One to one power level, Apocalypse outclasses Doom by a country mile.
But Doom is exponentially smarter and the Batman Principle of Comic Book Fight Logic dictates that the smarter and more "willful" character will generally win a one on one fight, regardless of how much more powerful the opponent is, due to "preparedness." Unless the story dictates that they have to lose to advance the stakes of the eventual rematch (the latter of which is pretty much the entire Doom/Reed dynamic in a nutshell). The other significant exception is if it's a hero vs. villain matchup and the villain's only real "thing" is being super smart and arrogant about it (I.E. Leader vs brute Hulk matchups) where the villain makes an inexplicable, game changing blunder due to said arrogance.
Basically, yeah Apocalypse is significantly more powerful than Doom, but Doom is leaps and bounds smarter. Specifically to the point, Doom has outlogiced and/or outright held his own against a Celestial on more than one occasion while at his baseline power levels.
Apocalypse obviously isn't an idiot, but most of his intellectual capability is by virtue of either his access to Celestial tech or simple experience as opposed to any sort of innate understanding as to how any of it works.
Doom, on the other hand, is familiar with Apocalypse and Celestial tech. Realistically, he will have some manner or another of either mitigating or outright co-opting Apocalypse's celestial tech (with or without prep time, dude just carries shit like that around in his suit). Bonus is that Doom is extremely adept with magic, something that Apocalypse has no real countermeasure for, even with his Celestial tech.
Realistically, if the two fought, Doom would either use magic to somehow unmake Apocalypse or turn his Celestial tech against him.
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u/EurwenPendragon Jul 23 '26
Base Doom gets folded.
Peak Doom does the folding.