Discussion How Important are Power Levels?

[Seven777]

With all the business with Mael and his 200k+ PL I think now would be a good time to discuss exactly how important power levels are in a fight. Some people seem to think its the most important factor in a battle, some people think there are ways around it. Apparently Merlin and Gowther say they arent to be trusted, though thats just something i heard, i dont know where in the manga this is said.

So my questions are how big of a gap in PL can be overcome, a %10 gap? %20? %30? etc and how do you bridge that gap? Is it skill? Intelligence? Hax? Oh and are speed/durability affected by PL?

 

[HereNThere]

Merlin said that power levels aren't set and stone and they aren't the only thing to determine whether or not one wins a fight.

However, despite her saying that, the series has been incredibly inconsistent with them and picks and chooses when and how that works, so basically, it's dependent on plot. There is no set percentage on when a PL can be overcome and no set way to bridge the gap. Skill doesn't guarantee it. Mel is most likely a more skilled fighter than Galan, however he couldn't do anything to him until he got a portion of his power back. Intelligence isn't a guarantee as Merlin has been caught off guard by more powerful opponent a couple times. Hax is the more consistent.

Speed and Durability are affected by PL, though it isn't pointed out often. King noticed an increase in his speed when he was in Gloxinia's body. Ban obviously had a major increase and durability during his time in Purgatory. Mel also had an increase in speed after his resurrection, seeing as he was able to dodge circles around Derieri, when before, he couldn't do anything by attempt to block her moves.

 

[Demonspeed]

Magic(the magic itself, not magic power) and skill. PLs are also just numbers and it is not a durability indicator for example. They are only important to know which fighters are in the same ballpark and for some hype scenes.

Before the standard for the Sins was above 3K, now it is different. Mael now has lost all his fighting skills he once had and he has only four techniques, with only one offensive one. High PL, terrible fighter. In terms of skills it's hard to be better than the Sins in general, raw power was the biggest issue before.

 

[kkck]

Magic(the magic itself, not magic power) and skill. PLs are also just numbers and it is not a durability indicator for example. They are only important to know which fighters are in the same ballpark and for some hype scenes.

Before the standard for the Sins was above 3K, now it is different. Mael now has lost all his fighting skills he once had and he has only four techniques, with only one offensive one. High PL, terrible fighter. In terms of skills it's hard to be better than the Sins in general, raw power was the biggest issue before.

I am not sure its fair to say mael has lost all his other skills. While it is fairly clear he has been steadily losing his mind to the commandments, it does not seem like he is fighting randomly or anything like that. He has been using each commandment effectively so far at least.

He used his belll to counter gowther for one thing. That's... not something you do if you are entirely out of your mind.

He specifically sealed king and diane with reticence.

His use of purity perfectly cornered gowther and with something that was almost fitting for a revenge.

And there is no indication he has lost the techniques he had before. He simply doesn't need a demon ending beam if there are no demons around.

 

[Demonspeed]

I am not sure its fair to say mael has lost all his other skills. While it is fairly clear he has been steadily losing his mind to the commandments, it does not seem like he is fighting randomly or anything like that. He has been using each commandment effectively so far at least.

He used his belll to counter gowther for one thing. That's... not something you do if you are entirely out of your mind.

He specifically sealed king and diane with reticence.

His use of purity perfectly cornered gowther and with something that was almost fitting for a revenge.

And there is no indication he has lost the techniques he had before. He simply doesn't need a demon ending beam if there are no demons around.

He is reasonable to an extent yes but he is clearly far less skilled than before. There is no presence of skill at all. Once Gowther's spell lost its effects he was using physical and magic attacks of all kinds. Now, even though he has been using the four Commandments effectively, he has done nothing beyond that. How many times did he spam Light ball of Love? Nothing indicates that he has only these four moves indeed, but I don't think a skilled fighter would have done the same thing again and again.

 

[kkck]

As far as PL's go, I'd say they are fairly important. BUT power levels alone do not convey the whole picture. Power levels do not account for magics whose effectiveness does not vary with power nor do they consider how specific fighting styles interact against each other. Still, if the difference in PL is too large odds are pretty good that the one with the higher pl can just basically run to the other and end him/her.

