Yeah, but back in alabasta crocodile didnβt want any water. Now heβs fighting warships in the middle of the ocean.
He clearly grew
Nah his abilities just got retconned.
Back in Pre-TS, Haki wasn't even introduced so Luffy needed an actual counter to deal with Crocodile's logia powers. Maybe elemental advantages would work for weak logia users relying too much on their DF, like Caribou, but Crocodile was hardly inexperienced. It's the contrast. Crocodile possibly has awakening as well.
But now that Haki was introduced and fleshed out throughout the end of Pre-TS and current Post-TS, there's no need for Oda to draw massive situations of match-up depending circumstances when it comes to logia users.
Each logia user will have an answer against attacks holding an elemental advantage over theirs. The answer will mostly be Haki anway.
So now that Haki is there, people don't always have to rely on water to even hit Crocodile but it's also vice versa since Crocodile doesn't have to lose against characters using water on him. He should have tools to deal with water based techniques as well. Otherwise, Jinbe would simply neg diff him with some water sources - this can't obviously work. Warlords aren't and shouldn't be that easily replacable.