Jellal's Grand Chariot pushing him back doesn't mean Acnologia was jobbing. Human Irene did it with one of her blasts as well.
Natsu's punch =/= Grand Chariot. They don't scale to each other. They were both strong enough to knock out Neinhart, which given his lack of durability showings should be doable by literally anyone worth crap.
Your line of reasoning basically states, A is greater than X. B is also greater than X. Therefore, A = B. Which is a fallacious argument.
Acnologia fought off Gildarts presumably sometime around the beginning of the series. Gildarts has literally jumped up tiers since then, so no, this argument does not translate to 'Jellal >> Gildarts' at all. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Acnologia would have had a hard time dealing with Jellal at all if he was completely serious, but the fact of the matter is, we will always go back to this one basic reality: Jellal at his strongest was strong enough to stand up against him momentarily and he performed somewhat comparable to how Human Irene did.
I reread the fight, I was wrong about Sting's basic punches damaging Larcade, it was his named attacks, Holy Ray and Holy Nova to be precise. Larcade got pushed around then used hunger to weaken him. Once Sting ate Rogue's shadow, his CQC did not just match Larcade, it flat-out overwhelmed him which forced him to pull out RIP.
Getting overwhelmed by base Sting's named attacks isn't even something I see Natsu struggling with, and Jellal should at least be above him.
And at the very least, Natsu or Gajeel can match these attacks with LFD/ISD.
He has feats of literally not being slightly cut by something that left Erza's body grazed all over. At the very least, his durability is somewhat on her level. His shield can completely block an attack from Acnologia and could momentarily push him back. He has hax that works on Erza tiers. He's probably still the fastest human in the series barring maybe August and Gildarts.
I know he hasn't had a direct fight against an opponent that would make it easier to gauge his place in the current power-scale in the series, but to imply he's fallen behind feats-wise to the point that there just isn't any comparison even between him and even Erza is what's flat out false.
I think it's just semantics, really. By durability, I mean the ability to take attacks without any significant damage (Erza tanking ). I define defense as the means to stop an attack from damaging (either by reducing it or flat out blocking it), Erza's Adamantine comes to mind. And endurance is the ability to keep fighting through sustained injuries (Erza destroying Deus Sema with broken bones then knocking Irene out of her dragon form).
It wasn't healed by Wendy at all. She fought Irene with those hands, which means she was not even close to being out of fighting condition after taking those blows. They were exchanging attacks for quite awhile but the way those blows were presented made it appear as if it was their finishing attacks.
Why wouldn't she be able to? I know it's impressive compared to Spriggans, but I see no reason why it should be out of Erza's reach, especially since Sting's attacks were damaging Larcade, he was legitimately overpowered by some of Sting's attacks, something I hardly see doing much to Natsu, much less Erza, which extends to their ability to also block that sword.
Cool.
This doesn't really change the point though.
Sting was superior stats-wise, but Larcade had hax. For this to be a valid argument, Larcade would need to be in Erza's level in terms of stats, which he's not.
But why? I don't understand where this is coming from. All we got from that was there was a significant upgrade with POF in play, but Natsu didn't exactly use it either when he fought them in GMG. It was just his regular power level. I'd go as far as to say he was playing around until the finishing attacks. Natsu with POF should still be very much able to take out Sting and Rogue with their own brand of it.
August also couldn't react to Brandish stabbing him face-to-face in his normal form. I think it's more of the gap between his battle form and his normal one.
I don't understand whole Acnologia jobbing thing, just because he destroyed Serena in one go doesn't mean he was jobbing when he didn't do it to Jellal and Irene with the same level of ease. Acnologia was trying to kill dragon slayers and Jellal was basically defending one (Wendy). I don't think there was any massive disparity between how serious he was against fighting Jellal and killing Serena.
Only time I think he properly jobbed in Alvarez was against Pegasus, but that's more of a Writer Induced Stupidity, he needed a way around introducing the Ravines of Time, some moments were just CIS, such as playing around with the dragon slayers in ROT.
Future Rogue isn't either Sting or Rogue, he has a different level of magical power behind his attack and Natsu was at least a tier below him at the time.
I don't think the relative power-scale argument is all that valid, so I don't think Jiemma helps this case much.
And Larcade is more of a fighter who mainly relies on hax once he gets overwhelmed by superior stats; he had to use hunger to weaken Sting once he started getting outclassed, then used RIP when he couldn't do so much as stand his ground against WSD. One-shotting him is an impressive feat only amongst Spriggans. He blocked Kagura's sword, and evidently, she's just really fallen behind everybody else considering her best efforts couldn't even move Larcade, whereas Sting at one point managed to overwhelm him with his named attacks. *refer to spoilers I used above*
Three of those attacks and those guys should still be standing, possibly damaged heavily, but not to the point they're unable to put up a fight. That's how big the gap is between Erza's stats and Larcade's.
I agree. But what I'm arguing about is that even if it does land, it would barely do anything. I don't think it's all that superior to Kyria's roar.
