Chapter 1,010: Color of the Supreme King

[wolfwood]

@King:

But did things really change though?

Adding a whole new combat system on top of the old has to be counted as a rather major change, for good or bad. Now one can of course argue that it more compliments the old one than replaces it, but for me it feels a bit like adding a fourth move to rock paper scissors that has an advantage over all others. Nothing really trumps haki, which makes it feel like it overwrites a lot of previously useful skills and powers and how they interacted with each other

–- Update From New Post Merge ---

@DatYute:

My only question is if it's actually Haki that makes Big Mom and Kaido so hard to hurt. That's kind of been where my mind has been since the revelation that in an unstable emotional state, Big Mom is just as vulnerable as anyone else. When they introduced her, she was just a force of nature from birth which I quite liked, but the mother Caramel picture stuff has me wondering if their is more to it.

I was wondering the exact same thing

[andre]

@DatYute:

My only question is if it's actually Haki that makes Big Mom and Kaido so hard to hurt. That's kind of been where my mind has been since the revelation that in an unstable emotional state, Big Mom is just as vulnerable as anyone else. When they introduced her, she was just a force of nature from birth which I quite liked, but the mother Caramel picture stuff has me wondering if their is more to it.

I think with Kaido it's a combination of Haki and his dragon scales while with Big Mom it's a lot of CoC and a lot more of whatever in her genetics makes her a human-heavy-tank.

[DatYute]

@andre:

I think with Kaido it's a combination of Haki and his dragon scales while with Big Mom it's a lot of CoC and a lot more of whatever in her genetics makes her a human-heavy-tank.

I think if it were a combination as you said, Big Mom wouldn't get hurt when she loses control of her emotions. All she did was fall on her knees afterall.

The issue I have with it being Haki is that it probably means all the super top tiers are invulnerable like this due to their immense haki. I really want it to just be Big Mom was born a freak and Kaido has his dragon fruit, but the inconsistency with that picture makes me feel otherwise.

[andre]

@DatYute:

I think if it were a combination as you said, Big Mom wouldn't get hurt when she loses control of her emotions. All she did was fall on her knees afterall.

The issue I have with it being Haki is that it probably means all the super top tiers are invulnerable like this due to their immense haki. I really want it to just be Big Mom was born a freak and Kaido has his dragon fruit, but the inconsistency with that picture makes me feel otherwise.

That's a good point, but I would imagine it's more of an Oda inconsistency maybe? Or it could be that Big Mom's strength is genetic, but her invulnerability is mostly haki?

[Zhenja]

@wolfwood:

Nothing really trumps haki, which makes it feel like it overwrites a lot of previously useful skills and powers and how they interacted with each other

Without it nobody would have a chance against a Logia user or other Devil Fruit powers. Especially regular humans without any kind of DF like Rayleigh or Zoro or Sanji or who ever.
Without Haki Oda would be limited in his creation of powers because he would have to be cautious about it not to make it to overpowered.

I think Haki gives him a lot more room for his creativity about Devil Fruits.
I like Haki, in every way.

[Deicide]

@DatYute:

My only question is if it's actually Haki that makes Big Mom and Kaido so hard to hurt. That's kind of been where my mind has been since the revelation that in an unstable emotional state, Big Mom is just as vulnerable as anyone else. When they delved into her backstory, she was just a force of nature from birth which I quite liked, but the mother Caramel picture stuff has me wondering if their is more to it.

My guess is that it’s both and neither. She has a natural hardened body and augments it with haki, but her vulnerability may be related to her both letting her guard down AND some psychosomatic BS on her body. One Piece is crazy enough for somebody’s will to affect health.

[Johnny B. Decent]

@Alfiere:

Well it's not like Oda isn't in complete control of how this world works, especially in fruit power mechanics and limitation. Akainu being an endgame villain has to possess a seemingly unbeatable power… keyword being seemingly. But finally overcoming him by figuring out "how to hurt magma man" by cunning and wits has got to be much more satisfying than measuring the respective level of hax spiritual power that makes in the end pretty incosequential wether he had the power of magma or of shooting confetti.
Kizaru could simply be annihilated by Blackbeard at some point. Make logia in general REALLY rare (i. e. the likes of Monet being actually paramecia), etc.

Same goes with the ope ope, making it actually less broken in the first place, with precise limitation in scope and usability, would have worked much better than binding its effectiveness to power levels.

