steelrunning secondary powers: what kind of imbalanced broken power is that?

[king of nowhere]

I was really surprised at how powerful steelrunning is depiicted in the book. brandon normally writes his power as well-rounded. they have effects, but they also have limits, and those limits make sense. steelrunning doesn't seem like his style. let's see all the things it does, and some comments

 

1) steelrunning strenghten your body.

running at that kind of speed would break your legs. it doesn't. and the flow of ari does not hurt your eyes (yoou ever tried to stick your head out of a car window?).

ok, that's a fairly common secondary power for feruchemy; normally, feruchemy gives you the secondary powers needed to use the main power anyway.

 

2) steelrunning also makes your mind faster.

bleeder not only gained superhuman speed, but also reflexes, a capability of his brain to react faster.

there are two distinct feruchemical powers that deal with speed: steel and zinc. Steel makes your body faster, zinc makes your mind faster. I had assumed that tapping steel would make your body movees fast, but without enchancing your capability to control it. I seem to remember (can't check on it) that sazed needed to tap both powers to move faster and see what he was doing. instead, in SoS, steel also makes your mind fast, as fast as your body. I wonder what's the point of zinc anymore. that was maybe the biggest surprise for me

 

3) steelrunning increases your friction with the floor.

if you have you ever tried to run on a smooth floor, you'll know you can't take steep turns, or you will slip on the floor. when bleeded runs in the governor's house, she was able to run along the corridors. What we should have seen was skid lines and pieces of kandra splattered all oover the wall at the first turn.

I would have expected attrition to be the most straightforward limitation to steelrunning. in a car, the faster you drive, the greater space you need to brake or turn. steelrunning doesn't seem to be affected in the same way. I want to stress that this is not a  chance about you, it is a change about your shoes andd the floor. it doesn't make sense. feruchemy does not work that way; is internal, it only changes you. It would be like feruchemical iron making the floor harder so you won't crash through it.

 

4) steelrunning also affects your equipment.

when wax and wayne are investigating the shootout when the governor's brother was killed, they say that the at-the-time-unknown steelrunner had tapped his speed and shooted three times, from three different positions, so fast that the other people only heard one single detonation.

That was the thing I found it hardest to accept. a gun has a limit to how fast it can fire, because all the mechanics in it take some time to move in the position where it can shoot again. how can Feruchemical steel make your gun fire faster? It doesn't make sense, because again, feruchemy only affects you. Feruchemical pewter makes your body bigger, but it doesn't make your clothing bigger, and you will rip out of it. I'd be real surprised if Feruchemical zinc would make your iphone processor faster. Feruchemical iron don't make your clothing heavier, or more resistant.

but steelrunning makes your gun fire faster.

 

basically, the way steelrunning has been described, it works like a bendalloy bubble, without all the limitations. it only affects you, it follows you, you can shoot out of it. I can't stress how unhortodox that is for a feruchemical power. it should not affect your environment.

 

I wonder why it behaves so differently from other powers, or if sanderson slipped a bit with his writing.

[Voidus]

 

Alterodent: With zinc, you get mental speed. How is that any different from steel, except without [physical] speed?

A: I think of the mental speed actually turning you into... Let's say you sped up your body, and you wanted to figure out some really complex equations.

Q: So it lets you have intuitive leaps.

A: Right. It basically turns you into Ken Jennings. That's how I imagine it.

Kurk: So it's not like bullet time?

A: No... It'll bullet time a little bit, it certainly will, because you're thinking faster than everyone else, but it has applications beyond bullet timing. Bullet time is really-

Kurk: That’s steel’s thing?

A: That’s kind of steel's thing. They overlap on that one, because the steel thing... But yeah. It's more like "I think fast, but my reaction speed is not sped up".

 

On the subject of Zinc.

As for the matters of friction and speeding up your gun, I thought of the gun thing at first too but this is a room filled with bodyguards, she easily could have just used three different guns that she stole.

On the friction point I kinda assumed that was going to happen with steel, otherwise it would not be particularly useful so I guess I wasn't surprised when it happened, I kinda pictured it doing some wibbly-wobbly realmatics things to get away with that piece of trickery while still being an internal power.

[bassTbone]

As for the gunshot, I can see how three guns fired close enough together would sound like one shot. She could easily have had three guns. Also, when Wax shot her out of the bubble, she was surprised and didn't dodge. Someone who could have also burned zinc probably would have been able to dodge the bullets.

