Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4519633-20141022032431/@comment-25926288-20151210144811

I'll correct and modify myself.

I think magic comes in three categories, besides, skill and versatility: control, source, and speed.

Control: The  level of control is important as it ranges from tame to wild and erratic.

- Regina is more tame and studied, while Zelena is also studied, she's also a natural at it and her emotions are quite wild.

- This is how I see the "power" being displayed. Zelena can dish out randomly more than Regina can do, but consistently.

- But that could also be Zelen'a downfall as she's like a wildfire instead of a controlled flame.

Source

- Rumple was the DO and he was also immortal so, he probably had a geat stockpile of magic to pull from and could handle it all. Likewise with other immortal or magical beings. Sort of where Sorcerer is defined as being a source.

- Everyone else (barring Emma potentially), have the same source and the amount they could handle (varying slightly between person to person).

Speed

- As the show show, the quickest one to the punch tends to win. Zelena is arguably one of the fastest magic person. A nice point of comparison is fireballs. Zelena's can range from big, overflowing fireballs to a smaller and more forceful one, but she can whip them out faster than Regina.

- Rumple and Regina are roughly in the same boat. You can say acting choices, but Rumple and Regina are pretty slow casters. Zelena could outspeed Rumple, not only because she foresaw his attack, but because he's not as fast with it.

- Another point towards Zelena in speed is that The Brave Witch was casting the teleporting spell to poof Arthur and Zelena out, but Zelena outsped her and poofed behind her and so on.

Now I would go on and talk about range, but that's dependent and sort of broken due to Frozen. Merlin was shown to have great range as well as Maleficent and Ingrid. I'd say that they can pull from a greater pool of magic, while Ingrid and Elsa are the more unstable ones.