Quarterfinal Natsu vs Gildarts

[Pheromone]

This match-up is decided by speed and fighting tactics/techniques, as both Natsu and Gildarts are walking WMDs by their magic alone.

They both could easily obliterate the other within one or two attacks/spells if given the proper opening.

As of now, I'm giving my vote to Gildarts, high difficulty. I believe he is the better fighter, and would be able to create and exploit openings within the battle to his advantage.

 

[Axiomus]

Gildarts can definitely push Natsu into using dragon force, which alone would warrant at least a high difficulty rating for Natsu. However, I just don't see Gildarts taking a direct hit from demolition fist. Even if DF demolition fist doesn't erase Gildarts' body like it did Zeref's, it would probably still knock him out. Also, we have seen Natsu burn magic itself. Even unconventional magic like time manipulation, which is arguably one of the highest form of hax there is. In a head on collision between Natsu's attacks and Gildart's, I have to give the edge to Natsu here. True Heaven and Empyrean haven't been shown to do the type of damage DF Demolition Fist brings to the table.

I don't really see where people are getting this idea that Gildarts has an overwhelming speed advantage over Natsu. Natsu has decent speed feats under his belt as well. Also, their hand to hand combat skill should be around the same level level - all things considered. Gildarts might have the slight edge here, but it doesn't outweigh the power advantage Natsu has in his attacks.

 

[Boomburst]

I cant believe that you guys have to take it this far. Gilly doesnt even to use crash. Owh if he does, natsu becomes nata de coco

Spoiler

I give gildarts high diff (with some courtesy of mine of course). Not to mention his magic cant be eaten by the likes of acnologia. And of course he oneshotted the strongest man in ishgar, who wielded the power of 8 dragons ,whose magical power was greatly reduced, but not physical strength.

#allhailempyreanpunch

He oneshotted a bare husk of someone who was never confirmed to be the strongest person in Ishgar, and even if he was the strongest at the time of receiving the title there were no guarantees that he remained so after the timeskip. Meanwhile Natsu has essentially oneshotted two mages who were said to be around the same level as God Serena, and that's the ORIGINAL God Serena.

Jacob ~~ Neinhart ~~ God Serena >>>>>> Historia God Serena. It's clear who has the better feats here, and this isn't even taking into account Dragon Force.

Magical power directly correlates with durability against magical attacks. Physical strength hardly matters, Wendy can take more magical hits than someone like Bacchus despite Bacchus clearly being the physically stronger mage.

 

[M3J]

This match-up is decided by speed and fighting tactics/techniques, as both Natsu and Gildarts are walking WMDs by their magic alone.

They both could easily obliterate the other within one or two attacks/spells if given the proper opening.

As of now, I'm giving my vote to Gildarts, high difficulty. I believe he is the better fighter, and would be able to create and exploit openings within the battle to his advantage.

Somehow, I don't see either being hurt that badly with one or two attack spells. It'd probably take more than that.

 

[Gaggen]

He oneshotted a bare husk of someone who was never confirmed to be the strongest person in Ishgar[/B], and even if he was the strongest at the time of receiving the title there were no guarantees that he remained so after the timeskip. Meanwhile Natsu has essentially oneshotted two mages who were said to be around the same level as God Serena, and that's the ORIGINAL God Serena.

Jacob ~~ Neinhart ~~ God Serena >>>>>> Historia God Serena. It's clear who has the better feats here, and this isn't even taking into account Dragon Force.

