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Koon, Fisto, Ti (Padster) vs Nihl, Talon, Grievous (cs_zoltan)


PadsterPwns

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KEK. In Star Wars Insider Grievous on a scale of 100 is faster than Yoda by 10, stronger by 20, and more mobile by 10.

 

I accept your surrender now Padster.

Damn. That's a crazy source, what were they smoking when they wrote that? :D

 

Side note: Did you see my PM?

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Matchups

 

The only thing that's sure is Grievous going for Fisto. By RotS he has the best reputation as a swordsman, not to mention Grievous desire to get even for his defeat in early TCW. Grievous already beat Ti twice so he won't care about her, and he never actually met Plo.

 

So Fisto vs Grievous is pretty much set. The other two would probably test the waters and in the end settle for Talon vs Plo and Nihl vs Ti.

The whole thing isn't done (and I'm struggling to pick whether to do Ilum and Makeb or skip to SOR) but I thought I may as well post that my view of the match ups has changed.

 

While I'm still sure that Kit vs Grievous is a certainty, I believe the other match ups will be Koon vs Nihl and Ti vs Talon. My reasoning for this is that if Plo and Talon do cross blades for a short moment Plo will probably realize that he is at a disadvantage against her due to her being far more agile which is a key weakness of Form V. In comparison, Ti will likely swap with her teammate either from Plo simply bringing Talon to her or her realizing that she is agile enough (being a master of Forms II and IV) to keep up with Talon whilst Plo can take advantage of Nihl's weapon of choice, with the Saber pike presenting many opportunities for Plo to counterattack, the entire purpose of Form V Shien.

 

Edit: Would you prefer me to answer to Koon vs Talon and Ti vs Nihl or Nihl vs Plo and Talon vs Ti?

Edited by PadsterPwns
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Edit: Would you prefer me to answer to Koon vs Talon and Ti vs Nihl or Nihl vs Plo and Talon vs Ti?

 

Up to you.

 

While I'm still sure that Kit vs Grievous is a certainty, I believe the other match ups will be Koon vs Nihl and Ti vs Talon. My reasoning for this is that if Plo and Talon do cross blades for a short moment Plo will probably realize that he is at a disadvantage against her due to her being far more agile which is a key weakness of Form V. In comparison, Ti will likely swap with her teammate either from Plo simply bringing Talon to her or her realizing that she is agile enough (being a master of Forms II and IV) to keep up with Talon whilst Plo can take advantage of Nihl's weapon of choice, with the Saber pike presenting many opportunities for Plo to counterattack, the entire purpose of Form V Shien.

Maybe. But why would my team let them? They aren't really inept fighters either. Nihl was a Warlord long before he joined the Sith, and Talon was bred to be a Hand. They also have good teamwork, they fought with each other several times, and even against each other once (which is a better way to get to know someone's fighting style).

 

Most likely both team will try to get their way, which would either result in a brawl or frequent switching.

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Up to you.

I'll reply (or make a case, I guess) in a Talon vs Ti and Plo vs Nihl format then, though if necessary I'll reply to both.

Maybe. But why would my team let them? They aren't really inept fighters either. Nihl was a Warlord long before he joined the Sith, and Talon was bred to be a Hand. They also have good teamwork, they fought with each other several times, and even against each other once (which is a better way to get to know someone's fighting style).

 

Most likely both team will try to get their way, which would either result in a brawl or frequent switching.

By brawl do you mean a fight like Malgus and Vindican vs Satele and Darach? Or would that be more like frequent switching?

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Kit Fisto vs General Grievous

 

Let's get the obvious the way. Fisto didn't actually beat Grievous as lukewarcriminal suggest. Fisto used the fog to exploit the General's obvious lack of force sense, then he got a lightsaber, they dueled evenly and then the Magnaguards showed up when they were in a blade lock.

Fisto may not have beaten Grievous but he was clearly the one who was pressing an advantage. Let's review the duel:

 

1) At 0:22 we see Fisto use the mist to evade Grievous and get into an advantageous position.

 

2) Fisto then gets into a blade lock with the General at 0:36.