[Edgedancer]

Yeah, f!steel really doesn't seem to store your speed as much as the speed at which time flows for you, if that makes sense, which is really strong and possibly the single most potent ability given by any magic system in the Cosmere, we have seen yet. Of course you still have to pay for it by storing but given how much Bleeder could store in a rather short time a dedicated Steelrunner shouldn't have to worry about that much.

[king of nowhere]

yeah, i also have no problems with the idea that she had three guns. but wax talked like steel allowed her to fire a single gun three times fast. maybe i don't remember well. i would look on my ebook, but i can only open that from my tablet, and i cannot use a search function from it.

 

so zinc doesn't make you think faster, it makes you smarter - and a bit faster, but mostly smarter.

 

the the only thing really standing out is friction. anyway, steel is still an incredibly powerful power. much more powerful than any other allomantic or feruchemical effect we have seen. i just feel its power level doesn't fit well with the rest of them. i mean, all the other metalborn are still human. they can be resisted or countered with mundane means. hazekillers are pretty effective against allomancers, and other feruchemical powers give you a boost, but nothing that would make you outright invincible. even miles' gold compounding would still leave him vulnerable to being tied up; also, a large scale dismembering would have probably still killed him. None of that works on a steelrunner. he just moves so fast that you cannot hit him, trap him, or resist him in any way.

Edited November 6, 2015 by king of nowhere

[Voidus]

yeah, i also have no problems with the idea that she had three guns. but wax talked like steel allowed her to fire a single gun three times fast. maybe i don't remember well. i would look on my ebook, but i can only open that from my tablet, and i cannot use a search function from it.

 

so zinc doesn't make you think faster, it makes you smarter - and a bit faster, but mostly smarter.

 

the the only thing really standing out is friction. anyway, steel is still an incredibly powerful power. much more powerful than any other allomantic or feruchemical effect we have seen. i just feel its power level doesn't fit well with the rest of them. i mean, all the other metalborn are still human. they can be resisted or countered with mundane means. hazekillers are pretty effective against allomancers, and other feruchemical powers give you a boost, but nothing that would make you outright invincible. even miles' gold compounding would still leave him vulnerable to being tied up; also, a large scale dismembering would have probably still killed him. None of that works on a steelrunner. he just moves so fast that you cannot hit him, trap him, or resist him in any way.

He was just speculating though wasn't he? I don't remember them doing bullet forensics or anything.

I think steels only really that powerful now that they have guns, and now Iron and Steel have become much less useful (And are going to be even less useful in the next trilogy once Aluminium is no longer rare in the least)

Well yeah you could tie Miles up but a regular Steelrunner (Who isn't compounding) can still be killed, just like anyone in a Bendalloy bubble can. It's just harder. (In fact arguable even harder against Sliders since they can buy as much Bendalloy as they need, theoretically someone could be in a Bendalloy bubble their entire life, Steelrunners still have to spend time storing)

Caltrops would probably do a fair number on them too.

[Edgedancer]

Caltrops would probably do a fair number on them too.

I actually don't think so. From how f!Steel has been shown to work a Steelrunner should be able to (from his perspective) carefully step between the Caltrops and still move fast enough to dodge bullets.

[Voidus]

I actually don't think so. From how f!Steel has been shown to work a Steelrunner should be able to (from his perspective) carefully step between the Caltrops and still move fast enough to dodge bullets.

I don't know about dodging bullets, not without compounding. Move fast enough to avoid getting shot sure but not actually watching a bullet fly out of a gun and dodging it deliberately.

And by stepping very carefully they'd be going easily 5x slower than at running pace if not more.

Even just compounding to 5x your normal speed would burn through your metalminds pretty quickly, you'd need weeks of storage just for a couple minutes.

Which is something I think people forget about Bleeder, she had weeks to store up Steel which she only ever used for a few seconds at a time, she probably didn't even get an hours worth of speed out of it.

It may be strong but it's like gold, you need to use it at ridiculous rates to get much out of it. Being a couple times faster than a normal people will give you a bit of an edge but it's only when you're moving at 10x speeds or more that you're getting to the really invincible stages.

[Edgedancer]

I don't know about dodging bullets, not without compounding. Move fast enough to avoid getting shot sure but not actually watching a bullet fly out of a gun and dodging it deliberately.

And by stepping very carefully they'd be going easily 5x slower than at running pace if not more.

Even just compounding to 5x your normal speed would burn through your metalminds pretty quickly, you'd need weeks of storage just for a couple minutes.

