Twilight has a lot of spells at her disposal, but MLP’s genre and rating prevents her from using any of them as they will be too violent and inconvenient to the current plot.
@Drasvin
Discord being the one handing out phenomenal, cosmic power would make for a great plot twist. What would he ask for in return? Seeing Glimmer making a fool out of Twilight might have been sufficient payment by itself. (•̀ᴗ•́)൬༉
The problem with the argument that Twilight has to use unwieldy magical “knock-out” punches forgets one simple fact. Twilight has a large repertoire of spells besides the bare bones polar rays and telekinetic pushes. She has a spell that severely limits the actions of ponies affected by it, and it takes very little time to cast. She has can create and transform matter itself, which I would hazard is not something a basic force field spell could block. She also has some potent mind affecting spells, including spells that alter a subject’s very nature or force a subject to desire something at the expense of lucid thought or moral considerations. She can also summon living beings from the aether, although the only entity Twilight has thus far been able to summon was a crummy para-sprite. My point is that Twilight has options, but she almost always defaults to the magical equivalent of jabs and straights. Throw in some hooks, uppercuts, and body blows Twilight gosh darn it.
@Pinkbeardedpony
Not sure why Glimmer has such a large reservoir of magical power, other than she’s supposed to be a magical prodigy on par with Twilight. If she did make a Faustian deal for power, my bet is on Discord. He might be good, but he’s not above messing with ponies for a good laugh.
As for Twilight’s combat skills, as the BP reminded me, she has past experience of her faster, weaker attacks having little to no effect, forcing her to resort to slower, but more powerful attacks. While she certainly should study more on combat tactics, it’s possible most material on the subject of magical combat focuses on lighter, faster strikes, which would conserve stamina and be harder to dodge. If that is the case, Twilight might not have much choice than to make things up as she goes along.
I know I am a broken record about this, but will someone please explain how Glimmer has such a huge reservoir of magical power? She is fighting Twilight to a standstill while levitating herself and maintaining a huge degree of mobility to boot.
Glimmer sucker-punched Twilight in their first encounter, which allowed her to prevail. Twilight had her number in their second duel, which was a stand up fight. Then the finale comes out, and suddenly Glimmer has gotten the power up of all power ups. She can levitate with such little effort that she might as well have continuous flight with hummingbird levels of mobility. Her polar rays are actually strong enough for Twilight to struggle to negate.
I don’t care if they wanted to make Glimmer untouchable for the finale. But they darn well should have given us an explanation for her new god-tier magical prowess. I like to think that Glimmer stumbled across an elder entity of cloying malevolence and frightening power while she was wandering around that cave system (at the end of the second episode of this season). Being a crazy, wild-eyed mare, she conversed with it amiably and struck a Faustian bargain for her absurd magical upgrade.
Lastly, for goodness sake Twilight. I know you are a pacifist with a merciful heart, but could you please spend a week reading up on the finer points of magical duels and combat in general. Ponies are hardly war-like creatures, but I am confident that a few texts exist that could help you become competent at smiting the monsters and madmares that crawl out of the woodwork every so often and threaten your subjects. Somepony has to pick up the slack now that Celestia is getting “Worfed” consistently, Luna can’t be asked, and Cadance is not always in the immediate vicinity.
@Drasvin
It should be noted that Twilight has tried to use less telegraphed attacks and it tends to backfire. In Canterlot Wedding, her weak attack just caused her spell to rebound, against Tirek he pretty much shrugged off her non-charged beam (noteably after that one, she charged up the rest), and now against Starlight, her shield easily blocked her multi-shot attacks.
Twilight’s best bets have been shields and charged attacks.
Maybe the reason her attacks are so telegraphed is because she seems to typically use attacks spells with a big charge-up. Like a boxer that solely uses punches with a big wind up. Generally going to be devastating if it connects, but rarely connects due to the obvious wind-up.
And I can kinda see what Twilight’s logic in doing that would be. If her attack connects, with ends the fight quickly. If the fight ends quickly, she can get to handling the aftermath of the fight that much sooner.
@Poptard
To be fair, much of that tends to be because her sources are bad. Still, you make a good point. Plus, fate degrees that whenever she studies a spell to solve a problem, it won’t work.
She also tends to pursue certain research and finds information that is both numerous, detailed, and rather irrelevant to current issues, like history on Griffins that is several hundred years out of date or incredible detail on Yak cultural history without picking up that it’s insulting to imperfectly replicate Yak culture.
@Starswirl
I’m giving advice for Twilight on how to get gud, not theorizing how Starlight won. To me, it seems like it was a battle between professional amateurs, ponies with incredible magical talent but no formal combat training.
@Poptard
Or research into her enemy. Starlight had been stalking Twilight for a while now, it’s possible she pieced together what Twilight’s generally capable of.
Never seen one unicorn with so much HAX and DEM on her side without some type of power up or explanation, not even Twilight on her best day. Really bugs me to no end.
