Seer vs. Sparker

[Oudeis he/him]

First, I think combat ability is the decider here. Whichever one of them can fight better would win, hands down. I think the advantage of one metal over the other is otherwise negligible.

 

If we DO assume absolutely equal fighting skill (which is so exact it's like calculating how far a tennis ball will go on a planet with no air) then I'm giving it to the Sparker for the following reason:

 

Allomancy burns metals at a flat rate.

 

Feruchemy lets you tap everything all at once.

 

However fast the Seer can react is one unchanging number. All the Sparker has to do is exceed that speed. With infinite resources, he can. If they're both of equal fighting skill, if they're both equal strategists, if they're both similarly armed, (if you throw the ball on a planet with no air), a Sparker can go faster than a Seer if he has to.

 

The fact that a Seer get to react BEFORE the Sparker moves, while the Sparker has to wait to see what happens, is an advantage, true. If they were limited to the same "amount" of power, I'd give it to the Seer. But that actually works somewhat against the Seer. You don't 'know' what's going to happen and then decide how to react, the books are clear that atium reacts for you. It does whatever action is in your immediate best interests, regardless of your own skill or abilities. It won't be able to lay a trap for a Sparker, but a Sparker will be able to force you into a position where suddenly you're in a corner and you atium realizes that in a few seconds, every option ends with your death.

 

Again, though, I think this battle would be so evenly matched, "power" wise, that I think it's inhuman for them to be so evenly matched in skill, and the better fighter would win.

 

Or, honestly, the Seer might have one advantage. They're so balanced that bad luck could easily sway the battle (a sweaty grip on a blade, stepping on a pebble, the wind rattling a shutter behind you and drawing your attention). Seers would be able to predict random events. Sparkers would not. So depending on your belief in chaos theory, if one random odd thing happened during combat it could give the Seer an advantage the Sparker lacks.

[aeromancer he/him]

I think you guys are all overthinking this - literally. Thinking is not the way to beat atium. Atium does not show all the possibilities of what the guy can do, but what he is going to do. Vin literally had two thrusts at once, allowing her to split. The sparker will intend to strike everywhere, but in reality he'll only strike once. Evidence: Vin stops thinking about her actions and just lets herself strike and responds to Zane with an  immediately changes using pewter-enhanced reflexes.

Edited September 17, 2013 by aeromancer

[happyman he/him]

I think you guys are all overthinking this - literally. Thinking is not the way to beat atium. Atium does not show all the possibilities of what the guy can do, but what he is going to do. Vin literally had two thrusts at once, allowing her to split. The sparker will intend to strike everywhere, but in reality he'll only strike once. Evidence: Vin stops thinking about her actions and just lets herself strike and responds to Zane with an  immediately changes using pewter-enhanced reflexes.

 

Nooooooo, I don't think so.  The way to defeat Atium is to provide a feedback loop.  If the Sparker can actually read the Seer and react well enough to make a feedback loop, I think he or she would partially have defeated the Atium.  If that is enough to tip the balance, I don't know.  Atium is a bit...mystical.

[Shardlet he/him]

But, Aeromancer's point highlights the process Vin went through to pull off the trick.  This process may well be easier for a sparker.  But even so, I don't think it would be easy for them and especially to do it a multiple of times in succession.  Not conclusive by any means.  But, food for thought.

[Oudeis he/him]

There are few people who are bringing up one very good point... the assumption that the sparker will accurately deduce the fighter's move. I even made this assumption in my own post. But atium is feint-proof; it doesn't react to what it thinks you will do, it reacts to what you actually will do. Almost every argument made in favor of the Sparker has assumed that every conclusion come to will be the right one. Like the DHS says about terrorists, we have to be lucky 100% of the time. They only have to be lucky once.

 

The seer might attack, the sparker would see it and react, splitting his shadow, maybe there's still time for the seer to react again, the sparker splits the shadow again... but before it gets so bad that it's a cloud, the sparker comes to a mistaken conclusion. Just "having more time to think about it" doesn't mean you make the right choice, or that you're getting perfect information. "It looks like he's shifting his weight to the left, but I can't be sure... there's a very good chance this is a feint, so I'm going to assume it is... if it is a feint, the real attack will most likely come from lower..." but the sparker can't know for sure with his imperfect information. The seer can, because his information is more perfect.

 

I still think it's close. Remember, in Vin's scenario, she's fought atium burners before. In fact, she's fought Zane-when-he-had-atium, twice already I believe. If we assume it's a seer as ready to fight a sparker as the sparker is ready to fight a seer, I'm starting to think the slight advantage would go to the seer.

