The Single Most powerful *thing* in FFXIV?

[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.