Another thing is that its weird how three completely different concepts of ability are all somehow aspects of the same base concept.
If Haki was left as just what became "Conqueror", while armament and observation were separate skills (maybe even not accessible to devil fruit users? As a more meaningful limitation in late game than just being unable to swim!) maybe it would have been more fun, who knows. maybe i'll end up enjoying how it's going to be implmented later on.
Just throwing random thoughts now, the bottom line is still how it basically drained most of the fun out of fights.

No, I must respectfully disagree on this. The Logia's ability to become intangible required Haki to be a thing, as if someone like Kaido couldn't defeat even Smoker, due to not being able to pass his defenses, then that would have just been dumb.

[MrPecans]

I'll chime in and say that I do think that haki has made a somewhat negative impact on combat, but that I don't think it has severely ruined most fights. As others have pointed out, Law and his Ope Ope fruit threw a monkey wrench into things, and made "levels of haki" into such a thing. In that way, Law's power reminded me of when Robin was first introduced. Initially, it seemed she could beat any non-Logia like that (snaps), but then it became clear pretty fast that superior strength and speed was sufficient.

So for me, the big instances of my haki beats your haki bull, that's bothered me has just been - Law vs Vergo and maybe Zoro vs Pica, aside from that, I'm more annoyed with the schtick where seemingly OP fruit hax become useless later on just because of an opponent's haki. Law, Doflamingo, Hancock, probably Bonney if I had to guess. That said, someone posted an interesting theoretical explanation for this recently in this or the spoiler thread, that postulated that hax fruits could be focused in order to effect stronger opponents (their example was in Hancock's attacks at Marineford) and I found that to be a somewhat satisfactory explanation.

And as some have pointed out, haki has also made seemingly useless fruits - Biscuits and Mochi - powerful. Course, one could argue that Oda could have just declared that Katakuri's Mochi was hard as iron just because. Afterall, he did that with Mr. 3's wax, but at least wax is hard by nature.

And I'd also like to agree with whoever said it so far that none of Luffy's most recent boss fights have felt lacking in interest. Hody had his Fishman Karate and underwater combat, Caesar took his breath away, Doflamingo got defeated by Luffy turning into a beachball, and then Luffy had to contend with Katakuri being seemingly as unhittable as Crocodile was in their first fight. And luckily, many of the Strawhats still don't use haki, so I think there's still plenty of room for non-haki-centric combat.

Slightly off topic, one thing in this current fight that might have been way cooler if Law could have teleported Big Mom and Kaido is if he had switched say Zoro for Big Mom or something and tricked Kaido into beaning her in the head or vice versa with Big Mom accidentally attacking Kaido.

[Jabra]

@Johnny:

No, I must respectfully disagree on this. The Logia's ability to become intangible required Haki to be a thing, as if someone like Kaido couldn't defeat even Smoker, due to not being able to pass his defenses, then that would have just been dumb.

The introduction of haki was never due to Logia. They are by far the easiest to write around, at least I have no doubts that someone like Oda would have been able to.

It would be easy because we're talking about Oda-science, Oda-power-interactions. Milk regrows teeth type of science.

What would stop Oda from making Smoker vulnerable to super-fast punches? Because super fast punches would disperse smoke effectively, to the point that Smoker starts to feel the pain. It makes sense, just like hitting a wet Crocodile "makes sense".

And for the average army / nations we still have Sea Stone equipment as an excuse why someone like Caribou can't just overtake a nation on his own.

---

What can't be covered without haki are the numerous hax abilities though. They are the issue, the only issue. In the beginning Oda even tried to write around them, gave those hax attacks a relatively easy counter (don't be charmed by Hancock, stab yourself if you must), but I assume he soon figured that making up those weaknesses was too much of a problem to write around.

[Deicide]

@Johnny:

No, I must respectfully disagree on this. The Logia's ability to become intangible required Haki to be a thing, as if someone like Kaido couldn't defeat even Smoker, due to not being able to pass his defenses, then that would have just been dumb.

Yeah, way back when Zoro was having trouble to cut steel I was certain that some kind of technique to hit Logias would be necessary. When then we met Enel and Luffy said there were stronger people than him in blue seas I was certain some kind of equalizer would be introduced at some point.

If you can “hear the breath” of things to cut steel, why not to cut intangible things?

When one thinks about it, it becomes clear haki was there since the beginning.

