Wax's superhuman aim,

[Lesser spren]

Wax's aim seems to be unnaturaly good. Shooting for limbs from almost any distance is unfeasible even for a trained officer

Source:

https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/why-shooting-to-wound-doesnt-make-sense-scientifically-legally-or-tactically-6bOdYvNUEECtIWRI/

Yet Wax shot a gun out of Miles hand on more than one occasion and even shot a bullet out of midair, (albeit possibly with harmony's help) 

Considering how Brandon said the "Steel Bubble" was savantism, is a Crasher's resonance enhanced aim?

[StanLemon]

1 hour ago, Lesser spren said:

Considering how Brandon said the "Steel Bubble" was savantism, is a Crasher's resonance enhanced aim?

I remember I once hypothesized that the Crasher resonance was an inherent understanding of force vectors. No real evidence for it but it would make some slight sense with what the two interacting powers are and why Wax can seemingly do impossible shots.

[king of nowhere]

quoted from that very article:

Quote

“Hitting an arm or a leg on a moving suspect with surgical precision will be virtually impossible,” Avery asserts. “I could probably count on one hand the individuals who can make that kind of shot under the pressure of their life on the line.

vax is one of those few individuals.

nowhere the article says that level of aiming skill is impossible. it is just impossible to expect your average policeman, even a highly trained one, to have it. especially considering that shooting is not a policeman's first specialization, and most of them never need to use their guns (at least in europe; one hears horror stories about violence in the usa, but not really sure how much is fact and how much it is inflated urban legend).

[Quantus]

13 hours ago, Lesser spren said:

Considering how Brandon said the "Steel Bubble" was savantism, is a Crasher's resonance enhanced aim?

This isnt really final until it's in a novel, but it's worth noting that he's likely to backpedal the bubble so it is skill rather than savantism.  He wants to keep  savantism as always having a downside, and feels like Wax is drifting that original intent:

 

 

Quote

 

Brandon Sanderson

Warning, Evgeni. I'm really considering doing a backpedal on savants. The more i think about them, the less I'm not liking how my current course has them being treated in upcoming books. I think it deviates too far from my original vision.

Argent

Hey, I wouldn't normally contact you directly like this, but given that you thought it important enough to reach out and let me know you might change how savants work, I figured you probably wouldn't be too upset by this message. I replied to your Facebook comment, asking if you could clarify a little bit which aspects of savantism you are thinking of keeping and/or cutting. I don't need an essay on the topic (though you know I'd love one!), just some details on what we can consider canon for theories, and what we should be careful around.

Brandon Sanderson

Evgeni,

So here's the problem. The more I dig into savants in the later outlines, the more I feel that I'm in a dangerous area--in that I'm disobeying their original intention. (Which is that using the power so much that it permeates your soul can be dangerous, a kind of uncontrolled version of a spren bond.)

And so, I don't want to let myself just start making people savants right and left. It needs to be a specific thing. Wax is the troubling one, as I have him burning so much steel that he's well on his way, but isn't showing any side effects. If I'm going to give him savant-like abilities, he needs savant-like consequences.

That's the danger, just falling back on savanthood to do some of the things I want, so often that it undermines the actual point and purpose of them in the cosmere lore.

So if I backpedal, it will be to contain this and point myself the right way, sharply curtailing my desire to make people savants without their savanthood being an intrinsic part of their story and conflict in life. (Like it was for Spook, and is for Soulcasting savants on Roshar.)

Feel free to share this.

Argent

Okay, so - if you do decide to go this route, I see the story implications (larger focus on consequences, less easy to get to the point where a character can be considered a savant). What I am not sure about is the potential for a mechanical change. Would a backpedal on your side cause a conflict with information you've shared with us, in or out of your books? Are you saying that it's possible that Wax won't be considered a savant (if you can't squeeze a good ramifications plot for him that doesn't contradict the apparent lack of consequences so far, for example)?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't decided on anything yet. It's mostly consequences for the future--just a kind of, "be aware I'm not 100% pleased with how Wax turned out, re: savanthood and Allomantic resonance."

The idea of resonance is that two powers, combined, meld kind of into one single power. This is a manifestation of the way Shards combine. Wax was intended as a savant of the two melded powers. But without consequences in his plot, I'm not confident that I'll continue in the same vein for future books.

