Some would define a "powerful" era of wulin as one wherein there is a large number of elite fighters, such as during DGSD and L/ROCH. During DGSD, there was the Janitor Monk, the Siu Yiu Sect Elders, Hui Juk, Deun Yu, Kiu Fung, Mo Yung Bok, Siu Yeun San, and Kau Mor Tze. During the span of L/ROCH, there were about a dozen figures in wulin who reached the status of Greats.
By the time of HSDS, there were only two confirmed elite fighters: Cheung 3 Fung and Cheung Mo Gei. For this reason, HSDS is often judged as a "weaker" era of wulin than DGSD or L/ROCH.
But is that really the case? Although DGSD and L/ROCH had a higher number of elite fighters, how was the wulin *middle class* doing during those stories?
In DGSD, it was doing reasonably well. There were plenty of very good mid-level fighters in DGSD, including Mo Yung F'uk and his henchmen, the Four Evils, the four royal guardsmen of Dali, various Shaolin monks, etc. In LOCH, however, we saw a huge decline in the wulin "middle class." Basically, below the Greats, there were the surviving Peach Blossom Island disciples, the Cheun Jen 7 Disciples, South Emperor's four guardsmen/disciples...and that was pretty much it. From there on, it went down to the Gong Nam 7 Freaks' level and below. The ROCH era had the same problem: remember how much difficulty the Chinese wulin had trying to come up with a combination of three fighters who could defeat the Golden Wheel Monk, Fok Do, and Dat Yee Ba? That suggests that although the L/ROCH era was top-heavy with Greats, the middle class was thin.
In HSDS, however, the wulin middle class prospered. The elite level was occupied by Cheung 3 Fung and Cheung Mo Gei alone, but in between them and the bottomfeeders were excellent fighters such as the Yuan Dynasty mercenaries (at least a dozen of them), the Four Guardian Lords and Dual Heralds of Light of the Ming Cult, the Shaolin Dao and Hung Generation monks, the Mo Dong 7 Heroes, Mit Jeut See Tai of Ngor Mei Sect, the Hung Dung Sect Elders, etc. It was a much stronger wulin middle class that appeared in HSDS than in L/ROCH, and I believe this trend carried over into the SOD era as well.
So in judging an era of wulin in terms of power, is it more accurate to judge it by the number of elites, or by the number of good middle class fighters?