4538655 Given Twilight's skills, and the fact that Celestia wouldn't pick just any old unicorn to be her personal student/apprentice, I'd argue that Sunset is either equal in magical talent to Twilight (prior to becoming an alicorn) or approaching her.

My headcanon is that she has knowledge superior to Twilight's - there would be no reason to make her less of a prodigy, after all, they both were personal students of Celestia, not just some typical talented unicorns, but the best of best, and Sunset has had at least ten years of experience more compared to Twilight.

And raw power? I don't believe Twilight is much stronger than Sunset, nothing indicates that becoming an alicorn instaboosted her magical capabilities at all.

Really difficult to answer this without more information on Sunsets past. We do know that she was good enough to be Celestia's student, so that means she has the ability to cast a lot of different spells.

Her cutie mark is the sun, so that might mean she is more specialized, but it's also a yin/yang symbol, so that could mean she has just about the same range of magic capability as Twilight Sparkle.

As for her power level, again we have no way of knowing that with out something to give us a clue. Since it is a celestial cutie mark like Twilight's, it's possible she has close to, if not the same, power level that Twilight did before ascension.

4538655 I tend to think of Sunset as having a similar power level to unicorn Twilight, though somewhat less of a generalist and having a particular knack for light and fire based magic. Does anyone else besides Twilight, Sunset, and Nightmare Moon teleport in the series? I forget. I also don't think that Sunset shares the same enthusiasm for researching and learning that Twilight does, instead preferring to seek out knowledge when it directly benefits her, even if that benefit is a general more knowledge = more power. Point being her studies probably led her to different magical paths.

As for problem solving with magic, well. In the show itself magic often causes more problems than it solves. In a general writing sense, if you have a vaguely defined magic system than magic should be used to solve minor plot conflicts, but not major ones.

Well if you consider IDW's Fall of Sunset Shimmer canon she's at least on par with Twilight as far as teaching and likely in her ability to learn new spells. She was Celestia's protege too after all.

Maybe her power is...

Or it could be more epic...

OVER NINE THOU...

Ahem, sorry. I mean, it's hard to tell. We've never seen her go all out, or even use much magic at all.

It's implied she is comparable to Twilight in terms of intelligence and talent. That's not the same thing as having a huge reservoir of magic, however. We don't even know how rare somepony like Twilight actually is - in terms of pure magic, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie are probably comparable to her, but we don't even know how they compare to a "standard" pony. It's hard to talk about "power levels" when the show doesn't actually have a standardized way of measuring power.

We could compare Twilight to Trixie, who is probably pretty ordinary in terms of magical output, despite being talented. However, we would still need to know if Trixie is anywhere near as intelligent as Twilight, or if she has studied magic to anywhere near the same degree.

We don't even know how important "power" is in the equation - what we do know is that being massively powerful doesn't really mean anything if the unicorn isn't an experienced spellcaster: All that magic didn't help filly Twilight much, after all.

So perhaps Sunset is more or less equal to Twilight, or perhaps she is weaker than Twilight but makes up for it somehow? Since Sunset spends most of her time as a human and it doesn't seem that she's in a hurry to return to Equestria, we may never really know.

4538655 Twilight Sparkle's fucking Super Saiyan Magic Horse God 30, while Sunset's a basic Super Saiyan 1, or Frieza final form power.

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She can turn SSJ1 at least.

4538706 Bitch I just said that.

Oh wait that's just a gif from the actual fucking movie.

Saiyans in disguise confirmed.

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Wait ... flowing red hair?

SHE'S A SUPER SAIYAN GOD!

4538716 ...it's only a matter of time before she reaches Super Saiyan Magic Horse God 30 now.

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Sunset Shimmer:

You: *runs*

Sunset Shimmer: Wait, don't run! I have to tell you this-

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Sunset Shimmer: Well, I'm never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna-

You:

Thus far, only 4 (possibly 5) Unicorns/Alicorns can Teleport. Celestia, Luna, Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. Cadence -might- be able to teleport, but I don't think we've ever seen her do so.

It's always sort of been considers a 'high level spell'

in the EQG world Sunset isn't any kind of mage.

she lives in a world with no magic. none. nothing. nada. zilch. the square root of jack.

no magic = no mage. the only time they experience any kind of magic is when Twilight nips over for a visit.

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I actually agree with you there, my best headcanon states that she can't match Twilight in raw power (she'd lose a "beam clash"), but she is incredibly dedicated and studious,

Though, it's still very vague just which one of those things matter more, even when it comes to shooting lasers at each other.