 

It is after this that Grievous tries to throw a strike at him, which Fisto easily dodges, uses the opportunity to sever one of the General's hands and obtains an extra lightsaber. He did all of this in a time gap so small that Grievous couldn't use one of his other lightsabers to intercept his disarming (no pun intended :p) strike.

 

3) From 0:54 to 1:03 we see that Fisto is pushing back Grievous whilst defending against his counterattacks with little to no strain. The reason why this bout is so short is because Fisto breaks it by using a chained in Force Push to surprise Grievous. The fight could have ended right there had Fisto been bloodlusted.

 

4) The fight then continues at 1:08 with Grievous trying to push Fisto back but fails and his Magnaguards intervene at 1:18 with the former holding off all three of them briefly. It is here particularly that we can see Fisto had the advantage as he pressed Grievous back with his assault whilst defending against Grievous' attacks.

 

In conclusion, Fisto may not have outright beaten Grievous but he pretty clearly had the advantage in their fight and likely would have won had the fight continued.

With that small detail aside TCW Grievous is...well pretty bad. I used to just handwave it, but that's neither accurate nor valid, since TCW is canon. It's obvious we are just dealing with a pre-prime Grievous.

Some of his feats are pre-prime but apart from some anomalous feats TCW doesn't portray Grievous that badly.

In the start of the war he humiliated Durge and Ventress simultaneously,

Granted, though that was a very pre-prime Ventress.

then beat an elite team of jedi on Hypori,

Who were exhausted, surprised and intimidated. Dooku says that he requires these factors to beat the best of the Jedi in the OCW show: https://youtu.be/PKgv6xyY5MM?t=43s

 

It's still an impressive feat but Dooku's words ring true, Ki-Adi Mundi wasn't intimidated and while Grievous was beating him, he didn't crush him like the others. Even then though, Grievous could only do that due to him not being known well then and because of the condition they were in. Had Ki-Adi been fresh he would have put up a great fight and that's with a form disadvantage, Ki-Adi being a Form IV practitioner. Put him up against a fresh Fisto, a complete master of Form I who turned the form into something unseen before him? I'd say that their battle would be the exact same result as their fight in TCW, only this time Fisto doesn't get stopped by outside help.

He needed trickery to beat a fresh Knight, Fisto's former padawan,

That's not exactly bad considering that Vebb completely trashed two Magnaguards and Grievous didn't even go all out. They only traded a couple of blows and had one saber lock, then Grievous killed him. It's not an extraordinary feat but it's not a bad one either, especially since Grievous was only using two blades and was holding back.

he couldn't kill Ahsoka twice,

The first time they dueled Grievous dominated her and she barely survived, he was toying with her and she escaped. Had the duel gone on and Grievous had been serious it would have been over quicker than his duel against Vebb.

 

The second time they fought Ahsoka, while better, only escaped because of one reason: Grievous' overconfidence. Watching their fight (

) we can see that while Ahsoka managed to hold her own briefly, she could have been killed at 1:06 but what does Grievous do? He slams her on the ground. Even after this he almost killed her before she could get up and following this she flees. It's not Grievous' skills that let her escape, it's his pride.

lost to Ventress 1on1

On a Dark Side nexus and even then it was fairly close. Besides, Ventress has held back both Kenobi and Anakin before, losing (by the skin of his teeth) to her whilst she was amped is nothing to be ashamed of. I'll also remind you that this Dark Side nexus allowed Mother Talzin to hold off both Sidious' and Dooku's Force Lightning for, IIRC, 30 seconds, so it was likely a large nexus. Also keep in mind that Sidious wanted Ventress killed because of how powerful she was getting and Fisto also lost to Ventress, though that was due to having a Form advantage and having observed Fisto's fighting style.

get beaten by Gungangs etc etc...

I never thought this would happen but I'm going to defend this showing. Whilst yes, I would expect Grievous to have roflstompt them to death, his showing against them highlighted a key weakness of his: his overconfidence. If he had just killed the Gungun chief and hadn't gloated he would have continued to wreck havoc BUT he did gloat. It allowed the dying Gungun to stick a spear right through him, restricting his movement. Physically, he would have destroyed them but he made an error and underestimated them and paid the consequences. I'm not sure if Fisto could take advantage of this but it's a weakness all the same.