Which is something I think people forget about Bleeder, she had weeks to store up Steel which she only ever used for a few seconds at a time, she probably didn't even get an hours worth of speed out of it.

It may be strong but it's like gold, you need to use it at ridiculous rates to get much out of it. Being a couple times faster than a normal people will give you a bit of an edge but it's only when you're moving at 10x speeds or more that you're getting to the really invincible stages.

The corpse of the Steelrunner she stole from was still intact, meaning not only that it plainly wasn't dead for long but also that she couldn't copy her appearance, meaning the one causing the innitial slaughter was the original and not Bleeder. Bleeder did not have weeks to store up, she had days at best and that's without cutting away the time we see her on screen. So no, as long as they don't do stuff like that on a regular basis, I don't think the amount of speed they have stored should be much of a problem.

[Voidus]

The corpse of the Steelrunner she stole from was still intact, meaning not only that it plainly wasn't dead for long but also that she couldn't copy her appearance, meaning the one causing the innitial slaughter was the original and not Bleeder. Bleeder did not have weeks to store up, she had days at best and that's without cutting away the time we see her on screen. So no, as long as they don't do stuff like that on a regular basis, I don't think the amount of speed they have stored should be much of a problem.

Bleeder is one of the best Kandra at changing forms, she could have approximated it pretty easily and I think it was explicitly mentioned that it was indeed her.

Well to be able to actually dodge bullet they'd need to compound their speed to at least 50x normal, more likely 100x.

Given that they can store maybe 20% at a time they need to be storing for 500 times as long as they tap, which is not even taking into account how much they'd be spending to actually compress it.

So they'd get maybe a minute of bullet-time speed a day (And probably less, I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to a few seconds) if they spent the entire rest of the day doing absolutely nothing but storing speed.

[Kurkistan]

The possibility has also been raised (and RAFO'd) that Bleeder was compounding.

[Moogle]

I agree. Steelrunning has practically no downsides (oh no, if you move at the speed of sound you might burn yourself up from air friction), and it's basically better than atium. As a power, it's clearly stronger than most others in Allomancy and Feruchemy... and frankly, everything else in the Cosmere.

 

I think that if Hemalurgy becomes a little more widely known that every single villain is going to want an Feruchemical steel spike... and with them, you can't have the protagonist of any novels fight them directly. The only reason Paalm didn't win without any effort was because she was unwilling to hurt Wax. You can't have every villain be like that.

 

Really, I'm a little skeptical on where the Mistborn books are going. I am hoping they don't get renamed to the Steelrunner books, but it wouldn't surprise me. Still, Brandon's earned my trust on this one. If, for example, Paalm was Compounding, and regular Steelrunners couldn't achieve those speeds without burning years of storages, that makes everything a lot better. (Though the Steelrunner at the start of SoS wasn't a Compounder, so...)

 

Also, this is yet another reminder that Sazed was really really bad at abusing Feruchemy and should have absolutely wiped the floor with Marsh in their fight in WoA. Though I guess he might have used most of his speed in the earlier fight, it still seems like the sort of thing you want to keep a big reserve of for huge emergencies.

 

Bleeder is one of the best Kandra at changing forms, she could have approximated it pretty easily and I think it was explicitly mentioned that it was indeed her.

 

It was not mentioned by anyone trustworthy that Paalm was the Steelrunner at the start of the book. Wax assumes it was, but he has no way of knowing for sure, and we have good reason to suspect she was not.

 

The possibility has also been raised (and RAFO'd) that Bleeder was compounding.

 

Given Oudeis/PhantomMonstrosity finding out that it takes a year(!) or more to learn to Compound, even for Ruin-controlled things, I have moved to believing that Paalm was probably not Compounding. (Also, given my favored model, it seems unlikely she was... but we've discussed that.)

Edited November 6, 2015 by Moogle

[Edgedancer]

Bleeder is one of the best Kandra at changing forms, she could have approximated it pretty easily and I think it was explicitly mentioned that it was indeed her.

Well to be able to actually dodge bullet they'd need to compound their speed to at least 50x normal, more likely 100x.

Given that they can store maybe 20% at a time they need to be storing for 500 times as long as they tap, which is not even taking into account how much they'd be spending to actually compress it.

So they'd get maybe a minute of bullet-time speed a day (And probably less, I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to a few seconds) if they spent the entire rest of the day doing absolutely nothing but storing speed.

