My Personal Comprehensive Analysis on the Sentry vs Photon Feat

[MasterDebater1]

would u classify him as multi solar system buster, or at least solar system+, considering he was holding back in his photon feat?

[Nik Hasta]

would u classify him as multi solar system buster, or at least solar system+, considering he was holding back in his photon feat?

I don't think you're going to get consensus on that from what is, frankly, a quite muddy single feat.

I would suggest you look at other stuff Sentry has done and draw conclusions from his broader consistent presentation.

Given that he messes around in the "significantly above Herald" ballpark, him being a threat to an entire Solar System or stars and whatnot doesn't seem out of the question for my money.

[MasterDebater1]

Still, it'd be easy to tell it's a solar system busting feat based into the context of the feat, and this is all why he's holding back, it's not hard to tell he's more than a solar system buster right?

[Beadle]

Still, it'd be easy to tell it's a solar system busting feat based into the context of the feat, and this is all why he's holding back, it's not hard to tell he's more than a solar system buster right?

‘Holding back’ is always a fuzzy mess. Because: a) is he really?; b) how much by?; c) if he stopped ‘holding back’, where would he top out? It’s impossible to answer those questions because it’s trying to mathematically extrapolate based on vague subjectiveness.

It’s like trying to knit fog or nail jelly to a wall.

[MasterDebater1]

‘Holding back’ is always a fuzzy mess. Because: a) is he really?; b) how much by?; c) if he stopped ‘holding back’, where would he top out? It’s impossible to answer those questions because it’s trying to mathematically extrapolate based on vague subjectiveness.



It’s like trying to knit fog or nail jelly to a wall.

True, but I'd still say he was still largely holding back a lot of his power considering his quote of 'time to stop holding back' and even if you can't really say how much he was holding back, he's shown solar system level busting while holding back tbh
Ig, but I want to at least try to establish sentrys tier with all the feats he's accumulated and the energy one which escapes the microverse is his greatest imo, also I need to quantify it for a debate I'm having with a friend tbh

[Sharpandpointies]

True, but I'd still say he was still largely holding back a lot of his power considering his quote of 'time to stop holding back' and even if you can't really say how much he was holding back, he's shown solar system level busting while holding back tbh
Ig, but I want to at least try to establish sentrys tier with all the feats he's accumulated and the energy one which escapes the microverse is his greatest imo, also I need to quantify it for a debate I'm having with a friend tbh

A couple of things.

If you're having an argument with a friend, this probably isn't the best place to get your answers. Rumbles operates by a specific set of rules that you and your friend may not use, so what we consider valid may not be the same for your buddy.

It's worse if you're having this argument on ANOTHER fight website, and you've come here looking for validation, because...

1. The other website CERTAINLY doesn't operate by the same rules as Rumbles;
2. It's actually edging into violating the rules of this place because it can encourage board warring.

Tiers are also not really a thing on Rumbles. Saying 'planet buster' is fine to give a starting point for discussion; it gives a fair idea, but all planet busters are not created equal, and one planet-buster might be stronger than the next. Saying bullet-timer to give an idea of someone's speed is also fair, but there are big differences in the speeds of various bullet-timers.

Saying multi-solar system buster is especially bizarre, because it begs the question 'what does that mean?'

Does it mean 'could use the energy to destroy THIS solar system more than once'? In which case there's a huge difference between a 'multi-solar system buster' who can release enough energy to blow up our solar system 2 times, and one who can release sufficient energy to blow up our solar system 15 times. So as a tier, it's kind of meaningless.

Or does it mean 'Can blow up our solar system and the neighbouring solar systems', in which case, maaaan, the solar systems are the least of the problem with blowing **** up, because the solar systems are tiny points in a vast, vast void between them, so blowing up a bunch of them is talking about a lot more impact than one thinks. Especially when 'multi-solar system' doesn't say how many, which could mean 'Us and Alpha Centauri' (which actually works out to annihilating everything within 4.35 light years, which....erm, makes it so far above 'can blow up a single solar system' that it's not even funny), or are we talking about 'us, Alpha Centauri and a couple of more systems' (and by systems, let's just mean next few systems out with verifiable planets) and now we're talking about blowing everything up within 8-9 light years, which...well, honestly, the moment we start talking about blowing up more than one system including the actual volume of space between them, it's orders and orders of magnitude bigger than just blowing up our solar system. So as 'tier above can blow up a solar system', it's kind of...well, a big jump. Also, if your calc is correct, 2.5 light years fails here due to Alpha Centauri being more distant (and that judgement isn't necessarily correct, because it's based on Earth system and closest system, and distances between systems vary, so the whole thing falls apart).

