Is Dumbledore all that knowledgeable about Horcruxes? Didn't he have Harry go get information from Slughorn to figure out how many he made?

 

That is information about the number of Horcruxes, not the Horcruxes themselves. If Tom Riddle asked Slughorn about them, then there might have been a clue that would lead Dumbledore to discover how many Voldemort created.

 

Being knowledgeable about Horcruxes (which Dumbledore certainly is) doesn't allow you to magically deduce the number of Horcruxes someone has, especially when all conventional wisdom regarding them states that splitting your soul once is de rigueur, and Voldemort attempted seven.

That Dumbledore was able to deduce the nature of the vessels based on his sheer understanding of Voldemort's psyche is a hugely impressive feat.

 

Thinking about it, would you really, really, want to know any more about them other than where and how many, and how to destroy them? They're abominations that shouldn't exist

 

Yeah that's what I thought as well. Dumbledore's morality probably restricted him from truly learning about the darkest of magics while Voldemort has no limits or morality and in the whole more knowledgeable about it.

 

This has me thinking, why do we instinctively measure a wizard's competency by their capacity for dueling and violence?

 

Because that is the most direct way of comparing two wizard's magical ability in perspective to each other

 

I mean I agree it’s the most direct, but not sure it’s the best.
Is Molly really a better witch than Bellatrix?

I’d argue duels are actually a really poor indicator of a wizards competency. How often do most wizards ever actually need to duel?

 

Dueling is one field where you can be competent, but trying to give a universal "competency score" to people seems pretty useless to me. Competency is all about the context.

 

>C-f
>Not a single hit for "love"

smh tbh fam. Dumbledore is incredibly powerful because he understands that even Muggles employ a weak form of magic because of their ability to love. When scaled up to magic-users, Love and Altruism triumph every negative form of magic. Trying to compare magical power (not knowledge!) of different characters in the HP universe is rather Voldemort-esque and is an exercise in futility.

Albus' greatest regret, then, was that there was barely anyone alive who truly loved him! There was barely anyone for whom he could sacrifice himself until Harry came along.

Albus is fairly competent. He is also quite smart and well-read. He is great at forming plans and figuring out redundancies. He is, however, relatively weaker when it comes to skepticism and schizoid behavior. He has almost never been able to figure out how a certain evil, nefarious scheme is going to play out. He only ever manages to figure out what evil actors might want, and then he guards it.

Year 1: Guards the stone.

Year 2: Guards the children the best he can.

Year 3: Guards the children the best he can.

Year 4: Failed to figure out Crouch Jr's scheme.

Year 5: Protected the school by letting Umbridge in; re-started the Order and tried to convince the ministry to protect itself; guarded the prophecy.

Year 6: Still on the defensive.

He can make great plans, grand plans, but he is not an exploiter, not a "hacker". Even his discoveries point towards this innate characteristic of his: he's known for "Twelve uses of Dragon's Blood", Alchemy and Transfiguration.

All his study and toil led only to one conclusion: that love and self-sacrifice for love was the greatest value.

Tragically, he could not enact this during his own death, owing to the aftereffects of Riddle's horcrux-guarding potion. Even in his extremely weakened and mentally battered state, he still tried to keep Draco's soul whole.

However, he understood that to defeat great, self-centered evil, the plan's inclusion of Harry's survival post-Voldemort was paramount. Which is why his gifts to Ron and Harry were centered around reconciliation. Ron was never supposed to fight Voldemort, but Dumbledore likely knew about the kind of heady, fiery disagreements he's had with both Harry and Hermione (Book 4 and Book 3), and the Deluminator was likely something that seemed like a good general solution. Harry was given the resurrection stone because he was supposed to sacrifice himself for others. Going to his death with the goal of killing Voldemort would have tainted Harry's death. The potential benefits of Harry sacrificing himself for others, for both Harry and other people, far outweighed a juvenile, hate-filled death. That Harry's death provided protection to Harry's friends and the Order was a happy byproduct that he wasn't counting on. He also did not know whether Harry's death would kill just the Horcrux or both Harry and the Horcrux.

Two of his most important actions in the two final decades of his life were:
1. Delivering Harry to the Dursleys to continue Lily's protection
2. Encasing the Resurrection Stone in a manner that guaranteed its use only when Harry had decided the time for self-sacrifice was close.

Regarding Voldemort vs Dumbledore, I don't think it is a fair comparison at all. Albus was so much better and had a more holistic understanding of Magic. Voldemort's knowledge is very skewed and badly balanced. Voldemort often went all-out and with a single goal (some specific person's destruction), while Albus could always repel Voldemort without ever dueling him, and he did so even after he was dead!

Albus Dumbledore was a very learned, very smart Wizard that also managed to practically apply his knowledge for the benefit of every living Witch and Wizard. I'd say that makes him extremely competent.