One Piece Power Level Discussion Thread

[goldb]

Ground Rules for the Power Level Discussion Thread
​

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.

 

[HereNThere]

I still feel like Kaido's gauntlet is the best feat so far.

 

[DeadlyBeast]

With his current portrayal, you doubt Garp wouldn't have been able to kill Akainu?

Most of what has been impressive about Garp is what he did in the past during his prime and not what he has been shown doing in the present storyline. Yes with what we have been shown of Garp in current storyline I highly doubt he'd be enough to kill Akainu during Marineford. I also don't think any of the older generation have what it takes to take out Akainu in a 1v1 at the moment post time skip.

Shiki was able to solo prime Garp and Sengoku for a few days right? That feat shits on whatever BB was doing in Marineford

That definitely is a sell for Shiki being more powerful then anyone is giving him credit for OR we will find out that Garp & Sengoku are not as impressive as we thought.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2023, Original Post Date: Jan 30, 2023 ---

I still feel like Kaido's gauntlet is the best feat so far.

Totally agree this is the number one portrayed feat that we readers have witnessed. There are definitely other fights that have been alluded to, that could be better feats like Rocks vs Roger/Garp but we haven't been shown in detail to make a final call.

 

[Pirate Queen]

Kaido's Wano Feats by far

 

[kkck]

Yeah, what kaido fought during the wano arc was ridiculous:

First Battle:
Denjiro
Azura
Kawamatsu
Izou
Inuarashi
Nekomamushi
Kinemon
Raizo
Kiku

Out of those the implication was that denjiro, kawamatsu and azura were in the ballpar of calamities. And nekomamushi an inuarashi could be at least as strong with their respective transformations. Kinemon, raizo and kiku were arguably the weaker scabbards but at least kinemon and raizo could use their unique skillsets to hard counter some of kaido's attacks.

Second battle:
Luffy
Kidd
Law
Zoro
Killer

Luffy at the start of the battle was well ahead of any YC1 as far as I can tell. He was the only of the supernova that could trade blows with kaido and deal damage with conventional attacks. law and kidd are suggested to be about comparable to calamities at least. Probably higher but not that much higher. Their awakenings probably give them an edge though. Killer was the runt among them but he was good enough to take on hawkins later on, supernova captain and probably someone about good enough to be a flying six.

Third battle:
A continuation of the second but at this point luffy learned conquero haki cladding and could trade blows with kaido relatively evenly. Luffy eventually lost and falls out of onigashima.

Fourth Battle:
Yamato takes over and holds the fort. Yamato is also revealed as a conqueror cladding user and manages to get some hits in.

Fifth Battle:
Luffy returns with momo's help after having eaten meat and miraculously has improved in his usage of cladding. Still loses to kaido.

Sixth battle:
Luffy returns seemingly from the dead with his awakening. After a prolonged conflict he finally nails kaido into a volcano and wins the fight. How long this conflict was evidences how far away from victory luffy was during the fourth battle.

Edit: forgot yamato

 

[Core D. Roy]

It’s so hard to read your list. Can’t even zoom In properly…=\

I don’t think Prime Rayleigh was ever stronger than Big Mom. Big Mom is High tier.

Prime Rayleigh could take BlackBeard.
Old Rayleigh can give BlackBeard a decent fight but can’t win.

So for me Blackbeard should be top of the Mid tier above most admirals & Old legends & Luffy.

Are you on mobile? I wonder if there's a different way I can link it.

I don't have Prime Rayleigh higher than Big Mom, just on the same level. Even that might be a bit much, but the implications of "Dark King" says a lot about whereabouts he should be.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2023, Original Post Date: Jan 30, 2023 ---

It's the lack of portrayed feats that would be needed to put him up at that level. Most power scales I've seen don't use the narrative story to decide on power levels. So far BB has been portrayed to definitely be an Emperor level fighter but he hasn't shown any actual feats that put him up there with WB/Roger. Narratively he is definitely at the top since there is no question that he is Luffy's final pirate rival to become PK. However, that doesn't preclude that events will happen that will boost BB powers beyond current to get him to top top tier.

Feats are only as important as narrative to decide level imo. I guess that's just something I fundamentally disagree with with a lot of power-scalers. But yeah, there is conflation in my tiers with where exactly people are right now and where they "will be", at least for some characters like BB.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2023 ---

Garp and Sengoku are more a narrative argument for BB's power level due to who they used to be in the past but frankly nothing we saw from them is that impressive in the present.

Don't forget the fact he scarred Shanks before stealing Whitebeard's DF, and I think even before he stole the Yami Yami, which is incredible. In Shanks's own words, there weren't any 'tricks' involved either. I think people are vastly underestimating not only pre-TS BB, but just how much of a ridiculous advantage it is to not only have two DF, but the "strongest paramecia" in the Gura Gura. BB is the epitome of "hiding his power level", it's baked into his character.

