One Piece Power Level Discussion Thread

[goldb]

Ground Rules for the Power Level Discussion Thread
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As always, please follow the guidelines set by the Forum Rules that apply across the board.

It's important that discussions from a current chapter are spoiler tagged until 24h have passed from an english release.

• For the sake of constructive discussion, where and when possible please quote/ source any information you provide. Particularly when it comes to conversations carried over from other threads.
• Avoid passive agressive posts, sly remarks or baiting/trolling. You can certainly have fun or disagree without it being at someone's expense.
• Only use anime examples that are canon and as means to provide clarity to pages in the manga. Any other anime material is otherwise non-canon and should only be referenced if it can be proved that the mangaka had approved it.
• We will strive to avoid repetitive discussions and any extensive battle topics will be guided to the Davy Back fight to existing threads or new ones can be made there.

As of now these topics are shelved due to repetitiveness or until the manga can present us with material to further discussions:

1. Shanks v Mihawk
2. Hand to hand fighters > Swordsmen
3. Zoro > Luffy
4. Zoro v Sanji
5. Is Smoker a top 30 character?
6. Mihawk's rank within the story
7. Law having CoC currently.
8. Katakuri > Kaido/Luffy/Etc.

If you wish to continue any of these discussion and remove it from the list, you will need to provide manga material as proof. If there's also anything you think we've covered numerous times, let me know and I'll update the list.

This is the only warning there'll be regarding these ground rules, anything no adhering will be removed. So please just check your posts before posting them.

 

[Pirate Queen]

"There are things that SURPASS Armament"

I thinks it's safe to say Kayakuri's usage of Hardening CoA is above the standard usage of CoA that we have seen from many top tier fighters.

 

[Fox666]

What is this?

 

[Moss Green]

Isn't block mochi just regular armament hardening? Or am I missing something?

It is. You’re not missing a thing

 

[AmitDS]

"There are things that SURPASS Armament"

I thinks it's safe to say Kayakuri's usage of Hardening CoA is above the standard usage of CoA that we have seen from many top tier fighters.

I forgot about this dialogue lol thx.

If you consider this scene in isolation of everything I guess people could have (and I think they have lol) simply written it off as evil villain-speak for "I'm better than you lol" but if we look at this scene AND earlier when BM's hand had a mysterious aura before Luffy clashed with her, I think we can say Oda was either teasing or experimenting (or both) with the possibility of advanced forms of haki.

Spoiler

This makes even more sense when you have Katakuri literally debuting and showing off an advanced form of haki (AdCoO) in this very arc.

 

[Pirate Queen]

It is. You’re not missing a thing

It's clearly not just simple armament haki. You are just chosing to ignore a black and white fact. Katakuri himself is saying he has something that surpasses armament, hence why block mochi is considered a specialty of Hardening. Can you at least address this fact? Do you think Katakuri is lying? In your opinion what do his words mean?

 

[Lord Traffy Law]

"There are things that SURPASS Armament"

I thinks it's safe to say Kayakuri's usage of Hardening CoA is above the standard usage of CoA that we have seen from many top tier fighters.

I forgot about this dialogue lol thx.

If you consider this scene in isolation of everything I guess people could have (and I think they have lol) simply written it off as evil villain-speak for "I'm better than you lol" but if we look at this scene AND earlier when BM's hand had a mysterious aura before Luffy clashed with her, I think we can say Oda was either teasing or experimenting (or both) with the possibility of advanced forms of haki.

Spoiler

This makes even more sense when you have Katakuri literally debuting and showing off an advanced form of haki (AdCoO) in this very arc.

It's clearly not just simple armament haki. You are just chosing to ignore a black and white fact. Katakuri himself is saying he has something that surpasses armament, hence why block mochi is considered a specialty of Hardening. Can you at least address this fact? Do you think Katakuri is lying? In your opinion what do his words mean?

