as i said, beating people with hax, kinda lowers the portrayal for me. white witch can beat entire fairy tail guild, but she aint that strong. this same goes for august.
no i dont do that like that. i need a reference point. hax confuse me, but otherwise i am ok.
easiest way i can explain it is like this
what is a stronger move, a moves that kill character A, or a moves that overpower character A strongest move. for me its overpowering character A strongest move, because i believe character A, can kill himself or herself with their own high tier moves. that is why i rank darkness gray strongest move above laxus reiko red lightening. gray overpowered invel strongest move, laxus killed wahl. assuming here, that invel and wahl are equal, invel armor would be equal to wahl etherion.
same can be done for eileen and august. lets ignore eileen stats increase in dragon form, and being able to do magic that she couldnt in human form (mp increase?). lets just say eileen and august are equal (this is cannon), eileen strongest move would be equal to august strongest move (featwise august has no strongest move, but his suicide move would be above anything eileen has shown), and that move would kill august, unless he put reasonalble effort to overpower it.
pof erza did over power that move, gildarts has no feats near this.
the way i see it
durability for human irene and august
is about same (august survived gildarts strongest move, irene while distracted pretty much tanked enhanced erza move)
speed for human irene and august
about the same (for me erza is faster than gildarts, so irene is also faster than august)
attack power for human irene and august
same, couldnt even put down wendy or cana (plot?)
but difference come with dragon irene.
suddenly irene claw swipe can wreck gildarts (break every bone for erza).
her deus sema should be even above that. august nor gildarts just doesnt have feats here
(you can, i guess, try to make august and dragon irene equal, but august attack powers are equal to human irene attack power ,(cana and wendy) and of course i dont think gildarts can break every single bones of laxus/erza with a punch, nor can gildarts tank such punch, (and last peopele said human irene and august were equal, no dragon or copy/nullification hax))
at the end, its simple. can gildarts kill zeref, if no. then it follows that pof erza can be above gildarts. now is she above or not, this depends on you.
I disagree, a character killing themselves with their own strongest move is incredibly unlikely. Take Raiko for instance, no way is it killing Laxus, in fact based on the Erza fight he could take it half a dozen times and still be standing. Or Jura with Rumbling Mt Fuji, Cana beat it cleanly, she's still not oneshotting Jura. Jellal's own Sema? He had to combine it with Grand Chariot just to put down the OS, no way it's beating him. Or your own example, Deus Sema, we both know that's not putting down Dragon Eileen, probably not even human Eileen. Then finally there is Invel's armor, Gray broke it with a punch, while when he actually had to beat Invel he used a DeS move, clearly Invel's own durability is a league above his strongest move. So yeah, durability>strongest attack.
Erza split apart Eileen's meteor? Gildarts split apart August's actual body. Faced against Gildarts Dues Sema is just a pile of cubes.
As for Eileen's dragon form, a wisdom increase is what she said. And again, you're assuming Eileen's hits are hard and August's aren't, for all you know the blast August used on Gildarts has equal strength to Eileen's claw swipe, but Gildarts is just too much of a tank. I don't necessarily believe any of this, but my point is you're giving the benefit of the doubt to Eileen over August because she faced Erza, despite Erza being weaker than Gildarts
For stats
August's durability is greater, tanking Gildarts strongest move is better because Gildarts is stronger.
Speed, human Eileen matches base August's speed, sure.
Attack power, sure, they're about the same.
Yeah, dragon Eileen changes things, but all the previous stats were judged on August without his actual magic. If you wanna go dragon stats then you gotta pull August magic stats.
Durability, Magic August wins, there are less users of Holder Magic than there are Dragon Slayers, August is near invincible.
Offense, Dragon Eileen wins, breaking bones is good
Speed, Magic August wins, Meteor takes the cake, plus Racers magic
Overall they're equal, as the manga states, Dragon mode doesn't change that. Even after Eileen uses it the manga still goes ahead and calls August the most powerful member of the spriggan 12, there is nothing at all in the manga portraying Eileen as more powerful than August.
Natsu got the power of the guild and his magic has an actual function of turning emotion into magic power, Erza's doesn't have any of that, if you wanna claim she literally got Makarovs power I'll hear you out, but outside of that Gildarts is stronger, so him performing well against August isn't a knock against August's feats, it just reinforces the fact that Gildarts is powerful.