Discussion Best Offense - Results

Ramen · Jan 18, 2020

grey matter said:
What I'm saying is that his "Armour" is like Fire for Natsu. IT's his ability, not his natural state.
His armour can tank a lot when he's high in magic power, but it weakens as his magic power lowers. IMO, every time he tanks something with his ability, that consumes magi power. So maybe Elfman would've kept attacking until Madmole until he sort of ran low on magic power.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 18, 2020, Original Post Date: Jan 18, 2020 ---

^^

What we do know is that Madmole was injured to an extent, he had scratches and shit

Yea that makes sense

Ebony Maw · Jan 18, 2020

grey matter said:
^^

What we do know is that Madmole was injured to an extent, he had scratches and shit

I just don't see how MP factors in to this when it was never mentioned by any of the people in the fight. Skullion never says that's why they are retreating, Mira doesn't say that's why they could possibly lose, Madmole is surprised that they are retreating and Elfman flat out wants to keep fighting.

Overall MP doesn't seem to be a concern to any of the characters, so I don't see that being the reason Madmole was scratched.

Ramen · Jan 18, 2020

Ebony Maw said:
I just don't see how MP factors in to this when it was never mentioned by any of the people in the fight. Skullion never says that's why they are retreating, Mira doesn't say that's why they could possibly lose, Madmole is surprised that they are retreating and Elfman flat out wants to keep fighting.

Overall MP doesn't seem to be a concern to any of the characters, so I don't see that being the reason Madmole was scratched.

Most likely he was scratched because he was in a fight. Even August had a bloody lip after his fight with Gildarts. Obviously he wasn't going to come out clean

They retreated because they were surrounded not because he wanted to.

grey matter · Jan 18, 2020

Ebony Maw said:
I just don't see how MP factors in to this when it was never mentioned by any of the people in the fight. Skullion never says that's why they are retreating, Mira doesn't say that's why they could possibly lose, Madmole is surprised that they are retreating and Elfman flat out wants to keep fighting.

Overall MP doesn't seem to be a concern to any of the characters, so I don't see that being the reason Madmole was scratched.

They were retreating because guild master asked them to. Not because they were low on magic power, I never said so. They may or maynot have been low on magic power, it's not the reason why they retreated

Yes, magic power seems to be relevant here, though they're not concerned about it. Because everyone is relatively tired by the end of the fight (Gray implies)
I'm just giving a possible explanation.
I don't buy the idea that Elfman has attack power surpassing Demolition Fist attack power. Combine that with the fact that they were kinda exhausted, and Madmole had a few injuries, it makes sense that their magic power is nowhere near their peak now.

Ebony Maw · Jan 18, 2020

August_Lightning said:
Most likely he was scratched because he was in a fight. Even August had a bloody lip after his fight with Gildarts. Obviously he wasn't going to come out clean

August took Gildarts' strongest attack and it was the first one to properly affect him due to his hax. That is way too different to compare to the Elfman/Madmole situation we're talking about - Elfman hasn't bypassed his Magic, he has just somehow left him scratched up when an FDK Demo Fist left him completely unmarked. That is suspect.

August_Lightning said:
They retreated because they were surrounded not because he wanted to.

Ah cheers!
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grey matter said:
They were retreating because guild master asked them to. Not because they were low on magic power, I never said so. They may or maynot have been low on magic power, it's not the reason why they retreated

I never said they were retreating because of their MP levels. My whole argument is that there's no indication MP matters here.

grey matter said:
Yes, magic power seems to be relevant here, though they're not concerned about it. Because everyone is relatively tired by the end of the fight (Gray implies)
I'm just giving a possible explanation.

Gray says that Mira is injured, that doesn't imply Madmole or Skullion are low on MP.

Is MP a possible explanation? No character mentions it, even Gray says "Mira is injured", not low on MP. If the characters in the fight mention nothing about MP levels and the characters outside the fight don't mention MP levels, why should I believe this is down to MP levels?

grey matter said:
I don't buy the idea that Elfman has attack power surpassing Demolition Fist attack power.

Glad we agree there.

grey matter said:
Combine that with the fact that they were kinda exhausted, and Madmole had a few injuries, it makes sense that their magic power is nowhere near their peak now.

You've lost me again. Yes their MP will be lower than when they started fighting, but there's no reason to suspect low MP + consecutive damage being the cause of Madmole's damage. Like I've said above, the characters don't make any mention of MP, but there's another reason your logic still doesn't work.