I mean, on one hand we have Twilight's Kingdom Part 2, where having more magic translated into much more powerful attacks.

On the other hand, we have The Cutie Map Part 2, where we had this (paraphrased) exchanged between Starlight Glimmer and Twilight:

Starlight: What the actual hay? How did your shield stop my laser? I spend ages studying that spell!
Twilight: I also spent ages studying that spell, but I also studied friendship, and that makes me stronger than you because friendship is magic.

Notice how the possibility of one of them being naturally more powerful than the other wasn't even an issue, as if what really matters is how well you understand the spell. or magic in general, or even how much of a social life you have.

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Starlight: What the actual hay? How did your shield stop my laser? I spend ages studying that spell!
Twilight: I also spent ages studying that spell, but I also studied friendship, and that makes me stronger than you because friendship is magic.

To be fair, friendship being magic is why Twilight became an alicorn in the first place, which may very well translate into direct magical muscle. It's just a more convoluted way of saying that.

4538872 I think Twilight's biggest problem in her first face-off with Starlight was that she lost the initiative roll. Second time around she went into it with a readied action.

My personal belief is that Sunset was more powerful than Twilight… when Twi was still a non-Ascended Unicorn. It kinda goes without saying that Twi is a level or two above Sunset now that she's been Alicornicated.

Twilight's magic is like a fire-hose: lots of raw power but not a whole lot of control – even post-Ascension we see her struggle to pull off precise spells that Rarity (who's far less strong) can handle easily. As for Sunset, I think she knows fewer spells – definitely fewer pointless spells like that moustache charm – but can far better control what she does know.

Remember that Sunset was Celestia's original Chosen One™. It's been made very clear that Celestia rarely takes on a student – that alone means Sunset is the very top percentile of power and intelligence. It has also been heavily implied that Sunset is smarter than Twilight even now, and has shown far more willingness to think outside the box. This alone makes her a formidable threat, no matter what world she's in. It also makes her a valuable ally if you can get her to trust you.

Sunset is older than Twilight, but I imagine she's probably forgotten a lot of the magic she learned due to years in the humanoid world. However, she's shown to be a very quick learner; it wouldn't take too much time for her to get herself back up to full abilities if she ever returned home.

FUN FACT: So far, we've only seen 3 Unicorns (and 1 Earth-pony) teleport – Twilight, Sunset, Starlight, and Pinkie Pie.

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I think its worth noting that Twilight is wielding the power of all four alicorns less like her normal combat "arrows" (precise single-target effect) and much more like a big club. Honestly, her reaction to having her first beam stopped by Tirek's shield was priceless. Make the big laser even bigger.

Actually, I found that she fought more or less the way I would expect her to normally fight: Beam attacks, shields and tactical use of teleportation. Makes perfect sense: No reason to mess around with esoteric stuff, just focus on attack, defense and mobility. Her power boost simply increased the scale of how much damage she could dish out.

Anyway, clubs are perfectly viable weapons, and sometimes a better choice than arrows depending on the context. That said, though, I don't think it's a good comparison: if you're going to hit your opponent with an energy beam, a larger and more powerful beam is obviously better. I mean, it's a beam - it's not like it becomes clumsier if you scale it up.

I also think Starlight kinda knew she was outclassed, and was less surprised that Twilight stopped it at all, but the ease with which she stopped it. It may have been another case of Twilight Red Mage-ing it, and having been subject to the spell once was able to whip up a suitable ward, fueled by her values.

I dunno, I don't like making assumptions. Point is, when Starlight seemed mildly baffled at being overpowered by an alicorn princess who specializes in magic, she specifically cited her study of the spell.

...Which, now that watch the episode again, might have been referring to the cutie mark stealing spell. It's a bit vague.

But either way, I just find it conspicuous that nopony ever seems to bring up raw magical potential as a reason for why some unicorns are better mages than others. The emphasis is usually on intelligence and how hard they studied.

Heck, going back to Tirek for a moment (Tirek being one of the rare exceptions emphasizing MOAR MAGIC!) note that even after stealing Discord's magic, on top of having drained a sizable portion of the Equestrian population, he was still only even with the magic of the four princesses combined. This is despite Discord treating Celestia and basically everything else short of the EoH as a joke.

That seems to imply that Discord doesn't actually have as much magic as one would assume, rather he intuitively understands how to use it very efficiently.

