I see a lot of posts recently talking about power scaling, most prominently Crocodile, Lucci, and Moria. For instance this post (which was the catalyst for mine).

Note that I'm not calling anyone out here, I'm just trying to provide some context to power scaling in the world of One Piece, to make everything fit together a bit better. Rather than posting a decent sized post there, I chose to create a more complete stand-alone post to address the idea in general.

This is, uh, really long. I have a tendency to do that, and this post is no exception. I've included TL;DR's at the top of each section for those who wish to browse this more casually.

I'm splitting this into several different discussions (see list below) that all tie together at the end:

• Luffy's Relative Strength.

• Other Pirates.

• The Geography of the World.

• Haki.

• Reconciling Enemies that Feel "Weak" Now.

• Crew Strength.

Luffy's Relative Strength

TL;DR - Luffy was in the top 1% or even 0.1% in strength from Day 1 of his journey. The power scaling of One Piece is just nuts. The average citizen (which makes up the majority of the world) seems to be about as strong as an average real-life human being, but it seems the body in One Piece has infinite growth potential, so the top 5% or so of the world is infinitely stronger than the average citizen.

After over 900 chapters and two decades, Luffy has not really been in too many fights, all things considered. And of all the fights he's 'struggled' to overcome someone, there are even fewer:

• Crocodile - overcoming DF power, Luffy outclassed him martially.

• Aokiji - wasn't really a fight, just including it to be complete.

• Lucci - finally outclassed by a martially-focused opponent, Luffy had to overcome him through strength power-ups.

• Magellan - Luffy outright lost this fight due to Magellan's ridiculously powerful DF, but I believe he outclassed Magellan martially, as Magellan takes considerable damage. Open to interpretation, I suppose. Magellan definitely relies on his DF more than his combat prowess, though. Again, this wasn't a struggle.

• Kuma/Pacifista/Sentomaru - This was the first introduction of what the New World would be like. Luffy is highly outclassed by all three opponents, here. Not quite "Aokiji" levels of outclassed, but these likewise weren't really 'fights'. Luffy and the rest of the crew just more-or-less gets their ass handed to them. They exhaust almost all of their strength in a combined attack against ONE Pacifista.

  • The Pacifista are effectively used to show how much the crew has grown over two years. From a story-perspective, that was their full purpose.

• Cracker - This fight goes on for HOURS with Cracker barely breaking a sweat. Without Nami, Luffy was fucked.

• Katakuri - Everyone knows this fight.

And that's it, at least as far as the anime is caught up (I'm still in Marineford on the Manga, so I'm not sure if he's struggled in Wano, but per posts I've seen, it seems like he hasn't, other than another 'non-fight' that I won't go further into, but y'all know what I'm talking about). So if we take out Aokiji, Magellan, and Sabaody in general, we're talking FOUR fights total that Luffy has experienced combat growth through. And I'd even say that Cracker didn't really teach him anything, Nami carried that fight. From his defeats by Aokiji and others he gained the perspective of just how strong he needed to be

I want to be clear - from a COMBAT STRENGTH standpoint, Luffy was more than ready on day one to enter and 'compete' with the middle-tier pirates in the New World. This means like executive level - Mont-d'Orr, Oven (Misspoke on Oven, he's stronger than I realized/remembered), Pekoms, Opera, possibly Amande, etc. I have no doubt he would have competed (NOTE: not no-dif, but high-dif and/or 'barely lose to') with this level of strength on day one of his journey. And the lowest tier of pirate in the New World is still crazy strong compared to the rest of the world. The New World is terrifying, it requires unimaginable strength to brave those waters.

I think people kind of don't understand this when thinking about the level of opponents that Luffy goes up against in the New World, and compares them to Paradise. The issue is, Luffy is the Big Mom/Akainu/Whitebeard of his own crew. It's not good enough to be "Executive level" for him, that's reserved for his crew mates that aren't Sanji or Zoro.

He's not there to join another crew. His willpower is stronger than that. That's where Ace and most of the Supernova have failed. It's why I'm so excited for Kid, as he hasn't backed down or compromised yet.

Other Pirates

TL;DR - There are many nameless, faceless pirates and/or other characters that are treated as absolute fodder, which creates the illusion that they're 'average'. Oda has dropped enough clues to point out that this 'fodder' is NOT average. They are legitimately strong. Top 5%-10% of the world. Luffy & co. is just that much stronger than them, due to, again, the body's seemingly infinite-scaling potential in One Piece. This helps scale Luffy and other powerful characters further, to truly show how scary they really are.

