Firing a ki bolt into the air and having it circle back would work unless they saw the blast. This isn't fan wank, it's physics (or as close to physics as DB gets) since Goku pulled off a similar stunt once. As would simply doing the Vegeta-signature-attack-that-always-works and filling the air with tons of ki blasts because it's a lot easier to break a pot than kill a warrior and that warrior would struggle to protect it.
There are a lot more problems with the Mafuba than is first apparent. Grabbing a bystander and throwing them into the path, another strategy.
edited 28th Dec '17 7:12:44 PM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"It's fan wank because we don't know how much the person can react to the technique being used and how much control they have while caught up in it
Because without the counter, it looks like you're pretty helpless
Once again, if you need to know what the move is to set up a counter strategy, that doesn't help when it would be used against someobe who doesn't know it
Goku was friggin nearly dead when pulled the ki bolt gambit.
Also, yes, it has significant advantages over someone who doesn't know what the move does. Which is how it should be. A move should be more dangerous if you don't know what it does.
edited 28th Dec '17 7:22:38 PM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"But not so advantageous that it becomes nonsensical that they don't try it against every new opponent.
What you came up with is not advantageous so much as it is an incredibly easy win.
The counters you have come up with have not been used by the series and do not fit what we have seen. People DON'T simply dodge it, blast the container or throw people in the way.
Your ideas can't explain why Piccolo Daimao couldn't counter it. It doesn't explain why Piccolo Junior invented a specific counter rather than easily handling it. It doesn't explain why nobody actually exploits these weaknesses, or why the characters don't use the technique because of weaknesses that have never been explained.
edited 28th Dec '17 7:30:46 PM by Saiga
Just because something hasn't been done, doesn't mean it can't be done. Saiga, these characters are dumb. All of them, dumb. Just because they don't think to do these things doesn't mean they wouldn't work. This seems like it'd be obvious. This argument is making me seriously doubt your logical reasoning skills.
That doesn't actually help your argument Pushover. Even assuming there are easy ways to get past the Mafuba going "The characters are too stupid to use them" is not a defense against what Saiga is arguing.
If you don't think the characters will do these things you're suggesting, then there's no point in bringing them up.
That's not a particularly compelling argument either. You shouldn't assume characters will break from precedence just because. Especially when the ones in this situations aren't supposed to be martial arts masters and fighting geniuses and such. If they haven't done what you said, you shouldn't just assume some other characters will randomly realized the "obvious".
All the sarcasm in the world won't do you any good without anything to back it up. Even falling your own logic here of "the characters we see are idiots, but that doesn't matter because later characters might not be idiots", is not something to rely on, and is ripe with implications of bad writing.
As Saiga put it:
edited 28th Dec '17 8:32:09 PM by LSBK
Call it fan wanking, but I got no real reason to believe that Vegeta couldn't escape the Mafuba after powering up to SSGB. Of course there's no concrete proof other than the blue aura pouring out when Roshi broke the bottle. I suppose my only argument is that Jiren manage to break Hit's Time Imprisonment, but that's a different technique.
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I dunno, maybe King Piccolo was paralyzed by trauma and fear and didn't think to do that. Piccolo Junior used the counter because reversing the Mafuba is better than just canceling it out. You're arguing that this move has some kind of safeguard against just breaking the container when Tenshinhan literally gave up on trying because the container was broken. There's no reason to assume that these incredibly obvious and logical weaknesses aren't weaknesses, aside from specifically arguing that the move must have more, different weaknesses.
edited 28th Dec '17 9:27:21 PM by PushoverMediaCritic
And I'm back.
Frost.
Piccolo.
The risk isn't non-existent. Even if it was, scrutinizing this kind of decision-making in Dragonball is an exercise in futility.
If you need more concrete reasons, it's been long-established that most of the cast doesn't often share techniques, and this story arc doesn't give them a lot of time to prepare for the tournament. They didn't use it on everyone because, up until Super, and much like the Kaioken, the Mafuba was obsolete and potentially deadly.
If we ignore the Rule of Funny and frequent incidents of mere luck in this franchise note then, yes, I can see this being a problem.
Except when the user of the Mafuba can't deal with multiple enemies and doesn't have time to hit them all, let alone the stamina to actually launch it multiple times. The non-lethal, no-limits Mafuba does have flaws that we have seen in Super already that make it not always the best strategy.
We've seen them multiple times - bringing a bad container, forgetting the seal, hitting the wrong target, destroying the container, and the heroes simply being stupid and/or forgetful. Those are just the ones we've seen. There's no guarantee that the Mafuba always lands or that the villain will give the hero time to use it. It's also easily countered even by people who've only seen it once.
There are multiple ways to keep it from being a Story-Breaker Power. The simplest, if not most creative being that Roshi simply refuses to teach it to anyone besides Goku and Krillin.
edited 28th Dec '17 10:28:44 PM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!I already pointed out the Frost example was ridiculous (Daimao couldn't counter it so quickly) and STILL doesn't counter what I am saying about needing prior knowledge. Piccolo's example specifically requires having a counter prepared.
The bad circumstances keeping the technique from being useful are not a good argument for it to be a story breaker power. Like LSBK said, that just reeks of bad writing. Why not just... not have the technique require contrived circumstances every time it comes up. If it weren't so powerful it could actually be used in appropriate situations and succeed! Furthermore, that doesn't explain all the times when the characters choose not to use the technique.
If you can't deal with multiple enemies, then you're fucked without using the Mafuba. If the number of enemies is a problem, "number of enemies - 1" is objectively a better situation to deal with. THAT is why Mafuba is always the optimal strategy.
'Enemies seeing it once' is not a common occurrence and does not apply to 99% of the situations they could be using the technique in.
Lastly, Pushover, just insisting the characters are dumb but simultaneously smart enough to avoid using the Mafuba when it could backfire is inherently contradictory. But it's also an incredibly weak justification to have multiple caveats for why the technique was used that are never mentioned nor implied by the series.
Literally every single character in the Tournament of Power has seen the Mafuba and knows what it's about and how to counter it (except for U9 and U10). This list includes all of the top gods of all the universes. Super is running out of space to introduce new antagonists in future arcs, it's very likely that all future major antagonists for the series will already know about the Mafuba (everyone present, like the Angels and Daishinkan) or will be told about the Mafuba (in the event of a future Arc Villain coming from one of the 4 exempt universes).
"Enemy having prior knowledge of it" is VERY likely, given they kind of blew their load with new characters in this arc.
edited 29th Dec '17 1:05:50 AM by PushoverMediaCritic

If those things are possible why are they never done? You can't call them possibilities when they're unproven.
We know why it only worked for Mutaito - because the other times it was used, shit luck and situational circumstances made it fail. It isn't good to keep relying on that to preserve drama.
Edit: by 'no limits' I am referring to no limits on power.
Any drawback that relies on prior knowledge doesn't work - more often it would come up against new opponents.
And any explanation has to fit with Piccolo Daimao knowing about the technique but unable to prevent it with his abilities.
edited 28th Dec '17 7:15:34 PM by Saiga