@desa:
Mostly bad deeds? Fight problematic marines, free the half-giant, fight pacifista on his way, save luffy, send a 100 heart, gives legs to everyone, fight a bunch of enemies, do some switching, render SAD useless, remove poisons. I suppose you can say sending pirates heart and doing switching are bad but he usually use that ting to fight or save someone.
He wanted the strawhats help and saving the kids was mandatory, why would he be uselessly mean when everything is finish by not removing the poison. He would actually need to hate the kids since he has nothing to do. Did we ever saw Law uselessly be mean to someone?
What expression?
Once again I did a bad job getting my point across. I also may be misremembering stuff since I haven't reread Punk Hazard, and might be making connections that don't exist. I thought that Law was the one that initially got the kids to help them, but since I'm not sure about that part, I won't use it for my actual argument.
First, I meant to say that Law has been portrayed to be more sinister and cruel compared to others. As you said, he sent 100 hearts to the Marine Headquarters to get his position as Shikibukai. He always had this cruel vibe going for him until a certain way into Punk Hazard. When he was confronting Smoker and Nami's group busted out, he was surprised to see that the kids hadn't been taken home yet. I would get the page for you, but my internet out here sucks, and it would take me a lot longer to get to it. While it wasn't his choice, he didn't seem to mind overall saving the kids, which in other situations I could see him abandoning others because why save them if it would just cause more trouble for their goals.
Anyways, from what I remember, it seems like he had somewhat of a stake in helping the kids, and seeing the kids that were with Law that died made me think of the kids at Punk Hazard. At most, it might be a way to show that those kids weren't saved but the kids in Punk Hazard were saved because of him. So basically, I have probably remembered things wrong and just blowing something out of my ass. Even still, I felt that there was a semblance of a connection there, even if not as big as I was making it out to be.
Maybe that's how Law got cured, he took the poison out of himself like he took the drugs out of the kids.
@Omni:
Theory: Three major things are going to contribute to the Dofla Family's downgrading. Corazon's Death, Law leaving the crew, and Dofla becoming a Warlord. They lost motivation and will to fight losing two of their family members and once they happened Dofla decided he needed to action because he knew they wouldn't last forever once they degraded so he did whatever it took to keep them safe thus becoming a warlord and taking over Dressrosa so they'd have a place to stay.
Also something I noticed, Buffalo isn't worried about Cora, he's worried about Law. That to me indicates either he hates Cora (don't buy it from their shenanigans) or he know's he's fine and is more worried about law getting impaled by Vergo's bamboo.
I think it was less those events (except maybe the Warlord part), and more just where he got to. I assume once he took over Dressrosa and had all his weapons and fruit trades going, he got into a position of waiting. While he had a great amount of power, he needed to wait for the right moment to strike, and that moment never came. During that time, he continued all the trading, but since they didn't have to worry about fighting, they could relax. They no longer had to fight tough opponents, so they grew weaker and got more out of shape as a result.
That would make the most sense at least. Of course some would've gotten slightly stronger by growing up (Baby 5, Buffalo, Dellinger), while others got weaker from growing older (Lao G, Jora).