Buggy/Abilities and Powers

Overview
While not as powerful as other former Roger pirates, Buggy is a fairly capable fighter who was strong enough to survive all the battles with the Whitebeard Pirates and the extreme dangers of the Grand Line and New World. His arrogance and greed usually gets the best of him, preventing him from fighting at his fullest. His great craftiness makes him a dangerous opponent as he will always use trickery in a fight.

While he was a considerable opponent at the beginning of the series, he became a lesser threat as more powerful enemies showed up. Finally, in the Impel Down arc, the Baroque Works members commented on how weak or how much of a coward Buggy actually is. However, he is still able to survive the ordeals people far more powerful than him (albeit with their help).

One of the factors that assist Buggy in his exploits at least during the escape and the Battle of Marineford, would be his extraordinary luck. His uncanny ability to read the mood, as well as his love of theatrics and saying lines at a precise moment to strengthen the morale of his "crew" helped him secure their loyalty in furthering his plans. In addition, due to their misconceptions of his selfish actions, i.e.: running away out of fear as something to do with the death of Whitebeard and their short term partnership, as well as catching Jinbe by accident but they believed that was his plan all along, many pirates become extremely loyal to him. Most of the times they were in tears from his "heroics". He is always keen on grafting himself to the most powerful people around and bending them to his will and is smart enough to come up with battle plans on the spot this combined with his leadership skills make him an at least moderately capable captain.

Thus proven, perhaps Buggy's biggest weapon is his cunning when it comes to speeches, the ability to easily lie and convince those around him to follow his bidding, this way gathering a crew with great strength.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his achievements coming from sheer luck and misunderstandings, he was at least acknowledged by the World Government to be strong enough, either in strength or influence, to be a Shichibukai. When Buggy's past was revealed, the Impel Down prisoners were all impressed with his past history on Roger's crew, as well as his brotherly connections with Shanks. Due to these two reasons, all the prisoners that escaped with him all joined his crew and are all completely loyal to him, increasing his strength somewhat when compared to other Shichibukai.

In spite of his normally cowardly and weak-willed behavior, Buggy possesses a strong will, having remained conscious from Luffy's burst of Haoshoku Haki at Marineford, whereas Galdino passed out from the burst.

Physical Abilities
Buggy has very high endurance and resilience, having survived a destructive explosion from a redirected Muggy Ball, which is powerful enough to severely injure Minotaurus, one of the Jailer Beasts in Impel Down, without sustaining much injury. He was also able to withstand the blazing inferno of Level 4 in Impel Down. He possesses quite a great deal of physical strength, as he was able to lift and choke one of his subordinates with just one hand, lifting a Blugori easily and slamming it into the floor (although it got up again with minimal injuries) and managed to sustain the weight of both Luffy and Jinbe while floating with the upper part of his body. According to Shanks, he was also a great swimmer and was proud of the fact, but this was said before he ate a Devil Fruit and lost his ability to swim.

Devil Fruit


Buggy accidentally consumed the Bara Bara no Mi, a Paramecia-class Devil Fruit which allows him to separate his body parts and control them independently of each other, but robbed him of the ability to swim, which, according to Shanks (back when the two were still apprentices on Roger's ship), he was excellent at. The abilities gained from this fruit also make Buggy immune to slashing, cutting and cleaving attacks; any such attack just separates him into his component parts, allowing him to reform as needed.

In addition, most of his body is capable of flying through the air, with enough force to send a man flying through a wall - with the crucial exception of his feet having to stay grounded. Even though the parts are separate, Buggy can still feel what the part feels; e.g. when Luffy attacked Buggy, he separated his torso from his waist, only to find that Luffy was aiming for the crotch (needless to say, this left him with a rather painful result).

Also, when Buggy used Bara Bara Festival in an attempt to take down Nami, Luffy took one of the feet and tickled it, causing Buggy to break down in laughter. No matter how much of his body he separates, something also seems to act normal; e.g., his feet walking as normal while Buggy sends the rest of his body flying. Though Buggy is a decent fighter and his Devil Fruit power makes him difficult to hit, he was constantly leaving himself open in the latter half of his match for Luffy due to distractions, resulting in many careless mistakes.

A weakness of his fruit is that if a component part is restrained, he cannot use the component part, shown by Nami when she restrained a part of his body in their first fight with him. Because he is invulnerable to cutting attacks, he could be considered the natural enemy to even the most powerful swordsmen, as seen when he easily survived Mihawk's extremely powerful slashing ability.

There are two major weaknesses of his Devil Fruit. The first is that his feet act as an anchor and must remain on the ground even when the rest of his body is airborne. Secondly, despite feeling them at all times, Buggy may lose pieces of his body if they leave his visual range, though once he can see them again he can easily guide them back.

Blades


Buggy seems to prefer bladed weapons, though he most favors the use of knives. He tends to hold one single knife at a time or three between the fingers of his hands, and can apparently perform small feats of sleight-of-hand to both store and draw them whenever necessary. Buggy seems to carry an impressive amount of these types of weapons on his person at all times; some of which he prefers to keep hidden under his gloves, or in his shoes (he throws both his legs spinning in an attempt to cut his opponent).

He was also seen using a sword in a failed attempt to cut Luffy's head off at Loguetown. Within Impel Down he initially wielded a battle-axe taken from one of the Blugori but after losing it armed himself with four katana-like weapons and a gun used by one of the prison staff.

Buggy Balls and Muggy Balls
Other than blades, he also can use (or threatening to use) his Buggy Balls, which are highly explosive cannonballs carrying his Jolly Roger on them and which are fired from a cannon. The Buggy Balls are able to clear entire streets consisting of buildings. In fact, he is one of the few pirates who actively uses cannons.



In addition, he had hidden "Muggy Balls", hand grenade-like weapons derived from his Buggy Balls, on himself. They are smaller, but still retain the mighty explosive powers. Until now, he has only used five of them: first against the Jailer Beast Minotaurus, a second one on Hannyabal's subordinates (in the manga, the usage was unseen, but it was shown in the anime), a third one on the Army Wolves in level 5 of Impel Down, but they dodged it, a fourth one on Dracule Mihawk, who redirected it back at Buggy, and a fifth one in 3D2Y. Due to these weapons' small size, Buggy was able to keep them to himself while being in Impel Down without the guards discovering and confiscating them.