Was that mentioned, because like Moogle I can't remember a trustworthy source fot that, although there already is a rather high amount of having to read between the lines to figure out what happened when, for this book. Some part of the discussion depend on that part, so coming to a consensous there might be hard.

 

As for dodging bullets, that may have been worded badly, stepping away from a bullet already in flight would be extremely hard, getting out of the way, while your opponent is aiming at you? Much easier.

 

 

 

[Voidus]

Was that mentioned, because like Moogle I can't remember a trustworthy source fot that, although there already is a rather high amount of having to read between the lines to figure out what happened when, for this book. Some part of the discussion depend on that part, so coming to a consensous there might be hard.

 

As for dodging bullets, that may have been worded badly, stepping away from a bullet already in flight would be extremely hard, getting out of the way, while your opponent is aiming at you? Much easier.

I'm probably just thinking of Wax's speculation that it was her.

You're still talking around 10x compounded speed for that (Maybe you could get away with something like 5x speed but against a marksman as skilled as Wax it'd be pretty risky), not as big a deal but still several hours of storage for maybe a minute or twos worth. Plus it would rely on you seeing every gun that was pointed at you to know when to use it and when not as well as which way to dodge.

I mean coinshots are basically completely immune to bullets all the time unless someone uses Aluminium, way better than being able to dodge bullets that you see coming for a couple of minutes a day.

[Edgedancer]

I'm probably just thinking of Wax's speculation that it was her.

You're still talking around 10x compounded speed for that (Maybe you could get away with something like 5x speed but against a marksman as skilled as Wax it'd be pretty risky), not as big a deal but still several hours of storage for maybe a minute or twos worth. Plus it would rely on you seeing every gun that was pointed at you to know when to use it and when not as well as which way to dodge.

I mean coinshots are basically completely immune to bullets all the time unless someone uses Aluminium, way better than being able to dodge bullets that you see coming for a couple of minutes a day.

Again, only really a problem if situations like that happen on a regular basis and surrounding someone with a lots and lots of guns will deal with most things on Scadrial, even putting up a Steelbubble only gives that much protection against bullets, even more so if Hazekiller rounds are used.

 

Which is why apart from maybe some of the unexplained attributes like luck double Steel may be the strongest combo, bonus points for compounding. Although, by the time we hit modern times, alluminium guns are probably going to be pretty common. While on the topic, I wonder if a Chaff grenade (lots of alluminium fragments dispersed in the air) could interfere with external allomantic metals.

[Kurkistan]

Given Oudeis/PhantomMonstrosity finding out that it takes a year(!) or more to learn to Compound, even for Ruin-controlled things, I have moved to believing that Paalm was probably not Compounding. (Also, given my favored model, it seems unlikely she was... but we've discussed that.)

 

This didn't occur to me at the time, but a thought: Paalm went obviously rogue at some point around when Lessie died, I think we can all agree.

 

So that gives her a bit less than 2 years (if I'm recalling the timelines in AoL correctly) on the lamb. Time enough to practice compounding of one kind or another, and I've little doubt that once you figure out, say, bronze compounding that you'll be similarly "skilled enough" to compound any other kind of metal. This of course depends on certain timelines for when she started Hemalurgizing.

 

--

 

As a secondary point, I'm a bit leery of this annotation. Since then, Brandon's said that ("drr drr drr" aside) you have to get the Feruchemical effect when you compound. So what exactly is there to practice at? Being able to effectively store off the excess attributes? But even then just uncontrolled super-boosts of speed or health or the like would have been quite helpful to Inquisitors.

[Moogle]

This didn't occur to me at the time, but a thought: Paalm went obviously rogue at some point around when Lessie died, I think we can all agree.

 

So that gives her a bit less than 2 years (if I'm recalling the timelines in AoL correctly) on the lamb. Time enough to practice compounding of one kind or another, and I've little doubt that once you figure out, say, bronze compounding that you'll be similarly "skilled enough" to compound any other kind of metal. This of course depends on certain timelines for when she started Hemalurgizing.

 

I don't think it would give her two years; she'd need to hunt down and kill an Allomancer and a Feruchemist to do it. And then she'd need time to get trellium spikes...

 

But I'll grant you, in a least-convenient world sense, that she could have had over a year to learn Compounding. So it's not quite a cut and dry argument from me. (I'll admit, I thought Shadows of Self took less than a year after AoL. I need to look up the timeline...)

