Discussion About Aura Combat & How Nen Works

[kkck]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Well, but what technique would actually reinforce nen? We know that ko is a clear reinforcement technique which concentrates an entire ren or ken in a single area. How would a similar principle apply to reinforcing nen? Say we have razor's nen ball and we attempt to reinforce it. What do we do? In principle we would send all the energy of our ren or ken to the ball right? But would that be reinforcement or simply a larger nen ball? In essence, reinforcement of nen does not work.Reinforcement has been stated to be the enhancement of something's properties through nen be it your body or an object. In that regard, nen enhanced with nen would not be reinforced nen but rather just more nen.

Even with the explanation you gave the whole kannon thing does not quite make sense with netero. If all schools lose power through aging then netero's emission, transformation and manipulation would have also gotten weaker through aging. More so, when it comes to offense the effects of increased defense or offense are not 1 to 1 for each amount of nen and physical strength, as bisk says there is a multiplier. So how would an emitted attack compared to a reinforced attack? Enforcement would have the speed of the attack plus the natural strength of the attack plus the amount of nen of the attack. When it comes to emitted techniques the amount of power they have is simply determined by the amount of aura and the speed at which it moves. In this regard an emitted attack against a reinforced attack with the same amount of nen and speed would invariably be inferior. Applying this to netero, what would be more effective in terms of offense or defense? Using his nen to enhance his regular defense and attack or using his nen to create that huge thing? His chances of hurting the king are evidently higher with a ko than with his nen statue simply because the statue will damage based on speed and amount of nen while his reinforced fist would damage based on his strength, speed and amount of nen. Its a huge obvious difference. His defense should work the same way too. Of course, netero himself could not quite defend his body from the king while the statue did not break from attacks on part the king. I really don't think the traditional rules of nen and hatsu apply when it comes to the statue netero uses, this we get to an specialization acquired with time.

I really don't think the statue can be said to be conjured either. Its too strong and the manga gave no indications of it having conditions and rules when it comes to its speed, movements and strength.

 

[Phantron]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Aura is 'reinforced' by spending more AP. This isn't reinforcement. If you want to create a bigger aura fireball, you got to use more AP. Your max AP output is some function of your overall mastery of aura and is not dependent on school. Gon uses 2-4K AP for all 3 of Jajaken's varieties. If it's school dependent then there's got to be some school he can't even use up to 2K AP at once, consider he's downright terrible with Transformation. We wouldn't expect the scissors to be very powerful, but it will always consume a very impressive amount of AP (and waste it).

Special moves can also greatly increase the amount of AP you can put into a move. Jajaken is an obvious example. Netero's Zero has to use more AP than his regular Kannon. The multiplier effect for special, at least in terms of damage, must refer to the fact that you get to use up more AP at once for increased effect because otherwise you're creating damage out of thin air, and that'd mean something special enough can kill someone using up 1 AP, which is an amount that has to be nearly undetectable so nobody can even prepare for it.

Gon's regular punch does around 200 damage on Knuckle's scale, and rock does around 2000 damage, and we know rock is way stronger than eating 10 punches from Gon in a row. So using up extra AP for damage, even at a relatively bad ratio, is almost always a good thing.
It's not clear how special multiplier works for non-damage stuff, but I think it's still a safe assumption that using more AP = better effect. For example, as Killua can probably create bigger shocks or have electricity last longer as he improves, but one would assume he has to pay at least a proportional amount of AP for those improved effects (assuming he is already 100% efficient at the technique of course).

I don't really think the statue is that powerful in terms of damage output. Netero said all along he expected to do very little damage to Meryem with this move. It may look like it can smash mountains but at least compared to the durability of the opponent, it was actually pretty weak. I have no reason to believe Netero can't punch harder than that during his prime.

For the decline with age, let's say at old age you lose 50% of your physical ability and 50% your total AP, and 50% of your maximum AP output.