Tbf it can be interpreted as maybe advanced COA but it’s not definitive, Oda could have been clear when luffy was thinking of his experiences with advanced COA by adding his experience with Kata , not dismissing it , it’s very possible but it’s not a lock

 

[I Am Atomic]

Oda could easily make more branches of CoA if he wanted to, so I am not closing my eyes on that possibility.

CoO has already shown different branches of mastery, so why not CoA? Future sight and Usopp's CoO.

 

[Lord Traffy Law]

I think It's Oda's ambiguity when it comes to Haki that has people confused/debating imo.

TL;DR:
King vs. Katakuri imo is extreme diff either way but the lack of abilities on King's part vs. Katakuri's bloated and busted kit and the duration of their respective fights skew perception.

I will say, Katakuri does have great CoA, just not advanced/AdCoA (Ryou/Flow/Barrier) as far as we've seen. But this is likely simply due to the fact that Oda didn't invent it yet lol.
However, he does have CoA that is hard enough (Block Mochi, etc.) to damage through Luffy's G4. This can simply be due to his haki being stronger than Luffy's, similar to Cracker's CoA that was able to cut through Boundman's arm at the time of the events of the Seducing Woods.

However, regarding King vs. Katakuri, I think the thing is that King shockingly doesn't have AdCoA or the rarer AdCoC, when Wano was the arc that introduced these types of Haki and he's the next best fighter on the enemy's side after the 2 Yonkou and Katakuri's contemporary in the BP and this arc.
On the other hand, Katakuri, as said above, already has great CoA that could've competed with WCI G4's haki, AdCoO, and CoC which leads to fan speculation that he has the propensity to develop AdCoC if he were to appear in the future.

I believe it would be an extreme diff either way but it doesn't do King any favors that Katakuri, by virtue of being Luffy's opponent/Arc Boss I guess, showed a lot of exceptional powers like AdCoO, great CoA AND Awakening, while King was expected to have at least 1 or 2 of these things AND ended up having none on top of Katakuri having CoC which received major attention in the current arc.

Besides these things, it's also difficult to wrap your head around how King in a hypothetical matchup would be able to outdo or match Katakuri when Katakuri has so many blatant 'hax' abilities while King's whole schtick is his defense mode durability. Oda accidentally made Katakuri retroactively superior (subjective) because the only way to counter his FS is matching FS or speed, but Oda made it so that if King uses or even possesses the speed to tag Katakuri he loses his durability and Katakuri, as we've seen in the vs. Snakeman phase, can effectively utilize his attacks while not foregoing any of his 'defenses' i.e. FS combo'ed with Paramecia shapeshifting to avoid damage.
On the other hand, if King stays in defense mode, he won't have the speed necessary to tag Katakuri so it would become a rather lame stand-off between who has the higher endurance, Katakuri with his FS to avoid damage or King face-tanking hits. This part also in a way made Katakuri look superior since he did fight Luffy for 11+ hours while King fell in less than 15 minutes.
Basically if King has to tag Katakuri, he loses defenses so Katakuri can damage him and in his defense mode there hasn't been anything to indicate that Katakuri lacks the AP to be unable to damage him when you consider Marco with a casual knee strike (with ambiguous Haki application to boot) made defense mode King bleed.

Not getting into powerscaling post-AdCoC Zoro vs. WCI Luffy or anything, but strictly from an on-the-surface level perspective, Oda portraying a >11 hour fight vs <15 minute skews perception lol

(Somewhat) Baseless Speculation Time:
For whatever it's worth, Katakuri's haki also has been shown to be the flame-pattern Haki that we've only seen 3 people have (Luffy in G4, Katakuri himself and BM strangely enough). People have been debating what this is really and the general consensus is that it happens when you mix your paramecia/logia element with haki, eg. Luffy's Rubber is 'mixed with' Haki, not just 'coated.' The problem with this hypothesis tho is that BM has been shown using it in her clash with Luffy in WCI, but as far as we've seen, her Soru Soru powers aren't the same as other paramecia/logia elements that are mixed with Haki a la Katakuri and his mochi-infused arm, etc. so we don't know exactly what this is and if it's a form of haki that benefits Katakuri or anything.