 

As a secondary point, I'm a bit leery of this annotation. Since then, Brandon's said that ("drr drr drr" aside) you have to get the Feruchemical effect when you compound. So what exactly is there to practice at? Being able to effectively store off the excess attributes? But even then just uncontrolled super-boosts of speed or health or the like would have been quite helpful to Inquisitors.

 

Inquisitors didn't Compound during the original trilogy, or else the world would have looked like a very different place. (Specifically, Vin would never have been able to take up the Mists. Of course, she never should have been able to anyways, as Feruchemical steel Inquisitors should have been able to absolutely slaughter her without Compounding, so I'm open to the possibility I guess.)

 

If it's that easy to Compound, that violates canon in a major way. Ruin knew about Compounding, so there's no excuse there.

[Edgedancer]

--

 

As a secondary point, I'm a bit leery of this annotation. Since then, Brandon's said that ("drr drr drr" aside) you have to get the Feruchemical effect when you compound. So what exactly is there to practice at? Being able to effectively store off the excess attributes? But even then just uncontrolled super-boosts of speed or health or the like would have been quite helpful to Inquisitors.

You know, I'm starting to trust WoB on how some magic works less and less. Interestingly enough, wheter or not Inquisitors could Compound or if Ruin could have thought them doesn't even really matter. WoB has it that Ruin is better at fueling Feruchemy given through Hemalurgy (meaning that he can fuel it) and given that fueling magic directly doesn't actually use up power he could always just given them the extra boost when needed, circumventing the need for Compounding.

[Kurkistan]

Inquisitors didn't Compound during the original trilogy, or else the world would have looked like a very different place. (Specifically, Vin would never have been able to take up the Mists. Of course, she never should have been able to anyways, as Feruchemical steel Inquisitors should have been able to absolutely slaughter her without Compounding, so I'm open to the possibility I guess.)

 

If it's that easy to Compound, that violates canon in a major way. Ruin knew about Compounding, so there's no excuse there.

 

Yes, I know/agree that they didn't compound during the original trilogy. The question, then, is why they didn't/couldn't given that, apparently, they wouldn't have a choice but to get the Feruchemical attribute upon burning a metalmind.

[Kaymyth]

He was just speculating though wasn't he? I don't remember them doing bullet forensics or anything.

I think steels only really that powerful now that they have guns, and now Iron and Steel have become much less useful (And are going to be even less useful in the next trilogy once Aluminium is no longer rare in the least)

 

 

Yes, he was speculating, and my theory here is that he was just plain wrong.  You can speed yourself up all you want, but that's not going to make the action on the gun's trigger and firing mechanisms any faster.  And trying to fire too quickly is liable to jam your weapon, and becomes more and more likely as firearm technology develops and gets fiddlier.

 

I actually don't think so. From how f!Steel has been shown to work a Steelrunner should be able to (from his perspective) carefully step between the Caltrops and still move fast enough to dodge bullets.

 

Well, you're still running, and it's hard to step carefully when you're running full-tilt.  Maybe with speeding yourself up and walking?  I don't know.  It still seems fishy.

 

There is definitely a lot in there that has me going .  To the point that even after taking the new information into account in my rewrite, I'm still gonna be depowering a bit.  No, Eva, you can't turn on a dime when running at 45 mph.  Just no.  Even if Brandon says so, no.  (Follow canon until canon doesn't work anymore, and then break it as needed.)

 

Given Oudeis/PhantomMonstrosity finding out that it takes a year(!) or more to learn to Compound, even for Ruin-controlled things, I have moved to believing that Paalm was probably not Compounding. (Also, given my favored model, it seems unlikely she was... but we've discussed that.)

As a secondary point, I'm a bit leery of this annotation. Since then, Brandon's said that ("drr drr drr" aside) you have to get the Feruchemical effect when you compound. So what exactly is there to practice at? Being able to effectively store off the excess attributes? But even then just uncontrolled super-boosts of speed or health or the like would have been quite helpful to Inquisitors.

 

It took the Lord Ruler forever to figure it out because he didn't know how to do it to begin with.  There's no reason to believe that he ever explained Compounding to the Inquisitors.  I'm with Kurk about there not being much to practice once you know the method.  The real question, then, would be why did Ruin not tell the Inquisitors?  Maybe amplifying his power like that is too far counter to his Intent?  Compounding is rather wildly additive and might overbalance the entropic qualities of Hemalurgy too much for him to be able to stand to use it.