It needs a lot of elaboration is what I'm saying. And I don't think it works, either way, the whole 'multi solar system busting tier'.

Which is why I'm personally fine with placing Sentry somewhere around 'Casually beats up planet-busters, contends with people who can blow up solar systems or equivalent stuff, loses to people who blow up galaxies, now let's look at the actual feats and compare them'. But not with 'slot Sentry into a certain tier', and certainly not with 'multi-solar-system buster', because what does that actually mean?

[Sharpandpointies]

I don't think you're going to get consensus on that from what is, frankly, a quite muddy single feat.

I would suggest you look at other stuff Sentry has done and draw conclusions from his broader consistent presentation.

Nik pretty much nailed how we do things around here. Worth noting.

[Cronus]

True, but I'd still say he was still largely holding back a lot of his power considering his quote of 'time to stop holding back' and even if you can't really say how much he was holding back, he's shown solar system level busting while holding back tbh

But as folks have noted, how specifically are you defining "solar system" buster? And how much exactly was he holding back? The terms/narrative are so vague as to lead only to speculation.

Ig, but I want to at least try to establish sentrys tier with all the feats he's accumulated and the energy one which escapes the microverse is his greatest imo, also I need to quantify it for a debate I'm having with a friend tbh

You and your friend may want to agree ahead of time what's admissible in the discussion. Given the board rules found here, there is the likely chance you and your friend's perspectives are likely to differ greatly from perspectives found on this site.

[MasterDebater1]

Fair enough, would the general consensus be that based on feats, the Sentry is at SS buster level?

[Wildling]

‘Holding back’ is always a fuzzy mess. Because: a) is he really?; b) how much by?; c) if he stopped ‘holding back’, where would he top out? It’s impossible to answer those questions because it’s trying to mathematically extrapolate based on vague subjectiveness.

It’s like trying to knit fog or nail jelly to a wall.

At least in Sentry's case and unlike any number of character hot air boasts, we know his powers have always been very mentality-based, which comics occasionally like to play with or remind (like the government saying during Dark Avengers they didn't know a limit to his powers despite being known at the time he could waste the Molecule Man) and which at this point in the last few years includes him being able to transform himself into a new form ("All-New Sentry") for a bunch of comics, because he accepted the Void within his mindscape for the first time, which then allowed him to laugh off somebody powered up to the level of his original self. As far as the "how high the not holding back or being better about himself" ceiling not having absolutely anything to show for it.

And by the end of Annihilation Scourge this new Sentry form included within himself a Void that was strong enough to expand a lightyears-wide portal with his bare hands, as measured by the Silver Surfer (which is as good as you can get for this kind of thing since he actually has acute cosmic senses he's very experienced with, and the comics were simple enough about just showing ship sized portal now, then massive space hole fleets could rally to).

But just talking about the Photon feat here (which should be at this point quite reasonable to take at face value just for saying "Sentry can waste worlds, plural, while holding back"), let's remind it happened during the same period (2005 New Avengers era) as the aforementioned Strange shields tearing feat. Which was impressive at the time because Strange's shields weren't just his own, but were also boosted by Iron Man and Invisible Woman, and all of them were 100% focused on just shielding. Iron Man was reduced to physically lean into the field to keep it in place with energy arcing out of his body, Invisible Woman was shown at the end to be nosebleeding, and Strange was two-handedly just watching the shield to pour magic into it. And the Void's punches were still powerful enough for Emma Frost to psychically "hear" them inside the forcefield, when all the previous fighting against the Void (including the Avengers/X-Men/Fantastic Four/Inhumans/shield trio only partially shielding etc.) didn't register to her.

[MasterDebater1]

do you think he can bust OUR solar system? at a level where he can blanket and bust a solar system?

[Cronus]

Fair enough, would the general consensus be that based on feats, the Sentry is at SS buster level?

Tough one. The Surfer is a consistent planet buster with energy strikes, so maybe...a comparison can be drawn between him and Sentry? The suggestion is that more than one planet could have been destroyed in his fight with Photon, while both were holding back...but...asterisks follow.

Brute strength though? Surfer just doesn't have enough, consistently, to place him in the big leagues with folks like Hulk or Sentry, or even Thor. As far as raw brute strength, this series of scans seems to be Sentry's gold standard.