For a Reinforcement natural user, that means your fist does 50% the damage before, and it can only be Reinforce to 50% compared to your prime since you lost half of your aura. Note that you're still 100% efficient at Reinforcement, but you have half the aura to use to reinforce your fistm so the effect has to go down too. You get 0.5 + (0.5*0.5)
= 0.75, compared to 1 + 1 = 2 at your prime. This means your fist power is roughly 1/3 of what it used to be.

For an Emission user, it seems Emission damage is just determined by amount of AP used + special modifier. Special modifier won't change with age, so since your AP output is half of what it used to be, your damage is also half of what it used to be. Therefore, if your fist and Emission used to do the same damage at your prime, your Emission techniques will now do more damage than your fist.

A Reinforcement user's damage depends on his physical strength plus his aura strength. An Emission school's damage appears to only depend on his aura strength. At least, it's not obvious to me why being physically stronger will make your aura projectiles more powerful. But this works both ways. As you reach your prime, a Reinforcement user benefits from both his physical strength and his aura strength, while other school only benefits from aura strength. We also know a HXH character's prime lasts pretty long (Zeno still seems to be relatively in his prime, for example), so I don't think Reinforcement user is getting a bad deal here.

The other schools have even less ties to physical strength. Hisoka's bubblegum ability, for example, shouldn't become more or less sticky just because his physical strength increased or decreased. Hisoka lost both of his arms against Kastro, and Machi told him to avoid vigorous action while his arm is healing, so his physical ability is greatly decreased during this time, but he sure seems capable of using both of his abilities at full capacity during this time.

 

[Tombadgerlock]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

I don't think pitou's nen had an affinity to materialization. Actually the manga gives conclusive proof that it is not. Materialized objects have the quality of being real objects which can be seen by normal people. Pitou's puppets could not be seen by normal people, he actually used them to manipulate a nation's leader and a number of soldiers and no one saw them.

You kinda forget the existence of 'In'.


Anyway, there is obviously no 'Cap' to abilities, though it's also extremely likely that after a while, training gives diminishing return. you can still learn new hatsus, but your own basic (constant aura power, potential aura, speed of aura movement) would increase slower (compared to before).

Also, it's pretty obvious you can reinforce materialized items, which is why it's so useful. You cannot make materialized items that are 'stronger' than a real equivalent, but you can both give unique proprieties to the item (see chain jail) and reinforce them.

 

[Jack Van Burace]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Imho, one's aura can become larger/denser with Reinforcement Hatsu: you just gotta Reinforce your aura production mechanisms (whatever that is). Gon's Rock didn't just focus Nen on his hand, it increased the amount of Nen that was there, hence the large blast. If moving Nen around one's body is what Rock is, then any school can do it, as it is one of those basic principles, and not exclusive to Reinforcement.

Reinforcement school has a larger aura pool than others due to this: one can Reinforce their own Aura output, just like their speed or strength. It isn't hax due to the fact that Nen isn't always about quantity. Imo, the 'Hatsu Hexagon' is a spectre that goes from quality to quantity, starting on Specialization and going to Reinforcement, where schools closer to Specialization are more about quality and schools closer to Reinforcement focus more on quantity.

So it is possible to reinforce your aura, since something on yourself makes that aura, and you can reinforce that.

 

[kkck]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Under that idea then almost any form of emission which used a large amount of nen would be reinforced nen which IMO does not make a lot of sense. Under that logic razor's nen ball would be something inherently reinforced as it is a large mass of concentrated nen however such a thing was never mentioned and would have been important. IMO emissions can project and concentrate their aura as much as they want without it having even 1% of enhancement to it. I also don't think you can reinforce your aura output. How would that work? You reinforce your output so you have more aura and in turn you use that aura to further reinforce it further and so on? I don't think things work that way. Aura output has been mentioned before however no one said the output could be increased by reinforcement, it is a variable aspect between hunters which increases with training. I also don't think there is "something" on you that makes aura. You make it sound as if there was an organ or something which makes it lol. If we try to find an explanation to aura the most likely thing would be spirit or heart, none of which are tangible things which could be reinforced lol. Reinforcement schools have not been mentioned to have a large aura output either.... I would think any school can have as large an aura output as they train to as aura output is just a function of that, training.

