@KiShiDo:
So Luffy >>> [z]oro by your logic and by the way. Sanji isn't as hurt as Zoro after his fights even if his oponents are near the strenght of Zoro'S
If we consider pirates to be "chaotic" in the dungeons and dragons sense, perhaps even "chaotic evil" the whole crew is organized based on power, with weaker characters yielding leadership to the strongest monster of the group. In terms of pure rank power by this line of thinking, Luffy > Zoro, but how much is debatable. Zoro and Luffy have only tangled with each other once, and neither was going all out, not even for their time (Whiskey Peak).
As for getting hurt, one thing about the Straw Hats is they've rarely fought opponents equal to them in strength. When I say equal, both fighters are wasted after the battle, and when I say wasted I mean near-death. Only in Arabasta did we see pretty even matchups - usually, it's the Straw Hats stomping all over someone then walking away to fight more people. Such was the case in Skypiea (Ener exception) and Enies Lobby (Lucci exception).
Since Arabasta was the only time we had equal battles, and it can be inferred Mr.1 > Mr. 2 in terms of raw strength and both Sanji/Zoro came close to death, at that time Zoro > Sanji. It's only been a month since Arabasta, but Skypiea was only a week after it and in that week Sanji was mostly out of commission. I don't think Sanji magically got stronger while he was comatose or during his brief stint on the Sea Train, but he magically got stronger when fighting Jabura.
@Kidany:
Okay…that still doesn't place Sanji as someone out of Luffy and Zoro's league.
See above, I think it does.
When the first three Staw Hats introduced turned out to be just 'fighters', that is, Luffy, Zoro, and Usopp, I always expected those three to be at the top tier of the story. But in terms of the "schema", Usopp dual classes his role as Sharpshooter with almost everything else - handyman, second captain, and whatnot. I guess this was what diluted Usopp's strength in the series, since as things have gone along he's generally gotten more powerful (exception - ENIES LOBBY, again) as he's been relieved of his duties. With Franky on board Usopp dealt a crushing and frankly tear-jerking (for me) to Perona, which just showed how much he's improved IMV. By Grand Line's end I don't doubt he'll be the third strongest Straw Hat with his ranged abilities, beating out even Zoro's pound canons in terms of ranged damage.
Sanji's role however has remained static, he hasn't had to do anything more than be a cook. All the Straw Hats have to fight; that's a given. He only needs enough strength and brains to give him advantages and disadvantages relative to the other Straw Hats.
It's like.
One has 10 points to allocate among stats in an RPG per level. Your stats are STR, DEX, INT, WIS, and CHR. You can put all 10 into STR, or you can put 5 in STR and 5 in INT.
Points are awarded on level-up, and characters aren't necessarily of the same level when they join the Straw Hat crew. If the median level was 10 for example, when Vivi joined she was level 3. Robin was like level 16, but as the other Straw Hats have gotten more powerful her unbelievable strength has waned in comparison.
@Kidany:
Besides, anytime it's affected a fight we've been shown Sanji either overcoming it by getting around it somehow(vs. Bon Clay), or being shown beforehand that he could've easily dealt with the opponent had gender not been an issue(vs. Calipha)
That's Sanji's intellect at work. Usually Zoro can overpower his opponents, Sanji has to work around the problem like he did with Bon Kurei. Sanji can overpower opponents weaker than him (Kurobi, as can Zoro, but Zoro has to "overcome" his problems rather than "avoid" them as in Sanji's case. That's a consequence of him being dumber than Sanji.
The Califa thing…we don't really know if Sanji could have overcome or gone around her power, Oda tried to avoid the matter altogether but he set it up knowing the match-ups were going to switch around.
@Kidany:
I'm not questioning Zoro being stronger than Sanji, in fact I actually agree with that, but to say he's not one of the powerhouses of the crew is simply wrong.
I think he's strong, but in terms of ranking:
Luffy >?= Zoro > Robin > Franky >?= Sanji = Brooke >?= Usopp > Nami > Chopper
For sure,
1. Luffy is on top, however slightly.
2. Chopper is on the bottom, with Nami just above him.
3. Usopp is one of the weakest Straw Hats.
4. Robin is top-tier.
When Robin was first introduced, she was unbelievably more powerful than the other Straw Hat pirates, even Luffy. Her Devil Fruit power was exceptionally destructive against powerful and weak opponents alike, once she had a view of someone she could take almost anyone down. Zoro was not an exception.