Edit: Y'know...occurs to me, IIRC...this topic is fleshed out in in this thread here.

2nd Edit: Heh. "SS". Sorry, you mean solar system buster. I think in the link I provided above I actually said something along those lines.

[Sharpandpointies]

Which was impressive at the time because Strange's shields weren't just his own, but were also boosted by Iron Man and Invisible Woman, and all of them were 100% focused on just shielding. Iron Man was reduced to physically lean into the field to keep it in place with energy arcing out of his body, Invisible Woman was shown at the end to be nosebleeding, and Strange was two-handedly just watching the shield to pour magic into it. And the Void's punches were still powerful enough for Emma Frost to psychically "hear" them inside the forcefield, when all the previous fighting against the Void (including the Avengers/X-Men/Fantastic Four/Inhumans/shield trio only partially shielding etc.) didn't register to her.

This feat deserves some further exploration. ^_^

Iron Man's shields aren't exactly a big thing here. They're something that can give a Class 100 pause, but nothing a Class 100 can't break through if they start putting in effort (Tony in hand to hand with a Class 100 tends to end up with Tony getting wrecked PDQ). Sue's shields are stronger, but again, once a Class 100 really starts whaling on them, she tends to nosebleed then lose the shields.

The heavy lifter here is Strange.

Edit:

[Tony] I'm one of the Avengers' heavy hitters. I do force screens, energy blasts, and flight.

[Sue] That's nice, Tony. I can't do the energy blasts (though I can beat you to death with a force field), and I don't fly, but my force fields are stronger than yours.

[Tony] Yeah, but I do more stuff, and all at pretty high levels.

[Strange] ...hold my beer.

Classic Strange's normal bubble shields withstand planets exploding in his face, such that he is thrown into space at FTL speeds (don't even try to make sense of this, it's comics, roll with it). When Strange is going bonzo on his shields, he makes Dormammu work (not that Furnace Face can't break them, but he does need to exert himself a little). Using the Crimson Bands to protect himself - explicitly weaker than normal, as they were cast by his astral form - he eats a supernova and the Bands hold.

So the Void was actually damaging shields made by Strange, powered up as much as he can manage (one assumes), and supported by a couple of lesser shields (let's say Sue made some difference and Tony added like...I don't know, 3%, sorry Tony, you really were the lightweight in that confrontation). It wasn't a case of 'Dormmamu puts in some effort and kicks through Strange's shields'; the shields were clearly not collapsing immediately. However, it rather looked like the Void was slowly tearing them down, despite Strange continuously struggling to keep them up.

That, plus the Photon feat, plus Sentry absolutely manhandling Terrax (a planet buster) like he's nothing leads me to the same conclusion I mentioned before.

'Casually beats up planet-busters, contends with people who can blow up solar systems or equivalent stuff, loses to people who blow up galaxies, now let's look at the actual feats and compare them'.

Could he annihilate our solar system? Haven't seen him do it, but seems likely. Not something I'd be willing to say as an absolute for the purpose of a Rumbles debate, but in my own head? Why not?

Is my opinion good evidence for your friend? Not really.

[MasterDebater1]

This feat deserves some further exploration. ^_^

Iron Man's shields aren't exactly a big thing here. They're something that can give a Class 100 pause, but nothing a Class 100 can't break through if they start putting in effort (Tony in hand to hand with a Class 100 tends to end up with Tony getting wrecked PDQ). Sue's shields are stronger, but again, once a Class 100 really starts whaling on them, she tends to nosebleed then lose the shields.

The heavy lifter here is Strange.

Edit:

[Tony] I'm one of the Avengers' heavy hitters. I do force screens, energy blasts, and flight.

[Sue] That's nice, Tony. I can't do the energy blasts (though I can beat you to death with a force field), and I don't fly, but my force fields are stronger than yours.

[Tony] Yeah, but I do more stuff, and all at pretty high levels.

[Strange] ...hold my beer.

Classic Strange's normal bubble shields withstand planets exploding in his face, such that he is thrown into space at FTL speeds (don't even try to make sense of this, it's comics, roll with it). When Strange is going bonzo on his shields, he makes Dormammu work (not that Furnace Face can't break them, but he does need to exert himself a little). Using the Crimson Bands to protect himself - explicitly weaker than normal, as they were cast by his astral form - he eats a supernova and the Bands hold.