Magical power directly correlates with durability against magical attacks. Physical strength hardly matters, Wendy can take more magical hits than someone like Bacchus despite Bacchus clearly being the physically stronger mage.

i think we are reading different manga. guys can someone point of his mistake. yes they were same level as serena but different league. Serena feats puts him as the 3rd strongest spriggan IMO. So feats like that speak huh. Natsu took them one by one, whereas serena took the gods of ishgar all at once. Plus i think @Emperor Spriggan has pointed out the inconsistency of natsu's power level went he fought those spriggan quite some time ago. Look natsu's power level is one deep shit that i wouldnt want to mess with. He is basically a mess. I would go with gildarts. Saying natsu is stronger than gildarts is just like saying gray is stronger than laxus, who is weaker than gildarts. This fandom mentality is funny, even though mashima has potrayed gray and natsu to be dead even, they dare saying natsu>gildarts, but gray<laxus, who is leagues below gildarts. Gildarts have stomped natsu numerous times. even during natsu's training his fist couldnt do shit to gildarts. many use zeref vaporizing here as an indicator of natsu's strength. First of all, zeref didnt put an effort to dodge that. Second, we dont know weither did zeref dematerialize himself or not like how obito does, since he has mastery to time and space. 3rd, gildarts physical strength>> zeref>natsu. Gildarts is shown crashing any type of ds spells. Natsu flames has the power ro burn logic, but definitely not crash. Crash is a sort of destroying magic, how can anyone even destroy destroy???

 

[kkck]

i think we are reading different manga. guys can someone point of his mistake. yes they were same level as serena but different league. Serena feats puts him as the 3rd strongest spriggan IMO. So feats like that speak huh. Natsu took them one by one, whereas serena took the gods of ishgar all at once. Plus i think @Emperor Spriggan has pointed out the inconsistency of natsu's power level went he fought those spriggan quite some time ago. Look natsu's power level is one deep shit that i wouldnt want to mess with. He is basically a mess. I would go with gildarts. Saying natsu is stronger than gildarts is just like saying gray is stronger than laxus, who is weaker than gildarts. This fandom mentality is funny, even though mashima has potrayed gray and natsu to be dead even, they dare saying natsu>gildarts, but gray<laxus, who is leagues below gildarts. Gildarts have stomped natsu numerous times. even during natsu's training his fist couldnt do shit to gildarts. many use zeref vaporizing here as an indicator of natsu's strength. First of all, zeref didnt put an effort to dodge that. Second, we dont know weither did zeref dematerialize himself or not like how obito does, since he has mastery to time and space. 3rd, gildarts physical strength>> zeref>natsu. Gildarts is shown crashing any type of ds spells. Natsu flames has the power ro burn logic, but definitely not crash. Crash is a sort of destroying magic, how can anyone even destroy destroy???

We don't really have all that much reason to think laxus is weaker than gildarts. Laxus was shown to be a match to gildarts when he went toe to toe with jura who was said to be, by makarov, as strong as gildarts. Sure, jura got left behind later on but still. And then two years later we see a basically half dead laxus take advantage of walhito and ultimately defeat him. That is no small feat overall. And then we see gildarts beating god serena who was a much weaker version than the original and then we see him fight august were he largely accomplished very little. He only managed one hit that did any damage at all and then august immediately decided to destroy the world.

As for natsu and grey being even... I doubt that is the case. We saw them against each other not too long ago but natsu has been going through his own stuff since then. As far as we have seen natsu has grown well stronger and even got access to dragon force recently. That is not something grey could fight against. Unless he gets demon force but that is not an actual thing.

I am not sure we have any reason to think gildarts is particularly physically powerful. I have no idea of where such an idea could have plausibly come from...

 

[Boomburst]

yes they were same level as serena but different league.

Same level but different league? What on earth does that even mean?

Serena feats puts him as the 3rd strongest spriggan IMO. So feats like that speak huh. Natsu took them one by one, whereas serena took the gods of ishgar all at once.

The GoI are basically irrelevant by current power standards, so no, God Serena's feats don't put him anywhere close to being the 3rd strongest Spriggan. And even if he was, Gildarts never fought God Serena. He fought God Serena's Historia.

Plus i think @Emperor Spriggan has pointed out the inconsistency of natsu's power level went he fought those spriggan quite some time ago. Look natsu's power level is one deep shit that i wouldnt want to mess with. He is basically a mess.

And if I seem to recall correctly I challenged his arguments that Natsu's power was inconsistent. Yes recent chapters have been a trainwreck but up until then none of Natsu's feats had contradicted what he had shown to be capable of.

