Yor Forger vs Lady Shiva

[Jcogginsa]

Yor Forger, the Assassin known as the Thorn Princess, takes on one of DC Comics foremost martial artists, Lady Shiva

[Dark Soul # 7]

Not sure if it makes much of a difference, but Post-Crisis Shiva or current Shiva?

If it's Post-Crisis I wouldn't be surprised if she has better speed feats than Yor, with Yor probably being the stronger of the two.

[Nik Hasta]

Not sure if it makes much of a difference, but Post-Crisis Shiva or current Shiva?

If it's Post-Crisis I wouldn't be surprised if she has better speed feats than Yor, with Yor probably being the stronger of the two.

Pretty much my assessment.

Yor is quick but maybe not fast enough and Shiva has some pressure point stuff or leopard blow.

[Sharpandpointies]

I've read the entire series so far. Unless I've missed some obvious feats, here's how I break it down.

1. Skill - Hard to say, but I'd give Shiva the edge here. Yor is really, really good, but I don't see her being the absolute best in her universe - there's nothing to say that's the case, and she struggles with the katana-wielding dude. Also, unless I missed them, no pressure points, etc. She's really good, IN the Top-Tier of everyone we've seen so far, but again, edge to Shiva. Not a big one.

2. Speed - I'd guess Yor is closing in on CBPH in speed, or equal to it, but I don't recall anything faster. Again, unless I missed something. Edge to POST-CRISIS Shiva - not 'blitz' edge, but an edge. Current Shiva, to the best of my knowledge, has absolutely nothing to show that she's faster than CBPH, so...equal?

3. Strength - Here Yor has a pretty big edge. Her strength is demonstratively past Comic Book Peak Human, probably past Post Crisis Shiva's own hitting power. I would give an edge to Yor over Post-Crisis Shiva, and a big advantage over Current Shiva.

4. Durability - ahahahaha...okay, Yor has it all over Shiva here. She gets hit by cars and just pops back up like it's a mild bruising.

5. Equipment - Shiva...sometimes comes equipped with SOME kind of weapon, but sometimes not. Yor always has her spikes. Maybe edge to Yor (haha)?

6. Special stuff - As Nik notes, pressure point stuff. I'm pretty meh on Current Shiva landing clean pressure point stuff on Yor, given the roughly-equal speed and only an edge on her in skill. Post-Crisis Shiva? Also comes equipped with the body-read; add that onto the speed gap, the skill gap, and she's likely to hit pressure point stuff while avoiding everything Yor throws at her.

My feeling is that Post-Crisis Shiva takes the vast majority of fights by dint of the advantages of speed, skill, combat precog, all allowing her to cleanly pressure points against the stronger, tougher Yor. I would say that Yor takes a majority in a series of rough fights against Current Shiva (barring someone showing more recent feats of Shiva being faster than I think and having the body-reading skill in an actually meaningful way*) by being almost as skilled, a large chunk stronger, and immensely tough by comparison.

Mileage may vary!

* current writers have forgotten or are ignoring what the body-reading skill means with regards to Current Cass.

[Jcogginsa]

A note on Pressure points, Yor does demonstrate some Pressure point knowledge early in the series...on a cow. Presumably she would also know human pressure points if she knows cow ones, though I dunno if that passes muster on rumbles.

Not sure if it makes much of a difference, but Post-Crisis Shiva or current Shiva?

If it's Post-Crisis I wouldn't be surprised if she has better speed feats than Yor, with Yor probably being the stronger of the two.

I intended this to be post crisis Shiva.

[Dark Soul # 7]

A note on Pressure points, Yor does demonstrate some Pressure point knowledge early in the series...on a cow. Presumably she would also know human pressure points if she knows cow ones, though I dunno if that passes muster on rumbles.

Which makes sense. Usually when we see Yor working she's just straight up murdering people and not likely to aim for non-lethal takedowns.

I intended this to be post crisis Shiva.

Then rhe concensus seems to be that Shiva wins due to superior speed and skill, and body reading.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Even if all other things were equal, Yor is also kind of an airhead, so Lady Shiva might be able to do something with that.

[Jcogginsa]

Yor does get a reaction feat against a sniper in the Cruise arc, but I had trouble parsing the art there, so I can't tell if it's aimdodging or not

[Dark Soul # 7]

Even if all other things were equal, Yor is also kind of an airhead, so Lady Shiva might be able to do something with that.

She's only really an airhead when it comes to more regular people stuff. When it comes to fighting and killing she's a pro.

Yor does get a reaction feat against a sniper in the Cruise arc, but I had trouble parsing the art there, so I can't tell if it's aimdodging or not

Yeah, and that's only one feat. I wouldn't be surprised if Shiva has plenty of more solid speed feats.

