How strong are Asgardians?

Question

Thor can survive a punch from the Hulk but Loki was able to stab him with a blade which penetrated his skin and drew blood. Both of these events happened in the Avengers.

Also the Hulk smashed Loki around (and called him a puny god) and Loki was just a little shaken up but Jane Foster slapped him out of anger for his attack on New York in the second Thor movie. If Loki and other Asgardians are super strong (like DC’s Superman) shouldn’t Jane have broken her hand as if she were slapping a block of cement?

Answer 1

Varies

• The average Asgardian is capable of lifting 10 tons without any specialized augmentation. Though this note has changed depending on which version of the Marvel Handbook you read. Newer ones indicate the average Asgardian male can lift 30 tons and the average female 25 tons due to their enhanced physical and skeletal structures.

• Some warriors (like the Warriors Three) who train their bodies to the limit may lift upwards of 30 tons or more. A few may even reach 50 tons or more i.e. The Executioner. Odin Allfather is another who is capable of lifting far more than the average Asgardian (60 tons) or more using magical augmentation.

• Thor due to his birth mother being Gaia and his father being Odin can lift upwards of 100 tons unaided by magic. He can double that strength if he is using his gloves and belt of strength.

Asgardian weapon are both "magical" and super-sharp and strong. Using Asgardian weapons against Asgardians makes them no more invulnerable than a normal man would be against a sword, hence the reason many of them wear armor into battle. Mortal weapons on the other hand are simply too weak to harm even an unarmed Asgardian. Thor has allowed himself to be shot by high caliber firearms to absolutely no effect.

• However, the people of the Asgard realm are in general incredibly durable and capable of withstanding incredible amounts of physical punishment. They are also blessed with a greater than human regenerative factor, allowing them to heal in days from injuries which would incapacitate a human for months.

• As far a slapping an Asgardian, it should sting quite a bit when a human slaps one but they are still like flesh, very hard, perhaps almost like near frozen flesh. So it should hurt you more than it hurts them.

Answer 2

TL;DR - the average Asgardian is about as strong as the average Kree, both of whom are far stronger and more durable than any human could ever be.

Being as this is tagged with the marvel-cinematic-universe tag, and all the examples given are from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I'm going to answer from that perspective. It's also worth noting that the films have been a little inconsistent about Asgardians, so this answer may not be water tight.

The first thing worth pointing out is that Thor is exceptional even for an Asgardian. I go into more detail in this answer, but in effect Thor is stronger than all other Asgardians thanks to the fact that he wields Mjolnir, an extremely technologically advanced hammer that grants him power when he is considered worthy. This means that Thor is not a great comparison, as he doesn't represent the average Asgardian.

(The reason that Loki could stab Thor by the way is because Loki also has strength far in excess of our own. We see in The Avengers/Avengers Assemble that he is capable of lifting Tony Stark and throwing him through a window, as well as going toe to toe with Steve Rogers thanks to his strength alone. A human probably couldn't stab Thor - but Loki, who is weaker than him but still significantly stronger than any human could ever be, can.)

A closer (but still not fantastic) comparison would be to use Lady Sif. Although still exceptional for an Asgardian, her notoriety is due to her skill as a fighter rather than having additional powers, so she makes for a slightly better comparison than Thor does as she will be closer in both strength and durability to the average Asgardian.

In the Agents of SHIELD season 2 episode "Who You Really Are", we see that Lady Sif is roughly as strong as the Kree warrior that she is fighting, the two of them appearing to be equal in strength and durability (but with Lady Sif being the more skilled of the two). If we see that Lady Sif is roughly comparable in strength to a Kree Warrior, then we can make another comparison - Lady Sif is probably about as strong as Ronan the Accuser from Guardians of the Galaxy, another Kree warrior (albeit an exceptional one).

In Guardians of the Galaxy, we only see one real demonstration of Ronan's strength. In Knowhere, he goes toe to toe with Drax the Destroyer who is outmatched in every way, both in skill and raw power. At one point Ronan (who hasn't yet been 'powered up' by the Power Stone) throws Drax a good 30 foot or so, embedding him in a building. And it doesn't even look as if Ronan was trying that much.

Now Drax is strong, but (at least in the films) I don't think he is meant to be super human strong (although he is definitely more durable than a human). So if we say that Drax might be about as strong as Captain America (not a comparison I pulled out of nowhere - in Guardians of the Galaxy we see Drax pull a drone sentry apart with his bare hands, a feat probably similar to when Steve Rogers pulls a log apart with his bare hands in Avengers: Age of Ultron) then we can see a clear hierarchy form.

Even when humanity is quite literally at it's very best thanks to a super soldier serum (which, contrary to popular belief, does not make you a super human) we would still be far outmatched by a Kree Warrior, and therefore far outmatched by an Asgardian. As Loki implied in The Avengers/Avengers Assemble, we are but ants when compared to the Asgardians boots.

Other relevant feats of strength or durability

• Thor, while powered up by Mjolnir, is capable of knocking over a charging, rampaging Hulk (The Avengers/Avengers Assemble). That can't be easy.
• Thor, again while powered up by Mjolnir, crushed one of Iron Mans gauntlets with his bare hands (The Avengers/Avengers Assemble). This is armour that wasn't even dented when being hit by a tank and it's only been improved since then (Iron Man).
• Vin-Tak (The Kree warrior that fights Lady Sif) knocks Agent Bobbi Morse across a room with ease (Agents of SHIELD "Who You Really Are").
• Even when being battered by the Hulk, neither Loki nor Thor show any signs of non-superficial damage (The Avengers/Avengers Assemble). If this was to happen to Steve Rogers, he would become paste (based on the damage that super soldier Emil Blonsky receives from the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk).
• Bullets are unable to harm Loki, simply bouncing off him when he is shot multiple times after arriving on Earth through the portal the Tesseract opens (The Avengers/Avengers Assemble).
• Loki is also barely hurt at all by an explosive arrow that Clint Barton fires at him in the Battle of New York (The Avengers/Avengers Assemble).