Board Thread:Versus Debates/@comment-36351381-20180802192015/@comment-34194151-20180803175243

Honestly, Itachi can take it. If naruto was able to outstrategize the 6 paths of Pein with feints and clones then Itachi can too. He definitely has the mind for misdirection and he has already demonstrated the ability to attack the blindspots of the Rinnegan shared vision. Also, The 6 paths of Pain like to take a T-shaped formation/ stand one behind the other, which is just a bad matchup for the totsuka blade. He can easily kill 3 paths when they are lined up by using the totuska blade. If he does his standard bunshin feint/subsitution feint (which outmanuevered and blindsided the likes of kakashi and Sage mode Kabuto) he can get a clone behind the pein standing in back and then run the totuska blade through him and any pains standing directly in front. This is also supported by even naruto being able to get a clone behind pein. Yata Mirror counters shinra tensei. Amaterasu the Ashura Path, etc... This is all possible because Itachi has better battle smarts, the perfect arsenal to counter the pains, and he outclasses Pein in speed across the board, movement speed, jutsu speed, reflexes, etc. The only uncertainity is chibaku tensei.

So he can win high difficulty without genjutsu because he will be heavily drained after, but people forget that sick itachi basically nearly outlasted hebi sasuke. His reserves, while low, aren't that terrible.

When it comes to genjutsu and the 6 paths of pein, there is much controversy. Some will claim that the rinnegan is immune to visual genjutsu when the only shred of proof for that is sasuke's special rinnegan generating a susano'o that blocks IT light, and that argubaly isn't a visual genjutsu because light simply has to touch you for you to be caught. Pein himself has not indicated any immunity to any kind of genjutsu, and the one genjutsu used on him worked wonders.

Logically speaking, the frog explanation of how the shared vision works was accurate but they also assumed that each body had its own conscious but were able to share visual images with each other. But we now know that The peins are simply corpses being manipulated by Nagato's chakra and mind. He can see, smell, hear, and sense through the peins and his own mind controls each of the peins. So logically, if one pein is caught in a genjutsu then Nagato himself is caught because while he doesn't share their bodies he is the mind. The only reason Nagato escaped frog song was because Jiraiya didn't know the secret, and after he killed the 3 peins he dispelled the genjutsu which allowed Nagato to gain control of the other 3 paths and flank jiraiya.

But who knows, If Itachi can capture one pein in tsukuyomi and the feedback goes back to Nagato thhen the fight will be over with mid-difficulty as opposed to high.