Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-75.27.105.179-20150316062106/@comment-4755115-20170219034402

73.42.45.136 wrote: Ao Kusanagi wrote: In the light novels, Asuna is the only one of the two who is notable for hitting her. But we don't get any play-by-play about Yuuki and Kirito's fight in the LN format other than who won in the end. You do realize if kirito couldn't hit her, he wouldn't probably win with Excalibur, right? Yes, which is why Kawahara said "might" instead of "it will". We currently don't know what kind of statistic boosts Excalibur gives since the author has yet to list any - officially or otherwise - in the story, but going by what Reki is implying, it likely increases the Avatar's overall STR, AGIL, etc by a significant margin when equipped. We don't know for sure because Kirito hasn't used Excalibur in battle and says that he'll only equip it when he and his party members absolutely need it.

To field the question you asked Ao: Yeah, Kirito openly speculated that an SAO Yuuki would be stronger than his SAO self at his peak.

Anyway, I'm outta here. Threads like these have never ended amicably in the past and usually devolve into circular arguments.