Looking at Luffy is all great, but you have to understand how Oda uses other pirates and marines to scale Luffy up. Since I'm currently on the Marineford arc in the Manga, I'll be pulling examples from around there, since it's freshest in my mind and actually fits really well for my objective here.

The first example we can look at is Impel Down. While bounty isn't a "perfect" scale of strength, it is the best indicator we have. Bounty essentially is 'how dangerous' a particular criminal is, and there are three things that make someone dangerous:

• Strength - this is the most common usage of the bounty and applies to the largest portion of the bounties of most of the pirates we see.

• Behavior - Kid's bounty was higher than Luffy's not necessarily because he's stronger, but because he was chaotic and indiscriminately destructive.

• Knowledge - Easiest example is Robin as a child. Her bounty only goes up by like 2,000,000 Beri as an adult, when she's actually strong, which is interesting.

  • To me that says that the bounty isn't the total sum of a criminal's Strength, Behavior, and Knowledge, but rather the "max" value of all three. But that's just my own head canon, obviously.

Regardless, with Impel Down we get the most clear-cut 'groupings' of strength in the series to date. Luffy would have classified for Level 5 or possibly Level 6 had he been captured before breaking in (after breaking in he most certainly would have either been condemned to die, as he was with Magellan, or tossed into Level 6).

Again, this is the most secure prison in the entire world and has only had ONE successful break out attempt previously, several decades before the story begins. And Luffy already qualifies for the lowest, most dangerous levels of this insane prison. That alone should tell you how strong Luffy is at the beginning (with only ONE real powerup since he began - Gears 2 and 3). Yes, a lot of his bounty has to do with him declaring war on the government and stopping the rebellion in Alabasta - but the point is he would not have been able to do either of these things without his already-monstrous strength.

But beyond that, the pirates who follow Buggy are not given attention or personalities in the story itself, but they are described as being "Pirates who were plenty infamous themselves!!!" in chapter 557. They are basically fodder to the story and the readers, and yet they were important enough to the world of One Piece to be described as "infamous".

Also recognize that NONE of these pirates (at least to our knowledge) have any form of Haki at all. Up to this point in Paradise, Haki is treated as something extremely unique with many of the characters not even knowing what it is. Including prominent marines like Smoker, and in fact he even says "so this is the Kuja's Haki," which means it was seen as unique to Hancock's people. We'll get more into Haki in a moment, though.

Also with Marineford, I think we get caught up in how many big names are there that are leagues ahead of Luffy, and think that Luffy was outclassed here. Again I want to be clear that he was not outclassed for the war overall. He was not even close to the weakest individual here. The only reason he is outclassed is because he is leading the fucking charge against all the big names. He uses Jinbe to launch himself directly in front of the admirals and fires a blow at them with a piece of a ship's mast.

So in that context, yes, he's definitely outclassed. But if you take out the admirals, Whitebeard, and his high-level commanders like Marco and Ace, Luffy is one of the strongest individuals on this battlefield. He no-difs hundreds of marines. Marines who were considered strong enough to be here for the battle against Whitebeard. Just let that sink in. These marines are NOT "10 Doriki" marines.

Also remember at this point that Coby is actually strong and he's barely an afterthought for Luffy. Coby is strong enough to use Soru. That's a huge accomplishment. Regardless, Coby is one of the weaker presences here. Again let that sink in for how strong the individuals of this war are, and Luffy no-difs hundreds of them.

Another piece of evidence is his fight against Marigold and Sandersonia in Amazon Lily. They are using both Observation and Armament Haki, as well as formidable Zoan DF powers, and straight-up lose to him with no contest whatsoever. He might have been using some passive form of Observation Haki (as some people here theorize), but he certainly wasn't using it on the same level as them. He's just that fucking strong.

• Fun side topic - we don't see it, but I think Hancock at this point in the story is stronger than Luffy. Just my own head canon. ;) Her fighting style is really fun, though.

However, Luffy needs to stand at the top, which is why Oda goes to painstaking effort to show how far from the top Luffy is at this point, despite his already-monstrous strength.

Zoro said it best in his fight against Mihawk - Zoro was already a famous bounty hunter on the East Blue. He was proud of his strength in his little corner of the world. When he faces off against Mihawk who makes an absolute mockery of all the strength he's proud of, he truly sees how far off "the best" really is. Mihawk recognizes him in this instant as "strong" because he sees that Zoro has what it takes to surpass him. Zoro truly internalized that climb, and it was/is massive.

