- OrderedComa
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- Noble Member
Posted by: manwith
From what I've read John sucks at pure hand-to-hand combat and has a real difficulty fighting alone without back up.
Fred, Kelly and Will show no indication of any weakness.
You have to take the whole scenario into account though. The reason he had difficulty with the Elite in TFoR was because when it was first written that was the first time that Elites had been encountered by the UNSC, which has since been retconned, meaning that it would not be John's first time fighting an Elite, which would also mean that he would not be having so much difficulty with it. Even if the text in TFoR remains the same for that part, the entire scenario is changed due to the fact that each of the Spartans have fought Elites countless times before.
And the only other CQB encounter that's really gone into for John is the battle with the Energy Sword wielding Elite on the Ascendant Justice. First off, the Elite had a sword, that changes the fight drastically, and on top of that it was in very quarters, not much room to move around. Plus, he had Johnson and the other guys with him who wouldn't have really stood a chance against the Elite. And the most deciding factor of it all, Chief had just been fighting through at least a week's worth of constant, almost non-stop fighting and getting battered that whole time. He'd had no sleep, was heavily wounded, and as far as I know had nothing to eat or drink. That does not make for a very easy or fair fight. Plus if IIRC the Elite on the bridge of the Ascendant Justice was one of the higher ranks amongst the Elites, something which everyone agrees that any Spartan would have some difficulty with.
Now as for your other point, the only instance of John having any sort of trouble working solo was when he first arrived on Alpha Halo. And that was because he had been working as part of a team for the past 25 or so years, he was used to someone else having his back at all times, any other Spartan would have had similar difficulties at first too.