Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-26773508-20160331045011/@comment-9782468-20160331202801

I don't think Tsunade could have taken the meteor down, in any case. Lee and a bunch of other Gate users were struggling, so Tsunade by herself wouldn't be able to imo.

You can't really expect him to compete at those levels, as no other Kage was able to take it down either. Kakashi just recognized that he couldn't, so he didn't expend the energy. Really the only Kage who might've taken it down are Hashirama or one of the DUst Release users. Minato might have managed to teleport it. But the rest? What would they do unless they had some sort of power-up hack?

Kakashi isn't a powerhouse. His main ability is adapt and overcome. But there was literally nothing in his arsenal to take down the meteor. If you compare him to other Kage, he has skill on par with pretty much everyone. It's his lack of power that puts him at the disadvantage. But he thinks and adapts so quickly in battle that he's gone up against very powerful opponents and held his own nicely.

In the story, a lot of Kakashi's purpose was to show a scale of how powerful the opponent Naruto and Sasuke took down was. He was nerfed for that, imo.