But as seen in the OCW and described in LoE Grievous kept practicing with Dooku, on top of his natural growth that everyone went through the war.

 

There had been moments during the extensive combat sessions when even Dooku had been hard-pressed to outduel the cyborg.

 

But then, Dooku had kept some secrets to himself.

 

Just in case.

―Labyrinth of Evil

While certainly a good feat, Dooku is not Fisto. In fact their dueling skills are completely different, Makashi being designed for singular opponents and Shii-Cho being optimal against multiple opponents, in this case blades. Before you say it, yes Dooku did completely master Makashi to the point of eliminating its weaknesses, but that is still completely different from being designed to handle multiple opponents/blades, something which Fisto clearly excels at.

 

Another key difference between Fisto and the Count is their keenness to disarm their opponents and strike different body zones. As a Makashi user the Count usually attacks in stabbing motions, always keeping his movements economical and going for disarming strikes that require finesse, for example burning the opponents fingers. In comparison, Fisto's Shii-Cho is specialized to be random with his strikes forming wide arcs, simply overwhelming them with speed, using any window of opportunity to remove a limb or weapon from his opponent. As seen in his fight with Grievous in TCW, Kit is highly skilled in this regard, being able to dodge an attack, cut one of the General's hands off and gain his lightsaber so quickly that the General couldn't intercept his blade despite him having three other sabers that weren't occupied. Following this we see Fisto push the General back, utilizing Jar'Kai to both attack and defend at the same time and then using a chained in Force Push to unbalance him.

 

What I'm trying to say is that dueling the Count, while a great feat, is not the same as dueling Fisto. Fisto is practically the dead counter to Grievous, he is a highly aggressive combatant who has shown an aptitude for being able to launch an attack that is so random and fast that the opponent doesn't get the opportunity to fight back and even if they do he has shown that he can attack and defend at the same time perfectly well.

 

By the end of the war he contended with an amped Maul,

How much time did he contend with Maul for?

blitzed TCW Kenobi,

I'm unfamiliar with this feat, did this happen in TCW or did it happen in Son of Dathomir?

 

Fisto is faster than TCW Kenobi anyway, in The Cestus Deception Kenobi admits that Kit is a better swordsman than him, despite the fact that Fisto was deliberately hampering his speed and balance during their exercise. In addition, Fisto has also baffled TCW Kenobi's vision showing that he holds an advantage over him in terms of speed. Before you mention this I know that The Cestus Deception takes place six months into the Clone Wars meaning that it wasn't prime Kenobi he did this to but Fisto wasn't in his prime at this stage either.

 

My basis for saying that Fisto hadn't primed, at least not in speed, is that in The Cestus Deception Fisto's best speed feats are being too fast for a JK-13 Bio-droid (I'll expand on this feat later) and making a "Web of Light" with his lightsaber. Fast forward to Labyrinth of Evil, during Fisto's performance on the Maglev car we can see that Fisto's speed has increased noticeably, with him forming a "cyclone of blazing blue light." from his lightsaber strikes and speedblitzing two Magnaguards. Keep in mind that these Magnaguards have near light speed reactions and that in the same trilogy three of these Magnaguards gave ROTS Kenobi trouble.

blitzed an exhausted Shaak Ti,

Source? Not accusing you of lying, I've just not seen that feat before. Besides, Fisto > an exhausted Ti in terms of speed, likely in skill too.

beat two highly skilled masters simultaneously,

If I recall correctly both of them had participated in a marathon duel throughout Coruscant before Grievous found them and killed them meaning they were likely fatigued. While I'm not trying to downplay this feat it's hardly similar to facing a fresh Fisto considering that both of them were struggling with Magnaguards whilst in comparison Fisto blitzed the two he fought. Fisto is faster than both of them and more skilled than them.

