The Single Most powerful *thing* in FFXIV?

[thegreatonemal]

If Midgardsormr could have destroyed Omega Weapon, then he would have. He fled because Dragon Kind was facing genocide in addition to planetary destruction.

The best argument to make is to say that Midgardsormr had to contend with Omega and the rest of the civilization behind Omega. If he could have beaten Omega, he likely would have been so spent as to make the victory meaningless. Which means, at best, they are at parity.

Not knowing exactly where he was going, Midgardsormr struck out into space with hope in his heart that he could not only get away, but that he could find somewhere to continue dragon kind.

And Omega had to chase him if they were fighting at the time since omega said it had to repair itself before he left in pursuit. So chances are good that Midgardsormr either got a really good hit and being unable to finish it off then and there decided to leave.

[YianKutku]

Omega says that the contest ended prematurely, and it failed to bring down Midgardsormr(failed to kill or capture). It goes on to say that Midgardsormr would only accept a fight to the death. Meaning Middie was on the back leg when either he fled or they got interrupted. On the back leg enough that he gave up on his fury/honor for the good of what was left of the dragon race.

Also, in context of the fights, the fight with Omega, either format, is more difficult with more powerful attacks than Dragonstar Midgardsormr.

I'm not sure how "Midgardsormr only fights to the death" and "the contest ended prematurely" meant "Midgardsormr was on the back leg". The impression I got was that Midgardsormr would choose to fight to the death against Omega and its creators, but if it's not a fight to the death Midgardsormr is seeking, then it would choose not to fight at all. Or at least choose to end the fight prematurely once Midgardsormr realized that win or lose, the battle would spend too much of his resources.

And Dragonstar Midgardsormr as fought in Alphascape was a creation of Omega itself to emulate what it believed to be Midgardsormr's full power, which has so many caveats and assumptions that I don't think we can use it as an objective measure. Omega itself admits that it has no idea what Midgardsormr in full Fight To The Death mode would be like, for power levels.

Personally I think that it also all depends on the type of contest. If it's a single decisive 1v1 battle, again I think it could go either way due to both Original Midgardsormr and Original Omega being about equal, but Omega might have a slight advantage. However, if it's simply "who will survive the other", I think Midgardsormr would outlast Omega, simply because Midgardsormr has shown the ability to recover from otherwise serious wounds, as seen with the Tales From The Shadow where he decides to protect humanity's resurgence into another Astral Era, while Omega in OMG is mostly just an observer.

So if we're talking about "Midgardsormr vs Omega right now", it again depends on when this "right now" is. During the events of the Omega raids, Omega is probably more powerful. During the Eighth Umbral Era, Midgardsormr is probably more powerful, possibly because he actually has permission from Hydaelyn to live on the planet.

[kaynide]

my vote is for Sabik, whose heart powered the ultima weapon. as lahabrea continually lectures me, the allagans barely scratched the surface of what that thing could do

This is intriguing. I read some old forum threads and lore hunted..but did we ever learn just what Sabik is/was?

We know:
-It was the power source of the Ultimate weapon
-It consumed aether of primals and (we can assume) allowed for their assimilation.
-The spell it allowed (Ultimate) was powerful enough to exhaust even Hydaelyn.
-It predates the Allagan Empire.

Could this be connected to “the sound”?


And Re:Omega/Midgardsormr, this is a tough call, since as far as we can understand, Middy can’t die. Does that make him more powerful? We bested Omega in the raid series…but all of that was essentially a virtual “benchmark test”.

Similar to Middy, the actual Omega machine is a machine that can auto repair…so does that just mean of the two, whoever can overcome/disable the other’s regenerative mechanism would be stronger. With Middy, I assume that means aether… Omega could also be aether, but it could just as easily be nanobots. Since it shoots actual missiles we also have to assume it has some kind of self contained manufacturing capability for armaments.

[akita_kt]

Similar to Middy, the actual Omega machine is a machine that can auto repair…so does that just mean of the two, whoever can overcome/disable the other’s regenerative mechanism would be stronger. With Middy, I assume that means aether… Omega could also be aether, but it could just as easily be nanobots. Since it shoots actual missiles we also have to assume it has some kind of self contained manufacturing capability for armaments.