Even if we assume your right about how Madmole's Magic works, he was still left unscratched by a Demo Fist. Say that took like, what, 10%. Elfman still has to somehow put out enough offence to match that same percentage, all of which should leave Madmole unmarked if this theory is to be believed. That's one issue alone, but then he has to consistently output enough offence to cover him in scratches.

One way or another Elfman has to have somehow delivered a barrage of attacks that are more powerful than Demo Fist, and then somehow have followed that up with barrages that were strong enough (so we're probably talking like another 2 Demo Fists worth of attacks at least) to cover him in scratches. How in the hell does Elfman pull this off when his first hit didn't even scratch Madmole and actually hurt him?

Another thing I'd like to mention is that I think your point about Madmole's Magic and MP scaling to his durability is wrong... kinda. So all Dragon Slaying Magic makes you near immune to your own element, but how does that work for Madmole? He can't exactly be highly resistant to armour because... how would that even work? Rather, I think that is where his crazy durability comes in - its his inherent boost, just like how Natsu's heat resistance isn't tied to his MP. Madmole does have his own spells after all, so his durability draining his MP would be massively counter-intuitive.
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Overall, the MP scaling theory doesn't make sense to me because no characters even mention MP and it wouldn't be in-keeping with how Magic Power works. Magic Power powers spells and Madmole's durability, though perhaps enhanced due to the type of Magic he uses, is not tied to a spell so MP should not affect his durability.

Biri Biri · Jan 18, 2020

Googled the term 'offensive', and they came up with this explanation.

offensive
/əˈfɛnsɪv/
adjective

1.
causing someone to feel resentful, upset, or annoyed.
"the allegations made are deeply offensive to us"

Similar:
insulting, rude, derogatory, disrespectful, hurtful, wounding

1. Erza
2. Wendy

Takuan · Jan 18, 2020

Lmao that was hilarious

Jko · Jan 18, 2020

Ebony Maw said:
Weren't Natsu and Gajeel playing the Twin Dragons from the start though? If I'm not wrong about that, the scenarios are too different.

Against Sting and Rogue they were clearly holding back since (IIRC) they comment on how they were learning their attack patterns, movements, etc.

In the case of Mira and Elfman neither made any comments alluding to anything like that, they just called them strong. Of course we have to accept that Mira did hold back due to her canonically having strong Souls. But Elfman? Even if you want to say he held back, you still have to somehow explain Elfman's Soul going from being hurt from hitting Madmole to surpassing the striking strength of an FDK Demo Fist. That is far too drastic of a difference to be explained by Elfman holding back.

Tbh I don't think it even needed justifying that much, he had a Soul that was made to counter Sand Magic and had assistance from Lisanna (which protected him from the one sand attack that would have saved Ajeel). Ajeel isn't exactly particularly strong even by Spriggan standards either.

Mira holding back is a weird part of this tbh, since it makes her look stupid as hell. "If we continued fighting, would we even have won?" - probably, if you'd just gone into a stronger Soul from the start? At least when Team Natsu lost to the DE's the first time around it was because they were shocked by their abilities and the fights ended before they could enter stronger modes (or use more suitable attacks in the case of Natsu). With Mira and Elfman, Mira just stayed in base for no reason. So while I do agree that Mira held back (in that she wasn't using stronger Souls, I think she definitely wasn't pulling punches even though she was in BSS), that only makes the entirety of the fight stranger to me since its still weird for Skullion to go from being completely undamaged by physical and Magical attacks to being scratched up.

As for Elfman though, I suppose we'll only see as time goes on whether that was his strongest Soul or not. But for now its the strongest he has, and going from being hurt from hitting a passive Madmole to scratching him up makes no sense when this is a guy who shrugged off an FDK Demo Fist. Like I said above, its too drastic of a difference to just be a case of Elfman holding back when in the exact same Soul.

My final stance on this is that you're right about Mira holding back but I don't buy Elfman holding back at all, and even though I accept Mira was holding back, its still weird as hell that Madmole/Skullion went from being completely untouched to being just as scratched up as the Strauss'.

God off-panel fights suck lmao

They were even and then started getting their butts beats by Sting alone in DF. We didn't know the held back until they get up for R2.

That's was later tho. We didn't know they were holding back until they showed that they were.

Elf never fought Madmole before so how would he know he needed to bring an attack that's stronger than a Demo-fist? They just met these guys so they weren't going to go all out from the jump. He hit Madmole and gets shocked out of his takeover. We then see him later attacking Madmole with multiple attacks without going out of takeover. He just wasn't expecting Madmole to be tough as he was and got his own attack reflected back at him. After that first punch he just took his punches up to another level.