[DatYute]

I think one of the most bizzare things about haki is that it depletes. When it was just introduced I thought Haki was one of the coolest power systems in shounen. It being a reflection of your will fit so perfectly with the themes of One Piece and being able to literally weaponize your will/ambition was dope to me. But the fact that it can run out and apparently recharge in 10 minutes(not even sure if that's an arbitary number Luffy needs or just how haki works in general) just makes it feel like more of a Ki/Chalkra/whatever that was in bleach type of power. I would get something like it being harder to fight while maintaining haki and it taking more a toll on your body but the deplete-recharge stuff is just super weird to me.

[MrPecans]

@Jabra:

What can't be covered without haki are the numerous hax abilities though. They are the issue, the only issue. In the beginning Oda even tried to write around them, gave those hax attacks a relatively easy counter (don't be charmed by Hancock, stab yourself if you must), but I assume he soon figured that making up those weaknesses was too much of a problem to write around.

I personally don't see that. Oda could have easily written more limited ranges or conditions on the hax paramecia fruits.

[andre]

I don't have an issue with Vergo because Haki was his entire gimmick and I think there was a story point to his clash against Law. I thought it was cool when he went full black body and the way he just beat people with a black bamboo stick.

[MrPecans]

@DatYute:

I think one of the most bizzare things about haki is that it depletes. When it was just introduced I thought Haki was one of the coolest power systems in shounen. It being a reflection of your will fit so perfectly with the themes of One Piece and being able to literally weaponize your will/ambition was dope to me. But the fact that it can run out and apparently recharge in 10 minutes(not even sure if that's an arbitary number Luffy needs or just how haki works in general) just makes it feel like more of a Ki/Chalkra/whatever that was in bleach type of power. I would get something like it being harder to fight while maintaining haki and it taking more a toll on your body but the deplete-recharge stuff is just super weird to me.

I agree with this as well. It does make it just more like every other Shonen magical-energy system.

–- Update From New Post Merge ---

@andre:

I don't have an issue with Vergo because Haki was his entire gimmick and I think there was a story point to his clash against Doffy. I thought it was cool when he went full black body and the way he just beat people with a black bamboo stick.

Vergo was so dope. Probably my favorite of the stoic badass opponents. Still one of my favorite New World antagonists. Very intimidating.

[kevo_koma]

@DatYute:

I think one of the most bizzare things about haki is that it depletes. When it was just introduced I thought Haki was one of the coolest power systems in shounen. It being a reflection of your will fit so perfectly with the themes of One Piece and being able to literally weaponize your will/ambition was dope to me. But the fact that it can run out and apparently recharge in 10 minutes(not even sure if that's an arbitary number Luffy needs or just how haki works in general) just makes it feel like more of a Ki/Chalkra/whatever that was in bleach type of power. I would get something like it being harder to fight while maintaining haki and it taking more a toll on your body but the deplete-recharge stuff is just super weird to me.

Hmm, actually I disagree, Haki depleting actually makes sense in the context of how it was introduced.

Some people are great athletes with incredible Wills, but no matter how much Willpower they have most of them probably couldn't climb a mountain nonstop or run super ultra marathon race.
So they find themselves needing a break for their bodies and mind to recover.

Heck I will use a better example. Imagine playing a game, you come upon a boss or difficult level, you bang your head against it, determined to win by sheer will alone. But then that Will begins to deplete after the 30th try, so you turn it off, take a break, come back and beat it on the first try.

[Jabra]

@MrPecans:

I personally don't see that. Oda could have easily written more limited ranges or conditions on the hax paramecia fruits.

What would be your suggestions specifically for Sugar, Law, Bonney and Perona?

Considering that the solution can't be too niche and still allows Oda to play all the scenarios we've seen so far?

[kevo_koma]

@Jabra:

What would be your suggestions specifically for Sugar, Law, Bonney and Perona?

Considering that the solution can't be too niche and still allows Oda to play all the scenarios we've seen so far?

Be fast enough for all 4 of them not to touch you.

You can do this by mastering a technique like Soru.

Hit them with long ranged attacks.

You can do this by mastering a technique like the tempest kick.

Or dodge their attacks so they can't touch you.

You can do this by mastering a technique like paper cut or whatever its called.

Huh, now that I think about it, seems like that might have been the plan before Haki was formalized.

[DatYute]

The only counter to Law without haki is just not to be in his room. Oda could have probably done something with that if he wanted people to be able to fight him without haki, but now he can generate pretty big rooms.

[Jabra]

@kevo_koma:

Be fast enough for all 4 of them not to touch you.