I would go with gildarts. Saying natsu is stronger than gildarts is just like saying gray is stronger than laxus, who is weaker than gildarts.

The difference here is that Natsu has better feats than Gildarts. Gray doesn't have better feats than Laxus.

This fandom mentality is funny, even though mashima has potrayed gray and natsu to be dead even, they dare saying natsu>gildarts, but gray<laxus, who is leagues below gildarts. Gildarts have stomped natsu numerous times. even during natsu's training his fist couldnt do shit to gildarts.

Pre-timeskip feats are essentially meaningless.

many use zeref vaporizing here as an indicator of natsu's strength. First of all, zeref didnt put an effort to dodge that. Second, we dont know weither did zeref dematerialize himself or not like how obito does, since he has mastery to time and space.

Yes, we do know. Zeref said he used his mastery of time to recover from the attack. If he had dematerialized himself he would have simply put himself back together.

3rd, gildarts physical strength>> zeref>natsu. Gildarts is shown crashing any type of ds spells. Natsu flames has the power ro burn logic, but definitely not crash. Crash is a sort of destroying magic, how can anyone even destroy destroy???

Crash is not going to save Gildarts from a DF Demolition fist to the face.

 

[EmberSpirit]

DF Natsu punch can erase Gildarts from existence. Why is this a hot debate

 

[Ebony Maw]

I don't really see where people are getting this idea that Gildarts has an overwhelming speed advantage over Natsu. Natsu has decent speed feats under his belt as well.

I think it's due to him surprising August their fight his fight and managing to cube August fairly early:

Spoiler

Keep in mind, Gildarts managed to get a hit in when Jellal, Cobra, Midnight, Racer and Hoteye (granted we don't see what Hoteye did, but the fact he was already knocked out is pretty telling) seemingly couldn't. And we know for a fact that Jellal used Meteor against August, so Gildarts must be pretty damn fast to get a hit in when one of the fastest (if not the fasted bar Acno) mages in the manga couldn't. I'm not really that knowledgeable on Natsu, but I don't remember him showing anything near that level of speed (apart from IgNatsu, which is moot here).

 

[BluePegasus]

Obviously Gildarts.

To all people who voted for Natsu I'd like to ask: Do you understand how Crash works?

Natsu is at a huge disadvantage here due to the fact that he wields elemental magic. Crash is the perfect counter for that and can easily undo all of the spells that Natsu can cast, just like how he did with Historia God Serena's.

And well, Crash has undoubtely the AoE for it:

Spoiler

So yeah, completely one sided.

Now I'm going to move away from this thread because I'm already scared off.

 

[coolerthanzerok]

So, I think that Natsu is probably the one throwing around more power here, but Gildartz showed the ability to cube August. I think that's enough evidence that he could pull it off against Natsu, dragonforce or not. Crash hasn't shown an upper limit, so I see all of Natsu's crazy attacks like demolition fist having the magic stripped from them and being just strong punches. Gildartz fought Historia God Serena followed by August, and never actually went down. I think Natsu has more power, but that Crash is the ultimate magic for closing the gap. While it's not ultimately relevant because it happened during the timeskip, the match in which Natsu conceded to Gildartz (the one in which Natsu got eaten) showed where they were about a year ago. I just don't believe Natsu has grown enough to overpower that by such a wide margin that Crash doesn't still successfully counter Natsu's moves.

 

[Axiomus]

I think it's due to him surprising August their fight his fight and managing to cube August fairly early:

Spoiler

Keep in mind, Gildarts managed to get a hit in when Jellal, Cobra, Midnight, Racer and Hoteye (granted we don't see what Hoteye did, but the fact he was already knocked out is pretty telling) seemingly couldn't. And we know for a fact that Jellal used Meteor against August, so Gildarts must be pretty damn fast to get a hit in when one of the fastest (if not the fasted bar Acno) mages in the manga couldn't. I'm not really that knowledgeable on Natsu, but I don't remember him showing anything near that level of speed (apart from IgNatsu, which is moot here).

