Board Thread:Versus Debates/@comment-30323490-20180607192958/@comment-34194151-20180914182937

@Cleoina

It depends. If Nagato opens with shinra tensei off the bat without doing a summoning jutsu, He would go for a light one, strong enough to stun minato and create some distance, but not crazy,  because his bigger ones require prep and have a longer cool down. He is not one to overextend his hand like that. So let's say minato gets pushed back. I'm not sure what he would do, but I imagine that he wouldn't let himself take any critical damage from the fall, when he can easily drop a kunai and teleport to it. FTG allows the user to control their own momentum and orientation in space, so he could replant himself if he wants to. But let's say he doesn't do so in the time it takes for nagato to summon cerberus and chameleon, and then dissappear into chameleon while cererbrus chases minato. Minato would probably start spreading kunai and call in gamabunta. Nagato pressures them with more summons. Minato realizes the dog can't be killed. Minato enters sage mode to try and sense nagato. I'm not sure if a perfect sage can sense the chameleon or not, but he can definitely sense nagato whenever he reappears. Sure, minato would lose the summoning battle most likely. Nagato could honestly wait him out. That's basically what Nagato did to Jiraiya. Conveniently, we never saw how jiraiya actually dealt with the majority of nagato's summonings, but to the very end, nagato stayed hidden in the chameleon until he was forced to leave it. So I imagine he could easily do the same to minato, unless minato can do whatever it is jiraiya did to release the summons. But this scenario has a bunch of assumptions, such as minato not getting back to nagato in time before nagato dissappears out of sight, and also perfect sage mode not sensing the chameleon. To me, KCM naruto could sense nagato, but he just couldn't see him, so that's why he asked "where is he" despite looking in the right direction. So once minato detects the chameleon, he should be able to detect it and at least force nagato's hand.

Minato can also use the contract seal on nagato to stop every single one of nagato's summons, including jigokudo in theory. That would stop the healing process. I also have become skeptical of this durability thing. Sure, chakra reserves definitely correspond to durability, but that's mostly been against blunt attacks. Madara uchiha has reserves comparable to hashirama, and he was killed by a sword to the chest. piercing attacks are more effective against durability beasts like Nagato, so minato's kunai will be clutch in wearing him down. But, I see your point of view about Nagato outlasting him.