 

[Uriel]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

We're talking about two different levels then. We have Nen monster that trained a lot and are strong and we're comparing it to Gon which is a rookie in the whole sense of the world. We shouldn't even consider tot compare Razor against him since it's obvious that Gon even putting all he has got wont take out of him more aura than what Razor is able to produce in a single bow.

The reinforcement is to the aura itself, as I said. It makes it more effective on what it tries to do or rise the chance of being effective. Either that be reinforce the aura to better reinforce the body or reinforce to aura to have a better reach or reinforce the aura to do full damage converting 1AP to 1DP.

 

[Jack Van Burace]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

You have "aura pores" on your body, so it IS an "organ" thing. Wing opened Killua and Gon's pores by applying Nen into them, so the same way a person can use reinforcement on that.

And I do believe it works exponentially like that, yes. A Reinforcer should have far more Aura available than other schools that have trained just as much. However, it wouldn't increase indefinitely, as one's ability to apply reinforcement with extra aura would be as difficult as reinforcing many different areas of yourself at the same time (it's like using it again, at the same time). And by doing so, one would let down what's really important to reinforce. Thus, it isn't indefinite, just as one's ability to apply reinforcement is limited, despite having a huge aura-pool (imo, it's not the size of one's aura that determines one's skill into using it).

So taking your example, a person generates more aura and then tries to reinforce once again using that aura, but the user is just one and can't reinforce an indefinite amount of things. He then can use the more aura he's got to reinforce better what he was going to reinforce, but if he choses to once again use it on his pores, he might not have the ability to apply all that aura into something while keeping its output.

I don't think Emission needs reinforcement to output a large amount of Nen. It's clearly two different things: increasing your personal output, and reinforcing your output. One may increase its own speed with Nen, but reinforcers not just apply Nen but also use it to add the reinforcing effect, thus becoming much more than usual Nen application would result in. So using reinforcement on your 'pores' would also work like an increased aura-output.

 

[kkck]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

I never compared razor to gon in my post, I merely pointed out his aura ball would necessarily have to be reinforced if the definition mentioned before applied.

I also don't think that you need reinforcement to convert 1 ap to 1 dp. That does not work either. If anything, if we go by what bisk said regarding techniques as ko, using reinforcement on something grants tens of dps for only 1 of ap. I don't see how you can reinforce nen, I don't see how that would even be viable. At least how I understand nen, it is simply energy. You don't have to change its inherent properties for it do basic techniques. In that sense, for gon to use rock or franklin or razon to use their emitted attacks, they did not give their nen an emitted properties or a reinforced property. They simply sent their regular generic nen to where they wanted and used how they wanted to. The way you describe reinforcement makes it sound as if nen had to be changed to reinforced nen for it to do any reinforcement on which I vehemently do not agree on simply because the manga has never mentioned such a thing. Interestingly, giving your nen a reinforced property to make it reinforcement nen would be more akin to a transformation type rather than enhancement type.

 

[Jack Van Burace]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

I agree: changing Nen's properties to increase or decrease would be Transformation. To be Enhancement it has to be on the body's mechanisms of outputting aura.

Transformation -> Changing Nen's properties to mimic those of matter;
Materialization -> Nen mimics matter entirely;
Enhancement -> Nen increases properties of matter;

To use Enahncement on aura one needs to enhance the "aura pores", not use it on aura itself.

 

[Uriel]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

For a Reinforcement natural user, that means your fist does 50% the damage before, and it can only be Reinforce to 50% compared to your prime since you lost half of your aura. Note that you're still 100% efficient at Reinforcement, but you have half the aura to use to reinforce your fistm so the effect has to go down too. You get 0.5 + (0.5*0.5)
= 0.75, compared to 1 + 1 = 2 at your prime. This means your fist power is roughly 1/3 of what it used to be.