Spoiler

This whole Katakuri vs. King thing is also a proxy for Luffy vs. Zoro as well lol and that's why when King failed to live up to some people's expectations of him we have this now. And no, I'm not saying or implying Katakuri is Luffy's equal at present or anything of the sort.

Oda had made advanced COA since the boa sisters and sentomaru ( described as having the best defense in the world ) and the admirals

 

[Moss Green]

It's clearly not just simple armament haki. You are just chosing to ignore a black and white fact. Katakuri himself is saying he has something that surpasses armament, hence why block mochi is considered a specialty of Hardening. Can you at least address this fact? Do you think Katakuri is lying? In your opinion what do his words mean?

It’s not a fact at all. You’ve decided it needs to be more than simple armament because that’s the only thing you can conceive that could possibly be stronger than simple armament. But it’s not. Because the manga has already shown us this isn’t the case. The question you’re asking me? I’ve already answered it.

Again you don’t need Haki that’s “advanced” or “mastered” to get through someone else’s Haki. You simply need to be stronger. We don’t say Hody Jones had ACoA when he bit Luffy, that Cracker had ACoA when he cut Luffy, or that Law had ACoA when he cut Vergo do we? Of course not. ACoA is an individual indicator of increasing strength that was only introduced this very arc. We don’t need to retcon everything to be ACoA becasue it was a strong attack. The scabbards and Hyogoro can all use ACoA yet they’re combined attack power is weaker than Zoro’s. The BOA sister had ACoA yet lost out to a G2 punch. You can have stronger Haki than someone without needing to claim it’s advanced. You can also have weaker Haki even if it is advanced.

 

[Pirate Queen]

It’s not a fact at all. You’ve decided it needs to be more than simple armament because that’s the only thing you can conceive that could possibly be stronger than simple armament. But it’s not. Because the manga has already shown us this isn’t the case. The question you’re asking me? I’ve already answered it.

Again. You go out of your way to ignore Katakuri's words. "There are things that SURPASS Armament" so even if you want to argue it's something completely different(despite it basically being compressed Mochi with+Hardening) whatever he showed was more than what King showed with CoA. You haven't answered anything. You haven't even addressed Katakuri's own words.

 

[Moss Green]

Again. You go out of your way to ignore Katakuri's words. "There are things that SURPASS Armament" so even if you want to argue it's something completely different(despite it basically being compressed Mochi with+Hardening) whatever he showed was more than what King showed with CoA. You haven't answered anything. You haven't even addressed Katakuri's own words.

How am ignoring Katakuri’s words? I just gave you several examples of things that surpass armament. You don’t want to acknowledge them because you’ve decided he means something else.

You’ve already decided it’s “more than what King showed” so you won’t accept anything to the contrary. What do you want me to do put their attacks side by side and compare how much environmental damage they did? Because the only other way we could possibly compare them is to compare Luffy from Whole Cake Island/early Wano to the Luffy that fought alongside Zoro on the rooftop. But that won’t be a productive conversation for any of us so I’m not getting into it .

 

[Pirate Queen]

How am ignoring Katakuri’s words? I just gave you several examples of things that surpass armament. You don’t want to acknowledge them because you’ve decided he means something else.

You’ve already decided it’s “more than what King showed” so you won’t accept anything to the contrary. What do you want me to do put their attacks side by side and compare how much environmental damage they did? Because the only other way we could possibly compare them is to compare Luffy from Whole Cake Island/early Wano to the Luffy that fought alongside Zoro on the rooftop. But that won’t be a productive conversation for any of us so I’m not getting into it .

Show a King equivalent feat.

We are comparing 2 fighters. Fuck Luffy and Fuck Zoro.

I provided all the a initial Katakuri has that put him over King. You haven't provided any reason why King would win in a fight.