August's magic allows him to copy his opponents, so when he was fighting Oracion Seis he would have had access to Jellal's meteor, Racer's slowing magic, and Cobra's hearing. Against Gildarts, he wouldn't have access to these abilities. Or if he did, he was never shown to be outright using them. August has the potential to be fast if he's copy Jellal's meteor on top of Racer's slowing magic, and had the ability to hear his opponents' thoughts like Cobra did. However, when he later fought Gildarts even Cana managed to tag a hit on him when he was caught off guard.

Spoiler: Cana tags August

Obviously Gildarts.

To all people who voted for Natsu I'd like to ask: Do you understand how Crash works?

Natsu is at a huge disadvantage here due to the fact that he wields elemental magic. Crash is the perfect counter for that and can easily undo all of the spells that Natsu can cast, just like how he did with Historia God Serena's.

And well, Crash has undoubtely the AoE for it:

Spoiler

So yeah, completely one sided.

Now I'm going to move away from this thread because I'm already scared off.

Crush breaks stuff.

Crush breaking magic is no different than Natsu's flames being able to burn magic, and certainly not superior. I don't know why people are assuming crush is some sort of specific anti-magic hax. In fact, Natsu has feats of burning magic way stronger than the magic that crush has been able to break. Natsu's flames can break down Zeref's physical body, where in neither Empyrean nor True Heaven does that for their respective targets - and those attacks should be stronger than his standard crush attacks. Natsu's flames can overpower Fairy Heart empowered attacks and burn away at time itself. Crush has never been shown to overpower attacks with infinite power behind them, nor break time magic itself. He broke the Historia of God Serena's attacks, which in all likelihood is weaker than Neinhart's own attacks after he was enchanted. Certainly weaker than Zeref's black magic, which blew a hole in Larcade.

 

[sardinestunasalmon]

Definitely the most tough match up.

I went with Natsu in a very high diff battle. But Gildarts could also win just as Natsu.

 

[Jean Grey]

my boy @BluePegasus is back

but Natsu did this my boy

Spoiler

considering that PoF is not restricted then...

 

[Axiomus]

Overcoming opponent's magic
If Natsu can burn away the time-reversing magic of someone with infinite power, what makes you think he wouldn't be able to burn away the magic behind Gildarts' crash? Natsu can burn away Zeref's black magic, which can put a hole through Larcade. The strongest attacks crush has managed to break is God the historia of Serena's attacks. Not only was the historia said to be weaker than the actual living God Serena, but Natsu actually has stronger attacks than God Serena himself when he was alive. Natsu's flames have overcome stronger magic and greater hax than Gildart's crush.

Attack Power
Even without accounting for the flames of savage emotions, which I remind you isn't actually restricted, Natsu's demolition fist when performed in Dragon Force was able to break down Zeref's physical body. Zeref was able to recover from this because he was immortal and by reversing time. Nobody else possess immortality to remain alive after being scattered, and a means of putting themselves back together by reversing time. Now Zeref can actually withstand attacks from Igneel's power without his body breaking down, so the power behind this attack must be great. At the very least, it would still very likely be able to overpower Empyrean and deal enough damage to knock out Gildarts.

Durability/Endurance
With the exception of Ars Magia, which Gildarts did not really tank, none of the attacks Gildarts has received outclassed the attacks that Natsu has endured. Irene enchanted Neinhart to be stronger than the limits of his own magic, and the historia of God Serena being Neinhart's magic. This means that God Serena's winds were in all likelihood stronger than historia God Serena's attacks. The feats support this as Neinharts winds actually managed to cut up Natsu and Brandish, whereas God Serena's attacks didn't really do any noticeable damage. Zeref's black flames blew a hole in Larcade, so it's on an even higher level than that. And of course, Natsu managed to survive against August's nuke, which was August's most impressive attack after Ars Magia.

