Page 5 of 8 FirstFirst 12345678 LastLast
Results 61 to 75 of 109
  1. #61
    Extraordinary Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    7,749

    Default

    Question: I was rereading your Kimetsu No Yaiba breakdown, and I had a question about Terminology.

    You refer to a tier between Comic Book Peak Human and Bullet Timer, Ringer.

    What exactly is a Ringer?

  2. #62
    Legendary God of Pirates Nik Hasta's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    London, UK
    Posts
    11,059

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jcogginsa View Post
    Question: I was rereading your Kimetsu No Yaiba breakdown, and I had a question about Terminology.

    You refer to a tier between Comic Book Peak Human and Bullet Timer, Ringer.

    What exactly is a Ringer?
    Ringer is a loose category, primarily used when talking about Lady Shiva back in the day. It's a term for a character whose feats are clearly beyond peak human but lacks the real solid stuff to bring them up the level of bullet timing.

  3. #63
    Extraordinary Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    7,749

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Nik Hasta View Post
    Ringer is a loose category, primarily used when talking about Lady Shiva back in the day. It's a term for a character whose feats are clearly beyond peak human but lacks the real solid stuff to bring them up the level of bullet timing.
    So, to give a hypothetical scenario, say there a comic book where a guy gets shot at, and dodges the bullet while his internal monologue says something to the effect of "I don't need to be faster than a bullet in order to move 1 foot before it moves 10."

    Would that be a ringer, or is that the lower end of bullet timer?

  4. #64
    Legendary God of Pirates Nik Hasta's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    London, UK
    Posts
    11,059

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jcogginsa View Post
    So, to give a hypothetical scenario, say there a comic book where a guy gets shot at, and dodges the bullet while his internal monologue says something to the effect of "I don't need to be faster than a bullet in order to move 1 foot before it moves 10."

    Would that be a ringer, or is that the lower end of bullet timer?
    That's low end bullet time.

  5. #65
    The Weeping Mod Sharpandpointies's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    13,889

    Default

    Even more specific, it's a term Rumbles use to designate someone who exceeds what comics present as peak human ranges without being 'enhanced'. It is generally used for speed, but realistically applies across the board. The Kingpin, for example, would be a ringer. It just so happens he would be considered such due to his strength and durability.

    A lot of people use it just for speed these days, because we DO have a solid category for 'Comic book peak human' and 'bullet-time', but nothing 'in between'. Basically, 'enjoys a speed advantage over a comic book peak human, but is not so fast that they can blitz a comic book peak human'.

    It's also in the Rumbles dictionary.

    Background - the term, unsurprisingly, comes from a loose interpretation of a Batgirl issue where tapes of Cassandra Cain are being analyzed by a government black ops agency trying to figure out how she does what she does. One of them accuses their superior of 'putting a ringer in', or somesuch. Some people on Rumbles started immediately using that as a term for 'someone who is not superhuman, but still does superhuman stuff'. Really, it's an actual English expression.

    Noun. ringer (plural ringers) (slang) Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.

    It's often used in situations like competitions. Say there's an amateur boxing competition. But one sponsor slips in a pro-boxer under a false name. One would accuse them of putting a 'ringer' in the match.

    Here, the scientist is basically saying 'You lied to us - she's not actually unenhanced, she's really a metahuman!'
    Last edited by Sharpandpointies; 11-25-2020 at 06:21 AM.
    Why are we here?

    "Superboy Prime (the yelling guy if he needs clarification)..." - Postmania
    "...dropping an orca whale made of fire on your enemies is a pretty strong opening move." - Nik
    "Why throw punches when you can be making everyone around you sterile mutant corpses?" - Pendaran, regarding Dr. Fate

  6. #66
    Extraordinary Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    7,749

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Sharpandpointies View Post
    Even more specific, it's a term Rumbles use to designate someone who exceeds what comics present as peak human ranges without being 'enhanced'. It is generally used for speed, but realistically applies across the board. The Kingpin, for example, would be a ringer. It just so happens he would be considered such due to his strength and durability.

    A lot of people use it just for speed these days, because we DO have a solid category for 'Comic book peak human' and 'bullet-time', but nothing 'in between'. Basically, 'enjoys a speed advantage over a comic book peak human, but is not so fast that they can blitz a comic book peak human'.

    It's also in the Rumbles dictionary.

    Background - the term, unsurprisingly, comes from a loose interpretation of a Batgirl issue where tapes of Cassandra Cain are being analyzed by a government black ops agency trying to figure out how she does what she does. One of them accuses their superior of 'putting a ringer in', or somesuch. Some people on Rumbles started immediately using that as a term for 'someone who is not superhuman, but still does superhuman stuff'. Really, it's an actual English expression.

