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I have noticed that many characters who rely on magic seem very 'gimmicky', which makes their survival hard to explain.
The most prominent example here is King, with Gloxinia being an example of the same problem. They both have a strength stat of 0, which implies that their physical durability is nearly nothing. Gloxinia's glass cannon nature came up frequently in the Meliodas vs Dolor and Gloxinia fight, and only didn't get him killed because Meliodas held back. However, if this was treated realistically, assuming the strength stat=durability, he would splat on even the slightest impact. For now, I just assume that the Magic stat not only allows characters like Gloxinia and King to fly around and evade quickly, but also provides some measure of durability, as otherwise, their survival of high level attacks directly hitting them is utterly unexplainable. Their durability would simply be lower compared to melee types, and that's all well and good, but it needs to be there to some extent for them to ever win battles.
Nakaba seems to have heavily moved away from making any character gimmicky over time as he wrote this manga. We had several characters like King, Merlin, Gloxinia, etc, which were all like this early on, but almost all the newly introduced characters were not. Not a single one of the Four Archangels is like that, not even Sariel(who used a melee ark-blade attack against Estarossa just as well as Tarmiel did), and all the newly introduced antagonists also were not. For example, Chandler and Cusack were either Masters of All or master melee combatants respectively, and the Demon King, of course, can do both things, primarily physical attack To me, it seems like Nakaba started to recognize the problem here, and tried to ignore it as best as he could with already present characters like King, as it fortunately became less relevant due to King's evolution in learning to defend and attack at the same time, but that's just me. I also think this is part of why it's so difficult to believe Merlin can ever be killed in her fights. There is never a sense that she can be harmed since she is never hit., and any direct hit would vaporize her due to her nearly nonexistent power level compared to other characters later on. It would be so much better if Merlin simply used lots of automatic barriers created constantly by "Infinity", and you could see more of the layers getting destroyed over time if she was losing, but this was not done.
However, even these especially balanced characters like Mael/Ludociel/Chandler/Monspiet who have good magic capabilities while also being good at physical attack bring up the inherent flaw in this magical/physical split, and this is the key point of the whole post. It makes being good at two things inherently a bad and suboptimal choice since it's a zero sum game. If you're good at magic and physical then you're only half as good as you could be in each, and against someone who's incredibly overpowered at one or the other, you should logically be dead meat. For example, imagine if Garan had been way stronger when he was young, and was equal in overall power level to Monspiet. Now let's nerf Monspiet and make his physical/magical split exactly half in each rather than mostly magic and a little bit of physical, so that he's not that good at either. What would happen is Garan would absolutely body Monspiet in melee combat. Monspiet having fireballs and Hellblaze wouldn't really do anything to make up for it at all, since the fireballs would be half as powerful as Garan's defense. Trick Star could only help him a little as a gimmick, so Garan would win in overwhelming fashion. This is the core problem with the physical/magical split, it makes learning both a bad choice. That problem only seemingly goes away when Nakaba does not cover the physical/magical split. And, unsurprisingly, he stopped doing so as soon as he introduced the Four Archangels, Chandler/Cusack, and the DK, which really seems to line up with this hypothesis. In the case of Monspiet vs Estarossa, it seems like Monspiet's strength stat of 16'000 was ignored altogether vs Estarossa's overwhelmingly higher strength of 53'000. That 3 to 1 gap should have easily overpowered Monspiet's strength even when Monspiet tricked him into a chokehold, but it was ignored for the sake of the plot to make it look like Monspiet could ever possibly defeat Estarossa with physical force.
My solution to this would be that if Nakaba had foreseen these problems, he could have simply made a 'power level' overall that can be used in either physical or magical fashion. Spirit would be a separate thing from this and possibly not have a number attached at all. Super magic specialists like King would be more efficient when using that 'Power' stat for their magical attacks, but it would still be the same power they use in melee. AKA, King might be a mere 1/4th efficiency if he used physical attacks compared to his standard magic, but against Holy Knights, he would still speed blitz and physically overpower them. This would also solve issues for Monspiet and others, explaining why Mael/Ludociel aren't inherently weaker types of combatants. It would also allow Zeldris's frequent magic use in this manga to make sense with his power level rather than being totally inconsistent with his super low magic stat. Merlin would be an exception though, as her actual power level is somehow still very low, so she'd still be glass without many Infinity barriers blocking for her, or illusion cheese, or invisibility, and so on. Meanwhile, the ideal fighters would be those who have become Masters of All like Chandler and learn to balance both physical and magical so they don't become weaker in one by getting good at the other. I would have the Demon King and Supreme Deity both be like this along with Meliodas and Elizabeth, since at end of series it would make sense for them to surpass their parents when they inevitably end up ousting them from their positions. Nakaba already decided to make Meliodas suddenly a master of magic with that 'Condense Power' technique he used earlier, so he might as well do so with the DK and SD.
