How strong is the Warrior of Light?

[Necrotica]

About the only things seeming to pose a genuine threat to the WoL are godlike and above entities at this point. ....And Zenos for some reason. It's going to be a rather jarring case of plot whiplash if we suddenly start encountering mortals stronger than them after everything they've fought. And, y'know, that whole being made up of most of Azem's essence thing.

Don't forget random old monk dude on the First. CAUSE REASONS!!!

[SentioftheHoukai]

Power levels are bullsh*t.

[Dikatis]

Aside from the tongue-in-cheek Doylist explanation of "as strong as the writer needs them to be", WoL is not Superman, but they're very, very strong by mortal standards. We see this in "In From the Cold" where WoL struggles to take down magitek weaponry they would've plowed through in their own body. The Buduga consider WoL as strong as a hundred of their finest warriors, and of the elite Xaela warriors who participate in the Naadam, only Sadu and Magnai are able to handle WoL in a 1-on-1 for any prolonged period of time.

WoL goes from being fatally wounded by Lahabrea at the Praetorium and needing Hydaelyn's direct intervention to survive to beating the snot out of Lahabrea and Igeyorhm at the Singularity Reactor. They also have more than enough steam left over to beat the fear of Hydaelyn into Thordan and the Heavens' Ward despite them empowering themselves with Nidhogg's eyes, the aether of the Warring Triad, and Lahabrea's leftover aether. Zenos, the nigh-invincible legatus who can single-handedly wipe out an entire squad of elite Doman samurai with one strike, considers WoL his one and only equal by the end of Stormblood. By the end of Shadowbringers, Zenos reiterates this opinion while casually batting aside Estinien and Gaius, who are themselves two of the greatest and most renowned combatants in the world. The Company of Heroes, who are all elite soldiers of fortune and heroes in their own right, all defer to the Warrior in the Melee DPS Role Quests. Fran, a major leader of the Dalmascan Resistance, says she would not wish the Warrior's wrath on her worst enemy, and the Bozjan Resistance says that WoL's herculean feats of heroism would be written off as fiction were it not for the many eyewitnesses of their exploits on the battlefield.

That said, the devs more or less say that WoL ALWAYS has backup with them regardless of how improbable it is (see fights like Ravana, the Knights of the Round, Tsukuyomi, and Innocence). So they're not soloing their fights. But for all the mocking, "Haha, do you really think you can solo a primal?" that the English localization does, Arenvald admits that he doesn't come close to WoL's fighting capabiltiy. In all likelihood, WoL could've beaten this hastily summoned Sri Lakshmi on their own were it not for the hostage situation. At Ala Mhigo they're leading an elite strike force into the palace, so they're not facing Zenos alone and later take on Shinryu with seven people for backup. And in every major fight since the SoS, WoL has backup with them or calls it in via Azem stone. The nature of dynamis also means WoL isn't showing the peak of their power at all times and only taps into their maximum potential during a truly desperate and/or emotionally charged fight (Ysayle also mentions this after their fight with Ravana, that this is the first time she's seen their full power since her duel with them at Akh Afah Ampitheatre).

So, in short, WoL would utterly clobber anything short of an elite veteran of the battlefield with little effort. But they're not invincible and can be shot dead with a gun even though they've caught a sword the size of an office building and deflected the blow (as confirmed in Stormblood Hildibrand quests). There are people who can keep up with and seriously challenge them but WoL will usually come out on top through crafty planning, pragmatism (bringing more people to a fight, exploiting a weakness with gizmos like the Omega Jammer), or shonen hero gumption.

[Cleretic]

The way I see the WoL, and it's something that generally carries looking at other evidence, is that at the point of Shadowbringers and Endwalker they're at the top of their particular style of combat (whatever that is), but not to a degree where it's beyond what your regular person can do. In superhero comparisons, we're not Superman, but we're probably Green Arrow.

That doesn't mean the WoL doesn't have to try--just because you can kick a tiger's ass doesn't mean you can let your guard down--and it doesn't mean they don't have equals when it comes to one-on-one combat; remember that just in ShB and EW we've had fights considered near-equal 1v1s with Ran'jit, Zenos, and multiple Bozjan duels, all of which were depicted as 'normal humans at the top of their specific game' (as long as we excuse the Gabriel and Hypertuned Dabog from the duels, who are their own thing). We fudge the numbers on what's considered 'normal human', we can also factor in fights like Elidibus in both Zenos' and Ardbert's bodies where it's not really clear what extra Elidibus is bringing to the table, but also that he's not exactly breaking many rules of what we'd consider possible anyway.

But, as Dikatis said above me and I want to really underline, the WoL has the greatest strength of all larger fights: Remembering that it doesn't have to be 1v1. To a degree it's almost not important how strong the WoL is solo, because using that as your only metric for their strength or chances of success would be like estimating the success of an entire football team solely on a single player.

[Vyrerus]

About as strong as a small pony, and that's rather strong, that is.

[AwesomeJr44]

However strong the current story needs us to be, and I'm not joking.

[Jandor]

I tend to think of my WoL as a sort of 'Captain Eorzea' in terms of strength. Among the best of the best when it comes to mortal fitness and fighting ability, with a knack for recruiting the right allies and coordinating them in the heat of battle, but not outright superhuman.

[Lustre]

WoL is the eorzean equivalent of a Strategic Nuclear Missile, you just point it at whatever and it ceases to exist

[RukoBoshi]

WoL is the eorzean equivalent of a Strategic Nuclear Missile, you just point it at whatever and it ceases to exist

If it doesn't work the first, you just keep doing it until does.
Worked pretty well with Zenos, Elidibus and Ranjit.

[Korbei]

Well we have Hydaelyns Ward/The Echo, multiple Job crystals, plus Dynamis now to add into the stew of our character. We certainly hold advantages over most adventures and side character of the story for sure. In the end though, we are basically as strong as the writer for the story wants us to be.

Actually very little of that matters. Hundreds or thousands of other adventurers also have the Blessing of Light. Including the Warriors of Light from the First. Most characters with the Echo are not particularly powerful by comparison.

The player character is, even before starting the game, 7 times rejoined. Your character is over halfway to being fully unsundered. This isn't true of all denizens of the Source. By the end of Shadowbringers, you are 8 times rejoined. Somewhere in the Thirteenth there may lurk a 9th.

Then add to that, the Blessing of Light, the collected crystals of light, soul stones. By modern mortal standards, the WoL is deific.