I don't think the math is good here. You can't lose aura, actually. You can stop training and stop rising it but that's different. Aura is one of those concepts that NEVER go down in ANY manga.
The math would be like this, as I see it:
[(X*Y)*(Z*L)]/W=D
[(X*Y+Y1+Y2+Y3)*(Z*L+Z2*L+Z3*L)]/W= D

X being Physical Strength
Y being Nen basic multiplier (Changing depending the basic-advanced technique used)
Z being the school percentage (100% Intensification, let's say)
L being level of that school
W being the total AP used
D being Damage Done (Not taking in consideration the defender)

In case of Netero, X was downgraded thus affecting the rest of the equation.

Anyway, there is obviously no 'Cap' to abilities, though it's also extremely likely that after a while, training gives diminishing return. you can still learn new hatsus, but your own basic (constant aura power, potential aura, speed of aura movement) would increase slower (compared to before).

Exactly. There seems to be a cap due this, but it's not a real cap.

I never compared razor to gon in my post, I merely pointed out his aura ball would necessarily have to be reinforced if the definition mentioned before applied.

Was not only to you, I was pointing at the few examples given in the thread.

And I agree with what you said about reinforcement Nen being more likely Transformation school when I put it like that. Hmmm, I guess then I should just take the manga explanation of what Intensification is, lol.

 

[Phantron]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Morel can control about hundreds of smoke entities that have combat power.

Both Pufu and Pitou are capable of controlling an army with 50000 entities. How can this not require more AP? Razor implied that his aura projectile would do a bit more damage than him throwing a ball, and Biscuit also said that dodgeball isn't exactly the optimal sport for his school (gives Reinforcement user all the time they need to charge). However, the fact those two are doing comparable damage would suggest he uses comparable AP for throwing a ball (Reinforcement) or an aura projectile (Emission). The Emission does more damage because that's his natural type, but he is capable of projecting comparable AP on Reinforcement techniques as well. I think we just tend to see Reinforcement using massive APs because it's easy to translate that. More AP = more damage. But unless you think the limit to number of entites you can control is completely arbitrary, even stuff like Manipulation has to be related to AP expenditure, i.e. more AP = more people controlled.

1 AP -> 1 damage is just a convenient base line for maximum efficiency. I guess you can say Emission can do 1 AP -> 1 damage too and that seems reasonable. The other 4 schools don't seem to have an obvious translation between AP expenditure to damage (e.g. Hisoka's bubblegum does no damage at all), but I think you can assume no school can do better than the benchmark established by Reinforcement. For a technique like Ko, it's taking all the aura that normally would be on standby around your body and focus it all on one attack. It'd have to be the case that you're using most of that aura up, or the increase in damage wouldn't make sense. Gon normally has around 2K AP around his body. If he uses Ko, then that 2K AP is now concentrated on his fist, so he can use more at once for extra damage. We know it doesn't even do 1 to 1 (otherwise he should use Ko over Jajaken), but remember, doing 10 times the damage in one hit is way stronger than hitting someone 10 times, so some efficiency loss is perfectly acceptable.

---------- Post added at 01:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:32 PM ----------

Additional note: I assume 1 AP -> 1 damage for special moves only. It may be possible to go above that with basic moves, but nobody in HXH has ever been defeated by just basic moves unless the victor was unfathomably stronger, and in that case it's not like he's worried about anything. Ko, I think, has to be worse than 1 to 1, since it's gathering all the AP around your body and concentrate it into one point. Just from the illustration alone, we can tell see that the concentrated point sure doesn't look comparable to the normal amount surrounding your body, so I think you're already giving up some efficiency. I.e. if you have 2000 AP around your body, you might only be able to compress it to 500 AP with Ko into one point. You certainly can't compress 2000 AP iaround body into 2000 AP at one point with Ko, or techniques like Jajaken wouldn't make sense to even exist. Ko can do multiple times of damage because damage in HXH is not linear. We can assume against a comparable level entity, that guy's physical defense + aura defense negates the majority of your damage by normal moves. E.g. you might punch for 300 but the guy can defend 250 for 50 damage. If you can triple your attack, you now do 900 -250 = 650 damage, so your damage is now 13 times compared to before. There is a huge advantage to be able to focus a large amount of AP into one attack in HXH, so I think it's reasonable to pay a corresponding penalty for it.