Since the Straw Hats have grown, Zoro and Luffy have expressed new strengths while Robin has not developed many new abilities that are as dangerous as "clutch". Her relative strength has decreased as a result, but I still see her as being able to overpower all the other Straw Hats at once. Zoro might be too strong for her to overpower now and Luffy of course is unaffected by her abilities.
Franky always struck me as more powerful than Sanji because when he was first introduced he tied Luffy in battle, and during the events of EL he went through a ton of trouble both on the Sea Train and in EL itself, going farther and longer than any of the other Straw Hats in stamina.
However, Franky's weakness was his heavy body doesn't make him flexible or dexteritous, so to make up for that I always envisioned him being able to punch harder than Sanji could kick. Sanji made up for his lack in strength by being more agile and intelligent than Franky. A lot of people disputed this claim two years ago and cite his lower bounty as proof Franky is weaker, but I am not convinced - bounties aren't power levels and even if they were, they are not intelligence levels.
@Kidany:
Ealier arcs have shown that Zoro's one and two sword styles affect his strength. While currently we've seen him develop plenty of techniques for the aforementioned; when Zoro is in a position where he cannot use his three-sword style that is a weakness.
I'm pretty careful about how I throw about the word "weakness", since "vulnerability" can be used instead. I define weakness as a negative side-effect of an overall positive consequence. Luffy's susceptibility to sharp objects is not a weakness, it is a vulnerability - Luffy was vulnerable to sharp objects before and after he ate the Devil Fruit, it doesn't suddenly become a weakness because the fruit had no effect on it. On the other hand, Robin's extra arms as a result of her Devil Fruit inflicting damage on her person when harmed is a weakness - it's a side effect of her Devil Fruit's power, caused as a direct extension of that power.
By this logic you're right in calling one style/two style techniques weaknesses, since Zoro gains the ability to use techniques he couldn't use with three but at the cost of power and defense, but I don't think that's a critical weakness since Zoro is rarely parted from his swords. Chopper's physical weakness, Franky's exposed back, Usopp's exposed everything are vulnerabilities all three characters cannot escape even when they're at their maximum potential, but Zoro's loss of swords would be the equivalent of someone else losing a limb. Like Luffy in water, it's something that would only happen under rare circumstances unless Zoro was aiming for a specific move with two/one style swordplay.
@Kidany:
That's more of a question of fighting styles. Kaku's mainly involved Rankyaku-based techniques which were amplified by leg strength of the Giraffe Fruit while Jyabura's revolved around Tekkai Kempo and a mix of the other Rokushiki techniques which was overall strengthened by his Wolf Fruit.
Just because Kaku had more raw power doesn't mean he was ahead of Jyabura by a large margin. That's why Doukiri was shown, so we know the strength difference between each CP9 agent. The two we're talking about just happened to not be far off from each other.
Kaku struck me as having not only the most powerful Rankyaku, but the most powerful Shigan as well, his "Bigan". It was a monstrously sized Shigan with all the muscles in the neck of a beast-man giraffe - that puts it leagues above even Rob Lucci's worst Shigan and Ten Bullet King, and Zoro was able to defend well against both monster Shigan and Rankyaku.
Even though Kaku and Jabura were similar in strength before they transformed, I think their fruits multiplied their strengths differently - Kaku got a much higher multiplier than Jabura because his animal was naturally bigger, stronger and more dangerous than a single wolf, even though Jabura was a carnivorous zoan. People have historically used Kaku and Jabura's base douriki as evidence of Sanji = Zoro in strength, but that doesn't take into account how powerful they were post-transformation and as you said, Jabura's form was much more well-rounded and evenly distributed while Kaku was just an outrageous power plant and Zoro was able to equal him.
However, I don't think Sanji ever equaled Jabura; true to his style, he found a way around Jabura's strength in Tekkai by using his flaming foot to damage Jabura's muscles, preventing him from using it properly. I wouldn't call that breaking steel, it was more like breaking the stone that mounted a steel gate in place and having the gate fall down without support.
A lot of folks seem to think that just because Sanji beat Jabura, it automatically meant Sanji was stronger than Jabura. I never found that the case…it might be true with Zoro who's matches are almost always based on butting heads directly, but Sanji uses strategy and that's what took down Jabs, not power. IMV Sanji's strongest move is still, and always will be Concasse, which was not enough to break steel as emulated by Tekkai.