You can do this by mastering a technique like Soru.

Hit them with long ranged attacks.

You can do this by mastering a technique like the tempest kick.

Or dodge their attacks so they can't touch you.

You can do this by mastering a technique like paper cut or whatever its called.

Huh, now that I think about it, seems like that might have been the plan before Haki was formalized.

Not convincing.

Law shambled half of the crew and he caught them off-guard. Sorry but I'm Oda and I want my bodyswitched Punk Hazard adventure!

[wolfwood]

@DatYute:

The only counter to Law without haki is just not to be in his room. Oda could have probably done something with that if he wanted people to be able to fight him without haki, but now he can generate pretty big rooms.

You could shoot him. Could've been a nice only a sniper can do it moment.

[DatYute]

@wolfwood:

You could shoot him. Could've been a nice only a sniper can do it moment.

Well that would be in perfect conditions. I was thinking along the lines of "Law activated room and you are currently in it, how do you not get fucked?". If you could travel a decent distance reasonably fast, you could move out of the room. Or jump really high. Maybe even dig underground. I don't know. Actually it would probably be pretty cool if a sniper avoided room and then Law had to try his ass off to get the sniper back in range of room.

[kevo_koma]

@Jabra:

Not convincing.

Law shambled half of the crew and he caught them off-guard. Sorry but I'm Oda and I want my bodyswitched Punk Hazard adventure!

We've seen that Law somehow needs to make some kind of gesture before he can shambles you.

It doesn't happen automatically.

You just have to be faster than him or overwhelming with ranged attacks so he doesn't get a chance to do his hand gestures.

You could also lower his visibility of you. Borrow into the ground. Make the ground quake. Disorient him.

There's a lot of counters.

I need to reread his fight with Doffy and Smoker to see how they dealt with his room.

[DatYute]

@kevo_koma:

We've seen that Law somehow needs to make some kind of gesture before he can shambles you.

It doesn't happen automatically.

You just have to be faster than him or overwhelming with ranged attacks so he doesn't get a chance to do his hand gestures.

You could also lower his visibility of you. Borrow into the ground. Make the ground quake. Disorient him.

There's a lot of counters.

I need to reread his fight with Doffy and Smoker to see how they dealt with his room.

Doffy and Smoker didn't deal with room well at all. In that one moment where Law changed places with Doffy so Luffy could red hawk him(that's still a damn cool moment), Doffy seemed to realize exactly what was going to happen and still couldn't do shit about it.

It also makes me wonder how much haki you really need to stop yourself from being teleported by shambles. I mean doffy was CoC user and Law wasn't. Doffy was also stronger than Law. So how come he couldn't stop himself from being teleported?

[kevo_koma]

@DatYute:

Doffy and Smoker didn't deal with room well at all. In that one moment where Law changed places with Doffy so Luffy could red hawk him(that's still a damn cool moment), Doffy seemed to realize exactly what was going to happen and still couldn't do shit about it.

It also makes me wonder how much haki you really need to stop yourself from being teleported by shambles. I mean doffy was CoC user and Law wasn't. Doffy was also stronger than Law. So how come he couldn't stop himself from being teleported?

No I was talking about his fight on the bridge.

So I just rewatched the 2 fights and Law's greatest weakness is that he has to use his sword to cut you up and he has to use fingers to teleport.

In the Smoker fight, Smoker tried to outmaneuver him through speed.

There's even a moment he dodges an a shambles attack and it ends up cutting the ship behind them.

So yeah, to beat law, you can just get master all 6 paths of the Roushiki and you're good to go.

Unlike with Haki that actually adds dimension to the fights and it becomes a chess game between the DF user and their opponent.

E.g Sugar has to avoid using her powers before she gets close to you, so you won't know its one touch and its over attack. Law has to come up with a way to get you far enough so he can swing before you dodge and attack.

Haki negates all that.

[wolfwood]

@DatYute:

Well that would be in perfect conditions. I was thinking along the lines of "Law activated room and you are currently in it, how do you not get fucked?". If you could travel a decent distance reasonably fast, you could move out of the room. Or jump really high. Maybe even dig underground. I don't know. Actually it would probably be pretty cool if a sniper avoided room and then Law had to try his ass off to get the sniper back in range of room.

