I'd like to talk about the powerscaling of Zenos vs WoL

[Kalise]

The WoL goes through very rapid power growth throughout the game.

Generally, it's mirroring leveling up, without actually having leveling up being canon.

But given that we literally start out as nobody adventurers, just doing menial tasks like eliminating pests such as rats, squirrels and ladybugs... Then by level 22 we're taking on a Primal (This being before we get Hydaelyn's Blessing either)... Surely, we can beat Zenos after 6 levels?

Especially when during those 6 levels we:

* Best Bardam's Mettle (Making us the first non-Xaela to ever do so. It is also a feat that many Xaela are unable to accomplish)

* Lead a group of Hunter-Gathers to victory in the Naadam (Beating out several other tribes whom are raised from birth to fight, who pride themselves on how well their tribe can perform in combat)

* Win a 1v1 with Sadu, the leader of one of the most brutal tribes of Xaela, when she's going all out with her full power.

* Remove the Imperial forces from Doma, the central hub for Imperial control over all of the Far East.

* Best Lakshimi, yet another Primal.

* Assist with pushing out the Imperial forces from the Velodyna Gate.

* Push the Imperial forces out of Castrum Abania.

* Best a Resonant enhanced Fordola.

* Fight our way through Ala Mhigo to get to Zenos.

So, it's not as if we were just sat on our hands and then magically able to kick Zenos' butt. We were getting stuff done and all the while, getting stronger with each obstacle overcome.

Also lol at Zenos trying to fuse with a Primal to defeat the "Eikon-Slayer"

[Daralii]

ignoring the "call", from the way the fight goes he definitely not pushover for me, yes we are winning but the way the scene goes, its more like "zenos" just messing around with us (aka not serious at all)

Elidibus was pretty clear, at least in the English text, that he was taking it seriously even if he was still getting used to the limits of what Zenos's body was capable of. We weren't going to win regardless just because the WoL has finite stamina, and every time we knocked Elidibus down, he could simply reanimate Zenos again as many times as it took. Without white auracite and Tupsimati, a dragon eye, Hydaelyn, or any other aether source potent enough to forge the Blade of Light, it was an unwinnable situation even with Concentravity(which was enough to trigger Down for the Count in every fight but in the Ala Mhigan throne room) now doing negligible damage.

[swiss_Momo]

ignoring the "call", from the way the fight goes he definitely not pushover for me, yes we are winning but the way the scene goes, its more like "zenos" just messing around with us (aka not serious at all)

Elidizenos starts the fight right of the bat with triple spark and unmoving troika (both tankbusters in their original fights) and seems pretty shocked on how strong we became after the DPS check ultimate. So I'd say he was pretty serious. And yet still a pushover seeing how we easily tank his slash after he gets back up in the cutscene, beating our biggest weakness: cutscene vulnerability.
Now if only it wasn't for that stupid cat calling at the worst moment just to tell us he left a FedEx parcel for us...

[Anonymoose]

I should have jumped into this fray earlier, but I thought someone else would bring this up, lol.

Yoshida actually addressed this once. (But first, some build-up.)

The Warrior of Light's potential is augmented by the Echo. It doesn't give us a strength booster, it allows us to transcend limitations.
Thus the Warrior of Light has an as of yet indeterminable potential that is ever closer to being met with every expansion.

Or, in the words of an Allagan A.I.

Anomalous potential confirmed.
Commencing scan.
Latent aetherial capacity: immeasurable.
Standard parameters exceeded.
Reinitializing system.

Yoshida, off-the-cuff, described the power levels as such:

- LV50 Warrior of Light
- Raubahn Aldynn
- Zenos yae Galvus
- LV70 Warrior of Light
- Guts (from Berserk)

Even then, Yoshida considers the LV70 Warrior of Light (in spite of being ever so slightly stronger than Zenos) actually defeating Zenos to be a relative miracle.

[Cilia]

I'd just like to say that while the Elidibus-Zenos fight is cake for us, that's probably just because we're massively overgeared for it. It's probably tuned for minimum iLv, which would give players a rougher time.

Elidibus' commentary that using Zenos' body he could destroy the Warrior of Light "as easily as one might swat a fly" was obviously off, but whether the Warrior of Light was dominating the fight before being "called" is... variable. Either way, even if they hadn't been "called" the Warrior of Light would have eventually lost through sheer attrition.

[Kalise]

I'd just like to say that while the Elidibus-Zenos fight is cake for us, that's probably just because we're massively overgeared for it. It's probably tuned for minimum iLv, which would give players a rougher time.

It was cake for my ilevel 310 SMN.

Given that in order to get to this point in the story, you have to beat Ghimlyt Dark which is min ilevel 360, I don't think it was a case of us just overgearing...

Though, one might argue that Hien, Yugiri and Lyse had softened him up a bit before we got there... It depends on how taxing dealing with them actually was for Elidibenos.

Elidibus' commentary that using Zenos' body he could destroy the Warrior of Light "as easily as one might swat a fly" was obviously off, but whether the Warrior of Light was dominating the fight before being "called" is... variable. Either way, even if they hadn't been "called" the Warrior of Light would have eventually lost through sheer attrition.

