Powers & Abilities Is hardening supposed to be impressive?

[Loki D. Terror]

It’s not an or thing, hardening would further increase the durability of his dragon scales. The idea that Kaido just refused to coat himself with coa just makes zero sense.

And his flame dragon torch doesn’t make sense unless he’s also coating himself with CoA seeing how boro breath hurt him.

And big mom had actually CoC lightning erupt from her body, Kaido didn’t.

It never made sense to me why Kaido won't use full body hardening like vergo did. We can assume has was using invisible adv coa haki barrier but then scabbard's were able to bypass Kaido's haki? Strange indeed.

 

[CbShadow]

Apparently when it comes to Zoro, i'm the only one who has a functioning brain.. Zoro never used full body hardening.. That's lalaland territory..

He did.

How else do you think Zoro blocked King's self detonation attack. Do you not understand how bombs and shockwaves work.

 

[Sir Yasheen]

It never made sense to me why Kaido won't use full body hardening like vergo did. We can assume has was using invisible adv coa haki barrier but then scabbard's were able to bypass Kaido's haki? Strange indeed.

I have to assume that’s how he’s able to use flame dragon torch but because of the coloring scheme of Kaido, and Wano in General a giant black dragon just wouldn’t look good on paper

 

[Roo]

It never made sense to me why Kaido won't use full body hardening like vergo did. We can assume has was using invisible adv coa haki barrier but then scabbard's were able to bypass Kaido's haki? Strange indeed.

Because his DF provides him a base durability high enough to block most attacks

Fighters have to be efficient, if you already have ridiculous durability why waste haki on defense? It’s better to use it all on offense

 

[grey matter]

It never made sense to me why Kaido won't use full body hardening like vergo did. We can assume has was using invisible adv coa haki barrier but then scabbard's were able to bypass Kaido's haki? Strange indeed.

He was most likely using always on advanced conqueror's and/or armament, just like how BM always had it on.

Law claims there is no opening for him to swap Kaido and BM, because . It only makes sense if they always had their haki turned on at a certain level.

There is no need for him to use full body armament, because he has dragon scales (which is >> hardening anyway) and armament/conqueror's coating.

As for why scabbards can damage him through his haki, I suppose concentrating advanced armament in a small area, like it is for sharp attacks, would allow them to breach Kaido's defences unless he focus on his haki at the same place.

Yet at the same time we have smoker who’s invisible haki was shown to be stronger than his black haki, so do we just ignore that or accept that there’s no hard set rule about this stuff.

Oda does what he wants, he’ll have invisible coa block CoC like with Kizaru blocking base Luffys CoC kick no problem.

The only overcomplication is when people try to create convoluted rules about haki progressions or give certain haki unique abilities beyond basic increasing AP.

You're right that Oda isn't consistent, however he has made it abundantly clear that the rule is: advanced conquerors -> ID advanced armament -> regular advanced armament -> armament hardening -> basic invisible armament.
Exceptions (for SAME character!) are Oda being inconsistent.

Zoro's attack power with advanced conqueror's >> Zoro's attack power with advanced armament >> Zoro's attack power with hardening
Luffy's same story, as mentioned earlier.
Kaido calls advanced conqueror's haki a power of handful of the strongest in the world.

Oda has made it clear in no uncertain terms that advanced conqueror's is BY FAR the strongest haki power, and the strongest singular powerup in the series (proof is DF-less top tiers getting to strongest levels attainable that we know of currently, like Roger).

 

[Sir Yasheen]

He was most likely using always on advanced conqueror's and/or armament, just like how BM always had it on.

Law claims there is no opening for him to swap Kaido and BM, because . It only makes sense if they always had their haki turned on at a certain level.

There is no need for him to use full body armament, because he has dragon scales (which is >> hardening anyway) and armament/conqueror's coating.

As for why scabbards can damage him through his haki, I suppose concentrating advanced armament in a small area, like it is for sharp attacks, would allow them to breach Kaido's defences unless he focus on his haki at the same place.



You're right that Oda isn't consistent, however he has made it abundantly clear that the rule is: advanced conquerors -> ID advanced armament -> regular advanced armament -> armament hardening -> basic invisible armament.
Exceptions (for SAME character!) are Oda being inconsistent.

Zoro's attack power with advanced conqueror's >> Zoro's attack power with advanced armament >> Zoro's attack power with hardening
Luffy's same story, as mentioned earlier.
Kaido calls advanced conqueror's haki a power of handful of the strongest in the world.

Oda has made it clear in no uncertain terms that advanced conqueror's is BY FAR the strongest haki power, and the strongest singular powerup in the series (proof is DF-less top tiers getting to strongest levels attainable that we know of currently, like Roger).

It’s not an inconsistency, it’s just that hardening and invisible haki are the same shit and it’s based on Oda coloring. There’s literally no point in trying to think too hard about it.

And we know that CoC isn’t the top power of the world as Oda showed us directly that Prime Roger’s CoC = Primebeard CoC, so how did Roger match the strongest paramecia fruit? Some future bs power up more likely. Kaido was probably just wrong. It’s not abnormal for villains to be wrong

 

[ArturCantSpeakJapanese]

Is it?

The first time we see it is from luffy. Which I guess is supposed to be cool and impressive to show how much stronger he’s gotten but the ability itself was never specifically hyped much

In punk hazard we met Vergo who had extremely hyped up armament. Him being capable of hardening him and his weapon. Smoker was capable of doing the same thing besides full body while also being less proficient

Then all of a sudden zoro being capable of hardening his swords becomes a hype moment. Not to say it’s not impressive I guess but it’s only weird because that wasn’t the case when we saw other characters being capable of the same

Kinemon is also a pretty weird case where him being able to harden his swords was never really hyped up in dressrosa but it kinda was in onigashima. Him using armament the whole time against kaido but getting a oden flashback talking about armament right before using hardening

Even fodder has shown the ability
Hell even characters like Kiku marigold and pre timeskip zoro were capable of armament flow an advantanced application but not hardening

Going back to the strawhats

1. Luffy was capable of basically spamming the technique with it never being specifically hyped much
2. Zoro being able to do it was lowkey made a big deal. With zoro only really using it when pushed to get more serious. His current post wano self being able to do it a lot more casually
3. Sanji has straight up just never shown hardening on screen despite the fact he obviously has armament haki. If you disagree show panel of him doing it

Hardening is just one technique of many.

By itself it's not an indicator of haki power, but it's useful for defense and offense by making things physically harder. I think of Hardening like in an RPG, it increases raw physical damage and damage reduction, while emission and internal destruction are a different type of damage that can bypass physical defenses but might not be as consistent.

Hardening: you apply a buff and your str/def is passively higher for all your normal moves

Emission: you do a single high penetration attack or defensive parry

 

[Toryu]

People still want Haki to be consistent?

It's whatever Oda wants it to look.