One Piece

If Luffy wasn't made of rubber and use Haki to defend himself, even he wouldn't be able to stand still and no-sell attacks from swords + bullets.

Whitebeard was powerful which makes him a lot tougher than regular fighters but without using Haki to defend himself, even he is only human in the end.

Honestly, I'm of the mind now that Whitebeard was mostly getting by on reputation at that point. While he was still certainly one of the strongest people in the world, the time when he was the "strongest man" had already past by Marineford.

edited 19th Aug '17 9:25:49 AM by LSBK

I don't think you're supposed to think that, though.

Wasn't that clearly stated? Maybe not to the point of "getting by on reputation" but age had clearly caught up to and weakened him.

edited 19th Aug '17 9:41:07 AM by sgamer82

At one point he did say "I can't be the strongest forever!" or something like that.

Whether that's an acknowledgment that he already isn't or just standard "the young will surpass the old", it could work as either.

edited 19th Aug '17 9:35:05 AM by LSBK

I suppose what I mean is that you're not supposed to think 'I'm not impressed, surely he must be better than this? I guess he's just old.'

Agreed. I took it as "of he's this strong now what was he like in his prime?"

edited 19th Aug '17 10:32:19 AM by sgamer82

I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that as far as the "now" goes, I don't see the Whitebeard we saw being the strongest anything, considering how I picture things going, and some stuff Oda has said about battles to come.

Though, I'd imagine the terminal illness had more to do with it than being old. He's not that much older than Big Mom.

Oda kind of introduced the "strongest man" too early, I think, with the kind of escalation that was happening, and we know is going to continue to happen.

edited 19th Aug '17 10:29:31 AM by LSBK

Maybe his thing is endurance over toughness?

I don't see it with Whitebeard, but I do think there are several characters that seem really unimpressive in retrospect relative to their hype level. Chief among them? Lucci.

Maybe the opposite, more raw power over defensive ability. He can still take an ungodly number of attacks, but can't shrug them of the way Big Mom or Kaido can.

The thing about Lucci, Crocodile, and Shanks (they seem to be the ones this topic mostly comes up about) is that even if you think they're unimpressive or seem weaker in hindsight than they should be, they're still alive and Oda is likely going to have them doing some ridiculous things later on that will reverse those impressions.

With Whitebeard though, unless we have some extensive flashbacks with him fighting Roger or something, that's just not going to happen.

edited 19th Aug '17 5:57:38 PM by LSBK

Apparently in the Gold movie, Lucci not only has Haki now, but fights Sabo to a draw.

Makes me wonder what we'll end up seeing out of Roger. He's got to live up to all this and more. Moreso than even Shanks does due to his Shrouded in Myth status

edited 19th Aug '17 11:20:51 AM by sgamer82

I like to think he just had the Devil's luck like Buggy.

The biggest example we see of Whitebeard's durability is him getting part of his head completely obliterated by lava without keeling over dead right then and there while still having enough strength to obliterate Marineford HQ. I certainly found the first part impressive, since he was basically halfway into the grave at that point.

Granted, for all we know, Kaido might be able to take such an attack without even getting singed...

edited 19th Aug '17 3:34:21 PM by dragonfire5000

I still find the issue more pronounced with Lucci. He's similar to Frieza in that he's a mid-series villain who received endgame-level hype (even Kuma seemed to find his defeat pretty unbelievable in the next arc) and ergo makes the fact that there's not just one but many people out there much stronger than him stretch suspension of disbelief.

edited 19th Aug '17 5:54:21 PM by HamburgerTime

But we already knew of multitudes of things stronger than Lucci eve n when he was the arc villain

We knew the very, very upper tiers were stronger than him. We did not know that, for instance, that the WG already had multiple Mecha Mooks stronger than him, or that Bellamy would come back years later stronger than him, etc.

How would you feel about those theories of Zoro being from Wano being corrected?

I mean, I'm guessing that they figured that a pirate on the Grand Line simply shouldn't be on Lucci's level, which I think is fair.

Kuma straight up states that he was sent to reinforce Moriah because the WG felt it would take two Warlords to drop someone who could beat Lucci.

Lucci was a real badass.

Luffy beat him by going above & beyond his limits & using every trick in the book.

My brain kind of oozed out my head when someone convinced me with actual math that roided-up Hody was in all probability stronger than Lucci. That's just stupid.

I'm pretty cool with it.

edited 19th Aug '17 6:15:39 PM by HandsomeRob