    Noun. ringer (plural ringers) (slang) Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.

    It's often used in situations like competitions. Say there's an amateur boxing competition. But one sponsor slips in a pro-boxer under a false name. One would accuse them of putting a 'ringer' in the match.

    Here, the scientist is basically saying 'You lied to us - she's not actually unenhanced, she's really a metahuman!'
    Interesting background.

    Though personally, I think a Comic Book Writer's idea for Peak Human is probably greater than what the board defines as a peak human, especially the more modern writers. Probably due to power creep, and anime changing the general perception of what an unenhanced person can do.

  7. #67
    Legendary God of Pirates Nik Hasta's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    London, UK
    Posts
    11,059

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jcogginsa View Post
    Interesting background.

    Though personally, I think a Comic Book Writer's idea for Peak Human is probably greater than what the board defines as a peak human, especially the more modern writers. Probably due to power creep, and anime changing the general perception of what an unenhanced person can do.
    Comicbook Peak Human is not defined by it's unenhanced origins, it's a level of ability. Captain America is the poster child for CBPH but he is enhanced by the Super Solider Serum. It's a generalised level that is often applied to unenhanced people. Cap and his peers are well beyond what any normal peak human could do.

  8. #68
    Extraordinary Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    7,749

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Nik Hasta View Post
    Comicbook Peak Human is not defined by it's unenhanced origins, it's a level of ability. Captain America is the poster child for CBPH but he is enhanced by the Super Solider Serum. It's a generalised level that is often applied to unenhanced people. Cap and his peers are well beyond what any normal peak human could do.
    I know. What I was saying is that, because of changes in pop culture, modern day (by which I mean the last 20 years or so) writers have a different idea of what that level of ability is than older writers did or this board does.

    Cap, as you said, is the textbook definition of a CBPH, and this board is very firm on the "CBPH's are not Bullet timers" point. Yet in the books themselves, you have people flat out asking Cap "So how do you dodge bullets?"

    (To be 100 percent clear, I'm not arguing that the board should change it's position, I'm just observing the difference in thought processes)

  9. #69
    Legendary God of Pirates Nik Hasta's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    London, UK
    Posts
    11,059

    Default

    Because I can't follow a docket to save my life and, rather than read Trigun, I reread all of One Piece I figured I'd do a little piece on that series.

    One of the things that really stuck out to me was both how pronounced the power buffs for everyone was after the timeskip but also how new characters are able to play what is an exceptionally beefy physical bracket. This is basically an excuse for me to talk about how ridiculous OP the Big Mom pirate Generals are.

    SO! It's physical strength and it's our boy Monkey D. Luffy acting as the prime yardstick.

    ONE PIECE - BROAD STRENGTH CURVE

    Couple of things to note from the off;

    - One Piece is not very upgrade heavy. Luffy is just mad strong from the off and doesn't actually get an form of codified upgrade until hundreds of chapters in. This is useful for our purposes as it makes it simpler to document the key points without having to list a bunch of piecemeal upgrades.
    - Techniques matter for Luffy's hitting power. One Piece as a series is, by and large, more concerned with clever implementation of powers than it is "big power levels," so Luffy's specific techniques imply different levels of strength being employed. I'll be noting this as we go and pointing out the key bits and pieces.

    Let's get started then.

    Pre-Timeskip

    We start not at the beginning for once. The key benchmark for the series across the timeskip is the handling of a Pacifista - essentially a giant superhumanly powerful killer android. Prior to the timeskip, a single Pacifista requires the entire Strawhat Crew busting out their strongest moves in concert to put it down.

    The hit list used on one(1) opponent;

