Board Thread:Versus Debates/@comment-34938099-20180927150340/@comment-1458758-20180927174703

So we're basically looking at Naruto as he was when he fought Pain, plus any non-Kurama/Six Paths related skills he earned after that. Meanwhile, all the others are basically in top form? Seems a tad unfair, but okay, let's break this down.

At this point, Naruto can use Frog Kata, his Rasenshuriken can be thrown, and he took out God.

Given that, despite assuming mastery over Kamui for Kakashi, he still doesn't have the chakra supply to fight Naruto head on and he'd probably use it up taking out fatal shots from Rasengans and the like rather than risk wasting it on a kill maneuver when Naruto's signature move is shadow clones. That leaves him with Raikiri as his best move to take on Naruto, and as we've seen, pitting that against Rasengan is not the best solution either. So here I think it's Naruto's win.

Similarly, with Hiruzen, while the old dude has literal decades of experience on Naruto, stamina and range aren't on his side, as Naruto can make literal thousands of clones to fight. So I'm gonna give that one to Naruto again.

The Kage from his own generation, Chojuro, Darui and Kurotsuchi are strong, and have some skills, but they're a lot more traditional in terms of skill sets, Chojuro relies on the shape manipulation of his sword, Darui uses swordsmanship and various elemental combinations of techniques, and Kurotsuchi is strong in taijutsu and using trapping moves with her jutsu, all things are not well suited to fighting Naruto since he has literally beat the pants off people with these same skills sets.

A is a challenge, as we literally saw him fight Naruto just as he'd gotten his KCM, so I can't say that it's in his favour, but he did beat A's father without using chakra mode, so I'd say putting experience on Naruto's side, he could win this, though it might be an uphill struggle.

Onoki has powerful Dust release, and his ability to alter weight are nothing to sneeze at, but he doesn't have the chakra, and all it takes is one bad moment on his back to put him in a seriously bad position. Since we're dealing with a fully fledged Naruto, just sans some abilities, I'd say he has the tactical advantage, as he knows about Onoki's dust release, and basically just has to wait until the old timer's age catches up to him.

Mei, the first of the Five to have a definitive advantage, with her Boil release, Naruto, unlike Sasuke or Gaara, doesn't have any defensive techniques that surround his body, so he'd start to fry pretty quickly in a battle against Mei. His only hope here is that since Mei seems to lack close combat ability, to hit her hard and fast before she cooks him, but given that's another strong suit of Naruto, I'd tentatively give him the win again.

Tsunade, another with a good set up against Naruto, her healing puts her past the point of Naruto's ability to harm her, and she's a specialist in taijutsu whose every blow could break a lesser man in half. Blow for blow, so long as she outlasts him chakra wise, I don't see Naruto pulling a win.

I'm gonna throw Hashirama, Tobirama and Minato in together. Hashirama is the God of Shinobi and given his skillset, even without Sage Mode, he's still basically a monster, so I don't like Naruto's odds in a one on one. He'd have to rely on basically killing Hashirama before he gets off any of his big wood techniques, but since Hashirama literally lived through wars fighting monsters like Madara, I do not like Naruto's chances. The same goes for Tobirama and Minato, but for the opposite reason, those two basically have Assassin builds, their strong suit is killing enemies in single blows using the Hiraishin and without Kurama's back up, Naruto doesn't really reach those speeds.

Last, but certainly not least, Gaara. These two fought when they were kids, and from there both just got exponentially stronger. Without the core part of his combat style in the KCM, Naruto is certainly disadvantaged here, he's going up against the strongest shield in Gaara, and while he's certainly improved to the point where I don't think any of Gaara's more basic maneuvers could catch him, their fight would almost certainly escalate to city crushing levels, at which point, Naruto's lack of powerful defensive skills puts him at a disadvantage again.

All in all, I don't like this comparison, cause you're basically taking out a key feature of Naruto's whole combat style and saying "Hey, how does he match up if we chop off his arm?" basically when the only two with similar handicaps are Hashirama and Minato, two guys that didn't use those skills as key parts of their toolkits. I think Naruto has a much better shot than Necroism is giving him credit for, and at the same time, I don't think the new Kage are really weaker, just from what we've seen of them, their skillsets don't match up well when Naruto has been pulling feints and producing literal armies of clones since he was no age. I just find this whole thing feels a bit pointless when you take out a skill Naruto has been using regularly for his entire adult life.