User blog comment:AYET/Ready for New World - What does it mean?/@comment-10543621-20150708065127

Actually, if the question is purely whether Luffy's current fighting abilities are enough to survive in the New World, the answer is most certainly yes. I'd like to point out that being the protagonist crew, the Strawhats are undoubtedly gonna be facing adversaries beyond the typical difficulty level an average crew would face. So far, Doffy is the third Shichibukai Luffy has fought. If you include encounters with Kuma and Mihawk, the Strawhats have basically come into conflict with 5 Shichibukais. No other average pirate crew would ever come into conflict with that many of the Shichibukais.

Luffy has also come into conflict with all 3 original Admirals, and now the 4th one with Fujitora. He's also had plenty of Logia enemies, which is arguably the strongest class of DFs. All his enemies were famous and well known, with higher than average battle potential. Regular pirates don't have that kind of luck.

It's been the same post time-skip. Although it's true that his enemy in Fishmen island should be fodder, like you said, Luffy had more pressing concerns. HIs efforts at that time was stopping a giant ship from crushing an entire island. I saw Noah as the boss of that arc, not Hody. On Punk Hazard, even if you say that Caesar isn't battle oriented, he's definitely no pushover. His bounty alone would easily put him way above average pirate captains. If anything, Luffy's has shown that he's more than capable of handling someone like Caesar once all his tricks have been used up.

Now onto Doffy. I think we've all established by now the Doffy CANNOT be the gauge of average New World level pirate strength. Doffy has been shown time and again to be among the elite, and he's definitely not a good representation of the average new world pirate strength. It's really not fair to gauge Luffy's readiness based on his performance against Doffy.

So here's how I feel. If we wanna know whether Luffy is ready for the New World in general, we need to look at other more comparable fighters from the new world. The colosseum fighters would be good examples. All of the new famous names thrown out at us are supposed to be famous enough in the new world. Sure they're not Shichibukai and Yonkou level famous, but they would be a more accurate gauge of average New World fighter abilities. In fact, someone like Brownbeard was able to flounder around and survive near the start of the New World. Other examples to compare with would be WB's new world pirate allies, although we never really got a chance to see what they were capable of.

I think it's important to realise just how diverse the strength level of people in One Piece can be. Even among the 'strong' the disparity is tremendous. Luffy's definitely way above the average strength of New World fighter based on what we've seen, that's for sure. In that regard, yes, Luffy is ready for the New World.

The real question would be, is Luffy ready for the top tier level opponents he's going to continue facing while he traverses the New World based on the fact that he's the protagonist, and also that he's impulsive, doesn't think and likes to challenge others without any regard for consequences? For that, not quite. Doffy was obviously top tier, but Luffy's line of opponents are gonna remain top tier, and eventually even higher tier. To be honest, this is a Shonen manga, and Luffy is the main character. This essentially means he will never be truly 'ready' since part of the journey of following them is to see their struggles to overcome each adversary they face, and as he overcomes them, he continues to improve.