Speed/Agility
The main argument for Gildarts' speed seems to be that he can tag August a few times, and that August was faster against Jelall's group. Now I don't think August is slow by any means, but Augusts' magic is to copy the powers of his opponents. When August fought Jellal, Cobra, and Racer, he could copy meteor, slowing magic, and cobra's hearing. Each of these factors grants August a significant edge in terms of agility and speed. August did not have these powers when he faced Gildarts and Cana (or if he did, Hiro never made it clear). I will give Gildarts credit where credit is due for getting the drop on August, as August is still a high level Spriggan. However, even Cana was able to tag August with her cards. Gildarts was also not consistently faster than August. Towards the latter half of the fight, August was tossing Gildarts around in hand to hand.

Why speed is not the dominant factor in this match
Speed was never the dominant factor in Natsu and Gildart's previous sparring sessions. Speed was never the dominant factor in any of Gildarts' previous victories (against Bluenote and historia of God Serena). Even when Natsu was weaker than Gildarts, he could still find ways to force Gildarts into taking one of his blows. Also Natsu doesn't need to tag Gildarts a bunch of times. He could just try to clash fists with Gildarts, and do the exact same thing he did to Zeref. If Gildarts uses Empyrean, then Natsu can just throw demolition fist at the exact same.

Hand to Hand/Combat Experience
Now I am willing to say that Gildarts has the edge in hand to hand combat because of his older age, and that means he probably has spent a longer time training his hand to hand combat. However, does Gildarts actually have more experience? Natsu has fought all the leaders of the Ballam Alliance (Zero, Hades, and Mard Geer), a dragon (two if you count dragon cry), two actual Spriggan 12 members (one of which is enchanted), and an immortal with infinite power that can reverse space-time. Even if Gildarts has the advantage in hand to hand combat skills, Natsu's experience in combat isn't so inadequate that he wouldn't be able to keep up.

 

[Ebony Maw]

August's magic allows him to copy his opponents, so when he was fighting Oracion Seis he would have had access to Jellal's meteor, Racer's slowing magic, and Cobra's hearing.

How does this make August staving off CS with ease any less impressive? Whilst it means he wasn't having his reactions slowed, it doesn't mean that CS was any slower than usual, so August still has some pretty insane reactions. Yet despite these reactions, Gildarts managed to blitz him.

August has the potential to be fast if he's copy Jellal's meteor on top of Racer's slowing magic, and had the ability to hear his opponents' thoughts like Cobra did.

Why does August's speed matter here? We're talking about whether Natsu has the reactions to prevent Gildarts blitzing and cubing him, and whether Natsu has the speed to blitz/bypass Gildarts' defenses.

However, when he later fought Gildarts even Cana managed to tag a hit on him when he was caught off guard.

Spoiler: Cana tags August

Key word: off-guard. Unlike August, Gildarts won't be distracted against Natsu because he's only facing one opponent.

Spoiler

 

[Brandish μ]

Speed is not a big deal here in my opinion. They can hit one another. Historia Serena hit Gildarts, so Natsu can too. I think Natsu has been hit by several different opponents.

If I had to pick one, it would be Natsu because of DF... exercising common sense of course.

 

[Boomburst]

Obviously Gildarts.

To all people who voted for Natsu I'd like to ask: Do you understand how Crash works?

Natsu is at a huge disadvantage here due to the fact that he wields elemental magic. Crash is the perfect counter for that and can easily undo all of the spells that Natsu can cast, just like how he did with Historia God Serena's.

And well, Crash has undoubtely the AoE for it:

Spoiler

So yeah, completely one sided.

Now I'm going to move away from this thread because I'm already scared off.

HOLY SHIT BLUEPEGASUS IS BACK WELCOME BACK

Crash may be able to undo Natsu's roars but that's only because his roar has a physical form that he can undo. A punch cannot be dissasembled because a punch has no physical form TO disassemble. Unless you're arguing that Gildarts can just cube Natsu himself before his punch even connects, which would be an entirely separate discussion on its own.

 

[Axiomus]

How does this make August staving off CS with ease any less impressive? Whilst it means he wasn't having his reactions slowed, it doesn't mean that CS was any slower than usual, so August still has some pretty insane reactions. Yet despite these reactions, Gildarts managed to blitz him.

