Don't you think both matters though?
I put weight in both injury and effort.
You can put high effort and stomp, that wouldn't make the fight a high diff, would it?
What makes Kaku a high diff fight is that Kaku fought Zoro equally until Zoro pulled out Asura, and reduced Zoro to like 30% hp. I mean as a true equal, unlike Lucci where Zoro was sandbagging for most of the fight.
Zoro didn't treat Kaku like a joke in the end, where he casually dodged his final attack and one shotted him with a mid-end move. Zoro couldn't deal with Kaku's strongest attack at all, until he pulled out Asura. Asura was needed to overpower it.
I do think both matter but I think I maybe contextualize their importance to each other depending on the fight (admittedly this will introduce personal bias but power scaling as a whole is never free of that so I try to do it carefully). For me this goes back to that fight Zoro had with Zombie Ryuma where it was commented by Brook that they were both similar in fighting style and physical strength, and as a result how the fight would be short.
The way OP depicts fights changes depending on the narrative Oda is going for but in all reality when two fighters are relative equals, the fight should be short and end with few attacks landing, especially if the fighters in question are attack heavy. Zoro v Lucci fell into this category for me, where a single serious attack from either landing on the other was likely to end the fight. The reason I think the fight took so long aside from plot is both of them couldn't manage to land a real attack and when Zoro finally did he won. This dynamic is especially true for CP agents who fight to kill: thinking of the fights in Onigashima such as CP0 v Apoo, CP0 v Drake and even in this arc when Lucci did a sneak attack on Sentomaru. Since this was the lense through which I viewed Zoro v Lucci, I ended up counting injury less.
However, I do completely admit this is difficult to judge. In the same vein we'd think Zoro v Kaku should have ended with few injuries since they were relatively equal. It seems to me Oda has both sides land hits and get injured when its a main fight that is being shown but when similar fights happen as a side element of the plot, we see only one/two attacks land with fight ending quickly. This is true even with Zoro v Kaku 2.0 where we didn't have a conclusion to the fight showing that both Kaku & Lucci can hold Zoro off vs being low diff wins for him. To me if Kaku & Lucci were low diff for Zoro they wouldn't be able to stall him.
That's why I land on mid diff to high diff for Zoro v Lucci. The big open question for me is if Zoro used aCoC or not, which we can't explicitly tell since it forces us to do haki analysis which is not great. If he didn't use aCoC I stick with Mid Diff. If he used aCoC in that fight and it didn't end there, then High Diff.
As for Killer.
Yes, he was injured, but that was a result of external intervention. What would have been a mid diff fight if pure 1v1, turned into a high-extreme diff fight due to intervention from the Fox.
Good point on the Killer fight. There was interference from Gyu something fox person. Otherwise you're right Zoro would have comfortably handled that form of Killer (since he wasn't fighting his normal style won't comment on real Killer though how he went out in Elbaf makes me think low diff since I have hard time imagining Zoro going down like that to an indirect hit).
I am not talking about Pica, moreso talking about stuff that happened in Wano itself.
Check when Zoro got Enma and cut the cliff, check when Zoro was using attacks against Kaido and as well as against King (pre KoH)
You could see the smoke there too.
Smoke can be advanced armament overflow, or KoH. Rooftop Zoro used advanced armament only and was having smoke anyway.
And lastly, my main point here is the author intent:
I get you. I did go back and check all the chapters and there is smoke emanating from the sword (Enma mostly) in several moments prior to KoH. However, KoH I think is the only one I saw with multiple small circular flows of smoke around swords vs large amounts of smoke we saw before. Either way this is turning into same problem of black lighting interpretation so I think I will just say I don't know if Zoro used KoH in the fight.
With that in mind will stick to the above, Mid Diff if no KoH used and High Diff if KoH was used.
Repeating myself:
is Lucci ~ smoke santoryuu Zoro ~ base nittoryuu Zoro?
How can this be the case, when the attack that took Lucci from almost full hp to like < 20% hp was a mid-end attack WITHOUT KoH ?
This means, Lucci cannot handle Zoro's attack power in base advanced conqueror's even.
How could he handle Zoro's attack power in KoH then, which it's OVERUSE of advanced conqueror's + advanced armament? Make it make sense.
I think this is a bit disingenuous. Its clear Lucci has shown that with haki on this hands/claws he can block Zoro's swords but the same does not apply to his body. So even if we leave out KoH/aCoC this is akin to asking why did Lucci go down to Zoro's CoA haki swords when he was just blocking them before with his CoA haki hands/claws?
To me it can make sense that a Lucci actively using CoA haki hands/claws successfully to block either CoA or aCoC swords is still consistent with a Lucci that gets taken out if a CoA or aCoC named sword attack from Zoro lands on his main body.
This is also why I said before, had Zoro failed to dodge Lucci's Madara attack he would have lost the fight. I don't think his body would have just taken it, he'd had been riddled with holes. Do you disagree?