Absolutely. Fun can be had with a seemingly unsolveable problem. And with oddly specific solutions to for instance logias a lot of the lesser hats could have gotten some shine. Nami fighting smoke with her own elements anyone? Not that Oda was ever leaning toward something like that. But it could have been a fun extension of the i need people who can do what i can't bit from Arlong Park

[King Cannon]

@kevo_koma:

We've seen that Law somehow needs to make some kind of gesture before he can shambles you.

It doesn't happen automatically.

You just have to be faster than him or overwhelming with ranged attacks so he doesn't get a chance to do his hand gestures.

You could also lower his visibility of you. Borrow into the ground. Make the ground quake. Disorient him.

There's a lot of counters.

I need to reread his fight with Doffy and Smoker to see how they dealt with his room.

Smoker just let Law's attacks pass through him.

Law can't really imbue Haki for his long range moves. This is why Vergo had to be directly cut. And why only Mes worked on Smoker.

Doflamingo was a bit more messy. He blocked Law's sword with his strings and reacted fast enough to Law's attacks.

[kevo_koma]

@wolfwood:

Absolutely. Fun can be had with a seemingly unsolveable problem. And with oddly specific solutions to for instance logias a lot of the lesser hats could have gotten some shine. Nami fighting smoke with her own elements anyone? Not that Oda was ever leaning toward something like that. But it could have been a fun extension of the i need people who can do what i can't bit from Arlong Park

Exactly, it could have even added fun dimensions to the worldbuilding.

Like, you know how there is apparently a huge in-universe fandom for Devil Fruits? To the point that there are entire books detailing their looks and abilities? We could have had some of the crew, researching and trying to find counters against tough fruits like Magma and Smoke.

Heck its what made Blackbeard so great. He such a DF nerd, he knew he had to wait years until he could find the fruit that could bypass all other Fruit defenses. That's what made him fascinating.

Now, with the intro of Haki, its like he wasted all those years for nothing. He could have been training with his Dad to master all types of Haki instead.

[Jabra]

@kevo_koma:

We've seen that Law somehow needs to make some kind of gesture before he can shambles you.

It doesn't happen automatically.

You just have to be faster than him or overwhelming with ranged attacks so he doesn't get a chance to do his hand gestures.

You could also lower his visibility of you. Borrow into the ground. Make the ground quake. Disorient him.

There's a lot of counters.

I need to reread his fight with Doffy and Smoker to see how they dealt with his room.

What would stop Law from luring a Marine Admiral by punching a Celestial Dragon, with the only intention to shamble one of his crewmates with the Admiral? Again, Law caught even the Haki-using Straw Hats off-guard. They didn't know he was there or what he could do.

What would stop Perona from spraying her ghosts all around her and / or ambush an Admiral from underground? One ghostly touch and Kuzan would be licking the floor, literally. Unless he's depressive to the point that he doesn't want to exist anymore to begin with, and I doubt he or any Admiral is. And sorry, but I'm Oda and I want my special Usopp Sniper battle only he can handle!

The problem isn't that one can't think of a counter at all. It's about writing a fun scenario WHILE keeping the overall integrity of the series intact. It's hard. And it's even harder in a 20+ year long series. I imagine at one point he simply made the decision that the risk to write yourself into a corner would be too high without haki as a back-up mechanism. Because it's not like the niche counters are completely gone - Big Mom's fruit can be hardcountered by simply not being afraid of her. But he obviously wanted a safety net in the case he has a really great scenario in mind - but can't execute it because it would hurt the integrity of the series.

[RomanceDawn]

@wolfwood:

Adding a whole new combat system on top of the old has to be counted as a rather major change, for good or bad. Now one can of course argue that it more compliments the old one than replaces it, but for me it feels a bit like adding a fourth move to rock paper scissors that has an advantage over all others. Nothing really trumps haki, which makes it feel like it overwrites a lot of previously useful skills and powers and how they interacted with each other

I was personally very happy with the introduction of Haki and how it's been implemented. In large part because I felt like Oda made a very deliberate point to show that Haki can be trumped one way or another. We've had all of Skypeia to get used to the idea of enemies predicting your every move and how one might counter that. We have seen Sandersonia's Color of Observation unable to keep up with Luffy's raw speed even though she could see what was coming. In this very fight on the dome Luffy's future sight saw what Kaidou was going to do but was still unable to keep up.

With Color of Arms Mariegold couldn't block unhakified Luffy. Luffy couldn't defend against Hodi's unhakified teeth(at the time anyway). And while not necessarily Haki related, I can't imagine Jack didn't or wouldn't try to Armement defend himself from Zunisha's immense trunk. I'd imagine no matter what he tried the result would have been the same.