The Geography of the World

TL;DR: The way the One Piece world is set up, it sections off cultures from one another almost entirely. This explains why few outside of the New World have even heard about Haki, why Devil Fruits are seen as myths outside the grand line, and especially why so many people are shocked at how powerful some individuals of the world are.

Something else that goes into all of this is I don't think people truly appreciate how sectioned-off the world of One Piece is from one another.

In East Blue (at least), the people think Devil Fruits are a myth. And yet you see them all over the place in the grand line. Outside of the grand line it seems like traversal across any given sea is fairly straight-forward. However, due to both the grand line and the red line, each cardinal sea is sectioned off from one another (you have to travel over the red line or across the grand line to get to another sea).

Beyond that, once you reach the grand line, the wonky weather and currents are so chaotic that islands have varying degrees of evolution even. With Little Garden being a prehistoric-age island, while Alabasta seems to be a somewhat dark age island, and Water 7 is pushing into the industrial age. Forget communication and trade, they don't even really have contact with one another!

With that in mind, it makes sense that some people seem like absolute monsters when the lay citizen witnesses their feats of strength, whereas we as a viewer might think "we see these guys everywhere, why are you surprised that a guy can cut steel, or lift a building?" They don't see that anywhere. Everyone they know is a normal human being. They even hear about these crazy strong pirates like Whitebeard, but likely don't truly believe the stories until they witness a uniquely strong individual like Luffy passing through.

In fact I would bet that they see quite a few pirates and others passing through on their journey through the grand line, and they still don't measure up to anything close to the Straw Hats. Luffy's little band of misfits is actually ridiculously, terrifyingly strong.

It also explains why Haki seems so unique in the first half of the story, and almost commonplace in the second half. Paradise itself is very sectioned off from the New World. Oda makes sure to let the reader know that less than half of the ships that try to go to the New World from Sabaody even make it, and this is after all the previous failures to follow the log to get to Sabaody in the first place.

Seastone-coated paddle-boats are also a very new invention, and reserved exclusively for the World Government and the Marines at the moment, so there's no other way to traverse these seas. It's a huge barrier to information, with only the newspaper - which is more-or-less controlled by the government iirc - to relay world news.

Something else to keep in mind is that weather is more-or-less stabilized on each island. This explains why denizens of islands even in the New World are still just normal citizens. Many of them have probably never left their island.

Haki

TL;DR: Few people, even in the New World, have been showcased as Haki users. It's still a very rare skill. Haki is not a requirement for everyone in the New World, only the leaders.

Honestly I expected to have more to say, but I've covered a bunch of stuff up above pretty thoroughly, so the last few sections will likely be much shorter (thank God, right?).

A lot of people point to Haki as a big flaw in the story as far as power creep goes. But with the above in mind - Geography of the world really cutting off access to knowledge of things like Haki, for instance - it honestly makes sense. Most pirates in the New World cannot use Haki. The 'leaders' always have Haki, and most end up having Conqueror's Haki, even, but the lesser players like, again, many of the Executives of the Big Mom pirates don't seem to use Haki, or at least don't utilize it very well.

It is something that Luffy absolutely had to develop, but not necessarily all the members of the crew. For those that think that every crew member will develop it - I mean I can't say one way or the other with definitive surety, but I would place good money on most of the Straw Hats remaining as they are. I could see a case for Robin, and maybe Chopper, but I doubt even those two will develop anything.

The stakes are bigger for Luffy, now. He's facing the cream of the crop, the highest of the high. So of course they're going to be way more overpowered than previous enemies. The enemies he's facing from now on will all be Haki users (as long as they aren't fodder, at least), but don't mistake that to mean that everyone "suddenly" uses Haki now. Luffy started the race facing the top "10%" of the world. He's weeded out 9.99% of that, and is left with the top 0.01% or less. These will ALL be monsters.

Something else to keep in mind - Crocus was a member of Roger's crew during his last journey. Homeboy has no combat skills as far as we know, due to his comment that the cannon ball would kill him. He was just a really good doctor. We have no reason to believe he is a Haki user.

Reconciling Enemies that Feel "Weak" Now.