Why does August's speed matter here? We're talking about whether Natsu has the reactions to prevent Gildarts blitzing and cubing him, and whether Natsu has the speed to blitz/bypass Gildarts' defenses.

Key word: off-guard. Unlike August, Gildarts won't be distracted against Natsu because he's only facing one opponent.

Spoiler

August could slow his opponents down, use Jellal's meteor, and know what his opponents were trying to do against Jellal's group. He wouldn't have had any of those advantages against Gildarts, which would make it easier for Gildarts to tag August. It doesn't mean that August is slow, but again - even Cana could tag him, which meant that he was probably slower than when he was facing off all members of Oracion Seis. Like I said before, even when Natsu was weaker than Gildarts, Natsu could still take swings at Gildarts.

Spoiler: Natsu vs Gildarts

 

[Ebony Maw]

Durability/Endurance
With the exception of Ars Magia, which Gildarts did not really tank, none of the attacks Gildarts has received outclassed the attacks that Natsu has endured. Irene enchanted Neinhart to be stronger than the limits of his own magic, and the historia of God Serena being Neinhart's magic. This means that God Serena's winds were in all likelihood stronger than historia God Serena's attacks. The feats support this as Neinharts winds actually managed to cut up Natsu and Brandish, whereas God Serena's attacks didn't really do any noticeable damage. Zeref's black flames blew a hole in Larcade, so it's on an even higher level than that. And of course, Natsu managed to survive against August's nuke, which was August's most impressive attack after Ars Magia.

"Melt" might have been August's most impressive attack bar Ars Magia, but you're forgetting to account Natsu's immense heat resistance + the fact that he managed to negate some of the damage. Also, Gildarts tanked this:

Spoiler

Whilst that is admittedly an unnamed attack, there's hardly been any named attacks as of late. Even Zeref was just throwing around nameless blasts until his fire attack, so there's no reason to doubt that this blast would be powerful in it's own right.

Speed/Agility
The main argument for Gildarts' speed seems to be that he can tag August a few times, and that August was faster against Jelall's group. Now I don't think August is slow by any means, but Augusts' magic is to copy the powers of his opponents. When August fought Jellal, Cobra, and Racer, he could copy meteor, slowing magic, and cobra's hearing. Each of these factors grants August a significant edge in terms of agility and speed. August did not have these powers when he faced Gildarts and Cana (or if he did, Hiro never made it clear). I will give Gildarts credit where credit is due for getting the drop on August, as August is still a high level Spriggan. However, even Cana was able to tag August with her cards. Gildarts was also not consistently faster than August. Towards the latter half of the fight, August was tossing Gildarts around in hand to hand.

As you stated earlier, Cana tagged August because he was caught off-guard. As for August's speed/reactions, why would Racer's magic help him against Jellal + CS in a defensive way? Racer's magic doesn't slow speed, just reactions, so while I get it helping offensively (easier to crack their defenses), why would it help defensively?

And as for Gildarts' not being consistently faster, when did he try and blitz August again? And tbh, that doesn't even matter, because that one showing is better than any speed feat of Natsu's IIRC (though admittedly I'm not that knowledgeable on Natsu).

Why speed is not the dominant factor in this match
Speed was never the dominant factor in Natsu and Gildart's previous sparring sessions. Speed was never the dominant factor in any of Gildarts' previous victories (against Bluenote and historia of God Serena). Even when Natsu was weaker than Gildarts, he could still find ways to force Gildarts into taking one of his blows. Also Natsu doesn't need to tag Gildarts a bunch of times. He could just try to clash fists with Gildarts, and do the exact same thing he did to Zeref. If Gildarts uses Empyrean, then Natsu can just throw demolition fist at the exact same.

In their previous sparring sessions, Gildarts was never bloodlusted like he is here, and no opponent ever challenged him to the extent that August did. Why wouldn't he abuse his speed and agility, especially against a heavy hitter like Natsu?