 

Final thought... if their skill is even, low-skilled fighters will go to the seer, while high-skilled fighters will go to the sparker. If someone with as little practical combat experience as me were to fight someone like me, and he came at me with a feint, I would have no experience to draw on to know if it was a real, committed strike or not until it was too late. What I'm saying is, more combat experience would help the seer some, but it would help the sparker a lot, since it would make him/her far more likely to accurately interpret the seer's moves.

[Swimmingly he/him]

Of course, an Allomantic atium Feruchemical zinc twinborn is essentially omniscient in combat. Depending on how the limit to atium works, steel might be even more effective.

[angryman13]

game theory says the seer wins every fight because one side is getting perfect information about what the other is going to do while the other side can only guess and base his actions on what he sees. the only chance for the Sparker to win is if he or she can surprise the seer by splitting on the first pass (attack) and the seer is surprised by this and doesn't react fast enough. i do agree that it also depends on skill level if both fighters are low skill the seer should win 9/10 times while at higher skill levels i would say the Sparker would win 6/10 times.

 

this is just what i think based of what i know (which isn't as much as i would like) so if anyone has any comment or my info/reasoning is wrong feel free to tell me.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Think of it this way: If you had a twinborn (Allomantic atium, Feruchemical zinc) versus a simple Seer, who would win? The twinborn, almost certainly. If the arguments in favor of Feruchemical zinc's superiority on its own are correct, then the Sparker can essentially negate all of the Seer's advantages, while the Sparker is still in a very good position with his Feruchemical zinc.

[Claincy he/him]

The way I take it is that the seer will be able to react perfectly to one of the shadows he sees. However he will have no advantage in picking which one and won't have the mental speed to consider his decision. Operating on atium is more like running on instinct (albiet an instinct that is, in a normal situation, always correct.)

[Wonko the Sane he/him]

First of all, I agree with the previously made argument that for there to be any contest, the sparker's ability to react correctly must be superb. So for the purposes of this post, I'm going to assume that they're both perfect at it.

 

I believe that the entire battle hinges on the seer's (natural) reflexes. At their heart, both metals allow you to react to new information faster: zinc by reducing mental lag, atium by actually giving you the information earlier. With infinite mental speed, the sparker's reaction time is reduced to zero. So the question is, can the seer reduce their time to less than zero? or do their unenhanced reflexes limit them enough that even with advance warning, they can't react fast enough? Since all other factors are being held as equal, reaction time must be the deciding element.

 

On the subject of splitting shadows, I believe that while there would only be two shadows at any one time, the literally instantaneous reflexes of the sparker would ensure that old shadows disappear and new ones reappear at a blinding rate, which would still make the sparker difficult to track.

[Leonardus he/him]

I am going to put my money on the seer winning, I can see everything your going to do and react to it. if you defend I will see past your defense, if you move to attack I can dodge it even if you feint, because I know your going to be doing that. The sparker can only think about what he thinks your going to do and prepare/make a plan for it but he has no way of knowing exactly what I will be doing.

 

An example that occurred to me is when you're doing a particularly difficult math test and you have absolutely no idea of how to solve it, giving you more time to think about it, is not going to let you solve it. 

 

To put it simply being able to see the future with a 100% success chance is extremely powerful, Feruchemical zinc can help you counter it somewhat but since they are evenly matched in just about every attribute (intelligence, resources amount of atium/charges etc,) you will eventualy be overwhelmed by someone who knows exactly what your going to do.

 

Also Kurkistan of course the twinborn will win, he has an extra advantage in a (supposedly) balanced match.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Leonardus

[Kurkistan he/him]

@Leonardus

 

The point of my talking about a twinborn was to highlight the potential "atium-cancelling" ability of Feruchemical zinc. The Sparker isn't freezing time and thinking in a vacuum: he is able to observe the actions, facial expressions, and musculature of the Seer. This gives him insight into the future. Now how much insight or how many shadows that will create are in question. But we know that people can use the cues given off by atium-burners to change their own future actions, resulting in multiple future-shadows for the Seer to deal with.

 

The twinborn example, then, was positing that the Sparker will be able to create a multitude of future shadows from observing the Seer, then observing the Seer's reaction to the shadow created by the Sparker's planned reaction, then... This would effectively make the Seer's power worthless. In this case, the Sparker still has some degree of benefit from his power while the Seer gets none. This is effectively the same scenario as the Sparker being a fZing/Allomantic atium twinborn: neither gets any of atium's benefits and the Sparker still gets Feruchemical zinc's.