overloaded the best Soresu ever

This certainly is a testament to how lethal Grievous' assault can be but Fisto fights completely differently than Kenobi does. Kenobi is a highly defensive fighter, someone who's strong point is weathering an assault and waiting for them to slip up. In comparison, Fisto is a highly aggressive fighter, someone who releases himself, relentlessly attacking whilst defending, constantly pressing forward. We saw in their TCW duel that Fisto was perfectly OK to handle Grievous because he didn't let him start an offensive barrage, he immediately took a blade off of him and then beat him back with any strikes Grievous tried to throw back being either dodged or blocked. Before you raise that Grievous was not in his prime in Lair of Grievous, as I raised earlier, Fisto likely wasn't either as he had a much better showings later on in the Clone Wars compared to earlier on.

and pressed Dooku in sparring matches even though Dooku deliberately held back his training.

Impressive but the fact still remains that the Count has a drastically different fighting style to Fisto, Dooku may be able to handle multiple blades but Fisto is specialized in that field and, to make it worse for Grievous, he's specialized in disarming his opponents. On top of that Fisto can use any blades he manages to pry from Grievous, as we see in TCW he is a very skilled Jar'Kai practitioner, able to effectively defend himself whilst pushing Grievous back at the same time.

And he did most of those with only two sabers. While in general more sabers doesn't make one better it's different with the General. Thanks to his cybernetics he negates the most obvious drawback of dual wielding, which is that a normal force user can't put enough strength behind his strikes with only one hand, whether we are talking about offense or defense. Grievous on the other hand could choke and throw around Kenobi with only one split arm. So in his case more saber does make him better, as shown in his duel with Foul Moudama and Roron Corobb.

Grievous using more sabers is an advantage to Fisto too given that Fisto's entire skill set is based around dismantling those who seek superiority through/in numbers. As I mentioned above, Grievous having more sabers just means that Fisto will have a possibility of gaining a second blade and it gives Fisto more blades to intercept, meaning that Fisto's wide arcing strikes will actually be more effective.

 

Citing his duel against Moudama and Corobb is not very useful for a couple of reasons, the main being that neither of them approach Fisto as a duelist, we can see this by the fact that they struggled badly against one Magnaguard whereas Fisto blitzed two of them effortlessly. The other reason is that both of them were likely tired from running across Coruscant and having their duels with Magnaguards. In addition we have no idea what forms they specialized in, though if I was going to hazard a guess I would say that Corobb was likely an Ataru practitioner, which if true, would mean that Grievous' multiple blades would have been difficult to deal with anyway.

 

Grievous has Fisto beaten in physicals as well. Fisto best speed feats are blitzing Magnaguards and not getting blitzed by Sidious. He is still inferior to Kenobi though, who was in the same speed range as Dooku, who could actually contend with Yoda, Sidious equal. And even Kenobi was slower than Grievous.

 

Grievous stayed right with him, attacking before Obi-Wan could even realize exactly what was happening, attacking faster than thought -

―Revenge of the Sith

 

Among other things Grievous was fast enough to dodge force attacks from Jedi Council members, and appear to teleport.

While ROTS Grievous may be faster than Kit, he hasn't shown anything to make me believe it wouldn't be a marginal difference considering that in the Lair of Grievous episode Fisto seemed to be outpacing the General and Fisto had only gotten faster by the end of the war.

 

Even if Grievous is faster that doesn't mean he necessarily has an edge over Fisto. As seen in The Cestus Deception when Kit goes up against the JK-13 Bio-droid it is actually faster than him:

 

They watched a replay. “Fast,” Nate said. “As a Jedi?” “Faster,” Forry said. “But speed isn’t everything. Look at this …” He hit other controls. The footage of a Jedi with protruding head tentacles appeared. “From Glee Anselm,” Nate said. “Don’t see many Nautolans around. Jedi, eh?” “Who else would use one of those archaic light sticks?

 

In some ways his tactics weren’t that different from those attempted by the trooper, but the results were impressively superior. “Beat it.” “Umm-hmmm.” Forry clucked admiringly. “Did you see that timing?” “Uh-huh. Never seen reflexes like that, either. You’re right: the machine was faster, but it didn’t make any difference.

