Xiaolin Showdown-verse Strategy Guide

How to be OP in Xiaolin Showdown

Once again I would like to remind that the tiers I'm presenting here are not the level of power the characters possess but the relative scale of threat a character can present, how far their influence would extent in the verse. Another way to think of it is if you dropped x character in the verse, how far would they be able to bring under their control. So a city scale threat is a character who can bring a city under their influence and a planetary scale threat is a character who can bring a planet under their influence.

Local Scale Threat:

This is the general level of tough fighters in the verse including the Xiaolin Dragons when they were just apprentices (into season 2 they are kind of this as well, though they can grow stronger with Dragon x Kumei Formation) and the villains that are roughly comparable like Jack Spicer, Katnappe, Tubbimura, and so forth. Jack Spicer is seemingly the weakest of these, though he was able to survive the explosion of the top of a mountain. In addition the characters scale to being below but not massively below Evil Dojo who sunk the island of Atlantis and was going to begin 1,000 years of darkness (well 962 years, but 1,000 sounds more ominous). Given that the energy of the sun that hits the Earth every second this is a likely megaton feat as well. 

Speedwise this scale has MHS+ speeds scaling from the Serpent's Tail which could quickly traverse half the entire Earth, and which even Tubbimura could easily keep pace with.

Outside of stats this scale has very high level of skill in combat, to the point that they can impress and even outperform warriors like Chase Young who has spent well over 1,000 years constantly fighting and training, and Omi was able to impress Chase Young in skill and even bested him by creating a new martial arts move on the spot. 

The verse also has numerous Shen Gong Wu, magical artifacts that grant various abilities with the most notable of them being things like: attack reflection, portal creation, time travel, knowledge of anything in the universe, lightspeed travel (and one that travels faster then anything including the prior lightspeed one), invisibility, intangibility, atomization and fear manifestation.

Now granted on any occasion, a fighter is only likely to have 1 or 2 on their person, however the sheer variety of effects making fighting in the verse very unpredictable, and hard to find strategies to counter. However there are a few weaknesses I've noticed in the verse.

Firstly there's stealth. Stealth seems to be very effective in the verse; for instance Jack's Robo-Kimiko infiltrating the Xiaolin Dragons pretending to be the real Kimiko, Evil Dojo tricking Omi by using his body elasticity to slink at the top of the cage, and numerous usages of the Shroud of Shadows (invisibility). Enhanced perception is actually not very strong in the verse, with the most notable being the Falcon's Eye which allows sight through solid objects.

If a direct fight is needed, mobility will be the name of the game. Katnappe after obtaining the famous Golden Tiger Claws actually combined mobility with minor stealth very effectively and got the upper hand against 3 of the 4 Monks with relative ease. A stealth + mobility build, maybe with some manipulation would likely be very helpful.

That said the sheer number of wu means that for the most part so long as they have it, a counter can usually be found, including one wu that traps enemies in a supposedly impenetrable orb that can transfer their powers to the user of the wu, meaning basically any defensive strategy that relies on tanking or resisting abilities is a really bad idea. One could always disable use of the wu with any kind of magical silence effect but even better would be taking them for yourself. Abilities like telekinesis would also be really effective as it would allow for quickly taking the wu from their hands before they can use them. Now granted, without mind-reading the counter won't be able to activate them since they won't the name of the wu, but it will for the time permanently take away their ability to use that wu, and again most opponents in the verse usually only carry 1-2 wu on them at any time, if that. 

So to get into counters, the first counter is a pretty raw power approach for a direct fight. This would be

Tatsumaki, the Tornado of Terror from One-Punch Man. 

As a premier superhero of the OPM Universe, Tatsumaki would be on the upper end limit of the XS-verse's power, given she stopped 35 city-busting bombs, counteracting their kinetic energy with her telekinesis. However this was casual and is a form of direct attack done with her mind meaning in a fight with the XS-verse lower tier fighters, she could just mentally force their limbs to break at a range or otherwise incapacitate them.

Tatsumaki is also a highly mobile fighter, due to her skilled flight mixed with her wind manipulation, meaning she would be extremely hard to pin down.

Tatsumaki has the ability to control technology with her mind as she used her psychic power to change the tv channel. Would this allow her to control the wu? I don't know, but at the very least, she could telekinetically control them and separate them from her opponents. 

Tatsumaki also has the ability to manipulate chi and auras, which going by the sun chi lantern could make her very powerful in the XS-verse by turning off the Dragons' elemental powers. 

The only real concern with Tatsumaki is that she might possibly be overwhelmed. While this seems unlikely given her ability to maintain distance and her sheer range/mobility advantage, if a more stealthy approach is wanted

Spectra would do really well.