 

[Demonspeed]

Funny thing is that in the Versus thread, members usually don't rely on PLs as if they were clear indicators when fighters are in the same ballpark and consider Magic, skills etc but once we see this in the manga, most complain because of their bias .

 

[kkck]

Another issue with power levels is that by default they aren't actually fixed. Take ban and meliodas during the liones fight. Gowther made a point of how their PLs varied during the fight. Emotions can also be hugely detrimental or beneficial to PLs. Gowther managed to cripple himself to less than 10% of his real power solely because he wiped his own memories. King fought at a fraction of his power due to helbram messing with his head. An reasonable estimate on how much your pl can increase or decrease based on emotions and such is hard, if not impossible, to make though.

 

[Magiie]

3k PL ban could have killed half the TC all by himself
4k king could have pretrified them
3k gowther could have make them kill each other
...
...
...
Draw your own conclusions

 

[Gut's is the man]

3k PL ban could have killed half the TC all by himself
4k king could have pretrified them
3k gowther could have make them kill each other
...
...
...
Draw your own conclusions

What are you basing that on?

 

[Seven777]

Hendrickson massacred the Sins at only about a %20-40 PL lead, Escanor slaughtered Galand with around the same advantage, Meliodas was beating the crap out of Gloxinia and Dolor with even less of a PL lead. While on the other hand characters like Galand, Derriere and Monspeit were doing considerably better against Sariel and Tarmiel, and the Sins right now arent doing too bad against Mael despite the PL gap being considerably larger. Whats the deal? Is Hendrickson really just amazingly skilled? Does Mael and the rest of the AA lack skill? Plot inconsistency?

 

[Magiie]

What are you basing that on?

In the fact that Ban was able to snatch the hearts of a 40k demon
King can petrify... why wouldn't it work?
Mind mess is gowther's arsenal, if he was able to mess with galand's mind well...

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 5, 2018, Original Post Date: Sep 5, 2018 ---

Hendrickson massacred the Sins at only about a %20-40 PL lead, Escanor slaughtered Galand with around the same advantage, Meliodas was beating the crap out of Gloxinia and Dolor with even less of a PL lead. While on the other hand characters like Galand, Derriere and Monspeit were doing considerably better against Sariel and Tarmiel, and the Sins right now arent doing too bad against Mael despite the PL gap being considerably larger. Whats the deal? Is Hendrickson really just amazingly skilled? Does Mael and the rest of the AA lack skill? Plot inconsistency?

None of the above
Answer= PL is not that important and you are actually telling us why.

 

[LYEL]

Power levels depends on Nakaba's mood.
If he says "this character with 2x less power will win the fight using the power of love and friendship" them that's settled it.
We see this kind of thing everywhere in these kind of plots.
FT, BC, Bleach, etc.
I'm not surprised at all at the changes of pace specially when you know the good guys are destined to win...
If NNT was not a story about an demon and an "angel" who fell in love and that later we discover +50% of the cast are also in love with them, maybe NNT could be better.
But... Since I'm already here and survived to Bleach i'll keep sticking to the manga. I'm just hoping for something good to happen right now.

 

[kaiiruuu]

The way Nakaba handles power levels is inconsistent though.

We have a 3k Diane who was a casual mountain buster, but she couldn't do shit against Galan (who was at that time showed only a large city level attack)
We have Escanor where his power level increases at convenient levels, and different from each other in many scenario. His power level is very difficult to estimate at certain times - most likely depends on the situation.

We also have a 4k King that can overpower Guila with his seemingly infinite number of Chastiefol Increase, but couldn't produce the same amount against Chandler's magic blasts even when using True Spirit Spear form.
We also have Merlin who's supposedly "4k" but can knock out AM Meliodas without any problems (though he's weakened)

So yeah, the way he portrays PLs is so inconsistent. Tbh, I think he introduced it to lazily tell us that "hey this character is more powerful than this one", without giving us concrete feats.