Perhaps magic runs on emotions as energy, and Friendship is simply more efficient or plentiful. I imagine Hate would burn you out pretty quick, but that's a conversation for another thread.

While there appears to be some connection between magic and emotions, I suspect it's much more complicated than that. You know, seeing as how the most powerful unicorn we've seen was basically made out of hate.

While I can't say how much power or control Sunset's got without seeing her in unicorn form, Twilight managed to deadlift an ursa minor, presuming that's a physically there creature with full mass, you're looking at somewhere in the region of 10-50 tons for it, plus an additionaly 2-20 tons for the water tower full of milk, that she did beyond line of sight, then also floated both to the ursa's cave which was also beyond line of sight. If you imagine leverage physics apply in that, you're talking a combined total of possibly 12-70 tons at a range of several hundred metres to a few miles (presuming the idiot colt duo didn't go too far alone).

Luna, presuming she's handling something at the same distances and has the same mass as Earth's moon (which is up for debate) is mass shifting possibly 7,347,673,924,575.5 tons at a range of around 2100-2500 miles. If Celestia is shifting the sun around and it, likewise, is at a similar distance and mass to our sun, you're looking at Celestia's TK shift being ridiculous. Of course, both of those are also presuming that they're using telekinesis to do the heavy work, it's entirely likely that there's something else involved that lessens the effort and it's also entirely likely that Equestria's sun and moon do not match Earth's.

As far as every other pony around, the only other pony we've really seen pull a large TK lift is Rarity, who dances around about a dozen poniquins around her during the Art of the Dress song. Presuming that's pure TK, she's deadlifting roughly 70kg to 160kg per poniquin if they're around a quarter to a half the average pony's weight and the ponies are around 12 hands high, so she's able to lift about 2 tons for the poniquins alone, plus manipulate the materials and tools of the trade at the same time, which aren't light all in. Yes she's nowhere close to Twilight, much less the alicorns if we're doing this, but she's not a slouch either since most ponies only seem to shift around a couple of saddlebags worth at a time (42-84kg max load).

For Sunset herself, depending on your views on where the comics stand in relation to the cartoons/films as canon sources, we know she has limited TK, line of sight teleport, possibly an unlock spell and light from the film, plus a maximsed growth and fire spells from the Downfall comic along with whatever stunning or combat spells she used on the guards in it, if any. She is probably weaker than Twilight when she comes back to Equestria to grab the Element of Magic, in part due to the fact she's spent 2.3-5 years in a world where there's no access to its natural magic, presuming it has any, so she's out of practice and the 'muscles' have atrophied from lack of use. Even with that though, she manages to teleport probably 10-20 feet behind Twilight with enough control to leave her cloak behind when it was in contact with her body.

Over all, sight unseen as to her full capabilities, I'd say given she was Celestia's student and is capable of that level of control after not using magic for years, she's probably roughly in the same bracket as Twilight, though maybe not as strong in the same fields. It's entirely likely that she's stronger than Twilight in areas to do with heat, fire, solar magic or things linked to that area such as plant growth while Twilight is more a generalist or possibly will be better with night related magics than sun related ones.

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Actually, I found that she fought more or less the way I would expect her to normally fight: Beam attacks, shields and tactical use of teleportation. Makes perfect sense: No reason to mess around with esoteric stuff, just focus on attack, defense and mobility. Her power boost simply increased the scale of how much damage she could dish out.

Anyway, clubs are perfectly viable weapons, and sometimes a better choice than arrows depending on the context. That said, though, I don't think it's a good comparison: if you're going to hit your opponent with an energy beam, a larger and more powerful beam is obviously better. I mean, it's a beam - it's not like it becomes clumsier if you scale it up.

I'm going to add a slight cavat to that statement. With any sort of weapon it's not necessarily just the size of it as to how much energy you can have impact your target. With mass weapons (guns, bows, etc) that means either increasing the velocity or the mass of the projectile, either of which can result in the weapon being larger or putting more or a point on the round to slim down the impact area, with energy weapons, it's not just the diametre of the 'projectile', it's also the intensity of the energy contained within. If Twilight was throwing around beams at her maximum intensity then yes increasing the beam diametre is the way to go, if not, then increasing the intensity will result in less collateral damage and more impact on the actual target providing you hit them. A 2MJ laser rifle that has an apiture of 5mm is going to do more damage to a smaller area than one with a 20mm apiture and the same power because the energy at point of impact is more spread out on the 20mm rifle than on the 5mm one. It's one reason why armour piercers are either pointier than standard bullets or have shells that strip away from a penetrator round that is either harder material, slimmer or both.