 

[kkck]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

---------- Post added at 01:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:32 PM ----------

Additional note: I assume 1 AP -> 1 damage for special moves only. It may be possible to go above that with basic moves, but nobody in HXH has ever been defeated by just basic moves unless the victor was unfathomably stronger, and in that case it's not like he's worried about anything. Ko, I think, has to be worse than 1 to 1, since it's gathering all the AP around your body and concentrate it into one point. Just from the illustration alone, we can tell see that the concentrated point sure doesn't look comparable to the normal amount surrounding your body, so I think you're already giving up some efficiency. I.e. if you have 2000 AP around your body, you might only be able to compress it to 500 AP with Ko into one point. You certainly can't compress 2000 AP iaround body into 2000 AP at one point with Ko, or techniques like Jajaken wouldn't make sense to even exist. Ko can do multiple times of damage because damage in HXH is not linear. We can assume against a comparable level entity, that guy's physical defense + aura defense negates the majority of your damage by normal moves. E.g. you might punch for 300 but the guy can defend 250 for 50 damage. If you can triple your attack, you now do 900 -250 = 650 damage, so your damage is now 13 times compared to before. There is a huge advantage to be able to focus a large amount of AP into one attack in HXH, so I think it's reasonable to pay a corresponding penalty for it.

That just can't be right, we have several statements in the manga which suggest otherwise. Based on what knuckle said gon can compress the 1800 worth of aura covering his body into 2000 points in his fist. More so, gon's rock is nothing but ko, that is also manga fact. Obviously the nen around gon's fist would not appear to have the volume it has when it covers his body however that can easily be attributed to the fact that the nen is concentrated in that point. A more brutal example of this is when gon uses his rock while in adult form. We saw he released a HUGE amount of nen which suddenly had a decrease in volume. That nen did not disappear, it simply compressed in gons fist.The whole point of ko is to have all of your nen around a single point to begin with anyways, that is its definition. Only reason for there to be a loss in power in this is to not be a proper enhancer however since gon is an enhancer there is nothing for him to worry about.

 

[Phantron]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Rock is far more powerful than Ko. A Ko can be defended reasonably well by using a standard aura guard against a comparable user. Knuckles has higher overall strength than Gon for sure, but was unable to defend against the rock. By successful, I mean you'd probably expect a guy to get knocked into a bunch of rocks and smash a few walls from the impact while defending Ko, but the damage taken wouldn't be considered a big deal.

Gon can use Ko at demand against Razor. If rock doesn't yield more power, there's literally no point to use it.

Ko isn't some kind of end all be all move. Biscuit said you just have to guard against Ko to handle it. If Ko is so dangerous that it can kill you while guarded, that wouldn't be an effective counter at all. Of course this assumes two people are equivalent. Someone stronger than you using Ko might overpower your guard, but that's because that guy started out stronger. Razor's Ko can easily penetrate most people's guard, but he's stronger than most to begin with.

---------- Post added at 05:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:10 PM ----------

One thing I realized that HXH combat system only make sense if two combatants are roughly comparable. Razor can probably kill someone with a Ko even if it was defended by a Ko, and in this case there's nothing comparable between the two because Ko is definitely supposed to be strong enough to defend against another Ko. For the most part, HXH fights involve great and sometimes ridiculous differences between the two combatants. The physical abilities of the Ants from Royals and up is pretty much in the stratosphere compared to the strongest human, so most theories break down when attempting to explain these things. I like Morel's fight against the two commander class Ants, since here you can assume they're roughly equal so it is dependent on strategy.