1. Skill - Hard to say, but I'd give Shiva the edge here. Yor is really, really good, but I don't see her being the absolute best in her universe - there's nothing to say that's the case, and she struggles with the katana-wielding dude. Also, unless I missed them, no pressure points, etc. She's really good, IN the Top-Tier of everyone we've seen so far, but again, edge to Shiva. Not a big one.

Being fair, she only fought him after going through dozens of other killers, inhaling poison gas and getting struck by a stun baton (among a few other things). He also had a weapon while she had to go with HTH most of the fight. She does acknowledge that he's better than the others, but there are other caveats as well.

[Jcogginsa]

Being fair, she only fought him after going through dozens of other killers, inhaling poison gas and getting struck by a stun baton (among a few other things). He also had a weapon while she had to go with HTH most of the fight. She does acknowledge that he's better than the others, but there are other caveats as well.

She also had an internal emotional conflict going on as well

[Dark Soul # 7]

She also had an internal emotional conflict going on as well

There was that too. Yor had a lot going on there. Probably because it was the first arc that really focused on her so they threw everything except the kitchen sink at her.

[Sharpandpointies]

Some more valid points here, thank you. Seems likely to be a tad closer than I first thought, but I'll keep the same idea - Post-Crisis Shiva wins a lorge majority and Current Shiva loses a smaller majority after longer, more drawn-out fights.

[Alias]

2. Speed - I'd guess Yor is closing in on CBPH in speed, or equal to it, but I don't recall anything faster. Again, unless I missed something. Edge to POST-CRISIS Shiva - not 'blitz' edge, but an edge. Current Shiva, to the best of my knowledge, has absolutely nothing to show that she's faster than CBPH, so...equal?

I mean...





There's some fairly minor caveats to this scene (Batman had been shot in the arm an issue earlier, and later got some slightly baffling lip service -- basically the Nightwing treatment, IOW, particularly if one compares it to the way Tynion'd previously handled Grayson vs Cass Cain in Batman & Robin: Eternal), but it's also consistent with how Shiva handled Cassandra (who'd go on to shed multiple mental blocks throughout the arc, but was already quite explicitly a better fighter than Bruce Wayne to begin with) through the better part of this storyline, and the general pecking order it rather laboriously established.

She later stalemates a strong, if weather worn, Bat Family lineup for a non-trivial length of time, ultimately getting sniped down by Ra's al Ghul while engaging Orphan (her goal by that point was to hold them until the explosives she'd set went off rather than beating everyone down herself, but I thought it was a fairly ridiculous feat all the same; she was unaware Ra's was present, to be clear).

Whether that was all down to speed, skill, a knack for reading body language, or whatever combination thereof, doesn't seem to strictly matter too much here - it still firmly demonstrates how she treats other top-ranking fighters in her universe at her best.

(Also notice that bit about requiring the slightest movement of her hand to kill an armored batman, and where her hands actually are at the time. I find the notion that she'd struggle to target pressure points against an enemy close to or equal to her own speed fairly dubious - at least, not unless they had close to or similar esoteric knowledge, or significantly greater skill.)

6. Special stuff - As Nik notes, pressure point stuff. I'm pretty meh on Current Shiva landing clean pressure point stuff on Yor, given the roughly-equal speed and only an edge on her in skill. Post-Crisis Shiva? Also comes equipped with the body-read; add that onto the speed gap, the skill gap, and she's likely to hit pressure point stuff while avoiding everything Yor throws at her.

Post Crisis Shiva's consistently failed to demonstrate anything like her daughter's skill at reading body language outside of Batgirl (and there was ample opportunity in and out of combat; Naughties Shiva never seemed to miss a chance to let someone lie right to her face). At the time I used to think they were essentially different presentations, for this and other reasons.

I can understand ruling either for or against the Puckett/Gabrych take as the highest persistant interpretation of the character. What I find slightly bizzare is the idea that reading body language's somehow an intrinsic part of her Post Crisis skill set while the speed to fight Batgirl evenly is not. (At the very least, Shiva's straight up murdered Katana in an issue where the latter'd repeatedly blocked multiple bullets with her sword, well before Cass ever existed).

[The Drunkard Kid]

A note on Pressure points, Yor does demonstrate some Pressure point knowledge early in the series...on a cow. Presumably she would also know human pressure points if she knows cow ones, though I dunno if that passes muster on rumbles.



I intended this to be post crisis Shiva.

She also uses some pressure points to instantly KO or kill one of the human assassins that attacked her on the boat.

[Sharpandpointies]

There's some fairly minor caveats to this scene (Batman had been shot in the arm an issue earlier, and later got some slightly baffling lip service -- basically the Nightwing treatment, IOW, particularly if one compares it to the way Tynion'd previously handled Grayson vs Cass Cain in Batman & Robin: Eternal), but it's also consistent with how Shiva handled Cassandra (who'd go on to shed multiple mental blocks throughout the arc, but was already quite explicitly a better fighter than Bruce Wayne to begin with) through the better part of this storyline, and the general pecking order it rather laboriously established.