 

Note that the JK-13 Bio-droid had some measure of precognitive function as well due to the droid having a core processor that was linked to a Force sensitive creature called a Dastha Eel:

 

More than superb: it had been perfect. What kind of programming made such precision possible? Obi-Wan could swear that the aim had been almost precognitive, almost …

 

But there was another aspect of the affair that most eyes had missed, a strange phenomenon that had manifested first with the trooper, but seems even more pronounced with Kit Fisto: the JK had anticipated the Nautolan’s responses.

 

As well as having precognitive abilities, it was also capable of strategizing against Kit mid-battle and was armed with shock tentacles, electrified nets, stun darts and could fire blaster bolts powerful enough to smash through stone:

 

Where, then, was the real attack? He leaned forward, examining the droid more carefully. Its feet. The spiky protrusions were sunken in the sand. And projecting outward from the treads themselves, burrowing under the surface … Were more tendrils, color-camouflaged to resemble sand. This thing attacked on two levels simultaneously, a strategy beyond most living warriors. Even more disturbing, it was deliberately misleading Kit by performing at multiple levels of tempo and efficiency, literally juggling its tactics, luring him to overconfidence -- The Cestus Deception

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Shock tentacles, electrified netting, stun darts, and blaster bolts erupted with dizzying variety -- The Cestus Deception

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Where they struck, rock shattered and smoked.-- The Cestus Deception

 

Despite having all of these capabilities however, Fisto still beat it as soon as he got close enough to use his lightsaber to attack, with his lightsaber appearing everywhere at once to the JK-13 droid, his attacks becoming too fast and unpredictable to strategize against or block with it's multiple spinning energy disks, eventually destroying the droid. Whilst doing this he also began to baffle Obi-Wan's vision, this being impressive due to Obi-Wan having seen the world in slow motion and being able to deflect torrents of blaster bolts.

 

This is undeniably impressive as it shows that Fisto's application of Form I was so random, wild and fast that it was able to make a Bio-droid (that's greatest feature was it's skill in reaction), cave in and retreat as it couldn't predict what he was going to do. Equally impressive is the fact that he was able to do this before his prime.

Considering that Shii-Cho has a weakness against powerful strikes

Where has this been stated? I've looked in The Jedi Path and this isn't mentioned, is it in another source?

At this point Mace has fought or sparred with Yoda, Dooku, Maul, Saessee, Talzin, and Kar Vastor, which makes Grievous lightsaber combat related strength pretty top tier.

It does but as far as I know (and I probably know more about Shii-Cho than any of the others) this shouldn't present a problem for Kit. Also while Grievous is stronger than Kit, the Nautolan a pretty decent strength feat himself: knocking out and incapacitating multiple X'Ting with ease. Whilst doing this he was described by Obi-Wan as a "martial hurricane" and appeared to be in two places at the same time, a pretty decent speed feat considering it was from Obi-Wan's POV.

Shii-Cho's other advantage is its unpredictability. Sadly for Fisto Grievous could analyze even Vaapad, which shares the very same characteristic as Shii-Cho, but unlike Shii-Cho Grievous was not trained in Vaapad.

As I raised earlier, Fisto has been too unpredictable and too fast for a Bio-droid that had some measure of precognition and was capable of strategizing mid-battle. Considering that Fisto became fast enough to casually blitz Magnaguards and create cyclones of light from throwing lightsaber strikes by the end of the war and I doubt that Grievous is going to be able to analyse it quickly enough when we have seen that Fisto's Shii-Cho becomes faster and more random as the fight goes on.

 

In addition, Shii Cho is not that similar to Vaapad. While Vaapad is unpredictable that isn't it's main function, it's main function is to simply overwhelm an opponent as quickly as possible, striking from any possible angle, simply eviscerating their defense. Though it is unpredictable like Shii-Cho it doesn't serve the same purpose, in fact it's weak against multiple opponents (so presumably blades too), a strength of Shii-Cho. It also differs in how Shii-Cho focuses on going straight for any body zones, something we have seen Fisto do to great effect against the Magnaguards in LoE, the X'Ting in TCD and Grievous in TCW.