Well... We literally beat him.

It's just he has Ascian Auto-Life BS super powers to revive infinite times.

Meaning that yes, inevitably we'd fall had we not been "Called" and then subsequently saved.

But before then, we kicked his butt.

Which shocked him and also annoyed him a great deal, especially when Varis was rubbing it in about his comments he made beforehand.

Though, while Ascians still have their stupid super powers that make them invincible to anything other than WMD level powers they won't be "Beaten" by WoL alone.

How Shadowhunter does his thing though... Who knows...

[Yshnal]

How Shadowhunter does his thing though... Who knows...

My guess is that he recovered something from inside Ultima after it went kaboom.

[Daralii]

My guess is that he recovered something from inside Ultima after it went kaboom.

If Gaius has been using the Heart of Sabik to "eat" them, I can't help but think he's been making a very large mistake.

[Bright-Flower]

It bothered me too. Especially with Shinryu, the ending of HW made such a big deal of Shinryu, having Popolymo sacrifice himself to stall it and us resorting to unleashing Omega rather than fighting it. Then we just fight it like any other primal.

You can try and say 'it was weakened' but the story doesn't really confirm that.

There really is no explanation beyond 'we leveled up.' Now if this was say ARR, maybe it wouldn't bug me. We start off as a new adventurer and work our way up to a grand hero standing against godlike monsters.

But by the start of SB we've been doing this a while, and nothing we go through in SB is really out of the ordinary for what we did in ARR and HW. It's not like we were being pushed to new extremes to become more powerful. We just keep doing what we normally do and arbitrarily get 'stronger' in that vague shoenen sense. Compared to say Fordola who we beat, then she gets empowered and beats us, and then we capture her by using a device to use her artifical echo against her and weaken her. With Zenos we just kind of stroll up and fight him.

And there aren't even any real stakes to losing to him either. A couple npcs get wounded I guess. One unnamed npc dies at RR but if I recall it was Fordola that killed him anyway. The resistance doesn't have to abandon its headquarters, and in Doma there are no negative consequences for our failed assassination attempt. In fact, it plays into our hands because Grynwhat's attack on the Steppe coming after us helps to rally the Xaela against them after we win the thing.

Zenos has the potential to become interesting for me in 5.0 with his current path of reclaiming 'what's his' in the empire but for now I find him unengaging both as a character and as a menacing foe to face due to the lack of consequence when he wins.

[Yshnal]

It bothered me too. Especially with Shinryu, the ending of HW made such a big deal of Shinryu, having Popolymo sacrifice himself to stall it and us resorting to unleashing Omega rather than fighting it. Then we just fight it like any other primal.

You can try and say 'it was weakened' but the story doesn't really confirm that.

There really is no explanation beyond 'we leveled up.' Now if this was say ARR, maybe it wouldn't bug me. We start off as a new adventurer and work our way up to a grand hero standing against godlike monsters.

But by the start of SB we've been doing this a while, and nothing we go through in SB is really out of the ordinary for what we did in ARR and HW. It's not like we were being pushed to new extremes to become more powerful. We just keep doing what we normally do and arbitrarily get 'stronger' in that vague shoenen sense. Compared to say Fordola who we beat, then she gets empowered and beats us, and then we capture her by using a device to use her artifical echo against her and weaken her. With Zenos we just kind of stroll up and fight him.

And there aren't even any real stakes to losing to him either. A couple npcs get wounded I guess. One unnamed npc dies at RR but if I recall it was Fordola that killed him anyway. The resistance doesn't have to abandon its headquarters, and in Doma there are no negative consequences for our failed assassination attempt. In fact, it plays into our hands because Grynwhat's attack on the Steppe coming after us helps to rally the Xaela against them after we win the thing.

Zenos has the potential to become interesting for me in 5.0 with his current path of reclaiming 'what's his' in the empire but for now I find him unengaging both as a character and as a menacing foe to face due to the lack of consequence when he wins.

Keep in mind that we got strong enough to also fight and win against Omega, which in turn was more powerful than Shinryu. So, it makes sense that at that point we could defeat the primal. If you think about it, Omega itself kinda "tells" us (well, he doesn't, as that's the part that it can't understand) why we can keep getting stronger and stronger, which in turn makes sense after everything that happens during SB. For instance, being the first time that we get our ass handed back to us would certainly sparkle something inside the WoL to go beyond their current limits (why does this remind me of that Cloud VS Sephiroth talk during Advent Children in regards to strength?). A bit of inner reflection and self-discovery goes a long way in order to make people learn and improve, especially someone with such a huge potential like the WoL. We never truly had to do that before, despite several people/dragons telling us to do it. And as Kalise said, we weren't sitting on our hands during all that time, either. The most important parts being our additional training with our job's master, or fighting with and alongside a true warrior race like the Xaela. If you add everything up, it truly makes more sense.

I agree on the lack of consequence part, tho. Yes, some minor characters died when we lost, but that's all. I mean, for our characters maybe even losing these people was a significant hit, but it's hard for us as players to actually feel anything like when a certain someone with pointy ears died (and then it felt so rewarding to beat Thordan and company).