Oda initially planned roger and WB to be top 2. Rocks , harald didn't existed as a concept in pre skip and garp/sengoku were meant to be below these 2.
As the series progressed oda changed his mind about roger and WB being the special ones. He made lots of characters equal to them like rocks , harald , garp etc. Even ray , gaban , sengoku , Kaido , oden are not much behind roger in power.
Rocks had way more agency also.
Then he introduced joyboy who shits on dodger and even introduced someone much stronger than him in current timeline in loki.
Oda cooked roger hard. He didn't even gave him a single one v one win against any top tier lol.