So the Void was actually damaging shields made by Strange, powered up as much as he can manage (one assumes), and supported by a couple of lesser shields (let's say Sue made some difference and Tony added like...I don't know, 3%, sorry Tony, you really were the lightweight in that confrontation). It wasn't a case of 'Dormmamu puts in some effort and kicks through Strange's shields'; the shields were clearly not collapsing immediately. However, it rather looked like the Void was slowly tearing them down, despite Strange continuously struggling to keep them up.

That, plus the Photon feat, plus Sentry absolutely manhandling Terrax (a planet buster) like he's nothing leads me to the same conclusion I mentioned before.



Could he annihilate our solar system? Haven't seen him do it, but seems likely. Not something I'd be willing to say as an absolute for the purpose of a Rumbles debate, but in my own head? Why not?

Is my opinion good evidence for your friend? Not really.

Haha fair enough, but yeh that photon feat convinced me sentry is ss buster, but if it's too muddled to actually tell, but ye solar system is a good level to put him at right?

[Wildling]

This feat deserves some further exploration. ^_^

Iron Man's shields aren't exactly a big thing here. They're something that can give a Class 100 pause, but nothing a Class 100 can't break through if they start putting in effort (Tony in hand to hand with a Class 100 tends to end up with Tony getting wrecked PDQ). Sue's shields are stronger, but again, once a Class 100 really starts whaling on them, she tends to nosebleed then lose the shields.

The heavy lifter here is Strange.

Edit:

[Tony] I'm one of the Avengers' heavy hitters. I do force screens, energy blasts, and flight.

[Sue] That's nice, Tony. I can't do the energy blasts (though I can beat you to death with a force field), and I don't fly, but my force fields are stronger than yours.

[Tony] Yeah, but I do more stuff, and all at pretty high levels.

[Strange] ...hold my beer.

Classic Strange's normal bubble shields withstand planets exploding in his face, such that he is thrown into space at FTL speeds (don't even try to make sense of this, it's comics, roll with it). When Strange is going bonzo on his shields, he makes Dormammu work (not that Furnace Face can't break them, but he does need to exert himself a little). Using the Crimson Bands to protect himself - explicitly weaker than normal, as they were cast by his astral form - he eats a supernova and the Bands hold.

So the Void was actually damaging shields made by Strange, powered up as much as he can manage (one assumes), and supported by a couple of lesser shields (let's say Sue made some difference and Tony added like...I don't know, 3%, sorry Tony, you really were the lightweight in that confrontation). It wasn't a case of 'Dormmamu puts in some effort and kicks through Strange's shields'; the shields were clearly not collapsing immediately. However, it rather looked like the Void was slowly tearing them down, despite Strange continuously struggling to keep them up.

That, plus the Photon feat, plus Sentry absolutely manhandling Terrax (a planet buster) like he's nothing leads me to the same conclusion I mentioned before.

No disagreement about Strange doing the heavy lifting there, he's always been treated as an "adult in the room" through all Sentry mini-series (whether either of them are in the Avengers or not) when it comes to deal with or at least try to keep the guy in check when things get iffy. But the point is he tends to not go at it alone, the first Sentry mini had him keeping tabs on Sentry and doing last minute shielding when otherwise the Void had shot out enough tendril rays to terrorize every super team on Earth available to the breaking point, and even in the third mini-series Iron Man had to contribute technology and Sentry was all along agreeing to not ever even try to transform into the Sentry at all, unless forced to (during that sometimes weird Doctor Strange arc when Loki usurped Strange's job).

And regardless of the explicit Sentry power-up that might or not continue to be a thing in future comics, it remains that when the Void rampaged all over again during Annihilator Scourge recently, comics danced the same usual dance of "it's iffy just fighting this guy to the last man standing death will work, even if we always ignore his super speed in these cases, let alone potential unkillability so let's just somehow make him voluntarily stop fighting" and that time Doctor Strange was not only IIRC blink and miss him there (which would make sense since Beta Ray Bill and Thing separately said he should be called first due to the nature of the threat) but also much of an Annihilators reunion, the Fantastic Four again (and Invisible Woman that time had extremely potent, extendedly planetary shielding powers probably to the point of SMvFL unless something happened to her powers in the meantime I don't know about) and more.

And even then Nova yelled everyone in attendance should attack the Void as one and ignore the Cancerverse legions to try to win the war, the gist being that they could only hold him back temporarily until Surfer blitzed Bob's consciousness back into the Void to make him immediately not want to keep fighting them.