Go ahead and keep pretending King has feats over Katakuri but all feats of both fighters put Katakuri>King.

 

[Moss Green]

Show a King equivalent feat.

We are comparing 2 fighters. Fuck Luffy and Fuck Zoro.

I provided all the a initial Katakuri has that put him over King. You haven't provided any reason why King would win in a fight.

Go ahead and keep pretending King has feats over Katakuri but all feats of both fighters put Katakuri>King.

Ok…so let’s compare rocks!

Here we have Katakuri smashing up some rocks with one of his strongest attacks. I hope we don’t waste too much time talking about the black lightning



And here’s king making a much bigger pile of rocks, using his face at that! What a weirdo


Now that we’ve had our fill of rocks lets look at wind

Here’s Kaido’s bad breath


And some nasty King arm farts


This is so dumb

 

[Windfall Island]

Instead of staying zoomed in on who has what going for & against him all the time & missing out on the bigger picture why not zoom out & see the larger narrative point in play here for comparison between King & Katakuri ->>>>

Yonkos are roughly the same strength & balance each out other out. Whether it is the yonko captain balancing out other yonko captain (as has been repeatedly shown via sky splits) or the rest of the crew which means the no.2 , no.3 , no.4 of the yonko crews, they must balance each other out as well to keep the yonko crews roughly the same level in strength.

So even if its not explicitly stated in the manga still it is implicit that Yonko captains, crew no.2 (yc1) , crew no.3 (Yc2) etc must balance each other & be roughly the same strength , therefore the terms Yc1 , Yc2 to refer to those levels.

VA level & shichibukai level are the only 2 cases where the strength varies extremely wildly & so for all practical purposes 2 VAs or 2 warlords can be class apart. But for Admiral lvl or Yc1 level or yonko lvl , that is not the case at all & so 2 characters belonging to any one of them must be roughly the same level even though say Kaido can edge out BM , Marco can edge out King but they belong to the same lvl at the end of the day.

Since all 4 yonkos have been shown to be nearly same in strength & stature & most importantly have been shown to balance each other out so that implies the yonko captains & yc1 , yc2 etc should be roughly the same strength otherwise they wont be well balanced amongst each other.
Therefore all Yc1s must be roughly the same strength.



King & Katakuri are both Yc1 & belong to the same level , one can argue that one can edge out the other but they belong to the same lvl Yc1 so Zoro defeating King implies that in a future fight Oda wont allow a Yc1 Katakuri to beat Zoro. Zoro will beat katakuri as well. AcoC is too much to handle for a Yc1 anyways & top that with Ashura. Oda can just make Zoro's attack speed enough to land attacks on katakuri faster than he could dodge. Whatever way oda uses, he will ensure that Zoro beats katakuri .

Katakuri portrayal wise benefits from being the major anatognist & the primary opponent vs Luffy in WCI while in Wano , Kaido & BM are the major anatagonists & Kaido is the primary opponent for Luffy so King can never get that kind of portrayal that katakuri got.

 

[Pirate Queen]

When we are talking about Character A vs Character B we are usually doing it as Oda not being involved to avoid CIS OR PIS

 

[Windfall Island]

When we are talking about Character A vs Character B we are usually doing it as Oda not being involved to avoid CIS OR PIS

Ok thats fair. That didnt occur to me.

In general though both King & Katakuri are Yc1 so even if katakuri edges out king, still they are roughly the same level like kaido vs BM , kaido can edge out BM but they are still roughly the same level.

 

[I Am Atomic]

Ok thats fair. That didnt occur to me.

In general though both King & Katakuri are Yc1 so even if katakuri edges out king, still they are roughly the same level like kaido vs BM , kaido can edge out BM but they are still roughly the same level.

We all agree on that, however we have seen differing levels of YC1s now. Would you say Marco is superior to both Katakuri and King? He held back King and Queen for hours while healing allies on the Live Floor. Even though all are on the same tier, Marco will most likely win every single time.
It's the same with Katakuri Vs King discussion. I am of the opinion, Katakuri will win most of the time, if not every single time against King.

