Rodent Wars Forum

Commonly in VS debates the claim that Dooku is weak to strength-based attacks is brought up. This is supposedly because his lightsaber form, Makashi, is light and elegant and prefers to use one hand, making it physically weaker (inaccurate, but that's another story).


He no longer tried to block Skywalker's strikes but only to guide them slanting away; he could not meet Skywalker strength-to-strength—not only did the boy wield tremendous reserves of Force energy, but his sheer physical power was astonishing— And only then did Dooku understand that he'd been suckered. Skywalker's Shien ready-stance had been a ruse, as had his Ataro gymnastics; the boy was a Djem So stylist, and as fine a one as Dooku had ever seen. His own elegant Makashi simply did not generate the kinetic power to meet Djem So head-to-head.
—RotS Novel

The source above is often used to show that Dooku is weak to strength based assaults. But all it says is that Dooku tries to meet Skywalker strength-to-strength, and he's not strong enough to succeed. But in a real fight, raw strength is not that important. You don't just block—you parry, which means also countering in some way. In the movie, Dooku can be seen to try to push through Skywalker's guard, but gets stomped because he's not as strong.


Here are some times Dooku statically blocks enemy blows, which is not normally a good idea.





When Dooku gets in a bind or blade lock, he tries to push, either to force their blade into them or to shove them away.

But that's not good bindwork. In a bind, you want to wind, strike, tackle, or disengage—basically either get out or attack. Not just push. He's relying too much on brute strength. More examples of Dooku's poor bindwork can be found here.


On occasion Dooku uses some not-so-horrible bindwork.

The problem here is that he's still just shoving. Then he uses an accurate but super-obvious slide attack, which Kenobi should've seen coming.

Here he redirects Ventress' shove. But he still doesn't do much with the bind.


Sometimes the Count deflects blows instead of statically blocking.

While this is certainly better than some of his other performances, he's still overly relying on force. It's not completely stupid because he's using Opress's motion against him; but his deflections consist of hitting his opponent's blade to guide it away. The second and third deflections are okay, though, as they are much more technical.



So Dooku isn't weak to raw strength because he's elegant. He's weak because he tries to muscle his way to victory.

A realistic discussion of why Makashi is weak against Djem So.