She later stalemates a strong, if weather worn, Bat Family lineup for a non-trivial length of time, ultimately getting sniped down by Ra's al Ghul while engaging Orphan (her goal by that point was to hold them until the explosives she'd set went off rather than beating everyone down herself, but I thought it was a fairly ridiculous feat all the same; she was unaware Ra's was present, to be clear).

Whether that was all down to speed, skill, a knack for reading body language, or whatever combination thereof, doesn't seem to strictly matter too much here - it still firmly demonstrates how she treats other top-ranking fighters in her universe at her best.

Nothing to show it being speed. Ergo, it can't be considered to be speed. But it's a valid point about how she's treating other top-ranked fighters in her own universe. If this is consistent with how NuShiva is now presented in DC, I'd be more likely to run things 50/50.

(Also notice that bit about requiring the slightest movement of her hand to kill an armored batman, and where her hands actually are at the time. I find the notion that she'd struggle to target pressure points against an enemy close to or equal to her own speed fairly dubious - at least, not unless they had close to or similar esoteric knowledge, or significantly greater skill.)

Given Batman is PINNED, and Yor wouldn't be, I find it perfectly acceptable to say 'Yor will have an easier time landing hits anywhere on Shiva than Shiva will have hitting exact pressure points.' And before people bring up Shiva pinning Yor down, Yor is rather tremendously stronger than Bruce. I would find it rather hard to accept that Shiva is just going to pin her, given the massive gap in strength and Yor's own considerable skill.

I find it dubious that it would take Yor having, as you put it, SIGNIFICANTLY greater skill than Shiva to stop her from easily hitting pressure points. So what you're saying is that if Shiva and Yor were of equal skill and speed, or Yor was actually a little bit better skillwise, Shiva would have an easy time hitting Yor's pressure points before, for example, Yor kicks her wherever with three-to-four (or more) times Bruce's strength?

Worse, people are pointing out that Yor DOES have pressure point stuff in her own stories. So myself, I'm going to have to go back and have a look at those scenes.

Post Crisis Shiva's consistently failed to demonstrate anything like her daughter's skill at reading body language outside of Batgirl (and there was ample opportunity in and out of combat; Naughties Shiva never seemed to miss a chance to let someone lie right to her face). At the time I used to think they were essentially different presentations, for this and other reasons.

Regardless, Shiva's connection to Cass and the actual abilities she demonstrated became canon and part of her presentation, which also holds with her feats. Ergo, her NOT showing said abilities under other writers is chaulked up to PIS, hereabouts.

I can understand ruling either for or against the Puckett/Gabrych take as the highest persistant interpretation of the character. What I find slightly bizzare is the idea that reading body language's somehow an intrinsic part of her Post Crisis skill set while the speed to fight Batgirl evenly is not. (At the very least, Shiva's straight up murdered Katana in an issue where the latter'd repeatedly blocked multiple bullets with her sword, well before Cass ever existed).

Post-Crisis Shiva HAS no actual bullet-time speedfeats. What she has is a bunch of feats that place her somewhere above Peak Human speed (as some examples from different sources, blitzing Killer Croc faster than he can see, punching Cass out of her super-speed charge while a gun hangs in the air as if floating then turning around, sticking out her hand, and having the gun fall into it, that sort of thing). This has been ruled in the past to give her an edge in speed over a Peak Human, and give people who can bullet-time an edge in speed over her, but she's not blitzing Peak Humans and Bullet-timers aren't blitzing her. That's basically how it worked out.

Shoot, I was the person arguing for Shiva to be considered a bullet-timer back in 2005 and again, later.

But still, no actual bullet-time feats. And Shiva doesn't have the same sort of situation like Kraven, or The Cat, where really the only thing we have is 'Presentation' and 'Manages to fight a character and impress them with their speed'. No, Shiva has a ton of appearances where she doesn't bullet-time, doesn't outspeed Peak Humans to the point of Blitzing, doesn't do all kinds of absolutely insane speedfeats, that kind of thing. Whereas Original Cass DOES have those feats on top of some insane bullet-time stuff.

What she has is a few speedfeats that maybe put her above Batman, but not enormously, and the usual 'fights people who are really fast like Cassandra Cain'. And given how speed is often done in comics - ie, really crappily - Rumbles is pretty picky about granting people equal speed when they don't have the feats for it, rather than pointing out 'could be PIS'. Which is Shiva's place, hereabouts.

I mean, again, I'd be fine with giving her Bullet-time status, but that's something that has been mod-ruled - twice - in the past (against my own arguments, to boot). And since Post-Crisis Shiva hasn't gotten any new feats (and never will)...that's not likely to change.