well yeah, interesting abilities are nice, but there's two kinds of interesting:
- interesting to imagine as powers.
- interesting in a fight.
using superman or flash as examples, they have a lot of interesting powers. Supes with his super strength, speed, durability, etc has resulted in some pretty interesting things. especially as you go into the realm of later Supermen where you've got like 20 different senses and powers to go in him to make a pretty interesting set. Flash meanwhile has a single power, speed, but can use it in a variety of ways to make for an interesting power.
mutants are another case with this, in fact they might be easier to understand. take guys like Magneto, power of magnetism. at a base level you'd think 'oh okay, so he's good against metal?' but as ou delve further you get an interesting powerset that includes blood manipulation, energy control, lightning, wormholes, fire, shields, etc. a huge list of powers born all out of 'magnetism' which makes sense as it's one of the big forces of the universe and there's a LOT that can be done with it.
but in a fight? well, Supes in a fight boils down to strength/speed. flash is a speed issue (and gamefaqs flash resulted from a lot of that). Magneto gets you questions of "brain blood clot y/n" -> "Shields' durability." with everything else following thereafter. it's not that any of them can't have interesting matches, but all 3 are sure to get a lot of boring ones unless you pair 'em with the right opponent. they're interesting to write about, evolve, and think, but in VS topics? they're pretty bad.
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"Maybe it's a tentacle, molesting the planet itself. - Aschen Brodel.