Even if you are just weighing effort, Zoro put a LOT more effort into Kaku than to Lucci
Zoro went all out, used many named attacks (that Kaku tanked), and pulled out his strongest ability till date to finally put down Kaku.
Compare that to Lucci, who damn near got one shotted with the first instance of a mid-end named attack
Comparing effort:
- Zoro used 100% of his ability against Kaku. Kaku forced Zoro to evolve himself and awaken his Asura for the first time.
- Zoro used like 50% of his ability at max against Lucci, no bandana
Comparing injury:
- Kaku took like 70% hp from Zoro
- Lucci took 10% hp from Zoro at best, even that is giving Lucci benefit of the doubt cause we didn't see Lucci land any hit on Zoro.
I will disagree about Seraphim pushing Zoro more than Lucci though.
Lucci could actually hold his own in CQC. While, Seraphim are bums with poor combat skills and no haki. They are just damage sponges who probably got ping ponged by Luffy/Zoro/Lucci, who are likely alive only cause Oda made Zoro retarded and made him forget King (a skilled adult lunarian with strong armament haki) was afraid of getting hit by Zoro once he got advanced conqueror's haki.
I think this goes to what I said in the first part where Oda shows a lot more back and forth, with both sides landing attacks etc for fights he wants to depict. However, for side fights that are off screened we pretty much just see people holding each other in place and only see attacks land at the end when they conclude. Don't forget Zoro also fought Kaku in Egghead and failed to win (fight was not concluded). Since Kaku is weaker than Lucci (unless you disagree), you'd think a Zoro that can low diff Lucci would have no trouble taking Kaku out quickly too but that just wasn't the case.
In that case, why is Lucci a high diff for Zoro?
No KoH (as I explained above), no Asura. Down with the first named attack.
Zoro used less effort on Lucci, than Kaido on 1010 Luffy.
I am not saying Kaido took a lot of damage there though, but he did get hit many times. Say 1010 Luffy took 10% of his hp?
I'll disagree on the KoH in that my position is its unknown. But that aside my rationale is that had either side landed a named attack directly on the other, the fight would have ended.
On Kaido v Luffy, 1010 not sure how much hp Luffy took but I think 10% is reasonable. Although I again have to stress how Oda shows tons of back & forth for where attacks land for fights that he shows with a lot of focus.
Contrast this with old WB v Akainu. Both attacked each other a lot but only landed a couple attacks, each of which was pretty fatal in the fight e.g. Akainu took piece of WB head and Akainu took huge blow to the head. When opponents of similar levels fight, this is typically what should happen, they hold each other off until an attack lands which tends to finish the fight.
But Luffy used his strongest mode that severely exhausted him, and had clashes with Lucci?
Wouldn't that push it to a minimum mid diff, due to the effort Luffy used?
Pulling out G5 automatically prevents it from being a neg diff, because at that point the only thing he's holding back is advanced conqueror's and gigantification in G5.
To put down Lucci, he would even need far more effort than he used there, because Lucci tanked 3 named attacks with only llike 20% reduction in hp. Up with just a bandaid, showing no signs of lasting damage or exhausting.
You say Lucci didn't damage Luffy, but Lucci caused zero damage to Zoro as well by the way.
This is the double standard I am talking about.
Look at how Zoro treated Lucci when he got serious.
Casually dodged Lucci's barrage of named attacks, exposing beyond any doubt that Lucci holding his own earlier was just Zoro sandbagging for the sake of plot. Damn near one shotted Lucci with a mid-end move without KoH, without bandana.
Why is it that one is (rightfully) interpreted as a stomp, while other isn't?
This is a fair point. Luffy made Lucci look easy purely because he was in G5 which is a lot of effort on Luffy's part. You've changed my mind, to be consistent I will have to readjust this to Luffy beat Lucci Mid Diff. Not clear what haki Luffy used but the fact that Lucci couldn't do anything at all during that fight and was toyed with by Luffy. But it did take Luffy effort to do all of that so can't label that Low Diff anymore.
The "ribbon" was a nice catch, never noticed it.
Dude seems like he was like just 1 step away from awakening, if not awakened already.
His DF mastery was INSANE.
He's definitely the Frieza of the verse. One of the best observation haki in the verse till date, natural genius creating space ships, mastered DF to an insane degree. All the while there was ZERO challenges to push him to grow stronger.
Oda can retcon him to admiral level and I wouldn't complain lol.
Yeah I was surprised to see the ribbon being used even back then. But definitely think Enel was slept on due to Luffy's rubber making him look easier than he should have been. The recent transformation that Greenbull did where he turned into a Forrest being also makes me think that is a partial awakening (or full) too. Logia's transforming into beings that embody the element seems the best course to go. Guessing all of logia Admirals have some form like this when fighting all out. Kizaru definitely has more in him than we saw this arc.
Also need to check if Sengoku had ribbons when he turned into Gold Buddah form. Maybe he was awakened too?