All of Gon's fights are against guys who significantly outclass him too. Gon versus Knuckles is probably the smallest mismatch Gon has out of his meaningful fights, and we know Knuckles can still beat him without using any special moves. Gensuru could've easily defeated Gon with only regular moves too.

 

[Tombadgerlock]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Phantro, Biscuit never said you can guard against KO.

Biscuit said that using KO in the first place was suicidal for most nen-users.

She had them train using Ryuu because in a fight you should never use KO unless the opponent is already open, as KO takes out any kind of defenses.

Rock *is* KO used as a Hatsu with a couple of restriction, like Phinks hatsu is.

Big Bang Impact is KO without any restriction.

Gon uses rock, and not KO, because he finds using Rock cooler- however, keep in mind that before he settled on Jajanken he used 'KO' and the power it made impressed everyone.

 

[kkck]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

When was rock ever said to be different than ko? Lets take a look at gon developing rock.
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hunter_x_hunter/v13/c123/11.html
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hunter_x_hunter/v13/c124/1.html

And we got rock? Easy right? Just do everything at once. Then lets take a look at good old bisk just for the heck of it.
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hunter_x_hunter/v15/c141/10.html

Ko uses ten, ren, gyu, zetsu, and hatsu together. Wait a second.... if rock = ren, gyo, zetsu, hatsu and ten and ko = ren, gyo, zetsu, hatsy and ten the ..... **thinking**.....**headacke**.....*smokes comes out of burning brain*.....*gon starts thinking it is his brain burning but it isn't*.......... Holy crap rock is ko! And to boot it was stated enhancers can become insanely strong with simple techniques. If I didn't know any better I would think togashi did this on purpose. I would also bet money on uvo's punch also being a simple ko.

 

[Phantron]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

They went over how to defend against Ko here:

http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hunter_x_hunter/v15/c141/11.html
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hunter_x_hunter/v15/c141/12.html

The training specifically goes over what you've to do to defend against Ko successfully. Therefore, Ko is not a move that can overpower Ken. The guy defending will probably take damage, but it won't be significant.

Rock clearly can punch through a Ken, so it has to be stronger than Ko by a lot.

 

[Tombadgerlock]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

They went over how to defend against Ko here:

http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hunter_x_hunter/v15/c141/11.html
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hunter_x_hunter/v15/c141/12.html

The training specifically goes over what you've to do to defend against Ko successfully. Therefore, Ko is not a move that can overpower Ken. The guy defending will probably take damage, but it won't be significant.

Rock clearly can punch through a Ken, so it has to be stronger than Ko by a lot.

Urgh, this isn't what it's saying at all. If you actually go further to read the whol stuff, you'll see that 'Ken' is the basic of how to protect yourself, but the actual way is 'Ryuu', which is redistributing the 'Ken' aura (Ken + Gyo) in order to block more thoroughly.

In that case, a reinforcement user with 80% defensive aura could theorically protect against a Transformation's user KO.

Biscuit was just trying to tell Gon that defending Ko with Ko was suicide. Ken won't work either, but more advanced version (Ryuu) Might.

 

[kkck]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

^Well, even ken or ryu cannot theoretically fully defend from a proper ko. Both of those (un particular ryu though) would work to minimize the damage, not to completely avoid it. In that regard ko is still useful to cause damage. To completely neutralize ko (or rock or big bang impact) you would theoretically need an equal amount of aura in your ryu or ken. Against an equal enemy such a thing is very unlikely to say the least, specially with someone who has made a point to have as large a ken as possible and efficiently gather energy in his ko. In that regard, the only way to defend against a proper ko is overwhelmingly superiority (assuming the attack connects). A non enhancer would have less success using ko as ryu and ken are at large available to anyone (as ryo is a basic movement of nen and ken is simply a maintained ren) and would go through the innate reinforcement penalties for non enhancers.

