I think the WG gives fruits to the possible admiral candidates to enhance their arsenal and versatility. So to become an admiral you have to go through extreme physical training (check Coby's progress) and haki training (the admirals have shown the barrier haki at least). Couple this with the fact that the Marines have a much wider pool to choose from so we can infer that only the strongest (seeing how the OG admirals were shown, the morality compass is not given much thought when choosing admiral candidates) are selected to be given advanced training. The Marines also know about CoC (and its potential) so it is a no brainer that to compete with other users of ACoC they have to have candidates who can also awaken it. The argument of subordinates not having CoC is just wrong since we have Zoro, Rayleigh, Sengoku, WB, Kaido, BM who were at one time subordinates of other people.
I am not one of those who says that Admirals>Yonko or vice versa, I just say that any Admiral vs Yonko fight is going to be an extreme diff and might go either way. The argument of how certain characters have reacted to facing off against an Admirals in comparison to a Yonko is still not applicable (we saw how BB ran from Akainu even after BB had 2 top tier DFs and one of it nullifies other DFs, BB is a coward but he was/became a Yonko around the same time). Having said that I say that Kaido is the strongest in a pure 1v1.
And please don't use Marineford to power scale characters, it was the most inconsistent arc in terms of power scaling. Wano has content which is better for powerscaling since it fleshes out the powers but then we have BM not using ACoC against Law and Kidd when she previously showed it against Page One.
As far as actual haki vs df debate goes, I think Haki can be stronger or weaker than DF depending on the users and devil fruits in question. For example you will need stronger Haki to defend against Gura Gura compared to defending against Mochi attacks. You will stronger Haki to cut diamond than to cut steel. You will need stronger Haki against Magma than against Fire. And then we have three characters who have competed or known to have competed against the strongest without any df powers (Roger, Garp and Rayleigh) maybe add Shanks and Mihawk but I don't they have been confirmed to not have a df. The only the 'normal' humans can compete against the likes of WB, BM, Kaido, Admirals etc. is because of their physical training and haki.
In short admiral hype is not dead, however expecting them to be stronger than Kaido is a no no for me. Admirals are first given extreme physical and haki training and then the possible candidates are given top tier fruits to increase their power. Admirals may or may not have CoC but as the WG and Marines have more knowledge and experience at their disposal we can safely assume that they are choosing the candidates with CoC over candidates without CoC and are then gifting these individuals with top tier DFs.
I am not one of those who says that Admirals>Yonko or vice versa, I just say that any Admiral vs Yonko fight is going to be an extreme diff and might go either way. The argument of how certain characters have reacted to facing off against an Admirals in comparison to a Yonko is still not applicable (we saw how BB ran from Akainu even after BB had 2 top tier DFs and one of it nullifies other DFs, BB is a coward but he was/became a Yonko around the same time). Having said that I say that Kaido is the strongest in a pure 1v1.
And please don't use Marineford to power scale characters, it was the most inconsistent arc in terms of power scaling. Wano has content which is better for powerscaling since it fleshes out the powers but then we have BM not using ACoC against Law and Kidd when she previously showed it against Page One.
As far as actual haki vs df debate goes, I think Haki can be stronger or weaker than DF depending on the users and devil fruits in question. For example you will need stronger Haki to defend against Gura Gura compared to defending against Mochi attacks. You will stronger Haki to cut diamond than to cut steel. You will need stronger Haki against Magma than against Fire. And then we have three characters who have competed or known to have competed against the strongest without any df powers (Roger, Garp and Rayleigh) maybe add Shanks and Mihawk but I don't they have been confirmed to not have a df. The only the 'normal' humans can compete against the likes of WB, BM, Kaido, Admirals etc. is because of their physical training and haki.
In short admiral hype is not dead, however expecting them to be stronger than Kaido is a no no for me. Admirals are first given extreme physical and haki training and then the possible candidates are given top tier fruits to increase their power. Admirals may or may not have CoC but as the WG and Marines have more knowledge and experience at their disposal we can safely assume that they are choosing the candidates with CoC over candidates without CoC and are then gifting these individuals with top tier DFs.
