User blog comment:Megadracosaurus/Are Night Furries overrated?/@comment-352641-20140702130729

Night Furies are definitely top tier. I mean, their reputation may be overblown, but usually there's a reason for why something is so feared.

Specifically, have you seen the yields Toothless pumps out? In the first movie alone, he utterly wrecks a catapult power in one shot, blows an iron chainlink fence on a building meant to contain dragons wide open, and when he nails the Red Death and knocks it on its sorry backside after rescuing Astrid and Stormfly from getting om-nom-nom'd, there's a freaking mushroom cloud from the explosion! And of course, knocking said Red Death onto said backside in the process.

I do agree that it seems like everyone overuses Night Furies. I mean, I see the appeal, but Hiccup and Toothless are supposed to be unique. It's like Danny Phantom where there's some stories that have half-ghosts running all over the place casually, or where other super-rare stuff is common. And I don't mean "A prototype battle tank in 2183 is entering standard usage in 2186 after field testing and refinement in the lab" or "Seventy years after Ozai's defeat, Metalbending has been taught widely", I mean just being around while stuff should still be rare.

Frankly, I'd fine an OC or villain more interesting if they stayed within the established parameters of canon and used that to their advantage. Fight smarter, not harder. Not cool because of a powerful dragon like another titanic Red Death or Bewilderbeast, but because they're able to fly with a smaller, less epic species of dragons and still win.

Long story short: Night Furies do get overrated, and seeing them with abilities that don't fit like outright magic (what, like Eragon dragons?), shapeshifting (okay, D&D dragons had that but HTTYD dragons pretty much explicitly don't), or similar just doesn't fit. Yet at the same time, there's a reason why Night Furies were feared. I mean, Toothless puts out serious firepower when he wants to and he one shots Stoick of all Vikings. You know, the same guy who casually slaps around Monstrous Nightmares like it was another day in the office, the same guy who single handedly lifts heavy gates and catches siege attacks from enemy catapults with the face and then throws the boulder back at said catapult. Because of that and the fact that Toothless seemed to wait in reserve during attacks, waiting for major threats to show up before diving down and taking it out, only adds to that fear because at any moment you, A. Badass, Viking of Berk, could get blown to smithereens without even knowing what hit you.