 

[Lord Traffy Law]

I still feel like Kaido's gauntlet is the best feat so far.

garp and roger defeating the rocks is more impressive

 

[Core D. Roy]

Rocks and roger defeating the rocks is more impressive

Lol nice typo. There's just too much unknown about that situation, and the running guess that Whitebeard betrayed the Rocks Pirates and evened things out is still a pretty high likelihood.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2023, Original Post Date: Jan 30, 2023 ---

Yeah, what kaido fought during the wano arc was ridiculous:

First Battle:
Denjiro
Azura
Kawamatsu
Izou
Inuarashi
Nekomamushi
Kinemon
Raizo
Kiku

Out of those the implication was that denjiro, kawamatsu and azura were in the ballpar of calamities. And nekomamushi an inuarashi could be at least as strong with their respective transformations. Kinemon, raizo and kiku were arguably the weaker scabbards but at least kinemon and raizo could use their unique skillsets to hard counter some of kaido's attacks.

Second battle:
Luffy
Kidd
Law
Zoro
Killer

Luffy at the start of the battle was well ahead of any YC1 as far as I can tell. He was the only of the supernova that could trade blows with kaido and deal damage with conventional attacks. law and kidd are suggested to be about comparable to calamities at least. Probably higher but not that much higher. Their awakenings probably give them an edge though. Killer was the runt among them but he was good enough to take on hawkins later on, supernova captain and probably someone about good enough to be a flying six.

Third battle:
A continuation of the second but at this point luffy learned conquero haki cladding and could trade blows with kaido relatively evenly. Luffy eventually lost and falls out of onigashima.

Fourth Battle:
Luffy returns with momo's help after having eaten meat and miraculously has improved in his usage of cladding. Still loses to kaido.

Fifth battle"
Luffy returns seemingly from the dead with his awakening. After a prolonged conflict he finally nails kaido into a volcano and wins the fight. How long this conflict was evidences how far away from victory luffy was during the fourth battle.

As impressive as the gauntlet was, people really downplay the fact Big Mom was also there and consistently shot down the Supernovae when they made any headway at all.

 

[DeadlyBeast]

Yeah, what kaido fought during the wano arc was ridiculous:

First Battle:
Denjiro
Azura
Kawamatsu
Izou
Inuarashi
Nekomamushi
Kinemon
Raizo
Kiku

Out of those the implication was that denjiro, kawamatsu and azura were in the ballpar of calamities. And nekomamushi an inuarashi could be at least as strong with their respective transformations. Kinemon, raizo and kiku were arguably the weaker scabbards but at least kinemon and raizo could use their unique skillsets to hard counter some of kaido's attacks.

Second battle:
Luffy
Kidd
Law
Zoro
Killer

Luffy at the start of the battle was well ahead of any YC1 as far as I can tell. He was the only of the supernova that could trade blows with kaido and deal damage with conventional attacks. law and kidd are suggested to be about comparable to calamities at least. Probably higher but not that much higher. Their awakenings probably give them an edge though. Killer was the runt among them but he was good enough to take on hawkins later on, supernova captain and probably someone about good enough to be a flying six.

Third battle:
A continuation of the second but at this point luffy learned conquero haki cladding and could trade blows with kaido relatively evenly. Luffy eventually lost and falls out of onigashima.

Fourth Battle:
Luffy returns with momo's help after having eaten meat and miraculously has improved in his usage of cladding. Still loses to kaido.

Fifth battle"
Luffy returns seemingly from the dead with his awakening. After a prolonged conflict he finally nails kaido into a volcano and wins the fight. How long this conflict was evidences how far away from victory luffy was during the fourth battle.

You forgot the round Kaido had with Yamato. That definitely caused him to sustain some injuries.

 

[Core D. Roy]

Best feat for me would probably be Whitebeard with two holes through the torso and half his head blown off and still standing. He didn't have the advantage of dragon scales/oni skin like Kaidou, or being a freak of nature "iron balloon" like Big Mom. He was just a goddamn beast of a normal human who took punishment his whole career.

 

[I Am Atomic]

Yeah, what kaido fought during the wano arc was ridiculous:

First Battle:
Denjiro
Azura
Kawamatsu
Izou
Inuarashi
Nekomamushi
Kinemon
Raizo
Kiku

Out of those the implication was that denjiro, kawamatsu and azura were in the ballpar of calamities. And nekomamushi an inuarashi could be at least as strong with their respective transformations. Kinemon, raizo and kiku were arguably the weaker scabbards but at least kinemon and raizo could use their unique skillsets to hard counter some of kaido's attacks.

