1) Fodderizing country level mages is better 2)Laxus as a proper dragon slayer would simply do better, would bet against Irene in a fight with any powerhouse dragon slayer. The DS enchant was not Erza's own power at Alvarez and nothing indicates that it was stronger than her Belserion Sword.
What are you talking ? He used it to one shot Wall

I'm not even saying he got stronger, i think only Erza really got and thought he grew stronger just because she didn't knew about Red Lightning. Man, you just can't prove that they were close a year ago, beyond red lightning his base was already too strong for her and even spriggans like Ajeel were able of overpowering her.
Even the start of their fight don't denies the gap they had before, Laxus was far superior to Erza to the point of destroying her lightning armor and made her appeal to her enchantments. If they were close the lighnting armor wouldn't have been worthless, just look at the difference of elemental armors performance with Enny
Base Erza was relative to Enny and so her water armor gave her advantage against a fire dragon Enny, elemental armors aren't worthless if the mages are close in power. Without the enchantments she couldn't compete with Laxus and she hadn't those enchantments at Alvarez. If Kyria cut Erza's sword then she got the upper hand and you are acting like if Erza wasn't already using enchantments in both situations, Enchantmentless Erza never scared Kyria.
But he wasn't caught off guard to say he was open to an attack, he saw Laxus ship way before it got close
And he was literally preparing to attack the ship, look at the sand attack he is making while he looks to the ship
The Fairy Tail team was trying to scape through the ship and Ajeel didn't wanted to let them go and was going to attack the ship WHERE LAXUS WAS, he wasn't open, he was literally preparing an attack, it's just that Laxus counterattack was far greater.
The historias stalled a bunch of fodders and tired Erza, that's so impressive

I don't even give credit to Duke, but Neinhart didn't even created a 100% spriggan. And when the summons are circumstantial the summoner shouldn't be so glass cannon, Youko is strong by herself and has solid summons, is she stronger than Serena because of that ? This spriggan wank of equalizing them to BDSK would put her above the BDSK because she is solidly better than Neinhart
Kyria already wasn't a pure one shot for Laxus like Ajeel was, got a upper hand against Erza like Ajeel, Wall also is a one shot material that needed lightning immunity and tumor advantage to not be one shotted. Many spriggans are hax users buddy, and nothing would stop Kyria from using her hypnosis hax on them, but even in a pure physicals she can already match them
I already showed how Ajeel and Wall are no match for Kirin and now just by comparing Youko to Neinhart i would be able to say she is stronger than Neinhart and Misaki is stronger than her