Board Thread:Versus Battles/@comment-27123758-20190411064410/@comment-27123758-20190412071653

I had a long message typed up and then I misclicked and lost it all, so I had to rewrite all of this! Yay.

While Tina may start on the offensive, Harahel starts on the defensive, the very defensive. While this is good in this situation, since Harahel has a very strong defense, they're not the type to whip out their most powerful abilities off the bat, unlike Tina, who will go for a kill very quickly. Harahel's a nice person, you see. Harahel doesn't want to fight someone without giving them a chance to stop the fight peacefully. Tina probably has the advantage in raw power; Harahel is lacking in raw stats for their scale of power, and relies more on their fun combination of hax and cheap fighting. Even if they're squishy, however, Eidos Lexicon makes for a very strong defense, one that will only get stronger over time as Harahel and Raziel figure out how Tina fights and how to best counter her strategies and attacks. Eidos Lexicon can counter attacks from much stronger opponents, and even the Spear of Destiny, under good conditions (Mastema not putting her full will into it and Harahel being super motivated), so I think Harahel will be able to reliably counter Tina's attacks. Tina will be able get a lot through, of course - Harahel needs time to analyze any given attack and Tina has a strong will, so.

Well, different setting, different rules! Unlimited Data Space is more of a power than an intelligence feat, though it's certainly impressive. They're definitely more or less equivalent in knowledge. I think Tina would have an advantage over Harahel themself when it comes to strategic ability, while Raziel's is more in her ballpark. Tina is also definitely the better martial artist; Harahel isn't even a close quarters fighter. They prefer to fight from a distance, exploiting the range so that they have more time to analyze and respond to attacks, while also using Eidos Lexicon to foil teleportation attempts to get closer. This would be complicated for Tina by Dream Evil, which would just let Harahel go invisible and reappear a safe distance away.

Harahel won't pull out Inner World Replication unless things get really, really bad. And they'd definitely not copy Tina's soul unless they have no other option, because, well, yeah. That's a very disturbing and musty place. Harahel doesn't want to think about those things.

I think Harahel may have the advantage when it comes to copying and countering, thanks to Raziel. Raziel will automatically work on improving anything Harahel copies, modifying it so that it's more useful, more efficient, etcetera. This will eventually change spells so much that they can't be countered in the same way, and Raziel will do this to Harahel's own spells once Tina gets better at dealing with them. Harahel will be able to resist Tina's data absorption a bit, so they have that, too. Lance of Longinus will hurt like a bitch, and though Harahel's a squishy person who isn't as good as Tina when it comes to taking hits, they're not that bad anymore, in this key. With Raziel's help, Absolute Barriers that can survive something like Jophiel's Raziel Second, and with Eidos Lexicon to soften the blow (though this won't apply to the first few hits they take), Harahel will be able to survive and keep fighting. It'll hurt a lot, though, and every hit will count - but Harahel will get better at dealing with it, at least through Reactive Evolution and Raziel, if nothing else. When it comes to adaptive ability, no one in Starcross beats Raziel. Every attack will chip away at Harahel's soul, though, and it'll eventually start interfering with its processes and even their inner world.

Harahel's Instinctive Reaction is only an imitation, and not a perfect one. The best it can do is buy them a bit of time. Goetic Eye means Harahel's going to be perceiving the fight at half-speed, and since the effects are applied to Harahel and Raziel, not anyone else, resistance won't change it. Combined with Raziel, this will give them a lot more time to process, analyze, and appropriately counter attacks. Once Harahel's pushed this far, they'll pull out the unfair tactics without hesitation and will thus copy Beelzebub's absolutely bullshit fighting style. Which is spamming Dream Evil, Hyperawareness, and teleportation to get cheap shots in whenever possible, attack enemies from the inside of their soul, and escape retaliation. Other dangerous abilities include Super Phantasmagoria and Heartbreak Trigger; while Harahel would really rather not use them, if they're pushed to their limit they'll lose their reservations, and I doubt Tina would respond well to having to relive all her trauma at once.

Raziel wouldn't dump information into Tina, that was only useful for dealing with small fry when Harahel was a smaller fry. Tina's defenses will definitely lessen the impact of Raziel and their copied laws, but Harahel doesn't depend on that stuff that much, anyways. Quantum Arts is an issue, as Logos is one of Harahel's biggest weaknesses in Starcross. But, you know, this just means Harahel has had to find a lot of ways to deal with it and defend themself. They'll figure out Tina's strategies and how they think, and Raziel will handle predicting and countering the attacks. It's far from perfect, but it works.

Poor Harahel... all of the inner worlds I have listed for them kinda suck. Salem Corpseworld is miserable and Sheol Necrocosmos is lethal... the only one that isn't garbage is Thaumiel, and that's another key that gives Harahel High 3-A Raziel, so it can't be used here. They do have other inner worlds analyzed and copied, including Canace's healthier Salem Pandemonium, but it's nothing that will change the course of the fight. Prometheus Dream is always active, also. Tina's inner world would suck a lot for Harahel, even if they don't try to copy it (and they probably wouldn't) - they'd rely more on Full Soul Counter, though. A complete soul counter is Harahel's most potent attack (it would be a 100% unambiguous death sentence for Observer, Yaldabaoth, and even Thaumiel Lucifer or Super Mastema), but there's no way Harahel's getting a complete counter out here, with all the souls Tina has absorbed and all that Unlimited Data Space. Harahel almost never goes for a complete counter, though; they'd make use of shortcuts and Raziel's innovations to make an incomplete and imperfect counter that will be useable faster and can be spammed.

However, using Omega Dominus against Harahel is a huge risk. The combined analytical power of Harahel and Raziel, and the knowledge of the soul reflected by Inner World Operator, means that they could definitely figure out Omega Dominus' biggest weakness and force it to trigger.

This is the thing about Harahel. They're a defensive fighter not just because their abilities are very well-suited to that, but because they have to be, otherwise they'd have killed a lot more people. They have not only one of the best defenses in Starcross, but, with Raziel's help, one of the strongest offenses. Both need a bit of time to reach their full steam, but Harahel at their best is only surpassed by Mastema in lethality, and only by her and Lucifer in defensive capability. It'll just come down to how long Harahel can last; if they survive Tina's initial onslaught, they'd have a good shot at victory.