Most DP Ghosts would do really well at this range really. Invisibility and intangibility give an immense advantage in the verse as it gives immediate stealth and extreme difficulty in being affected. Even if the serpent's tail + reversing mirror combo was used to make Spectra physical, she could simply turn intangible again. She can also fly and likely overshadow (possess) people meaning she could simply use their own power against them.

Spectra herself is also durable enough to survive an attack meant to tear ghosts like her atom from atom, meaning she would likely be able to survive a number of hits even if she was caught out in physical form.

Spectra is also a fairly good manipulator and could simply pretend she's a normal human to manipulate them, as well as her ability to gain power via misery and despair meaning she could grow much stronger around people like Jack Spicer who comically suffers every other day, or just by observing the Monks training. And with no ghost sense, the Dragons would have no reason to even suspect her.

However for an even more versatile and dangerous strategy I know someone would be even more dangerous

Candeloro, Witch form of Puella Magi Mami.

Candeloro should easily scale to weaker witches which maintained city sized barrier. Now granted the XS-cast will probably not be too fazed by the barrier itself, given that every Xiaolin Showdown warps the surroundings (if not quite as extremely, usually). However Candeloro's other powers are the main problem.

Candeloro is naturally invisible, as is all witches against non-magical enemies. In XS only those with Heylin magic would likely be able to see Candeloro. Beyond that witches have the ability to control minds with the infamous Witch's Kiss, even brainwashing entire fortress. They have also demonstrated reality-warping against non magical enemies inside their barriers.

You might think the lack of intangibility means the XS-verse might get lucky and hit her by accident, but Candeloro can also create legions of Du Polignac, Candeloro's familiars. Her enemies would likely think these creatures were causing the reality-warping surroundings. It helps that she is a highly mobile entity, with her flight and relatively small size as well as MHS speed by scaling. She can also theoretically reflect any lucky ranged attack with gun of aegis.

Mami and Candeloro's specialty is her ribbons, threads not even the city level Homura was able to break. She is so good at this, she can create whole copies of herself with ribbon. These ribbons could snatch the wu away from her enemies before they even notice the attack was coming due to their razor thin size and their speed. These ribbons could easily bind the XS-low tiers. This is in fact Candeloro's most basic strategy as the witch's desire is to make others join her for a tea party for all time, and even her many familiars can create these ribbons to bind Candeloro's enemies.

City Scale Threat:

This is the tier of the experienced fighters, including the Base Xiaolin Dragons by season 3 (they can also reach this tier in season 2 with Dragon x Kumei Formation). This tier is the fighters whose power is comparable to the Shen Gong Wu in their own domain, and in fact one fighter of this tier, Mala Mala Jong, is a Heylin Demon made out of wu. 

This tier is planet level scaling from Mala Mala Jong who was stated to be able to destroy the world, and being able to compete with the large planet level high tiers. In speed they should be low ftl from not being blitzed by beings like Chase Young who view wu like the Fancy Feet, who can move faster then anything including logically the Showdown Transformations which can propel an environment at faster then light, as toys.

Similar counters as before are likely to be useful here; stealth, manipulation, mobility, range and disarming tactics. Basically tactics involving staying out of range of melee fighting and hax wu abilities. 

One tactic that seems like it could work relatively well that starts to become a bit more common by this tier is time manipulation abilities. There is only one known wu that manipulates time; the sands of time, and it only allows for time travel. More esoteric time manipulation would likely be hard for this verse to fight. And that's the key to my first counter

Castor and Pollux from God of War. 

Castor and Pollux are faster then Champions of Zeus and so are confirmed to be faster then light by word of god. 

Now Castor and Pollux's raw power is drastically less then Mid Tier XS-characters, and are more on par with XS low tier characters. However they can ignore durability with the amulet of Uroborus which is really the main reason why Castor and Pollux would be so broken.

The Amulet of Uroborus allows for the control of time, including slowing it down to outright stopping it as well as age-ing or de-ageing anything in the area. This would be monumentally broken against the Mid Tier XS cast as they are clearly not ageless entities and could be aged backwards until their birth or aged forward until their death.

It also means trying to attack would not work very well. Not only can he fly and teleport, but he can slow down time or even stop it in his area meaning getting an attack through on him would be ridiouclously hard, meaning all he needs to do is shoot one age manipulating blast, time stopped or normal, and it would beat any enemy on this scale. Even Mala Mala Jong which likely would not die from being aged could be de-aged to being basic Shen Gong Wu again.

It might seem due to Pollux grotesquely being part of Castor that at the very least Castor would have no stealth and be an obvious target, however Castor usually keeps Pollux concealed under his tunic giving him a very low level of stealth.

For a combatant with a bit more flair

 

Magneto, master of magnetism would work well.

Magneto has planetary stats with his magnetism, able to shift the entire planets electromagnetic field and stop planetary destroying projectiles. While his speed is slower, his reaction speed is easily high enough to make it so he doesn't get blitzed.