I know we've gotten several moments of my Haki can top yours but because of these little examples I've long since felt Oda set us up pretty well to get the idea that just because you have Haki doesn't mean jack ship. I remember for some time there was this idea that a logia would almost be helpless against any Haki user witch isn't and hasn't been the case at all.

Some universal and natural phenomena(haki) in the world of One Piece that can balance against the absolute over powered nature of it's other natural phenomena(Devil Fruits) was something I've wanted for ages.

I used to imagine Sanji getting sea stone soles and Zoro getting a sea stone sword. In this outrageous world of phenomenal powers I like their fighting styles the most because of how "normal" they are in relation to the world around them. I was always hoping that there would be something that could compliment a current practitioners style without resorting to a new one off gimmick every time. Candle Champion and Water Luffy are cool every once in a while but I personally like what we are getting now.

[DatYute]

@wolfwood:

Absolutely. Fun can be had with a seemingly unsolveable problem. And with oddly specific solutions to for instance logias a lot of the lesser hats could have gotten some shine. Nami fighting smoke with her own elements anyone? Not that Oda was ever leaning toward something like that. But it could have been a fun extension of the i need people who can do what i can't bit from Arlong Park

The only issue I have with that example(again, I know that Oda wasn't leaning to it like you said) is that Nami is not on the same level as Smoker in terms of combat. We don't want this dilemna of "how to beat broken powers" to go too far the other way where someone has a seemingly broken power but if you have their one weakness they become useless. I think Haki being able to hit logias is a good compromise. It still allows the likes of Crocodile to do cool shit like drain the water out of you. All the other shit haki can do, yeah it's a little messy in it's current state.

[kevo_koma]

@Jabra:

What would stop Law from luring a Marine Admiral by punching a Celestial Dragon, with the only intention to shamble one of his crewmates with the Admiral? Again, Law caught even the Haki-using Straw Hats off-guard. They didn't know he was there or what he could do.

What would stop Perona from spraying her ghosts all around her and / or ambush an Admiral from underground? One ghostly touch and Kuzan would be licking the floor, literally. Unless he's depressive to the point that he doesn't want to exist anymore to begin with, and I doubt he or any Admiral is. And sorry, but I'm Oda and I want my special Usopp Sniper battle only he can handle!

The problem isn't that one can't think of a counter at all. It's about writing a fun scenario WHILE keeping the overall integrity of the series intact. It's hard. And it's even harder in a 20+ year long series. I imagine at one point he simply made the decision that the risk to write yourself into a corner would be too high without haki as a back-up mechanism. Because it's not like the niche counters are completely gone - Big Mom's fruit can be hardcountered by simply not being afraid of her. But he obviously wanted a safety net in the case he has a really great scenario in mind - but can't execute it because it would hurt the integrity of the series.

Is Shambles the personality splitting one?

If it is, then lets all agree that it was retconned and does not exist anymore.

I was talking about the one he cut you in pieces.

Plus we've established that since can't imbue his attacks with Haki, then any admiral Logia would crush him.

The Straw hats were caught off-guard because they didn't consider him a threat. The man literally saved Luffy from the jaws of hell, and saved his life. No way any of them would consider him an enemy for their spider senses to tingle.

As for the other scenarios. That's where experience and the chess game comes through. Just like with Nen. Its a matter of who uses their ability more wisely.

But I agree, Oda is done with making fights interesting. Now its just going through the story and showing the highlights.

[King Cannon]

@wolfwood:

Adding a whole new combat system on top of the old has to be counted as a rather major change, for good or bad. Now one can of course argue that it more compliments the old one than replaces it, but for me it feels a bit like adding a fourth move to rock paper scissors that has an advantage over all others. Nothing really trumps haki, which makes it feel like it overwrites a lot of previously useful skills and powers and how they interacted with each other

Haki doesn't mean instant win.

Remember when Logia Monet completely humiliated Tashigi?

Or when Caesar made Luffy breathless?

Or when Nami teamed up with Luffy to drench Cracker's biscuits?

[kevo_koma]

@King:

Haki doesn't mean instant win.

Remember when Logia Monet completely humiliated Tashigi?

Wait Tashigi had Haki?

Speaking of Smoker and Tashigi, what do you guys think about Haki also making seastone redundant as a weapon?

Oda showed us an impossible to beat person in Smoker, and then immediately showed us he could be beat if you had the right weapon like Seastone.