 

[kkck]

3k PL ban could have killed half the TC all by himself
4k king could have pretrified them
3k gowther could have make them kill each other
...
...
...
Draw your own conclusions

Which commandments could have ban defeated? The amount of strength ban can steal is irrelevant to most of them. At a minimum 3k ban had exactly zero chance against estarosa, zeldris, dolor, gloxinia, melascula,derieri, monspiet, and galand as far as I can tell. Estarosa, zeldris, dolor and derieri would not even notice the paltry amount of strength ban can steal. For galan the strength ban can steal is just a good time. And not even that good anyways, ban barely lasted. Melascula wasn't particularly impeded by that. Gloxinia won't suffer the 0 strength he will lose. Greyroad might be impeded but his arsenal of spells and curses is likely more than what ban can handle anyways. The only commandment that might suffer from this is good old fraudrin who wasn't really a commandment. There is no basis to the idea that ban could have killed half the commandments with his abilities. He gets barely two soft maybes and one of those isn't even a commandment.

 

[HereNThere]

If Ban ran into Monspiet and Derieri, he probably would've ended up killing at least one of them, especially if he got the drop on them like he did when he stole Galan and Merascylla's hearts. Those are the only ones though due to their heart handicap, and again, it'd have to go as that fight did.

 

[Magiie]

Which commandments could have ban defeated? The amount of strength ban can steal is irrelevant to most of them. At a minimum 3k ban had exactly zero chance against estarosa, zeldris, dolor, gloxinia, melascula,derieri, monspiet, and galand as far as I can tell. Estarosa, zeldris, dolor and derieri would not even notice the paltry amount of strength ban can steal. For galan the strength ban can steal is just a good time. And not even that good anyways, ban barely lasted. Melascula wasn't particularly impeded by that. Gloxinia won't suffer the 0 strength he will lose. Greyroad might be impeded but his arsenal of spells and curses is likely more than what ban can handle anyways. The only commandment that might suffer from this is good old fraudrin who wasn't really a commandment. There is no basis to the idea that ban could have killed half the commandments with his abilities. He gets barely two soft maybes and one of those isn't even a commandment.

He doesnt need to steal their pl but their hearts... it would be stupid if he steals pl when he can instakill by snatching their heart
The basis are in the manga.. I dont have the need to text them.. ban can snatch hearts.
I say half the TC and not all of them to because Estarossa and zel are +60k pl... leta guess he can't snatch the heart of people that powerful, the rest.. easy for ban..

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 6, 2018, Original Post Date: Sep 5, 2018 ---

If Ban ran into Monspiet and Derieri, he probably would've ended up killing at least one of them, especially if he got the drop on them like he did when he stole Galan and Merascylla's hearts. Those are the only ones though due to their heart handicap, and again, it'd have to go as that fight did.

Na..
-TC gathered
- ban uses zero sign and fox hunt
- at least 5 demons get their hearts flying out of their body
- end.

 

[HereNThere]

Na..
-TC gathered
- ban uses zero sign and fox hunt
- at least 5 demons get their hearts flying out of their body
- end.

The series implies that Ban needs to drop Zero Sign in order to attack anyone, so, at the most, he'd only be able to take down one Commandment before the rest become aware of his existence and wait for him to come back out.

 

[Magiie]

The series implies that Ban needs to drop Zero Sign in order to attack anyone, so, at the most, he'd only be able to take down one Commandment before the rest become aware of his existence and wait for him to come back out.

He is able to steal the hearts of more than one demon at the same time as shown in the ban vs galand and melawcula fight

 

[HereNThere]

He is able to steal the hearts of more than one demon at the same time as shown in the ban vs galand and melawcula fight

If he were able to steal more than one heart from multiple demons, he would've attempted to do so during that fight and, especially, when he saved Mel using Zero Sign when he had the jump on the remaining 9 Commandments. That implies a limitation of some sort (or plot). Then we have him failing to steal Estarossa's hearts, which could imply that a certain level of strength or spirit could prevent him from doing so, I don't know. I don't see Ban taking out half of the group though, even using Zero Sign before hand and having the element of surprise.

However, his new Crazy Hunt technique that he showed in Purgatory definitely makes it seem possible.