Round 2: spider vs. mik

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Bamf & His BAMFs vs. Black, White, & Scarlet All Over

Mik kicks off the debate by defusing a factor I went into this reading thinking would give spider a massive advantage - Nightcrawler's teleportation spam, and manages to turn it into a liability when he's fighting opponents who are fast and have precognitive capabilities. Strode's speed seemed extremely well-argued (and leaves me wondering if his author has some kind of fetish for good bullet-timing feats), Black Beetle and Ben are also put together with as much quality, and the contrast vs. spider's team's anti-feats is a good "my team fast, your team slow" if I've seen any. He then goes on to showcase his team's offensive capabilities, arguing that all projectiles involved on his team have relevant speed for the tier, a number of them have piercing relevant vs. spider's team, and a few others hit with relevant concussive force / have esoterics involved. A similar case of anti-feats vs. his own team's good feats are brought up for CQC, I don't really need to go into detail on why it's tight, and makes it seem like spider's team has to overcome an unsurmountable difference in stats. Strode is shown to have good endurance and durability, a collection of scans are given for Black Beetle's durability and regeneration, and Ben has a similar portfolio to Strode when it comes to endurance and durability. A nice touch to this is that Mik layers arguments behind arguments - he goes over how his team has good concussive, has good endurance/regeneration to fall back on if that fails, and has good speed to fall back if that fails too. Overall Mik has all his cards on the table here, I didn't feel like any descriptions of the scans here were off nor were there avenues Mik failed to explore.

Spider does a good spot-rebuttal of Mik's argument on Nightcrawler's teleportation, at least in regards to the sound he produces, and argues that due to positional knowledge (?) on the battlefield that senses are not an important factor to have. Moving on to speed, Spider argues that Frank has good reactions based on a close-range missile dodging feat (I don't think this feat is particularly great and Mik goes over issues with it later) + positional awareness (still not seeing where this came from) helps him evade attacks. He brings up mitigating context on a good number of Mik's Nightcrawler scans although he doesn't really ... showcase any particularly notable speed besides "appears instant" for the tier.  Danny Rand's speed comes off as the most legitimate, although the only scan that's mildly convincing is "a feat that is incredibly similar". He also argues Nightcrawler is bloodlusted - which doesn't seem to be something given by the stipulations and otherwise is only relevant for the tiersetter match. Spider concedes to most of the piercing points although counters with arguments that they won't be relevant for the fight - Iron Fist has good endurance, Nightcrawler teleports, and Mik's team doesn't have foreknowledge of War Machine's weak points. I don't think his rebuttals on Mik's argued points really change much of what Mik claimed (the 'metal container' rebuttal was particularly weak, not because it wasn't true but because even with one side removed spider's version of the feat is still extremely impressive). Most of Spider's retaliation to the ranged feats are "my speed good" besides the poison injections. Durability-wise spider goes into the same "this doesn't matter because my characters have good speed" for Nightcrawler and Iron Fist is shown to have meme concussive durability, and nothing particularly notable is presented for Frank besides the truck being bigger than Mik was selling it and an aftermath argument that wasn't linked to a scan. Anti-feats are then finally presented, spider argues that Stode is weak to the bullet spam that Frank produces and can be KO'd by damage his team produces. Ben gets ripped in half / mauled (?) by Frank, gets sliced by Nightcrawler, Iron Fist punches good.

Mik's R2 starts by picking at some of the more obtuse assumptions made by Spider, namely his team's knowledge of Mik's location, the location not giving LOS, Mik dumps more scans regarding Nightcrawler producing sound on arrival to contradict Spider's rebuttal, and showcases how knowledge helps give his team better initiative in the fight. He proceeds to somehow wail on War Machine's singular feat for an entire paragraph with scans on each claim, providing even more antifeats to stack on top of it. He brings up another weird assumption Spider made with his team being bloodlusted and disproves it, he goes on to elaborate and expand on previous points, such as Nightcrawler and Iron Fist's lack of applicable speed for this fight. It's an extremely nice touch that Mik limits himself to feats presented by Spider for a section of this discussion to re-compare feats and showcase how his characters still have massive advantages, as this also doubles as a soft rebuttal on Spider's arguments on top of the hard rebuttal Mik did above. He ends his R2 with a steelman that assumes that the battle goes according to Spider's ideal outlook of the match and how that still doesn't allow Spider's team to win.

Spider's R2 feels extremely out of place and detached from the rest of the debate, and reads as an attempt to backtrack from the three previous responses (which, considering how much the previous responses favored Mik it isn't too bad of a decision, I guess). It kicks off by giving the first objectively good feats for Nightcrawler presented thusfar in the debate for his resilience, speed, skill, and group management. Which I'd honestly buy if Mik hadn't already defused many of these claims with vast quantities of anti-feats and if Spider didn't kick off the debate with wincons that favor Mik's team of meme precog/sensors. Frank's final thoughts comes off as the weakest here and I'm still entirely unconvinced that he's fast after what Mik presented. It establishes that he has good movement speed, endurance, and has tank missiles/a flamethrower, none of which seem relevant to the wincons he or Mik put forward. Iron Fist is argued the best out of the three in this last hurrah, and even with what Mik has argued so far I think the new information makes him not dead weight, but Spider lost so much ground on Nightcrawler and Frank at this point that it's basically a 3v1 that has multiple combatants that still have relevant damage to him.

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If it wasn't already abundantly clear, Mik wins. Spider was far too reactionary with his arguments at first and didn't have many points that stood on their own two feet besides just rebuttals on Mik's arguments, and the standalone arguments he *did* make all read as extremely weak when compared to how well Mik elaborated on every detail of the fight and presented his advantages. Spider does make a bit of a comeback in his last argument where he suddenly decides to start posting his better feats but at this point Mik had already ran away with the debate and brought up far too many advantages for Spider to fully tackle rapid-fire in a single comment.