This system overall has limited character development as well. In my opinion, it would've been good development for King and Diane if Diane taught King how to be better at physical attacks or at least evasion(as the Dolor Dance uses evasion significantly after all), and if King's assistance with his mind reading powers and magical skill had been more important in Diane mastering the magic manipulation component of the Dolor Dance.
Of course, it's too late now for him to make that logical, but in my opinion that just means he should not limit himself with the illogical system he created and allow Meliodas or Elizabeth to do such feats in their final battles if he sees it as appropriate and thinks it will make the fight look a lot more entertaining. Meanwhile, he shouldn't bother stating their power levels at this point no matter how much they power up in the final fight, since too much of that is inconsistent. If he was going to do that, he should've done it already with the Demon King emerging from the cocoon.
TLDR, I think the split magic/physical stat system was a mistake, and Nakaba should continue to ignore it however much he needs to to make the fights entertaining. Obviously, characters who have never used physical combat until now like King should not suddenly use it, but he should not limit his antagonists like the SD and DK, or Meliodas and Elizabeth, and prevent them from doing complex magic if he thinks that will make the fight more entertaining. I personally think magic can add a lot of entertainment value to a shonen fight, with fights like those with King after his recent power up, and also with characters like Chandler who had versatile and unpredictable movesets. It certainly would be a lot better than having the DK stand there and spam giant slashes like he did earlier in the fight. Hopefully Nakaba will try harder with the rest of the fight to make it consistent with their abilities as well, even them just using the powers they already have and aren't using would be so much better.
The most prominent example here is King, with Gloxinia being an example of the same problem. They both have a strength stat of 0, which implies that their physical durability is nearly nothing. Gloxinia's glass cannon nature came up frequently in the Meliodas vs Dolor and Gloxinia fight, and only didn't get him killed because Meliodas held back. However, if this was treated realistically, assuming the strength stat=durability, he would splat on even the slightest impact. For now, I just assume that the Magic stat not only allows characters like Gloxinia and King to fly around and evade quickly, but also provides some measure of durability, as otherwise, their survival of high level attacks directly hitting them is utterly unexplainable. Their durability would simply be lower compared to melee types, and that's all well and good, but it needs to be there to some extent for them to ever win battles.
Nakaba seems to have heavily moved away from making any character gimmicky over time as he wrote this manga. We had several characters like King, Merlin, Gloxinia, etc, which were all like this early on, but almost all the newly introduced characters were not. Not a single one of the Four Archangels is like that, not even Sariel(who used a melee ark-blade attack against Estarossa just as well as Tarmiel did), and all the newly introduced antagonists also were not. For example, Chandler and Cusack were either Masters of All or master melee combatants respectively, and the Demon King, of course, can do both things, primarily physical attack To me, it seems like Nakaba started to recognize the problem here, and tried to ignore it as best as he could with already present characters like King, as it fortunately became less relevant due to King's evolution in learning to defend and attack at the same time, but that's just me. I also think this is part of why it's so difficult to believe Merlin can ever be killed in her fights. There is never a sense that she can be harmed since she is never hit., and any direct hit would vaporize her due to her nearly nonexistent power level compared to other characters later on. It would be so much better if Merlin simply used lots of automatic barriers created constantly by "Infinity", and you could see more of the layers getting destroyed over time if she was losing, but this was not done.