Fisto last hope is his TK, which won't be sufficient. Gripping powers are forbidden by the Jedi Code, so all he has is some pushes here and there. But Fisto's best TK feat is again inferior to Kenobi's, from whose push Grievous could instantly recover. Considering that Grievous can tank ship and factory explosions I doubt Fisto could even put a dent into his armor, unless he has Shatterpoint like Mace.

While I concede that Fisto's TK won't damage Grievous, it doesn't need to. As we saw in their duel in TCW, Fisto is perfectly capable of chaining Force Pushes in to his lightsaber sequences and he can use this effectively by using them to knock Grievous off balance or to push him back if he begins to be pressured. Also Grievous' endurance won't matter that much here as the only attack that will affect Grievous is a lightsaber strike, something we know cuts straight through Grievous' metallic plating.

As a closure neither Mace Windu nor Count Dooku considers Fisto to be a threat for Grievous, even though they both know what happened at Grievous Stronghold:

 

Do I need to demonstrate what responses you can expect from Cin Drallig or Obi-Wan Kenobi? From Mace Windu or, stars help you, Yoda?

―Labyrinth of Evil

In fact, Obi-Wan, I believe that of all living Jedi, you have the best chance to defeat him.

―Revenge of the Sith

Dooku likely didn't raise that specifically because both of them knew what response he would receive, a cute Nautolan grin and a deadly duel. Also going by that statement I could infer that you're arguing that Drallig is a more significant threat to Grievous than Fisto, which both of us know is false. Not that you are arguing that, I just wanted to show that using that statement as an argument could raise a ridiculous argument.

 

As for Mace's statement that Kenobi would have the best chance of beating Grievous, I agree with him. That statement doesn't mean that Fisto couldn't beat him, just that Kenobi would be more likely to defeat him.

tl;dr: Grievous sports numerous advantages, and the only two advantage Fisto has Grievous has counter for, while Fisto can't say the same.

I would actually like to raise two disadvantages the General has here, the first being his own body. While Grievous' body is an advantage against most people, it is a deadly disadvantage here because his size and numerous appendages simply present more targets for Fisto to chop off.

 

His second disadvantage is Fisto's unorthodox aggressive fighting style. While Grievous is used to fighting Kenobi, who weathers the storm of his assault, Dooku, who abuses his Force power and Makashi precision, and has stalemated Mace, who was dueling him on the top of a Maglev car with a style meant for one opponent, he has only faced someone like Fisto once. And he was getting pushed back during his run in with Fisto. We know that Fisto goes in saber blazing, we read it in The Cestus Deception, we saw it in TCW and we read it again in Labyrinth of Evil and we know that as a Shii-Cho master he goes straight to taking appendages off. This is going to be why Grievous will lose as Fisto can charge in, take a hand off immediately and then use the saber he took from him to defend and attack whilst advancing forward and pushing him back. If Grievous tries to throw strikes back? They'll either be blocked by one of his sabers or he can chain in a Force Push to stagger Grievous and give himself an opening. From there it's either rinse and repeat or the duel ends. On the off chance that he doesn't take a blade off of Grievous immediately I'm confident that Fisto can block any attacks the General tries to make considering that he managed to fend of blows of off a bloodlusted ROTS Darth Sidious and that Shii-Cho's wide arcing strikes will be able to fend off multiple strikes at once.

 

As for the environment around them, neither of them can really use this to their advantage, the only thing that Kit may do is abuse his Force power and throw sand in Grievous' eyes, though I doubt that would happen or be very useful.

 

All together I feel this fight could either be the shortest fight or the longest fight, if Fisto gets one of the General's lightsabers I feel that he could press an advance, quickly overwhelming Grievous with a Jar'Kai assault. If Fisto fails to take a lightsaber however, I think that the fight will turn into a back and forth duel, with both combatants making advances and then going back on to the defense. Either way I feel Fisto will come out of this alive, be it through the Jedi Master finishing Grievous early on in the battle or through one of his teammates helping him dispose of Grievous after they have dispatched their opponent.

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