Can you imagine Van Auger with Seastone bullets? He could have taken down all 3 admirals before they knew what happened.

[DatYute]

I think another really confusing thing about Haki is some of things being said about it in this arc. Kaido getting cut by the scabbards and saying they are using "Oden's ryou" and Zoro commenting that he can't cut kaido unless he releases more Haki from Enma, even though as far as we know he's not talking about the internal damaging kind. It really sounded like they were saying random things at times.

[King Cannon]

@kevo_koma:

Wait Tashigi had Haki?

?

[Paraplonq]

My main problem with haki is just how boring it is most of the time.

Oda is amazing at creating very creative powers both in concept and visually.Haki on the other hand has some very generic usages while somehow being very vague and confusing.

That's not even getting into the visuals, observation has nothing (to the point that it's hard to tell when it's being used).

Armament has the visual black coating but it looks the same for every character, and there are also the weird instances when the coating is nowhere to be seen.

Conquerors i suppose is interesting in concept but knocking out fodder gets boring (not to mention useless). Now we get a new usage for Conquerors but i still don't get how it's any different from armament aside from being stronger.

[King Cannon]

@kevo_koma:

Wait Tashigi had Haki?

Speaking of Smoker and Tashigi, what do you guys think about Haki also making seastone redundant as a weapon?

Oda showed us an impossible to beat person in Smoker, and then immediately showed us he could be beat if you had the right weapon like Seastone.

Can you imagine Van Auger with Seastone bullets? He could have taken down all 3 admirals before they knew what happened.

Seastone is useful for restraining, and prevents the ability from being used in any way.

It's still the ideal way to combat DF users. Law himself became completely helpless because of a nail. With haki, he can still attack you with other indirect moves.

[MrPecans]

@Jabra:

What would be your suggestions specifically for Sugar, Law, Bonney and Perona?

Considering that the solution can't be too niche and still allows Oda to play all the scenarios we've seen so far?

Well I can see that this conversation has raged on since you asked this, but I'll give my opinion anyway.

Sugar - Sugar can turn people she touches into toys. Aside from that she's just a kid. I say debatably she might not need any nerfing. But alternatively, maybe her fruit power could have manifested as the handle of a wind-up toy where the target only remains a toy as long as someone keeps winding them up, or maybe she could give each toy a "battery" that needs to be recharged regularly to keep them transformed. Maybe in order to toy-ify someone she'd need to knock them unconscious or SPLAT them between a pair of cymbals like a wind-up toy monkey.

Law - Like many people, I think Law's abilities need nerfing generally. I say he should have never had any power that wasn't related to switching things around. He could have made the whole thing about Law needing to physically slice whatever he switches around without the aid of his magic room. Or at least, in direct response to the idea of "how do you counter his body switching?" I'd say, give it a time limit, or make it work until the people in question touch each other, or have it be dependent on catching your targets from behind unawares. Generally speaking though, I just wish his whole power could be re-written from the ground up.

Bonney - I think this is a fun one. Make it to where when Bonney strikes you she adds (or takes away) years of your age relative to how hard she hits you. You could also make the effects of her powers temporary as well.

Perona - Perona is fine as is. She caught the Strawhats by surprise for comic relief, but there's no reason she couldn't eventually be speed-blitzed if Usopp wasn't in the equation.

[King Cannon]

It's very difficult to rewrite Law's power when it's ultimately a surgery fruit, with applications that are plot-critical like the immortality operation and Law curing himself from Amber Lead. Plus, this national treasure that needs the fruit to be operated.

Plus, we cannot discount the personality switching as an one-time thing. It has loads of potential for an interesting story down the line.

[MrPecans]

@King:

It's very difficult to rewrite Law's power when it's ultimately a surgery fruit, with applications that are plot-critical like the immortality operation and Law curing himself from Amber Lead. Plus, this national treasure that needs the fruit to be operated.

Plus, we cannot discount the personality switching as an one-time thing. It has loads of potential for an interesting story down the line.

If those story elements must be preserved, that's fine, I just wish his multitude of powers made more sense together. There's not really anything about things switching places that necessarily makes me think of surgery. I get that it's his ROOM and he can do whatever in it, but the operation connection is very tenuous.

[King Cannon]

@MrPecans:

If those story elements must be preserved, that's fine, I just wish his multitude of powers made more sense together. There's not really anything about things switching places that necessarily makes me think of surgery. I get that it's his ROOM and he can do whatever in it, but the operation connection is very tenuous.