 

[Phantron]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Urgh, this isn't what it's saying at all. If you actually go further to read the whol stuff, you'll see that 'Ken' is the basic of how to protect yourself, but the actual way is 'Ryuu', which is redistributing the 'Ken' aura (Ken + Gyo) in order to block more thoroughly.

In that case, a reinforcement user with 80% defensive aura could theorically protect against a Transformation's user KO.

Biscuit was just trying to tell Gon that defending Ko with Ko was suicide. Ken won't work either, but more advanced version (Ryuu) Might.

Are you saying Biscuit wasn't using Ko during the practice? Is her point, "use this to defend yourself, except against Ko, even though I just asked you what you should do against Ko?"

You're not going to defend against Ko unscathed (assuming all else equal) without another Ko, but it's not necessary to defend against Ko unscathed because Ko has huge restrictions. As long as you didn't die from the Ko, and can counterattack, you pretty much won the fight. Ken is sufficient against Ko given the dangerous nature of Ko to the user.

On the other hand rock has shown to be pretty much undefendable even against characters who are much stronger than him, with the exception of Razor. Nobody has ever been able to defend against rock and then counterattack, because the rock always knocked them out. This power output is far above Ko, which can be defended sucessfully (not flawlessly) with Ken alone.

---------- Post added at 07:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:33 PM ----------

^Well, even ken or ryu cannot theoretically fully defend from a proper ko. Both of those (un particular ryu though) would work to minimize the damage, not to completely avoid it. In that regard ko is still useful to cause damage. To completely neutralize ko (or rock or big bang impact) you would theoretically need an equal amount of aura in your ryu or ken. Against an equal enemy such a thing is very unlikely to say the least, specially with someone who has made a point to have as large a ken as possible and efficiently gather energy in his ko. In that regard, the only way to defend against a proper ko is overwhelmingly superiority (assuming the attack connects). A non enhancer would have less success using ko as ryu and ken are at large available to anyone (as ryo is a basic movement of nen and ken is simply a maintained ren) and would go through the innate reinforcement penalties for non enhancers.

The point isn't that you defend against Ko without taking damage. The only thing that can cancel out a Ko directly is another Ko. But as long as you didn't die from the Ko, the guy using it is probably going to be dead after you counterattacked. See Feitan versus Zanza. After Feitan used Ko, he was coughing up blood from a glancing blow. If it was even a halfway serious blow, he'd be dead. Yes Zanza defended it without taking damage (presumably due to Ant physique), but again it's not important she defended it without taking damage. As long as she got any reasonable counterattack off, and didn't die from the Ko, Feitan should have died outright.

 

[Tombadgerlock]

Re: Aura combat thoughts

Are you saying Biscuit wasn't using Ko during the practice? Is her point, "use this to defend yourself, except against Ko, even though I just asked you what you should do against Ko?"

You're not going to defend against Ko unscathed (assuming all else equal) without another Ko, but it's not necessary to defend against Ko unscathed because Ko has huge restrictions. As long as you didn't die from the Ko, and can counterattack, you pretty much won the fight. Ken is sufficient against Ko given the dangerous nature of Ko to the user.

By the time you counter-attack, your opponent should have his nen up again.

Ko is dangerous because you can attack the Ko user during the attack.

Biscuit pretty much said that Ko would still do damage with Ken, and that fighting with Ken was done with Ryuu.

On the other hand rock has shown to be pretty much undefendable even against characters who are much stronger than him, with the exception of Razor. Nobody has ever been able to defend against rock and then counterattack, because the rock always knocked them out. This power output is far above Ko, which can be defended sucessfully (not flawlessly) with Ken alone.

Rock is Gon's hatsu- at such, it gain Hatsu bonus. Even then, people can defend against Rock, especially if it's slow-mo Rock. the problem is that phys+nen is multiplicative, not additive, which means that countering KO in a real combat is extremely hard.

Btw, no one tried to block Rock, ever.

Knuckle didn't move, which means his defense was extremely limited, Gensuru didn't have any defense up then, etc.