The interesting thing here is that a lot of the Shen Gong Wu are made out of metal meaning that Magneto could simply zip them to his hand, including mostly notable the Emperor Scorpion which controls the others. And Magneto's electromagnetism range is planetary meaning he can simply call all the metal wu to him immediately, including ones that are currently dormant.

In terms of stealth, Magneto can bend the light (electromagnetic waves) around him making himself invisible. Magneto also has a number of one-shot moves even at planetary range, as he can create a near absolute zero cold magnetic vortex, can warp the electromagnetism in peoples' brains, can control the iron in peoples' blood...this would basically one-shot all the verse's mid-tier fighters.

Magneto can one-shot the mid-tier fighters in the verse from a planetary range away, while remaining invisible, and able to immediately take all the metal wu in the verse, including dormant ones, and including the Emperor Scorpion which can control all the wu and bring them to him.

For a semi hybrid style using spacetime manipulation like Castor and Pollux as well as raw power and one-shot attacks

you could use Shadow the Hedgehog.

Shadow the Hedgehog is comparable to Sonic who beat Perfect Chaos after absorbing four of the chaos emeralds, just one able to split the entire world and defeated ultimate Emerl who was stated to be a planetary threat. Shadow also scales to Sonic's speed and Sonic has stated that lightspeed is not even a challenge to him and has numerous ftl feats. This would make Shadow comparable to XS-mid tiers in terms of power, however this is only Shadow's normal state. He wears two inhibitor rings that allow him to rapidly grow in power to the point that he blitzed and annihilated an entire army of Mephiles the Dark, just one of whom was comparable to Base Shadow. While this doesn't bring Shadow to any higher level and so it doesn't break the power limit, it would give him a strong raw stats advantage.

But that's just starting. Shadow possess very potent chaos control, manipulation primarily of spacetime. This allows him to teleport and even time travel giving him unmatched mobility for the verse. Shadow can use chaos control to send opponents to different places in spacetime or even outside of spacetime and sealing them which would be a one-shot against almost anyone in the verse.

Shadow can also paralyze opponents with his chaos spears and he can chuck a lot of them at once, meaning he could cluster any group of opponents he runs into with paralyzing spears that at the very least gives him plenty of time to do other things.

Shadow can also use his chaos control to slow down or stop time, meaning he would get similar advantages to what was mentioned above, being able to outmaneuver the XS Mid Tiers casually. 

Planetary Scale Threat:

Here we get into the high tiers and the top tiers of XS.

The High Tiers include characters like Chase Young, Hannibal Roy Bean, Master Monk Guan and the Season 3 Xiaolin Dragons using the Wudai Orion Formation (and arguably Raimundo at EOS). Chase Young viewed Shen Gong Wu like the Fancy Feet giving FTL speed and the Lunar Locket which can move the moon at relativistic speeds yielding 86 yottatons (Large Planet Level) as mere toys and with a single strike split the Earth at relativistic speeds also requiring large planet level energy. The other high tiers are comparable to him. The high tiers are even more skilled in general then the Mid Tiers (in general).

The Top Tiers include the Great Heylin Witch Wuya and the Legendary Xiaolin Grandmaster Dashi. Wuya was powerful enough to warp the surface of the sun, requiring low stellar levels of power at least and Dashi was superior to her able to defeat her in pitched conflict. In fact Dashi created all the Shen Gong Wu with small parts of his power.

A lot of the prior strategies don't really work as well here. Primarily the big difference is range. Chase casually affected the entire Earth and Wuya affected the Sun from Earth, an entire astronomical unit away. Range isn't really helpful anymore and without any benefit of staying at range, mobility becomes significantly less helpful. Disarming is also useless now as characters don't rely on wu, both literally and symbolically. Dashi if he needed to could literally just make a new wu same way he made a new puzzle box just by willing it into existence.

I think stealth and manipulation might still be useful. Dashi notably trusted Omi based, according to him, on Omi having an honest face. A character who doesn't look intimidating visually or who is a good manipulator I think could maybe manipulate the top tiers Dashi and Unsealed Wuya.

For a little bit of that mixed with general raw power I would suggest

The Eastern Supreme Kai from DBZ would probably work well.

Eastern Supreme Kai is relatively young for a Supreme Kai, having only recently been an apprentice to the Old Supreme Kai. He also acts somewhat young correspondibly, being more prone to expressing emotion and being unstoic. However as a Kai he actually is millions of years old, with both lots of intelligence and combat experience meaning he would have a good chance of manipulating.

