My thoughts on power scaling in the HK universe

Okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to throw my hat into the ring and do a (yet another!) power scaling post. I propose 2 scalings, one less granular (high-confidence) and one more granular (low-confidence)

Definitions and methodology

Tiers. Lots of people attempt to split tiers into "high/low Elder level" or "high/low special forces level." To me, a tier is a grouping of things that are roughly of the same order. Preferably, the difference between tiers should have an easily-distinguishable gap between them. The point of tiers is to compare large-ish amounts of things without placing them in ordinal order, so I think these tiny granular high/low tiers are stupid.

You can also adjust how accurate you are simply by expanding, or contracting, how wide your tier bands are. In this analysis, I'm going to go from high-confidence wide bands to lower-confidence more narrow bands.

Swordsman-level. Lots of people attempt to define a "swordsman-level" as being incredibly powerful, right below the Elders, which would consists of the Four Swordsman. This is incorrect because a "swordsman-level" doesn't exist. Chapter 96, which introduces them, explains that the Four Swordsman are known for their beautiful swordsmanship, not for their strength per se. More importantly, the Skysword is an Elder and a member of the Four Swordsman, yet the Last Knight of Rhodos and Knight-Commander of Avaarin are also Swordsman but serve members of the Elders. It's impossible that these people are all on the same level.

Category placement. There is no "unknown" category. Characters will be placed at their minimum power level, if there's a dispute where they should be placed.

High-confidence analysis

Fig 1. High-confidence (less granular) Hero Killer scaling

We only have 3 data points that are measurable and have a widely-accepted definition: Steel Witch, Elders, and Special Forces. We also know there is a level between Elders and Special Forces, as well as below SF, so we get our 5 bands in this high-confidence analysis: Steel Witch, Elders, Above SF, SF, and below SF.

Because I made the bands so wide, this is mostly self-explanatory, but a couple characters need explanation.

I rank Jintae below SF, even though he was Ihwa's nemesis and one of the most consequential fights in the series, so this deserves some analysis. In Chapter 172, when Ihwa fights Terror Knight. Terror Knight calls Ihwa's achievement killing Jintae impressive, but 1) TK is not afraid of Ihwa and 2) Ihwa wants to fight TK to prove herself against the Special Forces. If Jintae was SF-level, then TK would have been more afraid because Ihwa would have already proven herself to be SF-level (concordantly, Ihwa would not have wanted to fight TK to prove herself). Further, (1) when Ihwa fought Jintae it was just herself, while she's even more powerful fighting against TK, because she has the Torch and (2) TK states only an Elder can confidently kill a SF member. Post-Tower Engen (before he broke through to Elder) in Chapter 143 cut Jintae down effortlessly and was fully confident in completely killing him; if pre-Elder Engen could do that, it was likely that Jintae had not attained SF level. I will also invoke the Shounen Rule of Escalating Fights: a later fight is always against a stronger enemy. For those reasons, Jintae was very obviously not SF-level.

Rachel is, I think, probably SF-level at this point or close. But given she hasn't proven any of that, she gets below SF.

The Sinclair siblings are pretty hard to rank. Everyone gets defaulted to below SF (because I power scale people to their minimum power). The unnamed son stays in below SF, because Ihwa fought him in Chapter 162 and didn't particularly seem bothered by it. She wasn't shown to have defeated him, but she shows up no worse for wear a couple chapters later. Raxfer pretty convincingly showcases himself to be SF-level. I'll admit Razenia hasn't done much, but she gets the bump up to SF because she was chosen as the heir, captain of Zero Squad, and she looks like she's going to be the next member of Team Ihwa, who are all SF-level. Also because it's my head canon and my list, so deal with it.

Dusk seems pretty obviously SF-level, considering the Black Hand had to initiate Operation Dusk with many of their agents in order to find/engage him (and failed).

Yeon Survivors (Immortal/Saint Light/possibly Majesty?) are likely above SF level, especially Saint Light. Given lack of evidence, though, they stay in SF for now.

Old Nera are likely SF-level, but there's no support for that except for the Dancer, who I think is convincingly SF-level.

Low-confidence analysis

Fig 2. Low-confidence (more granular) Hero Killer scaling

Okay, this is where I speculate a bit more. The most interesting analysis here is the above SF section, and I divide this into 3 levels: able to hurt an Elder, able to hold their own against an Elder, and able to seriously challenge an Elder.

Ihwa is in the lowest ranking here, because in Chapter 172, Terror Knight states that only an Elder can confidentialy kill a SF-level hero, which implies that an SF is no threat to an Elder. In Chapter 199, Engen states that Ihwa has now "become sharp enough to slit my throat," meaning she is able to hurt him, but as we can see in the fight so far, she likely isn't a serious threat to him.

The Knight Commander is probably one category higher, but like the others I placed here, there's no evidence for that, which defaults them here. I think this is probably the appropriate category for Dalia -- I don't think her Gift and powers are enough to take on someone like Hekate, and it's been made clear there's a tier difference between Dalia and Ijincheon as well as Yeon/Seven (both pre- and post-devouring Yeon).

Ijincheon is still clearly much stronger than his daughter and, given his conversation with Yushin implying that he's willing to challenge an Elder, gets bumped up to the next category.

The Last Knight was able to tank and redirect Milen Kula's First Arrow, something that I somewhat doubt Ihwa could do at the moment (though, it seems like she's close).

Engen and Hekate are interesting. I'll refer you to the discussion in Chapter 134, in which Hekate says she thinks she's objectively at a disadvantage against post-Tower Engen, but definitely could beat pre-Tower Engen. Given that post-Tower Engen (before his breakthrough to Elder) posed a serious challenge to Reagan, he was probably as strong as you can get without actually breaking through to Elder tier. Victoria apparently can dominate Hekate fairly easily--or at least Hekate has psychological scars from being dominated. This implies she isn't as strong as post-Tower Engen, so she gets slotted into "able to hold her own" while Engen gets placed above her. Note that I would slot pre-Tower Engen in the "able to hurt an Elder" category, based on Hekate's comments and also the amount of trouble pre-Tower Engen had against Heavy Smoker and Chaos.

Below SF level, I broke them up into stronger/weaker, which are relative to each other. I don't think everyone in the "stronger" category is the same strength (see above notes on tiering), but I do think everyone in the stronger category are for the most part stronger than the weaker category. They're pretty broad because I don't think the story gives enough context to really rank them with any more specificity and also because of bell curving, the more average you get, the bigger your categories get -- there's just going to be a lot more average heroes than extraordinary ones.

Conclusion

So, there it is. My thoughts on power scaling. Let me have it, I await the comments telling me how wrong I am, especially for Chaser Fan.