Second battle:
Luffy
Kidd
Law
Zoro
Killer

Luffy at the start of the battle was well ahead of any YC1 as far as I can tell. He was the only of the supernova that could trade blows with kaido and deal damage with conventional attacks. law and kidd are suggested to be about comparable to calamities at least. Probably higher but not that much higher. Their awakenings probably give them an edge though. Killer was the runt among them but he was good enough to take on hawkins later on, supernova captain and probably someone about good enough to be a flying six.

Third battle:
A continuation of the second but at this point luffy learned conquero haki cladding and could trade blows with kaido relatively evenly. Luffy eventually lost and falls out of onigashima.

Fourth Battle:
Luffy returns with momo's help after having eaten meat and miraculously has improved in his usage of cladding. Still loses to kaido.

Fifth battle"
Luffy returns seemingly from the dead with his awakening. After a prolonged conflict he finally nails kaido into a volcano and wins the fight. How long this conflict was evidences how far away from victory luffy was during the fourth battle.

Add Yamato in that list as well.

 

[DeadlyBeast]

Are you on mobile? I wonder if there's a different way I can link it.

I don't think this is a mobile issue. I am able to zoom in on browser and mobile browser. Maybe a higher resolution image so expanding can be enough without requiring explicitly zooming in?

Feats are only as important as narrative to decide level imo. I guess that's just something I fundamentally disagree with with a lot of power-scalers. But yeah, there is conflation in my tiers with where exactly people are right now and where they "will be", at least for some characters like BB.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2023 ---

Don't forget the fact he scarred Shanks before stealing Whitebeard's DF, and I think even before he stole the Yami Yami, which is incredible. In Shanks's own words, there weren't any 'tricks' involved either. I think people are vastly underestimating not only pre-TS BB, but just how much of a ridiculous advantage it is to not only have two DF, but the "strongest paramecia" in the Gura Gura. BB is the epitome of "hiding his power level", it's baked into his character.

I do agree with you that narrative should be an important decider in tiering someone. It helps since we no longer will even get portrayals of the growth but instead will just have characters fighting at a higher tier. What I find interesting is that you haven't applied this to Luffy yet? Narratively I think Luffy should be considered Kaido's equal if not superior at this point. Why not have Luffy higher up on your list, right below PK tier (assuming Luffy will have one major opponent before Blackbeard)?

Good points on Blackbeards other feats. I guess I have been less attentive to those pre-skip feats since portrayal of power levels has changed so much post the advent of haki. However, I still think BB should be one tier lower. My reason is that I expect BB to have one major fight prior to Luffy where he too will grow to PK tier before they finally have their clash.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2023 ---

Rocks and roger defeating the rocks is more impressive

I don't think we have enough details about that fight to really know how it played out. Personally I'm expecting us to learn just how much of a monster Rocks was and that they all had to gang up on him to win.

 

[kkck]

Ah, right, I forgot yamato. Added her to the post.

 

[DeadlyBeast]

Best feat for me would probably be Whitebeard with two holes through the torso and half his head blown off and still standing. He didn't have the advantage of dragon scales/oni skin like Kaidou, or being a freak of nature "iron balloon" like Big Mom. He was just a goddamn beast of a normal human who took punishment his whole career.

Honestly you're on to something here. I don't think we've seen any single fighter ever fight with the level of handicaps WB had during MF. The man fought while:

• Being pretty old
• Suffering from what seems like terminal illness, which he stopped taking medication for prior to MF
• Got stabbed all the way through his abdomen area by Squardo before he even started seriously fighting (compare this to Katakuri stabbing Luffy/himself with Mole)
• Got a hole in his chest from Akainu which should have melted his insides
• Got lasered through the arms by Kizaru (might have also been lasered in main body but don't remember)
• Lost a chunk of his head by Akainu

I just can't think of anyone who fought through despite all of this. I also think Kaido get's favored by recency bias and the fact the power structures are more defined now. If we were to see MF with the eyes of current world, even old WB on meds probably would have displayed solid haki feats and his opponents sure would have done the same.

Maybe we should get a poll up for this question?

 

[Crimson Ice]

Whitebard's endurance at Marineford is the best feat. The injuries he took were insane.

 

[Core D. Roy]

Being pretty old

It's important to note this, because like Garp and Sengoku he's a "normal person" who has been clearly defined as weaker with age, wheras people like Kaidou and Big Mom have seemingly never stopped being at "prime" despite getting old.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 30, 2023, Original Post Date: Jan 30, 2023 ---

I do agree with you that narrative should be an important decider in tiering someone. It helps since we no longer will even get portrayals of the growth but instead will just have characters fighting at a higher tier. What I find interesting is that you haven't applied this to Luffy yet? Narratively I think Luffy should be considered Kaido's equal if not superior at this point. Why not have Luffy higher up on your list, right below PK tier (assuming Luffy will have one major opponent before Blackbeard)?