While there appears to be some connection between magic and emotions, I suspect it's much more complicated than that. You know, seeing as how the most powerful unicorn we've seen was basically made out of hate.

I think emotions and abilities have been interlinked for a while, I know the Valdemar/Velgarth series has them linked and that's been going for a while. I'm sure there was a mention in the Jedi Academy trilogy of books or the I, Jedi book about light side emotions being cleaner and less liable to burn things out than dark side ones. I got those before FiM started.

With regards to how they interlink, I think the most obvious point is that if your emotions aren't under control, it's more likely you'll do something without thinking and that extends to other abilities, such as magic. You're scared and angry, surrounded by ponies that are hurting you or trying to and you lash out instinctively, except you don't just punch someone, you end up setting the building on fire because your magic is running hot and you want them to hurt. Thing is, maintaining that sort of state is much more wearing than you'd think, particularly maintaining it with enough control to force your magic (which probably wants to cause pain or havoc) onto certain targets. Granted, similar to Sombra, you can get to the point where those dark emotions are self-sustaining and force your body to keep going to feed them.

There's also another part to the emotion/magic mix, that's how they affect the types of spells used. Anger, hatred, fear, the wish to dominate or hurt will naturally improve spells for offensive combat or forcing your will on others. Love, protectiveness, compassion, joy and the like are more about either protecting others, helping them or healing them. It's one reason why Mercedes Lackey had most Healers (particularly Mind Healers) having Empathy and Healing together. The better able you are to relate to the pain of the person you're treating, the better you are at working things through, as long as you've got control and it's not your abilities running wild and forcing your to do things.

We actually see this in the Sunset Satan fight. Sunset, peeved off, out of control and under the influence of a corrupted artefact quickly mind controls most of the people at the Fall Formal and tears the place up, but her reaction to Twilight's defianace is to attempt to kill. The other girls, however, react instinctively to the threat, putting their own lives on the line for their friend. That reaction combined with the Element being used against its chosen results in a shield and Sunset getting blasted somewhat harder than anyone previously.

In Rainbow Rocks something similar occurs.

The Sirens, powered by the discord they created hammer the girls hard, but in the face of it, Sunset faces something similar to what she was and chooses to stand with those that she cared for, giving them courage in return and amping up the Elements to produce the Crystal Alicorn because she cares, she hurts because they do, even though she didn't get hit and she chooses to put herself in harm's way, being protective of her friends.

First before talking about canon let's talk about character themes.

Twilight sparkle deals in knowledge, it is core to her being and her core vice the thing which distracts her from wisdom.
Sunset shimmer deals in power, it is core to her being and her core vice the thing which distracts her from wisdom.

From that alone i'd argue that when it comes to raw magical oomph, Sunset should win, but Twilight is clearly better at learning spells and has a much greater breadth of them to pick from(It is her special talent after all.).

Now to go into canon.

Despite being Alicorned up. There are explicitly, textually unicorns better at unicorn magic than twilight, since she still isn't even capable of learning the aging spell still after all. So the idea that Sunset could be stronger? Definitely established.
I'll ignore her boasting in EQ1 as we didn't get to compare her magic directly.
Now let's go to EQG2, Twilight at full power cannot touch the sirens, at all. Sunset regains her magic and before doing the rainbow friendship lasers does shoot one blast at the sirens...it knocks them on their ass. Sunset's raw power is such that she can knock down with one shot something Twilight cannot even scratch.

In other words, Sunset probably is as her themes would indicate much more powerful, and Twilight much more knowledgeable(About magic, clearly not about the cosmos.)
Alicornhood doesn't seem to grant power so much as potential giving access to the other two types of Ponies magic, and is thus just a symbol of worthiness if one refuses to develop that potential.

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Luna, presuming she's handling something at the same distances and has the same mass as Earth's moon (which is up for debate) is mass shifting possibly 7,347,673,924,575.5 tons at a range of around 2100-2500 miles. If Celestia is shifting the sun around and it, likewise, is at a similar distance and mass to our sun, you're looking at Celestia's TK shift being ridiculous. Of course, both of those are also presuming that they're using telekinesis to do the heavy work, it's entirely likely that there's something else involved that lessens the effort and it's also entirely likely that Equestria's sun and moon do not match Earth's.