Omega self-repairs with aether. The magitek terminal at Rhalgr's Reach has Allagan logs on Omega and it says they found Omega slowly repairing itself using ambient aether, so they gave it a lot of aether so it could self-repair faster.

The self-contained manufacturing capability is Omega's creation magicks which also uses aether afaik.

On this issue: I do think we have no idea on who's stronger or not. "How hard do Omega/Middy's attacks hit" is a different question from "who would be the last one standing". Omega got Delta Attack, which needs tank LB3 to be survivable in Savage and Nero's gadgets on Normal. Midgardsormr is the wyrm king from the eldest star; father of dragons, paragon of wyrms. Omega self-repairs, but we don't know at which rate or if it's related to how damaged it is. Midgardsormr has at least two forms and probably doesn't see death as an issue. We don't know if Omega's body-snatching ability comes just when it realizes what "heart" means or if it's always there. Omega says Midgardsormr should have to be way stronger than he was at his prime to defeat it, but it also says it hasn't got complete data on Middy because it failed to defeat him. Omega also says Middy only accepts death as the conclusion to the fight.

There's a lot of factors going on: the Omega we see uses the Rift's aether, for example. It's in complete dominion of its Rift, so even if it isn't at its prime when we fight it, it has an advantage. Would that advantage continue when not in the Rift? We've seen so little of the Dragonstar War, so we also don't know how Omega fared and how strong Midgardsormr was. We don't really know the factors of Midgardsormr fleeing (game text implies it was Hydaelyn Herself calling dragon dad, but we're not 100% sure). So I think we won't know how strong Middy/Omega truly are, or how resilient they truly are. Maybe 6.0 will answer those questions...

[Vyrerus]

I'm not sure how "Midgardsormr only fights to the death."

What's left vague is how what, exactly, ended the contest prematurely. It could have been Midgardsormr rallying an attack that temporarily stunned Omega, leaving him room to flee. It could have been all of the other dragons still valiantly battling against the tide dogpiling Omega while imploring Midgardsormr to leave. It could have been Midgardsormr just suddenly leaving after his ultimate attack, Protostar, failed to even seriously damage Omega. Think about it, if Omega has the data to fully replicate that attack then he saw and analyzed that attack.

"From the heart of the eldest star doth weep the light of oblivion!" Oblivion in this context = Complete Annihilation/Extinction. This is the attack's intent against its target. Omega's presumption that he doesn't have all of the data on Midgardsormr comes from that fact that he doesn't explicitly know if this is Midgardsormr's most powerful attack, because he may also possess the qualities of a hero to exceed discernable limits when near death. In truth, some past forms of Shinryu(who FFXIV middie is based on in reality) in previous FFs have had access to Supernova as well, its form varying. So what we can gleam is pretty evident, we fought a version of Midgardsormr who, possibly, couldn't bring all of the real one's strength to bear. That's it, but given the context of his paired line to Protostar, I don't think the simulacrum was too far off.

Think about it like this. Omega can reproduce Midgardsormr in his prime, to a great extent. If he wanted to, he could make it corporeal, and unleash it into the world. He could do this with any of the bosses he made us fight. Midgardsormr never could.

All Omega needs to last is a new body, which it looks like might possibly happen in Endwalkers, given the benchmark. If Fandaniel has made a pseudo-Omega(I suspect Allagan-attempted reproductions) or several, Omega in the OMG could take one, and perhaps fight with us against him. It's likely a less powerful platform, still, but if Omega had access to resources and wasn't going to immediately get stopped, then he could probably rebuild himself too(given a platform capable of such).

In their most original forms in FFV, they're said to be tied for hardest superbosses, but actually Omega is much more difficult to kill, since all you really gotta do to beat Shinryu in FFV is equip rings that absorb water damage. Omega, you gotta bypass reflect with high damage, and kill him in just a few hits, else you get countered with missiles/being erased until you're dead. Funny enough, in FFXIV the story is that Omega pursues Midgardsormr, but the original relationship has Shinryu pursue Omega, heh.

[Navytroy]

Midgardsormr singular attack is Protostar, there you have it.

[Cleretic]

Midgardsormr singular attack is Protostar, there you have it.

Fancy attack names don't exactly count for a lot. Midgardsormr's in contention, but this is not the easy win you think it is.

