I know Shining Road might seem like an easy answer but keep in mind that Lancelot's output is limited by his weapon. The strongest version we have seen was against a fragment of CArthur and it broke Shirojika.
DK Meliodas, after just one power-up, pierced Ban’s stomach with his bare hand and nearly killed him, so I think all it takes is an attack with very high AP. Something like Lancelot’s Shining Road after he obtained his ST.
It really makes me realize how incredible Meliodas’s body is, it allowed the DK to become that powerful after only a small boost. No wonder it was the vessel he had been craving for 3,000 years.
DK Meliodas, after just one power-up, pierced Ban’s stomach with his bare hand and nearly killed him, so I think all it takes is an attack with very high AP. Something like Lancelot’s Shining Road after he obtained his ST.
It really makes me realize how incredible Meliodas’s body is, it allowed the DK to become that powerful after only a small boost. No wonder it was the vessel he had been craving for 3,000 years.
Anything full power from his fellow Sins likely can. Meaning, King going for the kill with Guardian, Sunflower or straight up Chastiefol. Diane with Drole's Dance prepared and her stronger moves can (Ground Gladius surprisingly is one of her weakest large scale move). Lancelot should be able to injure his Dad provided he get's a magic-imbued move to catch, amplify and redirect first or has an unbreakable ST.
Neither Merlin nor Gowther have any move physically strong enough to harm Ban, they can only use hax to nerf him or a mental attack to weaken his psyche.
No one else in the verse can currently do anything to Ban. Meliodas isn't listed because it should be obvious that he can match Ban.
Anything full power from his fellow Sins likely can. Meaning, King going for the kill with Guardian, Sunflower or straight up Chastiefol. Diane with Drole's Dance prepared and her stronger moves can (Ground Gladius surprisingly is one of her weakest large scale move). Lancelot should be able to injure his Dad provided he get's a magic-imbued move to catch, amplify and redirect first or has an unbreakable ST.
Neither Merlin nor Gowther have any move physically strong enough to harm Ban, they can only use hax to nerf him or a mental attack to weaken his psyche.
No one else in the verse can currently do anything to Ban. Meliodas isn't listed because it should be obvious that he can match Ban.
You think Meliodas's with his Full DM, no Assault Mode can injure Ban with punches and kicks?
I was pretty confident that King would be able to injure him before with casual Chastiefol attacks but not anymore. Sunflower should definitely be able to however. Even the SD said she didn't get injured because their powers were compatible or something.
Not at the moment. Nakaba is hyping up Ban’s durability as something unbreakable, so I don’t think anyone could injure him. Maybe AM Meliodas could do it with his strongest attack enhanced by Hellblaze.
If Ban could come out unscathed after one of SD’s attack, then I don’t think King’s Sunflower would be able to injure him, even though SD praised it as a good move.
An important detail about Ban's durability is that he was completely immune to the DK's energy storm as well as the Grieving Sage nuke, but still took damage from basic punches by the same opponent. This suggests that either the DK's physical attacks were stronger than his magical attacks, or that Ban's physical defense is weaker than his magical defense. The DK is a more physically focused fighter so the first option might seem plausible, but in that case Ban should have also been damaged by the more magically focused SD hitting him with her specialty. The fact that Ban tanked that just fine suggests that his magic defense is indeed higher than his physical defense.
This makes perfect sense if you consider the source of Ban's durability. During the time he spent in Purgatory he was constantly bombarded with the realm's hazardous environment full of toxins, corrosion, heat, cold, storms and whatever else until his body adapted to become extremely resistant to such forces. The only physical damage he would have been exposed to during that time would be from falls or getting into fights with monsters, neither of which would have been as frequent as the environment that was trying to kill him every second of every day. This means that Ban's adaptation would have logically leaned more towards withstanding energy-based damage than physical damage.