I think the only time we've seen someone try to TK the sun/moon is when Twilight did it with all four alicorn's magic, and it clearly wasn't the same thing that Celestia/Luna do.
"Raise the Sun/Moon" are pretty clearly separate spells that do just that.
Also the actual ridiculousness if it ran on earth physics, Luna can move the Stars TK on an object lightyears away. Luna routinely breaks time.

Discussing power levels is misleading, because it implies that if you have a high power level you would have a latent invulnerability aura like Superman. In terms of magic, you would have a higher saving throw against magical effects, or you'd be immune to low-level magical effects altogether.

Such is not the case in Equestrian magic. Twi is an alicorn, and when caught unprepared she's still as vulnerable as anypony. High power level does not offer a demonstrably higher saving throw. Or alternatively, even against powerful beings with high saving throws, smart use of magic can still reliably defeat them.

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It would strike me as delightfully ironic if, despite the aspects of "knowledge is power" they represent, the roles are reversed, with Twilight having the raw and Sunset having the precision, when if they stopped and thought they would much rather have the other way around.

It would, but irony doesn't always tell the best stories.
Sunset certainly holds and wields raw power better in other aspects more than Twilight. Though Sunset is shown to have a deeper knowledge in certain areas(Cosmology/The Elements) she seems the type when it comes to knowledge to learn and study what she needs or seems relevant than just curiosity for it's own sake.

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Discussing power levels is misleading, because it implies that if you have a high power level you would have a latent invulnerability aura like Superman. In terms of magic, you would have a higher saving throw against magical effects, or you'd be immune to low-level magical effects altogether.

Such is not the case in Equestrian magic. Twi is an alicorn, and when caught unprepared she's still as vulnerable as anypony. High power level does not offer a demonstrably higher saving throw. Or alternatively, even against powerful beings with high saving throws, smart use of magic can still reliably defeat them.

This is true, for most ponies their magic is dedicated to far different things than ass kicking.
But in this case i believe we are talking raw ability to throw that magic into unicorn spells so it's reasonably comparable.

The whole idea behind power levels is to show how pointless they are.
That being said, I actually think Sunset could actually beat Twilight in a one-on-one fight.
REASONS:
1. Sunset has been shown to look for weaknesses and exploit the hell out of them (example. she knew that twilight was unfamiliar with how high schools work, so she used that to her advantage by playing a discriminating video of her, tries to frame her,etc.)
2. Seeing as how she didn't have magic, Sunset most likely had to use physical violence to take care of the more problematic subjects (Gilda, Rainbow Dash, Lightning Dust, Applejack)
3. She can swing a fucking sledgehammer around like it's nothing while Twilight struggles to lift a lightweight table
4. She has been shown to quickly adapt and change her strategies to the current situation at hand within a matter of seconds
5. She has more creativity in battle than Twilight's teleport, shield, beam strategy
6. Twilight mostly relies on her friends to help her achieve victory, and she is not known to outright cheat (if you don't count Mare-Do-Well)
So, all-in-all Sunset has more versatility, creativity, experience, and strategic prowess than Twilight, so she would have little to no trouble beating Twilight by herself, however Twilight with friends has shown to be too much for anybody to handle (with Starlight Glimmer being the obvious exception)

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I'd say Sunset as she currently is is a more rounded version of Twilight. She's demonstrated that she could outsmart and out maneuver Twilight in the first movie.

Also, alicorn Twilight got her butt handed to her by a normal high-level unicorn in Starlight Glimmer. On top of that, Sunset as a student had less scruples than our goody fourhooves Twilight likely has access to spells Twilight never learned.

Now that Sunset can tap into Friendship magic, she's quite likely to ascend as well.

lets look at the Cutie marks, Twilight has a star, one could argue that a star up close is suicide, but when one thinks of a star, they think of the little lights in the sky at night, a lone star in a moonless night wouldn't cast much light unto the earth, however, the sun is the only reason the day is as bright as it is, excluding chemicals and such. In a nutshell, stars shine bright TOGETHER, but the sun burns radiantly by itself, not just cutie marks, but in the movies Sunset Shimmer accomplishes more on her own e.g. wrapping the school around her little finger, working out the bands social problem, and (please keep in mind that I have not yet seen MLP:FIM:EG:3) defeating Midnight Sparkle. Where as Twilight is a fish flopping about without her friends.

So I believe, Sunset Could likely destroy an army with nothing magic, but With her FRIENDS Twilight can turn gods to stone.
But in a direct comparison Sunset is far, FAR more powerful than Twilight.

She has NEAR SUPER SAIYAN ULTRA LEVEL POWER. nuff said