This thread was pre-Endwalker, so all discussion in it kinda has to take that into account; there's a number of interesting new contenders now. Previously the competition in my mind was basically 'Zodiark, Midgardsormr or Omega' (with the caveat that Zodiark still lost despite raw power, and that Omega and Midgardsormr are currently not at full strength), with Alexander as a wildcard, but now we have some interesting new options:

• Meteion/The Endsinger, AKA 'the thing that made The Sound'. She's definitely a strong contender, but it feels more like she's just very specifically designed to hit a particular cosmic weak point; if the question is just about raw power, I don't know if she's contending. (Also we're looking at a hive mind situation so you could have debate on if they're a single 'thing'.)
• Now that we know more about Omega's history, I feel like we can rule it out in contention as 'the strongest', although it's definitely still getting a top-ten finish. I wouldn't be surprised if there is something among the Omicrons we didn't see that stands up there, though.
• Whatever progenitor thing that Ultima and auracite came from is basically a complete unknown, but if/when it turns up I think it's safe to say it's probably competing for top five.
• Athena's likely a big contender (as I mentioned in another thread, I'd wager she's the strongest Ancient), but given how isolated her whole thing was, it's hard to get a good judgement.
• The Twelve weren't even on the table until Endwalker, and at this point I'd hardly throw them away out of hand; they're basically the only enemies the WoL has thrown everything at that were completely fine afterwards, and their domains certainly imply a pretty big footprint in terms of power, so the conversation has to at least acknowledge them. That said, we still have a lot of unknowns here, so it's hard to be definite until a couple more questions get answered.
• I ain't saying this is an immediate Big Boy in the whole conversation, but I wouldn't be surprised if Zeromus specifically wins 'most powerful thing alive at the point of time we fight it', given a lot of other competition is either dead or depowered.

[Carin-Eri]

IIRC its either Shinryu or Omega that takes the cake of strongest thing that the WoL has fought without any outside interference (and even then omega gimps itself by turning into human form outside of savage which isn't canon). Everything else was either weakened or we had a power boost from something.


Even with the things we got help with, I don't think ultima counts because we were hella weak back then. I'd be tempted to throw my hat in for Alexander because we fight a gimped Alexander just trying to fulfill a bootstrap paradox, so an alexander just trying to kill you could probably just pull a "kill your mum" on you.

Obviously full power bahamut gets a special mention, but I seem to remember an interview saying shinryu was actually stronger, but I might be misremembering.

Interesting point on Shinryu, as I recall reading something to that affect too.

Although I guess we never did really see what Shinryu was capable of, since Omega intercepted it, fought it to a stalemate of sorts, and then Zenos came along.

[Cleretic]

The thing about Shinryu as a contender is that, unlike with every other primal we've fought, we actually have something resembling a reliable metric for how much was sacrificed to make it: two First Brood dragon's eyes, specifically from Nidhogg. That's a very vague metric in most cases, but given our experience with dragons I actually can't say Shinryu was the strongest thing we fought without handicaps, because that by nature means that, at best, it's an equal match for Final Steps of Faith Nidhogg. (If not possibly weaker, since presumably it's got slightly less eye-battery juice.) And even with that, it presumably won't be holding that crown for very long, because we're soon going to fight Zeromus, which is also a being powered by two First Brood dragon's eyes, and then some.

I feel like if anything those handicaps count in the boss' favor in the case of this thread's base question, though: surely if we're looking at Nidhogg and Shinryu, both with theoretically equal power reserves, we should reasonably say that the 'stronger' of the two is the one we needed help to take down, right?

[Connor]

Pretty sure it’d be something stupid like Godbert or Julyan I’m afraid, lol. Or - ugh - Zenos * sick face emoji * lol

Wouldn’t Dynamis-Powered Meteion be a serious contender? It practically destroyed an entire universe by causing The Final Days, since based on what Pupu says during the Hildibrand quests even distant planets were heavily affected. I can’t think of any other entity in FFXIV that has power/influence on such a cosmic scale (again, besides something stupid like Godbert or Tataru lol).

Though, part of that reach was because Meteion isn’t a single entity but a collective spread across the cosmos, so it’s not exactly the ‘single most powerful entity’ when it’s abilities are based on a shared/collective consciousness