Yolo (Zodd) vs Verlux (Hino)

Yolo vs Verlux

Hino vs Zodd

Keeping in mind the judgment here is going to be proportionate to the claims raised and my evaluation of them, Verlux just threw out a lot more points of comparison between the two fighters, so his sections are generally longer because his responses were denser.

Yolo R1 read: Fine as a statpost, but I'd prefer if you engaged in a greater extent of comparison between Zodd and Hino, and a greater emphasis on attacking Hino's feats.

Zodd is a huge, fast fighter who is strong in comparison to Hino. Hino is not durable enough to sustain attacks from Zodd for long. Hino's material interactions are overstated and even at maximal interpretation fail to meet Zodd's power.

Yolo might be giving Hino a little more credit than is due with respect to the "his own strike redirected" feat, because the scan doesn't say Hino took his own strike redirected, it says he took a "thrust . . . loaded with both his own weight and his foe's." There is wiggle room there that Yolo could conceivably downplay. The better focus, though, is on the actual collateral of the feat.

Zodd's durability seems substantial, if understated on the singular blunt durability feat supplied. It is a little weird to be scaling Guts's blows using Dragonslayer to those from Golden Age, so I would use a different feat to scale Zodd's durability to Guts's blows.

Overall an improvement in substance in tone with respect to previous responses I've read.

Verlux R1 read: You are arguing your claims too forcefully for the evidence you supply.

Stat comparisons:

Strength/Striking: It seems a little weird to compare striking and then not link Zodd's striking in terms of the palm swipes Yolo supplied, but the point is taken that Zodd's highest end showings are headbutts (though isn't the same true of Hino?). I grasp the point about denting thick metal, but without any comparison to, say, a crater in stone or concrete, it seems as though we are not comparing like terms when talking about Zodd.

Durability: Good rebuttal to Yolo's characterization of taking his own strikes, noting Hino's state after the hit and the scale of the hit. I would not generally buy the "singular blunt durability feat" argument when the scaling seems clear to the Apostle form--Guts breaks x amount of material, but fails to cut through Zodd's horn with a swing, and Guts breaks x amount of material, and Zodd in a weaker form catches the blade in his flesh and against his forearms. I would sooner have attacked the scaling from Golden Age to Dragonslayer (though that is also rebuttable).

Speed: I don't know if this actually shows Hino "tagging" the arrow timer--it isn't a strike, it's some kind of air blade (Vacuum blade, from what I can gather?). Surely Hino has a feat of him directly striking the arrow timer in question at least once? Every feat so far is Hino failing to hit the arrow timer and getting hit in return, which is something you call out Zodd for in this section as well.

I also don't think I buy the attack on Guts's arrow timing scan. We see the shooter's distance from Guts, the arrow is in motion the panel before Guts's reaction is shown, and then we see Guts put his hand in the way of the arrow. That seems cut and dry to me.

In general I don't currently buy that Hino is massively faster than Zodd when there was no engagement here with other feats of his that were supplied--FTE, dodging swords close to him while in a weakened form, etc. It seems handwaved in favor of positing a feat that can certainly occur between opponents of equal speed, instead of one that cannot (thus excluding the interpretation from reasonability).

Skill: I don't think this was an honest appraisal of Zodd's skill, considering Yolo supplied several feats interpretable as skill (hundred years of combat experience or any look at what Zodd is actually doing in the exchanges with Guts supplied), and it more seems like you are introducing a line of argumentation that Yolo had yet to seriously engage in, rather than positing a solid, real advantage for Hino.

Shoulder-check antifeat: This is not my read of this feat, and it would be an antifeat for Zodd's weaker form, which is not part of the debate. Putting someone off-balance with a stagger is not the same as we are generally using "stagger" in relation to durability, where the stagger is the result of damage.

Seeping Savage Spirit: This is a potent striking feat. It also seems not to be the scan intended for this argument, which is about Hino's durability relative to his skeleton.

"Zodd's only striking relevant to the tier is his full-body tackle." This has not been demonstrated because there has been no engagement with Zodd's swipes other than to state Hino's striking is superior to them. This fails in my eyes because there has been no comparison between "denting thick iron cage" and "breaking stone or concrete"--you are not comparing like terms. It's significantly more intuitive at the scale of Hino's solar plexus hit, but not at that of the palm strikes.

Hino is close to Guts in speed, Guts has never been hit by Zodd's headbutt, Hino dodges. Generally checks out.

Hino consistently dodges 1/2 arrow speed attacks at close range, therefore he dodges Zodd. Going to remind you this tier is 50ms with no combat/striking speed attached to it, dodging ~50m/s strikes from 1m is a 20ms feat and you're arguing it takes attacks at the level of "tanks cratering a 2m+ diameter of thick iron bars with a smile" to faze Hino. Dude looks out of tier as argued.

Point 5: Why is "Hino is on the only one hit in an exchange with this arrow timer, and the arrow timer takes his eye" posited as an equal exchange? Back to Zodd, I get the full body charge point, which has been beaten into the ground, but there is again no engagement with the palm swipes.

You can't make the claims you are about Zodd's speed in comparison to Hino's when you haven't engaged with half the feats presented. You also can't say Zodd is not chaining hits together when we see multiple several-hits long exchanges with Guts, who I will reiterate has a linked arrow timing feat you failed to substantively attack.

