L_M Classic (UTW Tournament) Grand Finale. Feverish V Puck

Thanks to Puck for a great debate. It seems that the outcome of this battle rests almost entirely on whether Sentry can pull off his attack. Puck apparently assigns ultimate authority to the Marvel wikia's power grid but seeks to disregard all its other content. Most of my points that he has contended come straight from this source. Puck begins the previous round, omitting the "it is nonetheless conceivable that" from the start of the "Sentry's powers are practically limitless" quote and then says "Marvel themselves obviously don't agree with the claim". This quote along with many others that Puck disputes is from the same Marvel Wikia and as Puck himself says: "The wiki is constructed from Marvel themselves... Sentry as defined from Marvel is tournament legal, clearly not street level and has abundant powers and I don't have an issue with that at all" Puck states several times that Marvel support him and that my arguments are unsupported but let's look at some of the quotes I've already used and others that support them, all from the very source that Puck places faith in: >"Though most of his powers and their limits are still unknown, the Sentry has been said to have the power of a million exploding suns" >"Depending on how mentally stable he is, he could be powerful enough to fight off Cosmic Threats." >"The Sentry blasted through nine levels of the complex carrying Carnage into space, where he ripped the alien symbiote in half" >"Sentry engages the God of War. After a short skirmish where the Sentry has the upper hand, he rips Ares in half from head to toe to the shock of everyone on the battlefield. Osborn then sends the Sentry to battle Thor. Sentry gains the advantage in his fight against Thor" >"His unrestrained power overloaded the Absorbing Man." >"The Sentry can generate light, heat, force, and other forms of energy as powerful blasts and explosions of a yellow color... The maximum power of these blasts is unknown." >"The experimental serum creates a phase-shift in his molecules, causing each atom to step an instant ahead of the current timeline" >"The Sentry can react at superhuman speeds exceeding several times the speed of Sound. Sentry was able to catch a sniper bullet from an advanced Skrull gun" >"Utilizing his superhuman speed to fly far above supersonic speeds (above mach 4). He has demonstrated traveling to the Sun and back in a matter of moments which would require him to fly at speeds faster than light" All from: http://marvel.wikia.com... I have not tried to make Sentry move FTL in this battle and to suggest otherwise would be a straw man. I pointed out that it was an ability he has, even if he has never demonstrated it within Earth's atmosphere. As described in the previous round, Sentry does not need to cover any great distance to launch his attack and the light energy his molecules are composed of will of course travel at light speed. Sentry reacting instantly with molecules ahead of the timeline, flying a few hundred feet vertically at Mach 4 and his energy blasting a few miles at the speed of light will clearly take much less than a second. Puck's logic seems to be that Sentry is perfectly legal, as long as he is incapable of pulling off his attack. If judges agree with me (and the weight of Marvel evidence, excepting the strangely inaccurate power grid) then Sentry somehow becomes "banned level". Puck seems to think that the list of banned characters indicates some kind of specific power level that can't be exceeded, however it's clear that these are just a list of banned individuals rather than a basis on which to judge others. The only excluded power level is apparent omnipotence, which we know Sentry doesn't possess. Puck claims that Marvel wikia doesn't place Sentry on a "level" with any banned characters in this tournament, however it does explicitly state: "it is nonetheless conceivable that Sentry's powers are practically limitless, and may even rival those of the Thor's, Silver Surfer's and Phoenix's." Silver Surfer is of course banned from this tournament but Sentry clearly isn't. Puck says: "Omnipotence is clearly not the defining factor given the actual banned list." Tournament organiser L_M disagrees here: "By god, I mean people who are seemingly omnipotent. Essentially, people like Dr. Manhattan or the Living Tribunal or anyone who cannot really be defeated." http://www.debate.org... ___ Puck: "Beast has grabbed Spiral. Beast is talking. Next panel, Spiral is gone. There is no transition." This makes no sense. A transition is a change from one stage/situation/event to another. For the two panels to be connected and on the same timeline, there must clearly be a transition from one to the other. I don't think many people would speak five syllables in less than a second, probably closer to two, so as Beast clearly speaks before Spiral teleports, it seems that her ability will take at least a second to activate, by which time she will be cooked by Sentry. The comicvine link states: "Spiral casts many of her spells by dancing or using her swords, the more complicated the spell the more elaborate her dance is." http://www.comicvine.com... This suggests that Spiral can't generally activate her abilities instantly, contrary to Puck's claim. Teleporting herself out of a dangerous situation is clearly a much simpler spell than teleporting a group of characters (especially one that she is not used to working with) to a specific location. Remember that with zero prep time, Spiral and her team mates will just be materialising in New York. She will have to take stock of her surroundings and team-mates and make the decision before casting her spell. The near-instant attack of the time-phased super fast Sentry will already have taken place. Time travel is illegal in this competition and travelling through a "timeless dimension" to circumnavigate the normal timeline would certainly qualify as such. ___ Puck claims that Sinister and Engineer could both shield his entire team, but offers nothing to suggest that either could perceive the threat and erect strong enough shields quickly enough to save the team. Again the reaction times of these characters and the time it would take to perform such actions need to be weighed against the speed of the Sentry. I see no indication that either character's shields would be strong enough for a million exploding suns anyway. Other arguments seem fairly irrelevant once the solar megablast has hit and I guess this battle really does just come down to the speed and power of the Sentry vs. the responses of Puck's far slower team. Spiral won't be in any condition to teleport anything when her particles are blowing in the New York wind and Engineer won't be unleashing any nanites tonight. The edge in speed that Monkey and Spawn have will easily be enough to sweep up the remains of any hard-core natural survivors like Deadpool. Thanks again to Puck and also to the judges, anyone else reading and of course L_M himself, wherever he may be. Pro.