Even if he countered Ajeel's magic he had no feats on Ajeel's physicality. He was capable of one handing a jupiter shot and tanking Erza's sword strikes. Seeing that Elf's offense is actually high just goes to show that he had the power to actually beat Ajeel and it also reinforces that this guy did go heads with Erza and only lost due to getting side cocked.

We have to remember that Mira is modest of her own power and Eflman's with her so she is not going to go all out as she only fights at full power when she by herself.

Mira has the ability to use gale force waves.

We also know that since both hurt Madmole they are hitting harder than a Demo-fist and that means their physical power can scale to Natsu physical strength. And Natsu created a huge gale force against Bakel with his punch.

Not to mention that Bakel could create a gale force to blow back Natsu's fire.

We all know both are better than Bakel by a lot lol. She must have started must have been punching or kicking so hard that she was bringing them up which we know wind is a direct counter to his logia. Mira and Elf just weren't fighting at their best in their forms at the beginning since this a new enemy and they just kicked it up once they saw they were actually tough.

Why does it not make sense? Elfman was one of the people who was stated to train heavily. He just didn't get the actual screen time to show it so when he beat Ajeel it seem like bs, but this is just showing Elfman is actually powerful. Why is hard to believe he held back? It's not like he was throwing his full arsenal at Madmole with just his first punch lol. We see them in a stalemate and see Elf still in his lion transformation which means he was getting shocked out of it when he was hitting Madmole.

You think it's unbelievable that Elf held back with the first punch? How would he know that Madmole had OP defense? I'm not saying Elf held back the entire fight, I'm just saying he stopped holding back after that first punch. He got surprised by his toughness and then we see him damaging which means he must have been holding back with the first punch and kicked it up to the next level. It's also not like Elf wasn't ready to fight some more either which just really reinforces that he was able to hurt Madmole.

The Strauss siblings held back in the first part and then kicked it up. Mira's resourceful so her finding a way to hit Skullion is not out of the world.

They do, but they still give us info and feats from them. The fans who can't believe Elf is that strong are basically Gray and co while Mashima is Lucy trying tell us that Elf ain't a joke and he is not to be underestimated as he is strong lol.

Kurumi Tokisaki · Jan 18, 2020

I somehow managed to include Jellal in my list for casually one-shotting Neinhart, unlike Natsu who needed POF to beat him.

Jko · Jan 18, 2020

Kurumi Tokisaki said:
I somehow managed to include Jellal in my list for casually one-shotting Neinhart, unlike Natsu who needed POF to beat him.

Jellal wasn't casual as he used his second strongest move and was sweating + gasping after the attack.
Jellal was also bloodlusted while Natsu was not lmfao.
Natsu fought an enhanced Neinheart which is stronger than normal Neinheart.
Since when does PoF come from a casual punch?

Kurumi Tokisaki · Jan 18, 2020

Jko said:
nce when does PoF come from a casual punch?

POF comes from everywhere to Natsu.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 18, 2020, Original Post Date: Jan 18, 2020 ---

Jko said:
Jellal was also bloodlusted while Natsu was not lmfao.

No, he wasn't, he was just mad that he has to dirty his hands against someone like Neinhart.

Jko · Jan 18, 2020

Kurumi Tokisaki said:
POF comes from everywhere to Natsu.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 18, 2020, Original Post Date: Jan 18, 2020 ---

No, he wasn't, he was just mad that he has to dirty his hands against someone like Neinhart.

PoF only happens when you need to surpass your limit. You clearly can't surpass your limit when using a casual punch.

I'll take one more sin upon my soul and tiny pupils = bloodlusted.

Kurumi Tokisaki · Jan 18, 2020

Jko said:
I'll take one more sin upon my soul and tiny pupils = bloodlusted.

That's because he had no choice but to beat him. He was just upset that he had to beat a fodder like Neinhart. A cat can challenge a Lion but it's not like lion will fight the fodder cat unless he gives him no choice.

Jko · Jan 18, 2020

Kurumi Tokisaki said:
That's because he had no choice but to beat him. He was just upset that he had to beat a fodder like Neinhart. A cat can challenge a Lion but it's not like lion will fight the fodder cat unless he gives him no choice.

He wasn't as he goes on and fights actual fodder w/o being pissed beyond belief lol.

Livinbreathineatin · Jan 18, 2020

Ebony Maw said:
Weren't Natsu and Gajeel playing the Twin Dragons from the start though? If I'm not wrong about that, the scenarios are too different.

Against Sting and Rogue they were clearly holding back since (IIRC) they comment on how they were learning their attack patterns, movements, etc.