We still haven't seen Beckmann (who everyone thinks would be the strongest YC1) and Shiryu (who Zoro should fight, and has to be stronger than King for Zoro to struggle).

Another example is Prime WB Vs Prime Kaido. I will get on WB every single time, even though both are Yonko level.

The reason why this discussion is of poor quality is because the forum users who supports King says "it's laughable you think Katakuri will win" or "Laughable you think King doesn't have CoA feats just because it wasn't shown". But when asked for manga proof, they bring in wind and rocks like Moss Green.
However, forum users that support Katakuri shoes them proof, but they choose to ignore it.

Last point, just because I said Katakuri would win doesn't mean I put him at Yonko level It just means Katakuri will win extremely diff against King.

 

[Windfall Island]

We all agree on that, however we have seen differing levels of YC1s now. Would you say Marco is superior to both Katakuri and King? He held back King and Queen for hours while healing allies on the Live Floor. Even though all are on the same tier, Marco will most likely win every single time.
It's the same with Katakuri Vs King discussion. I am of the opinion, Katakuri will win most of the time, if not every single time against King.

We still haven't seen Beckmann (who everyone thinks would be the strongest YC1) and Shiryu (who Zoro should fight, and has to be stronger than King for Zoro to struggle).

Another example is Prime WB Vs Prime Kaido. I will get on WB every single time, even though both are Yonko level.

The reason why this discussion is of poor quality is because the forum users who supports King says "it's laughable you think Katakuri will win" or "Laughable you think King doesn't have CoA feats just because it wasn't shown". But when asked for manga proof, they bring in wind and rocks like Moss Green.
However, forum users that support Katakuri shoes them proof, but they choose to ignore it.

Last point, just because I said Katakuri would win doesn't mean I put him at Yonko level It just means Katakuri will win extremely diff against King.

I get what you are saying. Though i still disagree with some parts of it , for now i dont want to dive into details.

But just one point of yours where i objectively disagree with is that prime Wb is yonko level.
That is incorrect.
Prime WB(the only one to have equalled roger) >> old Wb (yonko level ) approx same as kaido > old & sick Wb( the one who showed up at MF).

You might bring up xebec ;
Xebec was considered to be the most formidable rival of the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, even more so than his then-subordinate Whitebeard would come to be. Probably had even stronger coc acoc than roger pk level coz his ambition to be king of the world was even greater than roger's.

Prime xebec>=prime roger>=prime wb ( all 3 nearly same but all 3 belong to pk level which is above yonko lvl).

 

[Lord Traffy Law]

I get what you are saying. Though i still disagree with some parts of it , for now i dont want to dive into details.

But just one point of yours where i objectively disagree with is that prime Wb is yonko level.
That is incorrect.
Prime WB(the only one to have equalled roger) >> old Wb (yonko level ) approx same as kaido > old & sick Wb( the one who showed up at MF).

You might bring up xebec ;
Xebec was considered to be the most formidable rival of the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, even more so than his then-subordinate Whitebeard would come to be. Probably had even stronger coc acoc than roger pk level coz his ambition to be king of the world was even greater than roger's.

Prime xebec>=prime roger>=prime wb ( all 3 nearly same but all 3 belong to pk level which is above yonko lvl).

Kaido and big mum are stronger than old and sick WB at marineford
Their COO and COC are working and functional
They have iron skin so they can’t get hurt by basic attacks
They don’t constantly fall over to sickness
“I can’t be a the strongest forever” - WB acknowledged he had fallen off significantly

 

[Windfall Island]

Kaido and big mum are stronger than old and sick WB at marineford
Their COO and COC are working and functional
They have iron skin so they can’t get hurt by basic attacks
They don’t constantly fall over to sickness
“I can’t be a the strongest forever” - WB acknowledged he had fallen off significantly

Agreed. Thats what i said. So what is your point , i didnt get it