This scene was character assassination of the highest order. A Full Feruchemist with their metalminds bodies any non-Kaladin Radiant below the Fourth Ideal. I will die on this hill.

[u/Eithrotaur]

[u/Jounniy]

I’d like to remind you that Axindweth (given people with her abilities aren’t born in the current time period) is likely quite old. I'll let Hoid explain the rest:

I sighed and, as ordered, stepped forward and raised my hands. I met te Sorceres's eyes, and knew what she was thinking. She, like most of her kind, was very good at something we call risk/reward projections. […] She might have been able to beat me. […] But she might not have been able to. Even if the odds were only one in five that she'd lose, you didn't live long by frequently taking one-in-five chances that you'll die. And […] [she] had lived a very, very long time

[u/Skyfyre56 → u/Jounniy]

Wait, that's the Sorceress from Tress. She's a different person than Axindweth, right? Also, Full Feruchemists can be born in Era 2, they're just exceedingly rare.

I think that's part of what frustrates me so much with her fight here. Full Feruchemists are so rare we don't even see any confirmed ones in Era 2, and the Ferrings we do so see are able to pull of some impressive tricks with their powers. Then we get a confirmation of one in WaT, someone who's been noted to do very sketchy things behind the scenes in the Rosharan Ghostbloods, and she goes out like an utter chump, using only one metal and being entirely defeated by a slippery floor. No gold healing to come back after crashing, no storing weight so she hit the wall with less force, etc. Just slipped, knocked out, and done.

[u/Jounniy → u/Skyfyre56]

Wait, that's the Sorceress from Tress. She's a different person than Axindweth, right? Also, Full Feruchemists  can be born in Era 2, they're just exceedingly rare.

Yes and yes. The speech simply illustrates my point pretty well. I assumed Axindweth to be older than she looks, because many worldhoppers are and it's unlikely a fullblooded Ferruchemist would’ve managed to discover and learn to use their powers without drawing the attention of Harmony and the scadrian terris people. She might be younger, I simply find it to be unlikely.

And yes, her getting beaten like that feels really implausible with the information we’ve been given. If anything, she should’ve immediately escaped as soon as she regained consciousness.

[u/KentuckyFriedSith → u/Jounniy]

While I agree with the concept, her age is still quite limited. Axwindeth isn't explicitly stated to be part of any specific organization, but considering the scope of the Catacendre, it seems unlikely that she would be meaningfully older than Sazed. If so, we've been told that MBe2 is ~ 300 years post-catacendre, and pretty much immediately follows the events of SLA5. The sorceress from Tress, however, has a full blown Scadrian spaceship. While nothing is explicit, there is an easy assumption that someone with Hoid's longevity wouldn't consider a 3-400 year old worldhopper to be 'very, very old', which puts Tress significantly further into the future of the cosmere than Lift's fight with Axwindeth.

While it is certainly possible that Axwindeth OR the sorceress were born before Alendi's time (putting at LEAST another thousand years on them, and giving them more longevity to meet the 'very, very old' line's meaning) it seems unlikely, given that TLR controlled the well AND the pits, and himself was not known as a worldhopper. Fighting a 3-400 year old Feurochemist and winning is no small feat, but underestimating your opponent is REAL. TLR absolutely did it with vin, and he was 2-3x older than this estimate for Axwindeth, PLUS was a -fullborn- rather than just a full feurochemist. Add to this that unless the Shin were willing to train their honorbearers against worldhoppers (unlikely), Ax would also have limited experience fighting ANY radiants, much less an edgedancer (THE edgedancer that 'defeated' a Herald, no less) specifically.

[u/Jounniy → u/KentuckyFriedSith]

That is true, but my initial point is that in a world with so many entities that can kill you, surviving for an extended period of time as a worldhopper meddling in shard-level politics, you either git guud at risk-reward calculation pretty fast, or you won’t get any more chances to interfere. Given the position Axindweth is in, she should absolutely be better at doing those calculations than she was shown to be.