TL;DR: Old enemies feel weak now because the power scaling in One Piece is exponential. The top 1% is exponentially more powerful than the top 10%, and the top 0.1% is exponentially more powerful than the top 1%. Pre-timeskip Lucci, and others, were still at the pinnacle of strength over the world, very few people could have opposed them. As we established, Luffy was already crazy strong when the story began, and was just barely more than Lucci could handle.

So this brings me full circle, right back to the post that I linked above. Let's talk about Lucci, and how weak he 'feels', now. First, some facts about Lucci that people sort of misconstrue into power scaling issues:

• He was previously undefeated.

• Top member of "CP9", the government's secret spy squad with a perfect (?) record.

• Crazy feats of strength even in youth.

• In the circles who knew of him, he was renowned and even revered.

So we have this seemingly unstoppable monster that Luffy overcomes, and it felt amazing during the events of Enies Lobby for Luffy to have defeated him. Fast forward two in-story years later (and many more than that out-of-story), and we look back and think "wow, Luffy would literally one-shot this bastard now, how was he so popular?").

It's because the power-scaling in One Piece is exponential. The closer you get to the top, the more exponentially powerful you are to everyone below you. There are very few in-story characters who are stronger than Luffy, now. Lucci is probably still on his level, Yonkos are obviously stronger than him, admirals are stronger, maybe Mihawk, and a few other outliers. Of all the millions or even billions of people on this world, Luffy is probably in the top 20 or 25 of all of them right now. Max 100, if Oda has some more characters to introduce in the future that cause issues for the SH crew. Let that sink in.

Remember I opened this post with the fact that Luffy was in the top 0.1% - 1% of the OP world in terms of strength on day 1. Day 1 Luffy would lose to Lucci. It took everything that Luffy had with Gears 2 and 3 to defeat Lucci. Everything. He literally could not move afterward.

So yeah, I guess if Whitebeard wanted to invade Enies Lobby just to do it for shits and giggles, he would have no-diffed the entirety of CP9, but WB has no reason to do this. Nobody in his crew was being taken through Enies Lobby. The government knew better than to do this in the first place. Ace was taken directly to Impel Down (afaik at least) for a reason, and even then the government took precautions there.

There are few people outside of Yonko-crews that could take pre-timeskip Lucci and live to tell the tale. He was 'enough' for his assignment to handle 99.99% of all threats heaped upon him. Luffy was part of the 0.01% he was not prepared for.

Crew Strength

TL;DR: The crew, most of which are not even close to Luffy's strength, are still stronger than a vast majority of New World forces. And that's not because the New World is weak - quite the opposite, the Straw Hats are just that strong.

I think it's also important to discuss the crew. And this will tie off the post with a nice little ribbon (we're almost done, boys and girls!). I don't think people give the crew enough credit, either. If I were to point to the physically weakest member of the crew, it would probably be Nami. Yeah she has her Clima-Tact, and it's a very powerful, cool weapon, but that has nothing to do with physical strength or ability. Nami, by all accounts, is very weak compared to the rest of the crew.

But that's compared to the rest of the crew. She still has combat ability. Before she was a pirate, she was a thief stealing from pirates. And it wasn't just cunning and craftiness that helped her do it. She's pretty agile. Case in point on Water 7 where she's hopping rooftops in the middle of the worst squall they've ever seen. She's no monster, but by 'normal' standards, she's in peak physical and athletic shape.

Add to that a weapon that competes with the monster-trio in terms of raw power (especially after WCI), and Nami - the "weakest" member of the crew - is still a massive force to be reckoned with in combat.

Make no mistake, she's no-diffing legions of fodder because her clima-tact is powerful as fuck. The same goes for the other members of the crew. As I stated before: They do NOT need Haki to 'compete' in the New World. The power ups and training they received over the two-year period set them on the course to being the well-deserved crew of the Pirate King. Just like Luffy, I don't think any of them are there yet (except perhaps Zoro, as we haven't seen him really struggle yet), but the reason that so many of their enemies feel like fodder is because they are fodder for them, as is fitting of the Pirate King's crew.

It's not that their enemies are weak, in other words, it's that they are just that fucking strong. It's not all combat, obviously, Nami is probably the world's best navigator as well. But this post is focusing specifically on combat and power scaling.

Conclusion

So, what do you think? Did I grossly misconstrue power scaling in your opinion? Did I leave something out? Do you agree? Discuss below!

I hope this was entertaining to read. It kept me busy on an otherwise unproductive work day. Thanks for reading! :)