The think is, from the mid gen, no one surpassed Roger. It took a old Whitebeard to lose the status as strongest men.
Kaido and co are monsters, but Big Mom hyped Whitebeard over Shanks and Kaido.
It pretty clear for me that Oda version so far didn't follow up the /new Gen>Old Gen theory.
At least when it come to the strongest of the strongest.
Roger is the goal with Luffy need to reach, the goal with even guys like Mihawk or Don Chinjao hyped very much. Like how Kaido hyped Roger.
I doubt that Shanks or Mihawk are strong as Roger. Can they push him to high diff or more? Yes, can they win? No...
I think Prime Rayleigh is there where we could place the current strongest guys, the Yonkou tier.
Who ever has the potential to be PK tier, they will be in same league as Roger but no one of them surpassed him.
Kaido is already very high for a high top tier, same for the others.
However I agree these characters have potential to be PK tier lvl, with Teach having even the keys to surpass Roger/Whitebeard.
Dragon,Akainu,Shanks,EoS Teach
And of all these I expect only Teach to surpass Roger, the rest is at best equal.
But I doubt Shanks has the same physical power as Roger had. I think Oda will stick only to have few PK tier lvl characters.
Sorry was too busy.
I wasn't saying that Roger and Primebeard got surpassed. I was just saying that there are a lot of characters that are very likely near carbon copies of Roger, as a haki god prototype, and that in general there are a whole lot of characters that are imo at or very near that PK lvl.
And thus the mid gen as a whole and therefore the great age of piracy plays on a whole other level as you have a lot of top tiers, imo around 7 mid gen top tiers, that were/are at that lvl, whereas beforehand you only a handful of top tiers in general and two PK lvl guys in Roger and WB at that level.
We have to keep in mind that with the Gorosei, the Seraphims, Shiryu, Kid, Law, Smoker, Yamato, Sanji, Sabo, Fujitora, Kizaru, GB, Croc, and perhaps even Boa and some God Knights we likely still going to have more than 15 low to mid top tiers. And inbetween these and the strongest are imo at times even very, very distinct differences.
And imo fighting against one of the mentioned above won't be a PK lvl task, but fighting against Shanks, Dragon, BB or surviving a whole island/climate trying to kill you similar to PH likely is a PK lvl task.
And imo it's natural and instinctiv for guys like BM and Sengoku to refer back to the peak of their era, a peak they even have directly witnessed. I cannot really argue against it. It's alos just normal storytelling.
We still see Shanks using Roger's signature tho and we still get to see that Aokiji got Prime Garp portrayal in a stat that's second-rate for him.
Imo Oda will only go further down that line.
It's also somewhat evident at hand of Zoro:
If we look at Zoro, he's someone who's going to Skyplit and then is still going to have mutliple additional power ups above that: KoH, KoH three sword dragon, Asura. Plus he will likely learn FS some time.
We can anticipate where this will lead him to and thus can imagine that Mihawk and by extension Shanks simply have to be at a certain lvl of strength.
Goes very well in hand with the anticipated Garling scarred WB- scale I talked about earlier.
And also goes very well in hand with the portrayal of Shanks, who'd already looking like a more powerful Rayleigh with uber future sight.
And nah, Luffy's goal is not really Roger anymore. That's like a sidequest for him nowadays, since we know it's only part of his greater dream. It's also one reason why I think that "PK lvl" benchmark won't be as important anymore.
Conclusion: I just think there are going to be a lot of PK lvl fights and even if those guys aren't purely equal to Roger and WB, they are still going to be extreme diff material.
We gonna agree to disagree anyway I guess.