Footnote: The first message comes from Brandon reaching out to Argent (Evgeni) on Facebook with a follow-up regarding this entry. This rest is from a Reddit PM exchange between Argent and Brandon.
Miscellaneous 2016 (Dec. 15, 2016)

 

 

[Bejarden]

I think that would be better

Before I saw it was a savant thing I always thought it was skill

[Halyo_Alex]

Pretty sure the steel bubble is an application of refined Intent on what to do when burning Steel. We saw Kel (and also Wax) can Push on individual segments of metallic objects instead of just the 'center of self' like a novice Coinshot, so it would not surprise me if the steel bubble was another skill like that.

Which would free up the "unnatural gunslinging skill" for the Resonance.

[HSuperLee]

I feel like we also can't ignore that as a coinshot, Wax would be used to tracking small and fast moving lines of metal through his steel-sight (don't know if we have a better word for that) and its probably a lot easier to correct your aim if you can see the path the bullet took, or even just know for certain where the bullet ended up without having to go recover it. Its likely that both lurchers and coinshots just have more tools at their disposal to develop marksmanship than your average person, and then Wax is talented on top of that. 

 

Edit: I feel like I should also add an example from personal experience, but when I've gone shooting at ranges, there's always a question after you fire a shot of, "Okay, where did that bullet go, and what kept it from going where I wanted it to go?" And as I said, being able to just steel sight where the bullet landed would be wicked helpful, especially if you're not firing at modern paper targets where you can always find the newest hole.

Edited March 12, 2021 by HSuperLee

[Elend Venture]

      Statistically speaking, relatively few police officers actually get into deadly firefights with perpetrators a year, usually only about 800-1000 in the US. In a country of 330,000,000 souls, 700,000 of those being law enforcement officers, that means that any one officer's chance of getting into a deadly shoot out per year is averaged at one seventh of a percent.The result of these statistics is less of a focus on firearms training for recruits from police agencies with more of a focus upon more commonly encountered problems. This will inevitably result in a fair sized percentage of police officers not having the practice required to pull that kind of shot off. A similar outcome is apparent in Era 2 Scadarial, Marasi herself stating that 80% of shots fired by Elendel constables at ten feet miss their intended target.

     There are of course, numerous exceptions to this generalization. Many police officers are interested in marksmanship and train independently in their free time. I would categorize Waxillium with this set of officers. Wax's aim is not superhuman, it is merely well cultivated.

Edited March 22, 2021 by Elend Venture

[Daggon Forescout]

On 3/21/2021 at 1:25 PM, Elend Venture said:

Wax's aim is not superhuman, it is merely well cultivated.

While I'm willing to accept repeatedly shooting a gun out of someone's hand as due to (fictional levels of) skill, I think shooting a bullet out of midair falls squarely in the realm of "superhuman." As @Lesser spren said, that could have been with Harmony's help, but I'm inclined to think there must be some magical shenanigans affecting Wax's abilities

[Parzival]

8 hours ago, Daggon Forescout said:

While I'm willing to accept repeatedly shooting a gun out of someone's hand as due to (fictional levels of) skill, I think shooting a bullet out of midair falls squarely in the realm of "superhuman." As @Lesser spren said, that could have been with Harmony's help, but I'm inclined to think there must be some magical shenanigans affecting Wax's abilities

I agree with this, all wax's shots have been phenomonal, but not what i would have conidered supernatural, until shooting that bullet out of the air. That definitely would require either assistance from Harmony, or some sort of resonance. I'm inclined to believe that Harmony didn't help with the shot cause he had already helped by giving wax his guns. I think wax's skill is a combination of his ability to see with steelsight where his bullets land like HSuperLee said, experience, and his resonance. The understanding of force vectors mentioned by StanLemon as his resonance makes sense to me, because he naturally understands how changing his weight affects his steel pushes, and he is also an exceptional coinshot when it comes to their "hopping" around. 

[Halyo_Alex]

10 hours ago, Parzival said:

The understanding of force vectors mentioned by StanLemon as his resonance makes sense to me, because he naturally understands how changing his weight affects his steel pushes, and he is also an exceptional coinshot when it comes to their "hopping" around.

Nothing else really fits, does it?

[Parzival]

27 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Nothing else really fits, does it?

I wouldn't say nothing else fits but I do think that fits the best

[Halyo_Alex]

Just now, Parzival said:

I wouldn't say nothing else fits but I do think that fits the best

Nothing else really fits quite as well as that does.

[Parzival]

1 minute ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Nothing else really fits quite as well as that does.

Exactly, and it feels like the sort of cool resonance that would help crashers and that Brandon would definitely use.