The point regarding skill is taken, however, with regards to "completing what took another person 10 years in a single fight." I can believe that Hino can passively analyze Zodd's attack patterns or whatever, but that doesn't quite shore the gaps between your claims and what you evidence.

Again with regards to blunt durability, you have not proven the point that Zodd has no durability feats, you've sidestepped them by failing to engage with the scans provided and focusing on a point that does not actually exist (the shoulder-check).

If the air blades don't matter then why are they the scan given to prove Hino tags the arrow timer? Perhaps you meant to link a different scan.

I agree with regards to the cage feat analysis, it doesn't matter or affect Yolo's overall argument and few claims were made based off it.

The cage feat is not actually superior to any interaction Zodd ever encounters, that has not been demonstrated by any comparison between it and Zodd's feats, it's merely stated by you conclusorily with no evidence. I really don't like it.

Don't OOT warn Yolo when you're running "dodges strikes in 20ms, barely fazed by a hit that's strong for the tier" guy lol.

Overall there are strong points hidden in the response in some areas but on certain claims the evidence against is largely avoided rather than engaged with, and it lessens the strength of the response.

Yolo R2 read: Why did you drop durability as a point when you at the same time do not prove Zodd lands his first charge?

The Sword Saint is toying with Hino for the entire match, and even after Hino's amp is repeatedly and freely tagging him in exchanges such that Hino thinks he will die. Hino is significantly slower than the Saint.

Zodd scales strongly to Guts, and Guts is a consistent arrow timer at close ranges by any metric. Yolo objects to the shoulder charge on largely the same lines as I took issue with it. Guts and Zodd are generally equal and Zodd can tag Guts fine.

Zodd is effectively faster because he tags Guts, who is of comparable or superior speed to the Saint, whom Hino struggled to tag. It's almost certainly a stretch to compare Guts favorably to the Saint; Guts may be a consistent arrow timer, but the Saint's feat is faster than any supplied for Guts.

Zodd is skilled because he's been fighting for 100+ years and Hino has only been fighting for 25, almost all of which was while he was lobotomized. This doesn't directly engage on the point of skill, really, and the feat supplied of Zodd killing Wyald doesn't demonstrate skill on his part. No feats were supplied of Zodd fighting an equal (though they could've been via repeated interactions with Skull Knight, who is implied to be a powerful combatant).

The points in favor of Hino's skill are largely sidestepped by Yolo here rather than engaged with--there is an interaction that will occur in this fight between Hino's skill and Zodd's stats, and so far only Verlux has been the one to characterize that interaction, meaning the point is leaning toward him.

A strike at Zodd's level can knock the wind out of Hino, and Zodd throws these hits in a short enough time frame to consistently hit someone faster than Hino. I believe the point broadly but at least one of the scans is clearly Guts being ambushed by Zodd's blow, not Zodd landing the blow in the middle of combat.

Hidden in this section is a rebuttal to the "headbutt is easily dodgeable by Hino" point Verlux made, but it needs to be emphasized more heavily as such by specifically showing the headbutt is coming from a place Guts would generally be able to react to it, but it was too fast; the current scan supplied is Zodd emerging from a fireball, already in flight, mere feet from Guts.

In general, from this response I buy that Hino is slower than Verlux presented and that Zodd can land blows on him, but not necessarily that the opening headbutt, which hasn't been rescinded, lands.

Hino's interactions don't bode well for sustaining strikes or bites from Zodd. Why not mention Zodd's claws as implements capable of damaging Hino?

Overall, an alright rebuttal to a number of Verlux's points, but probably not the ones that matter most, especially when durability has been dropped entirely for some reason.

Verlux R2 read: Improvement in tone and evidence largely from R1.

Better tone at the beginning of this response and a generally accurate summary of points.

The claim made was not that Hino does not scale to the Saint whatsoever, but that Hino's scaling is such that he is markedly inferior in speed.

Linking one interaction in a combat does not demonstrate he is generally the same speed as the Saint, nor does it counteract the evidence already supplied by Yolo of Hino repeatedly failing to land hits on the Saint while sustaining hits himself.

I agree narrowly with this point: The Saint at the end of the fight is not holding back. However, this does not rebut Yolo's argument that up to some point before this, the Saint was holding back, toying with, or otherwise goading Hino to fight harder, which Yolo evidenced.

The characterization of the first feat of Zodd hitting Guts is not evidenced by any additional material, it's stated conclusorily without anything to change what has already been said.

I agree in part with Verlux's read of the second scan, but it doesn't totally rebut the idea that Zodd is tagging Guts The Arrow Timer in the context of this debate.

Agreed with regards to scan three.

I don't think it's a stretch based on the relative feats provided for each that Apostle Zodd is superior to Human Zodd in every stat, and asking Yolo to evidence this idea (which up to this point you have both implicitly taken as true) in what you both know to be the last response of the debate is poor form.

The conclusion does not follow that Zodd does not scale to Guts when none of the other scans of Zodd and Guts engaging in equal combat are rebutted.

**Conclusion:** With different or altered argumentation from Yolo or a better basis of the evidence for his claims, I could easily see Zodd defeating Hino in a short exchange, but as is, with Yolo totally dropping Zodd's durability as a point and failing to prove Zodd lands his first charge, Hino fewshots him.

**Verlux wins with Hino.**