It should be noted that Ban being more resistant to magical attacks doesn't mean that he's weak to physical attacks, only that one defense is higher than the other. If his physical defense was still on the level of a normal human then the DK's punches wouldn't just have pierced his skin but instead turned him into paste, so he's obviously pretty tanky on both fronts. Still, this means that the way to injure him is to hit him with powerful physical attacks, which seems to be how he's defeated in the prophecy judging by the stab wound in his chest. I'd expect characters like Meliodas, Escanor and King to be capable of overcoming Ban's durability, maybe some other physical heavy hitters like Zeldris and Diane as well. Merlin and Gowther might not be able to injure Ban but they could theoretically incapacitate him with hax.
You think Meliodas's with his Full DM, no Assault Mode can injure Ban with punches and kicks?
I was pretty confident that King would be able to injure him before with casual Chastiefol attacks but not anymore. Sunflower should definitely be able to however. Even the SD said she didn't get injured because their powers were compatible or something.
Meliodas as he is now, with the approach to combat that he only recently taught Tristan, yes. I think he can harm with just punches and kicks.
Here's the thing: The entire setting suffers from a quality beneath quantity problem as far as feats of destruction go. What I mean by that is that there are hardly any modern-day materials to quantify certain feats from because the hardest materials we encounter en-masse are packed earth, rock (maybe bedrock and rarely quartzes and diamond), wood, iron, perhaps steel. That only can display the quality of an attack so far so Nakaba usually has to circumvent this by going for quantity (the other reason for the quantity approach is obviously visual impressiveness). This is why we see mountain ranges being leveled, massive canyons cracked into the countryside for miles and miles and so on.
Why am I talking about his? Because in a 1v1 this makes it difficult to gauge the actual power of mere strikes and kicks. NNT made a point of Ban usually being faster than Mel while Mel usually hit harder. They often came very close to each other but it could go either way. Sometimes Ban's incredibly speed, reaction and precision would net him the win, sometimes Mel would just punch him out and lay him out flat before anything else mattered.
Meliodas as he currently is still hits INCREDIBLY hard, even in base. The manga imo has great difficulty accurately displaying just how hard he can hit because there usually ain't no materialy durable enough to withstand him (my above paragraph comes into play here), same with opponents.
Yes, I still think Meliodas can injure Ban with just punches and kicks. Will he immediately lay him out flat? Hell no, that era is past. However for all the things Ban gained in Purgatory, there still was another trade-off for gifting his immortality to save Elaine: Welcome to the world of accumulating damage.
For the longest time this was hardly an issue for Ban because of his immortality and immense regenerative power. His pain tolerance always was incredibly high and it in a whole new world now after Purgatory but the regen factor is gone entirely. As far as Cath and the Perils are concerned, their onslaught could go for a week on Ban with little to show for. This becomes an entirely different game with people from Ban's general ballpark. A dragged out against a power puncher like Mel can quickly turn dangerous for Ban because damage WILL accumulate and maybe faster than he'd expect. Meliodas is someone who is rather durable himself and he can look back on several milenia of nothing but combat. Plus, it is hard to gauge when he ramps up his power because he can bottle up so nicely and got it so well under control, this rage of his. Which leads to hilarious moments like him casually talking up Cath and then just punching his fucking heart out. He can give you a clap or end a small town with just motion of his arm with that exact same facial expression and you just... never know. Okay, Ban knows because he knows his cap'n super well but still. I wouldn't reduce Meliodas to just merely "punches and kicks" just because he doesn't burn through Assault Mode anymore.
As for King: He has another problem entirely and that is his nature of being protective rather than aggressive; Ban can just output his full strength any moment he feels like it and sometimes does or did while King very rarely locks in. He almost never tabs into the potential he truly has and the moments where he gets enraged are few and far in between.
But every time he does, King is an absolute menace. He radiates an icy calm and just dismantles his opponent and he can make it look casual. There are several incidents of where he just absolutely claps cheeks in NNT and in 4KotA as well. Be it going past his limits and nuking the Albion back at the forest, giving Meliodas shit in the druid cave or giving Commandment-transformed Mael not even the room to breathe. If King locks in for a change he just brings the pain. And yes, even Ban would feel that and would not come out unscathed.