However, even these especially balanced characters like Mael/Ludociel/Chandler/Monspiet who have good magic capabilities while also being good at physical attack bring up the inherent flaw in this magical/physical split, and this is the key point of the whole post. It makes being good at two things inherently a bad and suboptimal choice since it's a zero sum game. If you're good at magic and physical then you're only half as good as you could be in each, and against someone who's incredibly overpowered at one or the other, you should logically be dead meat. For example, imagine if Garan had been way stronger when he was young, and was equal in overall power level to Monspiet. Now let's nerf Monspiet and make his physical/magical split exactly half in each rather than mostly magic and a little bit of physical, so that he's not that good at either. What would happen is Garan would absolutely body Monspiet in melee combat. Monspiet having fireballs and Hellblaze wouldn't really do anything to make up for it at all, since the fireballs would be half as powerful as Garan's defense. Trick Star could only help him a little as a gimmick, so Garan would win in overwhelming fashion. This is the core problem with the physical/magical split, it makes learning both a bad choice. That problem only seemingly goes away when Nakaba does not cover the physical/magical split. And, unsurprisingly, he stopped doing so as soon as he introduced the Four Archangels, Chandler/Cusack, and the DK, which really seems to line up with this hypothesis. In the case of Monspiet vs Estarossa, it seems like Monspiet's strength stat of 16'000 was ignored altogether vs Estarossa's overwhelmingly higher strength of 53'000. That 3 to 1 gap should have easily overpowered Monspiet's strength even when Monspiet tricked him into a chokehold, but it was ignored for the sake of the plot to make it look like Monspiet could ever possibly defeat Estarossa with physical force.
My solution to this would be that if Nakaba had foreseen these problems, he could have simply made a 'power level' overall that can be used in either physical or magical fashion. Spirit would be a separate thing from this and possibly not have a number attached at all. Super magic specialists like King would be more efficient when using that 'Power' stat for their magical attacks, but it would still be the same power they use in melee. AKA, King might be a mere 1/4th efficiency if he used physical attacks compared to his standard magic, but against Holy Knights, he would still speed blitz and physically overpower them. This would also solve issues for Monspiet and others, explaining why Mael/Ludociel aren't inherently weaker types of combatants. It would also allow Zeldris's frequent magic use in this manga to make sense with his power level rather than being totally inconsistent with his super low magic stat. Merlin would be an exception though, as her actual power level is somehow still very low, so she'd still be glass without many Infinity barriers blocking for her, or illusion cheese, or invisibility, and so on. Meanwhile, the ideal fighters would be those who have become Masters of All like Chandler and learn to balance both physical and magical so they don't become weaker in one by getting good at the other. I would have the Demon King and Supreme Deity both be like this along with Meliodas and Elizabeth, since at end of series it would make sense for them to surpass their parents when they inevitably end up ousting them from their positions. Nakaba already decided to make Meliodas suddenly a master of magic with that 'Condense Power' technique he used earlier, so he might as well do so with the DK and SD.
This system overall has limited character development as well. In my opinion, it would've been good development for King and Diane if Diane taught King how to be better at physical attacks or at least evasion(as the Dolor Dance uses evasion significantly after all), and if King's assistance with his mind reading powers and magical skill had been more important in Diane mastering the magic manipulation component of the Dolor Dance.
Of course, it's too late now for him to make that logical, but in my opinion that just means he should not limit himself with the illogical system he created and allow Meliodas or Elizabeth to do such feats in their final battles if he sees it as appropriate and thinks it will make the fight look a lot more entertaining. Meanwhile, he shouldn't bother stating their power levels at this point no matter how much they power up in the final fight, since too much of that is inconsistent. If he was going to do that, he should've done it already with the Demon King emerging from the cocoon.
TLDR, I think the split magic/physical stat system was a mistake, and Nakaba should continue to ignore it however much he needs to to make the fights entertaining. Obviously, characters who have never used physical combat until now like King should not suddenly use it, but he should not limit his antagonists like the SD and DK, or Meliodas and Elizabeth, and prevent them from doing complex magic if he thinks that will make the fight more entertaining. I personally think magic can add a lot of entertainment value to a shonen fight, with fights like those with King after his recent power up, and also with characters like Chandler who had versatile and unpredictable movesets. It certainly would be a lot better than having the DK stand there and spam giant slashes like he did earlier in the fight. Hopefully Nakaba will try harder with the rest of the fight to make it consistent with their abilities as well, even them just using the powers they already have and aren't using would be so much better.