Because Luffy's one of the very few examples in the series where his feats are directly shown to the reader in great detail at every point of growth. We don't have to rely on narrative suggestions for him, because we see what he can or can't do with our own eyeballs. When he was declared an Emperor after WCI, we didn't have to rely on the narrative suggestion to collectively agree that he definitely wasn't there yet. After liberating Wano? Now we're all collectively much more comfortable with the OP world calling him an Emperor.

Kaidou not going through the gauntlet and not choosing to face-tank Vajra Gun would have destroyed Luffy. It's not the first time Luffy has been "below" an antagonist and still wins through some method other than 1v1-no-items-final-destination- Crocodile, Enel, Katakuri and now Kaidou- all fights where he wasn't really "above" the villain. (Even to an extent, Moria and Cracker could be on that list too, but I still scaled contemporary Luffy above them even if their hax abilities would overcome Luffy 1v1)

That said, for now there's two reasons I have Luffy that low:

1) Feats: he's still extremely greenhorn with awakening, the zoan change in personality is making him act recklessly and his drawback is a huge liability compared to other more experienced awakening users, and

2) Narrative: I seriously doubt the current version of Luffy is the only thing we're going to see for the next 5+ years until EOS; as fun as current G5 is (and I do love it), Luffy has a ways to go before he's firmly "above" his the rest of the Emperors- part of the fun of a shonen story is seeing growth of the protagonist- if there is no more growth to be had it'd be sorta antithetical to how these stories go, especially One Piece itself.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 31, 2023 ---

Remade it in googledocs, wonder how that looks

OP Tiers

Four Emperors Top Pirates & Officers World Government Independent Actors Marines Previous Seven Warlords Revolutionary Army Supernovae Strawhat Senior Officers Strawhat Grand Fleet Pirate Underlings Red Scabbards S S Joyboy Rocks (Reversi)** Imu Harald (Contract)** Ryu...

docs.google.com

 

[HereNThere]

I honestly forgot about Whitebeard's feat. I tend to look disregard most of the Marineford due to, as already mentioned, the power system not being as well defined, but that is a bit of a disservice to Whitebeard's accomplishments. If Marineford happened sometime now, I'd say his feats would've been even more impressive than they were back then.

Suffering from what seems like terminal illness, which he stopped taking medication for prior to MF

I think this was the major contributing factor to his decline. Garp and Rayleigh are older than him and, while they've stated they've declined in power, they don't seem to be nearly as bad as Whitebeard was during Marineford..

I seriously doubt the current version of Luffy is the only thing we're going to see for the next 5+ years until EOS; as fun as current G5 is (and I do love it), Luffy has a ways to go before he's firmly "above" his the rest of the Emperors- part of the fun of a shonen story is seeing growth of the protagonist- if there is no more growth to be had it'd be sorta antithetical to how these stories go, especially One Piece itself.

It's really going to be interesting to see what Luffy pulls out in the future. He's at his "peak", but he's still only limited by his imagination. Gum Gum Giant alone feels like it can produce a bunch of different possiblities.

 

[LadyVados]

If Luffy’s final fight is Akainu and Zoro’s is Kizaru and they are the same diff (or Zoro’s is maybe even slightly easier) will that make you consider EOS Luffy and EOS Zoro equals ?

 

[Rein Avara]

If Luffy’s final fight is Akainu and Zoro’s is Kizaru and they are the same diff (or Zoro’s is maybe even slightly easier) will that make you consider EOS Luffy and EOS Zoro equals ?

They'll never be equals in power no matter how badly you want it to happen, that's not how Shounen works. Now if Zoro was a direct rival to Luffy I'd be inclined to say yes they would be somewhat equals kinda like (sasuke and naruto) but that's just not the case.

 

[Lord Traffy Law]

Well tbf at the end it really depends on the final boss
Mihawk does seem pretty up there
He’d be a tad below luffy regardless but close

 

[kkck]

Luffy will almost definitely always be stronger than zoro though I don't think the difference between them is ever particularly large. The difference between them right now is arguably the largest it's ever been and even then the implication is that zoro going all out can fight at roughly the yonko tier, however for a short time. Most of zoro's fights end with zoro having at least some leeway. Through most arcs luffy ends his fights having fought to the last of his stamina, literally unable to take another step after. We see this against rob lucci or doflamingo. Meanwhile zoro pretty much casually walked out of his fight with kaku and later on picca. Against picca zoro used one of his stronger techniques but he barely took hits and didn't even need azura. In the end the plot actually requires zoro to become a fully realized yonko level fighter and he appears to be a single BS haki powerup from that for the most part.