It's not that difficult to understand and you can kinda see the logic behind it.

People can move things with their hands (also swap, pull, touch, etc), and with Law's fruit, this logic extends to his room. Add a blade to a person's hand and they will be able to cut objects. That's just a broad interpretation of "operate", the same way Kuma's fruit is based on a broad interpretation of "pushing".

The confusing part is when you start including all the electricity moves with random effects, but then, that's just Oda giving Law a general medical theme.

[Monquito]

How long 'till the next cover story kicks in?

Can't wait for Vergo to eat the Axolotl devil fruit and regenarate his limbs with it.

[Alfiere]

Law's power is actually the easiest to rewrite in a far less broken way without taking away all the fun stuff like th personality swap:

he's near-omnipotent in his room, fair enough, but make so that the room iself is an actual limitation. There can be just one per time, and the bigger it is the longer it takes to form and the harder it is to maintain.
Him popping up random rooms around punk Hazard to teleport at will was the exact point when I remember I called bullshit on him.

[astagadragon]

In my opinion, haki is like a "patch" to a game called "One Piece". Before the "patch", all logia users are considered pretty much invulnerable, the only thing that can hurt them is a super rare material called seastone. Without that you're pretty much screwed, auto-win for the logias.

Even "weak" logia like Monet or Caribou will become a menace. Not to mention the likes of Sakazuki. How the hell you can touch magma to damage him?

A super imbalanced game is not fun.

So Oda "patched" up OP.

Now, with the "patch" called haki, now everyone can have a decent chance to fight logia user. But wait! Logia users can use haki too, so it's all balanced!

Imagine, without haki, even Luffy fighting Caesar back then is impossible…

[King Cannon]

@Alfiere:

Law's power is actually the easiest to rewrite in a far less broken way without taking away all the fun stuff like th personality swap:

he's near-omnipotent in his room, fair enough, but make so that the room iself is an actual limitation. There can be just one per time, and the bigger it is the longer it takes to form and the harder it is to maintain.
Him popping up random rooms around punk Hazard to teleport at will was the exact point when I remember I called bullshit on him.

Pretty sure that's already the case. The room he created for his body double trick in Dressrosa was said to have cut his lifespan because of how big it had to be.

And he can't create multiple rooms. The anime shows him creating a Room whenever he does anything, so it's more like Oda can't really be bothered to draw the process all the time.

[electricmastro]

@astagadragon:

In my opinion, haki is like a "patch" to a game called "One Piece". Before the "patch", all logia users are considered pretty much invulnerable, the only thing that can hurt them is a super rare material called seastone. Without that you're pretty much screwed, auto-win for the logias.

Even "weak" logia like Monet or Caribou will become a menace. Not to mention the likes of Sakazuki. How the hell you can touch magma to damage him?

A super imbalanced game is not fun.

So Oda "patched" up OP.

Now, with the "patch" called haki, now everyone can have a decent chance to fight logia user. But wait! Logia users can use haki too, so it's all balanced!

Imagine, without haki, even Luffy fighting Caesar back then is impossible…

It can also make the fighting in the series more interesting for some, in light of how some people concluded that One Piece didn’t really have interesting fighting visuals back in the old days.

[Sibersk Esto]

Some of you guys must have the memories of goldfish if you're saying that Oda is just giving up on coming up with interesting Devil Fruit scenarios after Ch. 1,009.

[fraggynator]

Question for the people complaining about the addition of haki:
Why do you think it would've been more satisfying to see every relevant fighter that has the chance of having to deal with a logia use seastone weapons? Because let's be real for a second, in a One Piece world where the only difference is that haki doesn't exist, this would be the logical solution.
If Haki wasn't a thing, why would any vice-admiral or higher not always carry a seastone weapon? Because "better to just risk it because that's smoker's thing and it would be boring if we all do it"?

[SuburbanErrorist]

@Galleon:

We all know its going to be called "Color of the God King" all haki types in one! And only one person every 20 years is born with it.

Why I like Haki as a concept, it tends to be super dumb at some points, like referring that people who use it, have a limited supply of it. Which is pretty stupid, considering Haki is literally mental willpower and ambition given form. So does that mean that people have limited supplies of "willpower/ambition"?

Technically willpower can burn you out in real life.

[Dark-Abel]

So is it true we might be getting the next spoilers a few days earlier?