Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20170429134340/@comment-25926288-20170530233332

I do get some arguments that perhaps we could focus mostly on feats (although that's not that fair). If we assume raw power hasn't changed and that skillset is sort of implied in feats, it does lead to slightly weird things.

Example: Jafar and Amara fought. Both blasted telekinesis at each other (via mirror shards from Amara). Amara was clearly winning before Jafar found a way to distract her. Thus we can say for a certainty, Amara outpowered Jafar, despite it appearing that Amara had roughly an equal skillset.

We see Merlin do an energy blast battle with Dark Swan. For some reason dialogue implies Merlin won based on experience, but that doesn't make logical sense. Emma was also the strongest Dark One (before Rumple) afawk. In a pure power play, that would mean that the Dark One power is simply weaker than Merlin's despite having the same source; light magic and dark magic of equal quantity has light trump dark. If we take experience and skill into it, then we have a few too many variables to confirm the power play or the alternative: assuming Dark Swan is more powerful, skills can trump power.

We saw Emma and Gideon face a creature of Fiona's making. Rumple alone could defeat it, meaning he was likely on par or beyond her power. (Emma and Gideon really had little to no effect.)

So, with Zelena of old. Zelena and Emma have a weird relationship. Both pass the mirror threshold. (Note: They had the perfect time to show that Regina could see across worlds on her own power, but they made it be Fiona (which we already could imply that since she's above Zelena's power). The issue is that we don't have enough thresholds for tiers. Zelena never engages in real combative feats with Emma that much. The only thing we know is that Emma blasted a protection spell and Emma didn't break it, but we don't know what kind of protection spell it was. If we assume it was personal handwave, then Emma would be weaker? I don't think we've seen someone stronger struggle with some quickly put up protection spell. If we call that the Easy-Protection (Handwave) spell test then,

Emma < Zelena (due to 5x21's Emma's lengthy attempt to break the protection spell)

Cora < Emma (due to 2x16, Emma taking time to break Emma's protection spell)

Emma > Regina (due to 4x10's Emma easily breaking Regina's containment spell)

If so, then it'll go Zelena, Emma, followed by Regina, etc.

Rumple is a force to be reckoned with but he doesn't really use it to any significant degree. We barely know how powerful the regular Dark One is. XD