In terms of raw power, First Form Freeza was able to casually destroy Namek with low stellar levels of energy and any one of the Supreme Kais could casually one-shot Freeza meaning the Eastern Supreme Kai should have a power advantage, though not to my knowledge be over the power restriction. He is also monumentally superior to Beginning of Z Piccolo (Buu Saga Piccolo claimed that Shin was dimensions stronger then him) and Beginning of Z Piccolo created a casual ki beam that traveled to the moon in a few seconds at most meaning near-light speed. Eastern Supreme Kai should likely be in the lower FTL range meaning that he should be comparable to superior in speed.

In addition, Shin has enhanced sight capable of seeing across the universe due to being a Supreme Kai as well as a teleportation that is superior to even the instantaneous movement. This means Shin can teleport in and out to quickly attack them without them realizing what happened, even if his singular attack does not one-shot. He could also teleport them through dimensions though this wouldn't be a one-shot against Dashi since Dashi could recreate the ying-yang yo-yo which can allow for inter-universal travel. 

Shin also has telekinesis strong enough to even restrain Gohan, meaning he could likely use it to temporarily paralyze even a top tier from XS meaning that even if they would be able to threaten him he could quickly paralyze them with his telekinesis.

While Shin would be a good choice, since he could probably win via raw power and mundane but strong techniques, there are beings that would do even better with lower stats just due to broken abilities. Shin would likely overpower but he could get haxed and lose. While XS has offensive haxes, there isn't actually a lot of counters to defensive haxes. A character I think could exploit it well

would be El Tigre. 

El Tigre is comparably powerful to Sartana of the Dead who one-shot El Tarantula. El Tarantula in fact is an old retired supervillain whose clearly not a threat, yet he was able to steal the moon at relativistic speeds which would put El Tigre easily in the yottaton, large planet level range similar to XS high tiers. He's also comparably fast to a laser which could travel to the sun in seconds requiring speeds 500 times the speed of light giving him a notable speed advantage against anyone in the verse.

El Tigre also possesses stealth and manipulation abilities that would hypothetically allow him to trick and manipulate Dashi and Wuya. El Tigre has stolen from and sometimes lied and manipulated his papi and grandpapi White Panthera and Puma Loco, who are a high-ranking superhero and supervillain respectively, both of whom have plenty of experience with criminals and presumably deducing liars yet he has shown the skill to manipulate both of them if need be. 

In addition while his raw strength probably would not be enough to seriously harm Dashi and Wuya, only minorly damage them, his claws due to their incredible sharpness act as a serious force multiplier and especially if used on a vulnerable part of the body, like the eyes could kill them, or at the very least blind them which would be a near death sentence for them as El Tigre would be able to zip around their blinded selves faster then they could catch and he could damage them with lots of claw slashes or even stay at range using his retractable chain claws from over 120 meters away or using the spinning armodillo to increase his strength via charging his energy from leaping up and falling into a kick and hitting their head.

Also El Tigre has a powerful defensive hax, the ancient tiger spirit which will automatically restore him even from death. The only way the verse would really have to be able to stop him would be for Dashi to kill him and trap the ancient tiger spirit in a puzzle box. However he would have no knowledge that was going to happen and if El Tigre blinded him he would have no idea when it was even happening even if he did luckily hit El Tigre. 

However Dashi does theoretically have the capacity to beat El Tigre. While I think El Tigre would win due to his stealth and manipulation, his raw stats focused through force multipliers like claws and kicks, and his hax/abilities, there is a character I think would do even better since theoretically speaking so long as the character wants to fight, it would be impossible for them to lose this fight.

Cure Happy from Smile Pretty Cure.

Cure Happy's final form is comparable in power to the massively larger then the Earth True form of Emperor Pierrot, who was able to obliterate the Earth in his first form. Cure Happy's final Angel form is itself far larger then the Earth. Cure Happy is also comparable in speed to Cure Marine who near the beginning of Heartcatch Pretty Cure was able to outpace light from a camera to save Cure Blossom. Statwise she's about comparable to the High Tiers of XS, maybe a bit less in terms of power since it wasn't as casual. 

Cure Happy has a number of abilities like creating light dimensions, danmaku styled multi-attacks using magic lasers, creating holy lights, and forcefields. This all would be helpful but not especially broken. However her ultimate power is beyond this.

Cure Happy's faith in fairy tales and happy endings was so strong that she actually changed the plot, the storyline in-universe, restoring all the fairy tale worlds to the happy endings that the Bad End Kingdom changed it from. Cure Happy can alter plot, the metafictional destiny. The XS-verse doesn't actually have any destiny manipulation to counter or any chaos manipulation or anything that would remotely counter this. It's spacetime manipulation as mentioned earlier is a bit rudimentary given it's tier meaning there would be very little that could be done to protect against this. It's a highly potent offensive and defensive hax. Cure Happy could simply change the outcomes via her belief in happy endings, to make it so that she won.

Though granted given she makes things into happy endings, I imagine it's less of killing the XS-high tiers and more so making them become her friends.

And that's how to be OP in Xiaolin Showdown-verse.