[Moogle]

It took the Lord Ruler forever to figure it out because he didn't know how to do it to begin with.  There's no reason to believe that he ever explained Compounding to the Inquisitors.  I'm with Kurk about there not being much to practice once you know the method.  The real question, then, would be why did Ruin not tell the Inquisitors?  Maybe amplifying his power like that is too far counter to his Intent?  Compounding is rather wildly additive and might overbalance the entropic qualities of Hemalurgy too much for him to be able to stand to use it.

 

Here's the part in the quoted Annotation:

The Inquisitor’s Speed

What the Inquisitor does here at the end is very important. If you’ve read book two recently, you may recognize this as what Sazed did when he tapped speed at the end of that book.

The Inquisitors are gaining Feruchemical powers, which makes them very, very dangerous. Mixing Feruchemy and Allomancy is what made the Lord Ruler so formidable. Fortunately, it took him a long time to figure out how to mix the powers correctly, and the Inquisitors haven’t had the time to practice, regardless of the force controlling them.

 

It specifically calls out the Inquisitors as needing practice, despite Ruin being able to help them.

[Kaymyth]

Here's the part in the quoted Annotation:

 

It specifically calls out the Inquisitors as needing practice, despite Ruin being able to help them.

 

Yes, I had read it.

 

The tack that I'm taking here, though, is that in this case "practice" would mean "practice with the powers and figure out how to do it".  They didn't know how.  They might have had an idea that The Lord Ruler was doing something weird with combining things, but they didn't have the nuts and bolts of how.

 

I am also speculating that Ruin would not, and possible could not, have told the Inquisitors how to Compound because the use of the power is so steeped in Preservation that spreading the knowledge went counter to his Intent.  (Either that, or he had a specific reason that he didn't want them doing it.  I agree that the idea that Ruin didn't understand how Compounding worked is ridiculous.)

[Moogle]

Yes, I had read it.

 

The tack that I'm taking here, though, is that in this case "practice" would mean "practice with the powers and figure out how to do it".  They didn't know how.  They might have had an idea that The Lord Ruler was doing something weird with combining things, but they didn't have the nuts and bolts of how.

 

I am also speculating that Ruin would not, and possible could not, have told the Inquisitors how to Compound because the use of the power is so steeped in Preservation that spreading the knowledge went counter to his Intent.  (Either that, or he had a specific reason that he didn't want them doing it.  I agree that the idea that Ruin didn't understand how Compounding worked is ridiculous.)

 

My apologies for assuming you had not read it, but I don't agree with your interpretation at all. "Practicing" implies something way different than "figuring out how to do something", and the Annotation specifically calls out the fact that they couldn't do it without practice despite Ruin controlling them - implying even though he told them, they needed to practice.

 

Marsh was there when Sazed talked about TLR's immortality trick - he definitely knew the fundamentals, in that you needed to burn metalminds.

[Kaymyth]

My apologies for assuming you had not read it, but I don't agree with your interpretation at all. "Practicing" implies something way different than "figuring out how to do something", and the Annotation specifically calls out the fact that they couldn't do it without practice despite Ruin controlling them - implying even though he told them, they needed to practice.

 

Marsh was there when Sazed talked about TLR's immortality trick - he definitely knew the fundamentals, in that you needed to burn metalminds.

 

If this is the case (and I'm not convinced that it is; I think that both interpretations have merit), then the real question comes down to what Kurk brought up earlier - what exactly needs to be practiced?  This is what doesn't make sense to me.

 

It's not the burning; we have sufficient WoB stating that the Feruchemical charge completely overwrites the Allomantic one.  So if you're a double-metal Twinborn and you burn a charged metalmind, you definitely get the Feruchemical effect.  There's no practicing; it's either charged or it isn't.

 

Is it, then, something to do with how the power is channeled?  If you burn a metalmind, does it take practice to figure out how to use all of that power without losing a piece of it?  Does the flow come in that differently from a basic tap?  Or is it simply a matter of having to learn how to take that excess power and re-store it in a new piece of metal?  Perhaps, then, it's easy enough to get the blast of power, but takes some level of practice and skill to shunt it back into another metalmind and start the perpetual motion machine.

[Moogle]

It's not the burning; we have sufficient WoB stating that the Feruchemical charge completely overwrites the Allomantic one.  So if you're a double-metal Twinborn and you burn a charged metalmind, you definitely get the Feruchemical effect.  There's no practicing; it's either charged or it isn't.

 

With respect, I believe you're placing too much emphasis on that WoB. Compounding WoBs can be slightly contradictory to say the least. Compared to the Annotations, I would not place too much trust in them.