In the case of Mira and Elfman neither made any comments alluding to anything like that, they just called them strong. Of course we have to accept that Mira did hold back due to her canonically having strong Souls. But Elfman? Even if you want to say he held back, you still have to somehow explain Elfman's Soul going from being hurt from hitting Madmole to surpassing the striking strength of an FDK Demo Fist. That is far too drastic of a difference to be explained by Elfman holding back.

Tbh I don't think it even needed justifying that much, he had a Soul that was made to counter Sand Magic and had assistance from Lisanna (which protected him from the one sand attack that would have saved Ajeel). Ajeel isn't exactly particularly strong even by Spriggan standards either.

Mira holding back is a weird part of this tbh, since it makes her look stupid as hell. "If we continued fighting, would we even have won?" - probably, if you'd just gone into a stronger Soul from the start? At least when Team Natsu lost to the DE's the first time around it was because they were shocked by their abilities and the fights ended before they could enter stronger modes (or use more suitable attacks in the case of Natsu). With Mira and Elfman, Mira just stayed in base for no reason. So while I do agree that Mira held back (in that she wasn't using stronger Souls, I think she definitely wasn't pulling punches even though she was in BSS), that only makes the entirety of the fight stranger to me since its still weird for Skullion to go from being completely undamaged by physical and Magical attacks to being scratched up.

As for Elfman though, I suppose we'll only see as time goes on whether that was his strongest Soul or not. But for now its the strongest he has, and going from being hurt from hitting a passive Madmole to scratching him up makes no sense when this is a guy who shrugged off an FDK Demo Fist. Like I said above, its too drastic of a difference to just be a case of Elfman holding back when in the exact same Soul.

My final stance on this is that you're right about Mira holding back but I don't buy Elfman holding back at all, and even though I accept Mira was holding back, its still weird as hell that Madmole/Skullion went from being completely untouched to being just as scratched up as the Strauss'.

God off-panel fights suck lmao
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Where did I claim Madmole and Skullion are immune to damage? I was the one that raised Skullion being hit by Gray in the first place.

Not sure if you're purposefully being disingenuous here but Natsu hurting Madmole in their second battle does nothing for Elfman's case. The manga makes it clear that Natsu isn't damaging him conventionally, instead he used FDK Purgatory to surpass Madmole's heat resistance:

If anything Elfman's feats in this off-panel fight look even more suspect since god damn Natsu chose to overpower Madmole through heat rather than actual striking power. So yeah, Elfman damaging Madmole to such an extent while in the same Soul that got hurt just from hitting a passive Madmole is looking like some major BS.

The point I've being trying to make is that Madmole's and Skullion's durability is pretty damn impressive. So when they get scratched up in an off-panel fight, an off-panel fight that they were clearly winning at the start since Mira and Elfman were damaged first while they were unscratched, something is weird when the fight ends with all parties looking equally damaged.

Just to repeat, no they aren't immune to damage but that wasn't my point and you would have known that had you bothered to read my previous reply.

I never said you said they were immune to damage lol. You just seemed confused because some characters got some scratches.

Elfman and Mira were more damaged than Skullion and Madmole. When were the parties equally injured? That sounds like something you made up because Mira and Elfman were literally covered in more injuries since they couldn’t bypass the defenses and intangibility till later.

Elfman casually hit Madmole at first then he bounced out of his soul. There’s nothing to suggest he didn’t just punch him harder afterwards, he’s always been a powerhouse e.g he tanked his own attack thrown at him at twice the power.

Axiomus · Jan 18, 2020

Ebony Maw said:
I just don't see how MP factors in to this when it was never mentioned by any of the people in the fight. Skullion never says that's why they are retreating, Mira doesn't say that's why they could possibly lose, Madmole is surprised that they are retreating and Elfman flat out wants to keep fighting.

Overall MP doesn't seem to be a concern to any of the characters, so I don't see that being the reason Madmole was scratched.

This is something that I forgot to point out: I am fairly certain that Madmole is saying something the lines of "I can handle this" when Skullion siad that Mira and Elfman were stronger than expected. That's why he seemed very surprised when Skullion gave the order to retreat. Though 2 translation sources seem to disagree with me, so I chalked it up to me misreading it. I will be checking out that panel again when the official translation comes out, whenever that happens. Vol 3 should come out in English next month, but these chapters might be in vol 6 or something.

If this is true, however, it probably means that Madmole thought he could solo this, and Skullion only retreated because he sensed Wraith and Kyria being defeated. So technically it's not Mira and Elfman flexing over Skullion....But rather Natsu and Laxus. Make of this what you will.