The fact that he won't have a prolonged fight with a top tier by himself, a fight like Luffy vs Kizaru, Zoro vs Lucci. He didn't have this on the roof, nor did he have this on Egghead where there were 6 top tiers present. 6 of em. And Oda gave us a single clash. So yea Oda is clearly uncomfortable with it, as it has never happened in the manga.
This is inherently contradictory. Lucci is not a sufficient stalling opponent for a true top tier. Canonically, Zoro’s fight with Lucci dragged on longer than the Straw Hats could afford, to the point where Jinbe had to step in, on Nami’s orders, to pull Zoro back to the group.
My cutoff for top tier is being able to give Big Mom or Old Legends an extreme diff battle in a 1v1, nothing even slightly below this.
King is not an exception for a YC1. You can place him at the top but Katakuri and Marco are not getting ragdolled by King like Zoro was. Marco was the one ragdolling King when they were fighting on panel for a reason even in a 1v2, Katakuri is basically invulnerable when his FS is active in combination with his DF.
Oda gave each of the 3 YC1 nigh invulnerability. With Marco it's through his df and then linked to his stamina, with Katakuri it's through haki and then linked to his stamina, with King it's through his genes and linked to (god knows what) his flames. When all 3 characters have their invulnerable modes activated they are very close to invincible. You can argue one is more invincible over the other (depending on the situation).
In the time limited situation Zoro was in he was going to struggle equally as much against either of Marco or Katakuri.
The point was that rooftop Zoro was being placed above YC1s, based on his rooftop performance, and people thought King would be a waste of his time...only to be hit with a dose of reality.
This time, people aren’t putting Zoro above top tiers, just on the same level as them so the comparison naturally scales down. And unlike the massive gap between top tiers and everyone below them, the gap between YC1 and YC2 is much smaller, so Zoro being around YC1 lvl on the roof only strengthens my stance, because he "looked" like he was much stronger than YC1 which turned out false. 1v1s are a different beast.
Given the overlap in their toolkits (no DF, lethal weapons, ACoC, elite in CQC, solid ranged attacks, not lacking in speed with a clear edge to Gaban in mobility) lacking Future Sight becomes a serious disadvantage for Zoro and gives Gaban a significant edge. I wouldn’t be surprised if Future Sight ends up being standard for every DF-less top tier, effectively becoming the baseline form of observation haki at that level because with similar toolkits it ends up giving far too big of an advantage to the FS user.
Zoro's last major fight he nearly got killed by his own sword taking out King, who was quite literally proven to be trash to a top tier in Aramaki. There isn't enough on Zoro rn, did he get stronger? Sure....how much stronger remains to be seen. And there is a heck of a lot of ground to cover given Aramaki can defeat someone like King without breaking a single sweat.
Lunarians cannot be damaged with flames on, Luffy and Kaku were in the same boat far as damaging them goes.