    - Coup De Vent: An air shockwave cannon that previously has destroyed a massively multi-ton shipping crane and a battleship. (This did no discernible damage beyond slamming the Pacifista into a gigantic nearby tree, it kept fighting fine)
    - Cloven Cherry Blossom: Chopper using arm point who has KOed super durable humans who wield weaponry heavy enough to weigh tons. (This did no discernible damage)
    - Strong Right, Franky Boxing: A punch combo from Franky, who is strong enough to wrassle with Luffy and damage superdurable opponents. (This did no discernible damage)
    - Swallow Bond Avant: Stabbing technique from Brook whom has previously blast through giant monsters with the same technique. (No Damage, did not even scratch it)
    - Atlas Bomb: Flurry of high explosive bombs. (Some damage as one of the bombs went into the Pacifista's mouth and caused some damage)
    - Beam misfire in mouth: Robin managed to slam it's mouth shut as it fired it's mouth laser causing it to explode in it's face. (Some damage)
    - Thunder Lance Tempo: Nami casts a big old lightning bolt through it (Some damage, could be due to a lightning weakness)
    - Diable Jambe: Sanji, a dude who casually oneshots giant monsters, uses this technique to critically injure and KO superdurable humans who could largely ignore people on his and Base Luffy's strength level. (Big Damage)
    - Asura: A cutting technique which Zoro had previously used to cut through an energy wave that sliced a skyscraper type building in half made of solid stone. (Big Damage)
    - Giant Rifle: Gear 3 Luffy's strongest single attack technique. (This crushes the wounded Pacifista and it stays down)

    So, a whole lot stuff used there to put a Pacifista down. But Luffy is our yardstick so we need to establish what a Gear 3 Giant Rifle actually means, so let's quickly run down his base strength feats and how he grows over the pre-timeskip story.

    BASE LUFFY

    Luffy is mad strong. He is definitely in the Class 80 kind of bracket. Feats in no particular order:

    - One punches small kaiju sized monsters with his basic Pistol attack.
    - Grabs building sized monsters and swings them around as melee weaponry.
    - Shoves multi-story stone buildings over after being briefly trapped between them.
    - Using his Bazooka technique, punts a person so hard they fly to another island. Islands in the Grand Line routinely require multiple days of sailing to travel so we're talking likely dozens if not hundreds of miles on a single hit.
    - Having literally ~120 tons of gold attached to his arm, he is capable of not only wielding it as a weapon but also running up near vertical surfaces for hundreds of metres at a time without issue.
    - Punching Crocodile into the ceiling of a cave beneath a city with such force that he is blasted up through the city so hard he flips multiple multi-story stone buildings and continues to fly more than four stories into the air.

    Video, because it's cool:



    So, yeah, Class 80 ballpark ****.

    We flash forward to the Water 7 Arc and CP9, an elite team of government agents with superhuman stats and use an ability called "Tekkai" [Iron Body] to amp their defences. Luffy, when he hits these guys at base does basically nothing.

    Facing off against one of them, Blueno - Luffy manages to just about breach his base Tekkai ability with Rifle - his hard hitting single technique. Now, with all his building smashing, island punting, kaiju-decking strength as listed above, being brought to it's apex, he manages to all of knock Blueno back a bit and he's like "Wow, he's really strong, Tekkai didn't stop him completely," and then he continues to fight just fine.

    This brings us to our first real upgrade.

    GEAR SECOND

    Gear Second is a doping technique where Luffy super accelerates his bloodflow to drastically amp his stats, most notably speed and strength. With this upgrade, Luffy blows through Blueno's Tekkai like it isn't really there. At the end of their confrontation, Blueno uses an enhanced form Tekkai (Tekkai Gou) and eats a Jet Bazooka. He remains standing for a moment and Luffy is like "Oh, I need to hit you harder eh? Okay," but Blueno falls unconscious from the force of hit before he can deliver on that.

    When facing off with Lucci, Blueno's boss and canonically about 7 times stronger than him based on some power level stuff and Luffy cannot meaningfully hurt him at all without using Gear Second. Further to that, while Luffy with Gear Second can breach his Tekkai - much like with Rifle against Blueno - he isn't ending the fight. He's hurting him but only superficially. thus Luffy, despite being an order of magnitude above his Class 80 self, resorts to a harder hitting technique.

    GEAR THIRD

    Gear Third is a technique Luffy inflates his bones and gives himself giant limbs to attack with. He hits Lucci, who can absorb Gear Second hits fine with his Tekkai, with Gigant Pistol and not only breaches his Tekkai but also hammers him through multiple buildings. This attack does serious damage to Lucci like no other attack Luffy does in this fight, apart his final attack.

    Luffy will also go on to use this giant attack to break the spine of a super durable zombie giant and, as covered above, put down a Pacifista.

    And, as noted, technique matters. Regular Pistol << Regular Rifle and so Gigant Pistol << Gigant Rifle. So, we're like two or three orders of magnitude beyond Class 80-ass base Luffy and that is what deals with Pacifista.

    Now, let's jump two years and get crazy.