Same with Diane, her case is even worse because she shares a similar mindset to Elizabeth, both prefer pacifism to a great extend and don't even like fighting very much or at all. But if Diane has something or someone she really wants to protect she rearranges half the nation. She wouldn't even need to bother whether she would injure Ban or not, she could just drown him into a several-kilometer sized wave of earth, muck and bedrock, pack it tight and call it a day. Last time I checked Ban still needs to breathe now. But of course you'd never get her to perform such a feat because Nakaba hates his female protagonists.
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
Addendum:
I completely forgot about this but Meliodas has a 100% surefire way to murk Ban (or anyone still alive in this manga for that matter)
It should be noted that Ban being more resistant to magical attacks doesn't mean that he's weak to physical attacks, only that one defense is higher than the other. If his physical defense was still on the level of a normal human then the DK's punches wouldn't just have pierced his skin but instead turned him into paste, so he's obviously pretty tanky on both fronts. Still, this means that the way to injure him is to hit him with powerful physical attacks, which seems to be how he's defeated in the prophecy judging by the stab wound in his chest. I'd expect characters like Meliodas, Escanor and King to be capable of overcoming Ban's durability, maybe some other physical heavy hitters like Zeldris and Diane as well. Merlin and Gowther might not be able to injure Ban but they could theoretically incapacitate him with hax.
I don’t think there are that many people who can actually injure Ban. DK Meliodas before power-up, who is physically stronger than Ban, tried to pierce his stomach with his extra arms, yet Ban only bled a little. So I believe the only ones capable of hurting Ban would be those who can hit harder than him, which is why I would exclude people like King, Diane, and Zeldris from the list. Excluding the gods, Escanor The One Ultimate has the highest chance, but that form is a suicidal move. AM Meliodas is also a potential candidate, even though we haven’t seen many feats from him in that form yet.
I think that Wild Full Throttle can definitely injure him. I mean he was even capable of momentarily pushing back and lightly damage the Demon King TRUE BODY IN PURGATORY, a feat neither Ban nor emo Meliodas(without True magic) could achieve IIRC.
What about annihilation ?? I think that it could damage him IF it hits.
Escanor could definitely with "divine sword Escanor" and "Divine spear Escanor".
Not at the moment. Nakaba is hyping up Ban’s durability as something unbreakable, so I don’t think anyone could injure him. Maybe AM Meliodas could do it with his strongest attack enhanced by Hellblaze.
If Ban could come out unscathed after one of SD’s attack, then I don’t think King’s Sunflower would be able to injure him, even though SD praised it as a good move.
All the Sins took the SD's attack at least once. Ban was unaffected but it's implied that the second attack would have killed them all without Meliodas's intervention.
If the SD herself said that the compatibility was the reason why it didn't injure her I doubt Ban could take it and come out unscathed.
All the Sins took the SD's attack at least once. Ban was unaffected but it's implied that the second attack would have killed them all without Meliodas's intervention.
If the SD herself said that the compatibility was the reason why it didn't injure her I doubt Ban could take it and come out unscathed.
I’m talking about a single attack. I don’t think King’s Sunflower is stronger than SD’s God Thunder to the point that King could injure Ban with just one single hit. He might be able to do it if he spammed Sunflower multiple times.
Yes but that's more Hax than anything. I don't know if I can name an attack which can injure his body other than fully powered Shining Road I guess? He tanked all of Cath's attacks with zero damage.
All the Sins took the SD's attack at least once. Ban was unaffected but it's implied that the second attack would have killed them all without Meliodas's intervention
Does that make a difference? I don't think Ban got weaker, he is older but still as strong. But if you think he is weaker then see it as Ban before he got affected by Bubbling of Years.
