channeling the power of friendship.

 

[Lightbuster30]

Yes, and thats why occams razor exists. On one hand there isn't anything solid suggesting outright that thwy have all the same powers.....but on the other hand, there isn't anything suggesting thy don't.

...And this makes Luna wrong how? She clearly came to the conclusion that Rainbow Power can do what the MoF can do. The fact that the writers had them used in such a way, even if only in a dream, suggests that they also think of the Rainbow Power as not much different from the MoF in terms of ability. They could have had the Mane 6 use the EoH but they had them use Rainbow Power instead. Authorial intent plays a big role here.

The rest of your comment is entirely speculation. You're trying to imply that every other form of the MoF is only able to blast the target. Need I remind you the Mane 6 used the Elements for the sole purpose of destroying Sombra? By this point, it's clear the MoF not turning every villain to stone is blatantly a choice by the Mane 6, and not some inability due to not being the EoH. Either show me hard evidence that outright suggests what you're saying is true, or I;m not inclined to believe a single word.

 

[Lightbuster30]

But hey if people think it makes sense for mere symbols to be superior to the real, raw, thing thats fine.

 

[MinatoSparkle]

Well, I did say RP is meant to be a simple fix everything mcguffin, so dispelling evil could conceivably one of its abilities.

I suppose. It just seems weird that the beam was animated in the exact same way as it was in the season 2 premier. I even thought they were being turned to stone when the camera showed them standing in poses inside the beam.

They're not just mere symbols. They are the real raw thing channeled into artifacts. And it's not necessarily superior, just more varied. For example, Tirek in his mountain sized state was obviously stronger than Discord in terms of raw power, but he had a much larger arsenal of abilities.

 

[Lightbuster30]

Oh, and they never intended to turn the trio to stone. Celestia couldn't think of anything to do to them until Discord suggested something.