    Post-Timeskip

    So, after training for two years, Gear Second Luffy /obliterates/ a Pacifista in one shot with a Jet Pistol. So, we've gone from "My big ass mega Class 80++ super punch technique needs to the support of my entire crew to work," to "My second level base technique can take them down,"

    Luffy is now, clearly, in the Class 90 bracket at base for my money and he has his previous techniques to apply a similar multiplier to his base strength as before but from the higher base level and a new ability "Haki" that is essentially a "hit harder" power.

    So, the next important moment is when Luffy throws down with Donquixote Donflamingo, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, and general monstrous badass. When fighting Luffy, despite having taken some really ugly damage from another fight, Doffy is able to take hits from his Haki infused Gear Second Jet Bazooka with minimal issues and generally laughs at his attacks, saying Luffy's Haki "has no weight,". He also flatly blocks Luffy's Haki infused Gear Third attack with his Spider Web defensive technique.

    In response Luffy busts out...

    GEAR FOURTH

    Gear Fourth is a Haki-infused transformation that drastically improves Luffy's abilities across the board. In comparison to Doffy being able to laugh off his Class 90++ Haki attacks and generally not be moved by them, Gear Fourth punts Doffy across most of a city and through dozens of buildings. Doffy comments that Gear Fourth raises Luffy's power "several times beyond his limits,"

    Now, observant persons will note that I am not using Class 100 here. Luffy is mad strong but he doesn't quite play in the mountains-to-planets level that Class 100 people generally mess around in. He's awful close but he's not there.

    So, in their final confrontation, Luffy hits Doffy with the Gigant form of his Gear Fourth attack, King Kong Gun. This not only blows through Spider Web, which we saw earlier, effortlessly held off regular Gear Third + Haki, but also then blows through one of Doffy's own massively powerful string attacks and then hits him and slams him into the ground with such force that he flips over a significant chunk of a city:



    So, my guy Luffy is like Class 90+++. Big old strong boy.

    RIGHT!

    So, with all that said, Cracker of the Big Mom Pirates can effortlessly spawn biscuit soldier constructs and then infuses them Haki strong enough that Luffy literally cannot break them without going into Gear Fourth. Dude is nuts. I'm probably going to edit this later but I'm tired of writing now.
    Last edited by Nik Hasta; 05-27-2021 at 03:32 AM.

  10. #70
    Extraordinary Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    7,749

    Default

    I feel like there should probably be more weight classes between the "Punches apart mountains" and "Punches apart planets" level. Just seems like a pretty broad range of strength to have a single label

  11. #71
    Legendary God of Pirates Nik Hasta's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    London, UK
    Posts
    11,059

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jcogginsa View Post
    I feel like there should probably be more weight classes between the "Punches apart mountains" and "Punches apart planets" level. Just seems like a pretty broad range of strength to have a single label
    This is why Classes should only ever be guidelines. Feats are what's paramount.

  12. #72
    Legendary God of Pirates Nik Hasta's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    London, UK
    Posts
    11,059

    Default

    Small note, I was looking through my Kenshiro breakdown and there was some pretty generous interpretations of orders of magnitude going on there. I also flatly misunderstood how the series was representing Falco's relationship to the denizens of Shura which amped by original interpretation a bit.

    I have duly edited it down. The end result is still that Kenshiro is somewhere in the "significant multimach," kind of area but less aggressively so. FotNS deals a lot in a small but significant differences in its key fights rather than the model of "A blitzes B blitzes C," sort of model of more contemporary shonen stuff. The feats are still solid though.

  13. #73
    The Weeping Mod Sharpandpointies's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    13,889

    Default

    It's still oodles faster than most.
    Why are we here?

    "Superboy Prime (the yelling guy if he needs clarification)..." - Postmania
    "...dropping an orca whale made of fire on your enemies is a pretty strong opening move." - Nik
    "Why throw punches when you can be making everyone around you sterile mutant corpses?" - Pendaran, regarding Dr. Fate

  14. #74
    Legendary God of Pirates Nik Hasta's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    London, UK
    Posts
    11,059

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Sharpandpointies View Post
    It's still oodles faster than most.
    Kenshiro big fast.


    atatata for days.

  15. #75
    Rumbles Limbo Champion big_adventure's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    7,422

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Nik Hasta View Post
    Kenshiro big fast.


    atatata for days.
    Rough night last night? That was big shortage on words.
    "But... But I want to be a big karate cyborg... ;_;" - Nik Hasta
    "Get off my lawn! ...on this forum, that just makes people think of Cyclops." - Sharpandpointies
    "...makes me think the Night King just says "Screw the rules, I have magic money" when it comes to physics." -Captain Morgan

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •