Top 10 Strongest One Piece Characters

How's it going, everybody? Today is the day I finally bring you the long-awaited and highly anticipated new One Piece top 10 list. I'm extremely sorry that this article took so long to come out. In my previous One Piece top 10, I did say this article wouldn't be coming out for quite a while. Here I am releasing this article four months later; I'm incredibly sorry that this article took so long to come out but hopefully this article will end up being worth the wait. 

Today we're going to be counting down the top strongest characters in One Piece. Now there are a ton of things we are going to cover in this list which also means there are also a lot of things you guys should keep in mind before we actually jump into it. 

The first thing you need to know is that this list will be based on how strong these characters are overall so what we're going to be doing is looking at their physical abilities, their ability to use haki, and how effective their haki is, their intelligence, their notable connections or alliances with other characters and organizations, their devil fruit abilities, whether or not they have a double fruit, and a few other random aspects as well because each of these characteristics are very important in deciding which of these characters are indeed the strongest in One Piece.

The second thing you need to know is that there are many strong characters in One Piece; so many, in fact, that condensing all of these powerful characters into a single top list would be near impossible. To make it easier on myself I've created a list of conditions that a character needs to meet to be eligible to be on this list in the first place and these conditions are as follows. The first is that these characters need to be currently alive in the story so characters such as Whitebeard, Gold D.Roger, and Ace will not be on this list. The second is that these characters need to be in their prime or very close to it, this means characters like Rayleigh, Sengoku, and Monkey D. Garp will not be on this list. The final condition is that we need to know a decent amount of information about these characters and their abilities so characters we know little to nothing about can't be on this list, simply because we don't have enough information to truly confirm they are one of the strongest. Without a doubt, I personally think Monkey D.Dragon is a very powerful character in the One Piece universe, however we know very little about him and as of right now we know nothing about his abilities. Although I believe Dragon would be one of the strongest One Piece characters, we just simply don't know enough about him or his abilities to place him on this list accurately. Instead of making a fool of myself I decided it's best to just keep him off the list entirely, that being said, there will be a few exceptions to this rule on the list. This condition excludes Monkey D. Dragon, the Gorosei, Basil Hawkins, Urouge, and X Drake. The final thing you need to know about before we get into the list is that the way I will be formatting this top 10 is by starting each character off with a detailed description about everything you need to know about the character in question. Then I will give my personal analysis on the information I just relayed to you; this will create a few instances where I may end up repeating myself. Also, we will be covering a lot of information for each character, so be prepared for a lot of knowledge being thrown your way. We, of course, won't be covering everything: just the things I think are most important in determining how powerful these characters really are. Now that you know what to expect, let’s begin!

Top Strongest One Piece Characters

I'm sure most of you are fully aware of Luffy's abilities because he is the main character after all but for the sake of keeping this list somewhat professional I'm going to be going over all of his notable qualities anyway. I want to say sorry in advance because we are going to be covering a lot of information about Luffy so now might be the time to go grab some snacks! The very first thing we are going to go over is his physical abilities - without the use of his devil fruit.

Considering that Luffy is the main character of the series, it is no surprise to hear that he has an enormous amount of physical strength to the point where he can easily lift and shatter large boulders, push buildings apart, and shatter steel easily with his just hit bare hands. Additionally, he can easily flip over and throw big men who are over twice the size of himself and Luffy himself stated that due to his training as a child with his grandfather, Monkey D. Garp, he has been able to throw a punch as powerful as a pistol from the age of seven! If that’s how strong his fists were back then, I can't even begin to imagine what we could compare them to now. 

Luffy also has incredible speed; it is to the point where he can easily anticipate his enemy's movements and in turn counter their attacks in combat. Even though Luffy's normal speed is nothing special on its own, it is multiplied greatly with the use of his gear second technique, but we'll talk about that in a minute. 

Luffy also has amazing durability and endurance, capable of enduring a ton of powerful attacks from his enemies and still continue to fight. Some of the attacks he's endured would easily kill a normal person, of course this durability is mainly due to him being made of rubber. That being said, he is still able to take on these same deadly attacks while they are imbued with haki, which bypass his devil fruit powers. The best example of Luffy's endurance would be his fight with Cracker, where Luffy fought him for 11 hours straight using techniques such as gear forth that really eat up his energy. He was still able to defeat Cracker, barely, but it doesn't stop there. Luffy was also able to withstand attacks from Sanji shortly after his fierce battle with Cracker, and then shortly after his encounter with Sanji, Luffy managed to defeat most of Big Mob’s army before he was finally taken down. This is absolutely insane and a true testament to his durability. 

Another unique ability Luffy has developed is his immunity to poison: thanks to him surviving the poison from Magellan's Doku Doku no Mi. Because of this, there has currently not been a poison shown to affect Luffy very much at all. 

Next, let's talk about Luffy's intelligence, or should I say lack thereof! Don't get me wrong, Luffy isn't stupid by any means, but he is also by no means one of the smartest characters in the series. He is, without a doubt, one of if not the least intelligent characters that will be featured on this list. Luffy has a very broad imagination and is very creative, especially with his devil fruit, he has great social skills which is great for making new friends and recruiting allies - even if he doesn't mean to. Along with this, he's very good at achieving the impossible, simply because he can easily think of a way to achieve these tasks. That being said, Luffy usually tends to think of the worst possible way to go about it. Thus, this causes a ton of problems and destruction for anyone involved and he often gets himself and his crew into some pretty detrimental situations. Intelligence isn't really one of his strong suits.

 Luffy also has a very strong sense of willpower, but we'll talk more about that in a second. When it comes to haki, Luffy is one of the more prominent users. Currently, the main reason for this is because Luffy is one of the few characters that can utilize all three types of haki. He is also currently one of the only six living characters that can use Conqueror’s haki, at least from what is revealed so far. The simplest way of explaining what Conqueror’s haki does is that the user exerts their willpower onto individuals who have weaker willpower which renders them unconscious, however individuals who have a stronger sense of willpower will remain unaffected. Luffy has one of the most prominent senses of willpower in the series his Conqueror’s haki is almost unmatched. One time, during his battle with the New Fish-Man Pirates, he used his Conqueror’s haki to take out 50,000 men at once. Try and comprehend how many people that actually is! 

Luffy can also utilize observation haki. This haki allows the user to sense the presence of others even if they are very far away. This, in turn, allows the user to mindlessly predict an opponent's movements moments before they make them, allowing Luffy to easily dodge attacks before they strike and even dodge bullets at point-blank range. This grants Luffy the ability to have a great advantage against his opponents unless they have an unpredictable fighting style.

Luffy can also use armament haki and he's very proficient with it. Armament haki is when an individual uses their spirit lifeforce to create an invisible armor around themselves or specific parts of their body. Not only can it be used as a means of defense but also as a weapon. The armor created is incredibly strong and when Luffy uses armament haki he not only greatly strengthens his normal attacks but he also strengthens the techniques created from his devil fruit. Luffy would not be able to use his Red Hawk technique without armament haki. Between gear second and his haki, Luffy found a way to ignite this attack to create both fire and an explosion. Without the use of haki, Luffy would not be able to access his technique, gear fourth. Luffy's haki is something you definitely don't want to mess with, even if the person up against him is also a prominent haki user.

Next, we need to talk about Luffy's devil fruit: Gomu Gomu no Mi. Also known as gum gum fruit, it gives Luffy's body the properties of rubber, making him a “rubber man”. This fruit allows Luffy to stretch any part of his body like rubber and because Luffy is made of rubber, this makes him immune to pretty much all blunt attacks including but not limited to: cannon balls,bullets, blunt objects, hand-to-hand combat, and falls from very high places. With the addition of his armament haki, this defense is even harder to bypass; however if his opponent were to use armament haki against luffy when he himself isn't using it to defend himself, they can bypass his immunity for a direct hit. Although Luffy is immune to blunt attacks, he is weak to slashing attacks such as swords. This fruit is also the natural weakness of the Goro Goro no Mi as it allows one to attack the electric logia user without the use of haki and makes the Gomu Gomu user completely immune to electrical attacks. This makes the Gomu Gomu no Mi far more superior.

 One of Luffy's best characteristics would be his creative ideas and techniques he has when it comes to using his devil fruit. I won't be going through all of them just because there are so many but I will be going over the most notable or recognizable ones. It should also be noted that a lot of these techniques would usually only be useful at close range but because Luffy is able to stretch his body and limbs, these attacks can also easily become mid to long range attacks. Luffy’s signature technique is the Gum Gum pistol which allows him to deliver a punch as strong as a pistol shot. Another technique of Luffy’s is the Gum Gum rocket. This is Luffy’s main method of travel as it lets him cover great distances quickly by grabbing onto an object, stretching his arms back, and flinging himself away making him a human slingshot. The  Gum Gum bazooka is a technique in which Luffy stretches both of his arms back before propelling both of his arms into his opponents with palms open, sending themflying with great force. Another popular attack Luffy has is the Gum Gum Gatling. In this attack, Luffy sends out a massive barrage of constant powerful punches from seemingly every direction all at once. The Gum Gum rifle is where Luffy twists his arm while he stretches them and once his arms stretch forward far enough and make contact with the enemy, his arms untwist to create more force dealing a deafening blow. The Gum Gum Balloon is a technique that Luffy uses to inflate himself like a balloon. This helps him soften blunt attacks or return projectiles, like cannon balls, back at enemies. This technique can also be used for a number of different scenarios. The Gum Gum Bell is when Luffy stretches his neck back a considerable distance before flinging it back to create a devastating headbutt.

Each of these techniques are very powerful and useful by themselves, but Luffy can also imbue them with armament haki to create an even more devastating attack. Now that we know a bit about Luffy's normal techniques, let's look at each of his gear techniques.

The first one, which is also called gear second, is a technique that allows Luffy to speed up the blood flow in his entire body or select parts which provide them with more oxygen and nutrients. The faster blood flow allows Luffy to become temporarily much faster and a little bit stronger as long as the technique is active; however this technique does take a toll on Luffy's body. It essentially shortens his life little by little the more he uses it. Because of this negative side effect, it does make this skill have a large drawback. It is safe to assume that after the time skip that occurs,  Luffy has probably managed to perfect this to the point where it affects his body less or not affect him at all. Since gear second allows luffy to be both faster and stronger, it opens Luffy to a whole new plethora of techniques. These techniques become enhanced, making them faster and stronger, so much so that they are given a new name when used. Each of the previously mentioned techniques get the prefix jet added to their name so they become: jet pistol, jet bazooka, jet gatling, and so on. Additionally, Luffy can also add armament haki to his techniques while in gear second making for even more powerful attacks. With the addition of this haki Luffy also gains access to a new range of abilities which involve fire. From the steam that gear second produces, Luffy is able to ignite his limbs, as long as they are coated in armament haki thus making he doesn't get burned. These techniques are known as Gum Gum Red Hawk which is a flaming, more powerful version of the Gum Gum jet pistol, The Gum Gum Hawk Gatling, which is a stronger, flaming version of Gum Gum jet Gatling, the Gum Gum Hawk Rifle, which is a stronger, flaming version of the Gum Gum jet Rifle, and the Gum Gum Eagle Bazooka which is a flaming, stronger version of the Gum Gum jet Bazooka. This concludes all of the gear second abilities.

Luffy’s second gear technique is called gear third. This technique consists of Luffy biting a small opening into his thumb joint and then blowing air into that opening to inflate specific parts of his body. Whenever one or more of his limbs are inflated, they are so big that they resemble the size of a giant limb. Once his limbs become this big, it ends up having an increased mass in that specific area on his body, which also creates a larger area, making it easier for him to land his attack. Although this sounds very similar to his Gum Gum Balloon Technique, the difference between the two is that with Gum Gum Balloon, Luffy just sucks in a bunch of air which expands his body or his lungs until he exhales, whereas in gear third, he instead blows this air directly into his bones, which although they are stretched out, they still maintain the strong nature of the bones themselves.

 Although this attack is very powerful, it does have a downfall: lower mobility. Since it makes him slower, Luffy generally only uses this ability when he needs to draw strength opposed to speed. That being said, it's not as bad as it sounds. After the time skip, Luffy has managed to direct or select where the air is kept in his limbs allowing Luffy to still stretch his arms while they are inflated and maneuver them much better than he could before the time-skip. As most already know, gear third opens up Luffy to a whole new range of abilities, or much like gear second some big (no pun intended) improvements to his regular techniques.

 Some new techniques include the Gum Gum giant pistol, which is the regular Gum Gum pistol except with a gigantic fist flying at you instead, the Gum Gum giant bazooka, which is the regular Gum Gum bazooka except also much, much bigger. I think you guys get the idea what the rest are like because they're all just gigantic versions of his normal techniques. Luffy also has the capability of mixing gear second with gear third to create the Gum Gum giant jet shell, an ability in which he inflates his body with gear third while keeping up his gear second to ram his whole body into his opponent with both immense strength and speed in the shape of a cannonball! Although this technique is very powerful, it is also rather dangerous because it puts double the strain on Luffy's body and restricts his movements. If he fails to land this technique, it could very well be game over for him. 

In addition to this, Luffy can also enhance his gear third techniques with armament haki to create some extremely powerful techniques. A few examples of these techniques are the Gum Gum elephant gun, which is a haki imbued version of the Gum Gum giant pistol, the Gum Gum elephant gatling, which is the haki imbued gear third version of the regular Gum Gum gatling, and the Gum Gum grizzly magnum, which is essentially the Gum Gum giant bazooka imbued with haki. Each of these techniques are definitely some of Luffy's most powerful so they should not be taken lightly. That concludes gear 3rd, which leaves us with his last gear: gear fourth. This technique currently has two different forms which are bound man and tank man but we'll talk about bound man first. To activate this technique, Luffy first covers his arm with armament haki and then blows air into it. However, instead of inflating his bones like he does with gear third, he inflates his muscles and then inflates the rest of his body as well. Similar to how gear second constantly emits steam from Luffy's body, this form also happens to emit steam. Due to this, Luffy is incapable of standing still and needs to constantly bounce while in this form. Luffy’s strength and speed are increased immensely due to him mixing both gear second and gear third turning himself into one massive powerhouse. Since gear second lacks strength and gear third lacks speed, when Luffy mixes the two to create gear fourth he is almost unstoppable because he becomes incredibly fast and strong.

 

Gear fourth also gives Luffy amazing defensive capabilities. Even though his body is hardened with haki he still remains rubbery, which in turn makes attacks towards him bounce right off. This allows Luffy to counteract his weakness of sharp objects with this technique as his body is hard enough to stop it from piercing him, yet he is still elastic to the point where any attack will just bounce right off of. This technique also allows Luffy to bounce off of the air, similar to Geppo, and move so fast that he seemingly disappears, like Tsuru. 

Although this technique gives Luffy some amazing abilities, this form does have two downfalls. The first is that many of his techniques require Luffy to compress, rather than stretch. This means many of these techniques will only work at close range. The second downfall is that this technique can only be used for a short amount of time. After that time is up, Luffy is barely able to move his body, meaning if he doesn't get the job done before gear 4th deactivates he is donezo. As you might have guessed, gear 4th comes with a few new and powerful techniques, such as the Gum Gum kong gun, which is where luffy compresses his hand into his forearm and then unleashes an insanely powerful short ranged punch, the Gum Gum rhino Schneider, which is where Luffy compresses both of his feet into his shins to then release a double kick - powerful enough to send some of the strongest enemies flying, the Gum Gum culverin, which is where Luffy sends out a punch similar to the Gum Gum pistol, however this one is very different. This is one of the only techniques in gear 4th that stretches instead of compresses, but unlike his regular Gum Gum pistol punch this punch will continue to redirect itself until it finally makes contact with his target, no matter how many times it takes; there is no escape. Another attack is the Gum Gum king kong gun which essentially is the normal kong gun except this time around, Luffy blows even more air into his arms, similar to gear 3rd, to deliver an enormous compressed punch. In my opinion, I think this is probably currently Luffy's most powerful attack.

 Now it’s time to discuss the second gear fourth form: tank man. The full version of this form was achieved after Luffy ate a tremendous amount of biscuits, to the point where he was extremely round and bloated. Apparently, this form also drastically increases Luffy's durability. While Luffy was in his bound man form against Cracker, he almost got his arm cut off by Cracker’s sword, but once in tank man form, Cracker sword was unable to pierce Luffy at all. This also brought forth one new technique called the Gum Gum cannonball, which is where Luffy compresses his stomach - along with sucking the enemy into his compression - and then launches them a great distance away with a tremendous amount of power and speed. This concludes all of Luffy’s devil fruit abilities, making it now the time to look at his notable relationships, connections, and allies. Luffy has a ton of different allies so I will try and to briefly touch upon the important ones.

 The first group we need to talk about is his own crew. Luffy has some of the strongest and smartest pirates on his side which helped him out in a number of different situations. Generally Luffy tends to fight his battles on his own, but when needed, Luffy and his crew make a great team when it comes to taking down tough foes. Without them, Luffy would have never made it as far as he has and without them Luffy will not stand a chance at becoming The Pirate King. 

Luffy also has a fleet of pirate crews backing him; these crews are the beautiful pirates led by Cavendish, the Barto Club led by Bartolomeo, the Tonta Corps led by Leo, the Happo Navy led by Sai, the Martial Arts Alliance led by Ideo, the new Giant Warrior Pirates led by Haruden, and the Yonta Maria Grand Fleet led by Orlumbus. This adds up to a grand total of 5640 people ready to help Luffy anytime he is in need. 

Luffy essentially has a small pirate army following him which will without a doubt help his influence and help him defeat some very powerful enemies in the future. Luffy also has some considerable connections within his family. His father is the most wanted man in the world and the leader of the Revolutionary Army. Although the two haven't spoken yet, Luffy has made connections with other members of the Revolutionary Army so it is without a doubt that the two will end up coming together at some point. Dragon, Luffy’s father, has saved Luffy in Loguetown so it appears as though he does care about his son's life. This then means that one of the most powerful men in the One Piece universe is looking out for Luffy in one way or another. Additionally, Luffy's brother, Sabo, is second in command in the Revolutionary Army and those two always make it a goal to protect each other. In theory, Luffy will, without a doubt, have some sort of alliance with the Revolutionary Army, which so happens to be one of, if not the most, powerful and mysterious groups in the world. Once this alliance forms, it will definitely come into play later down the road. Luffy's grandfather, Garp, is also a notable ally. Although some wouldn’t necessarily deem each other allies.

 Luffy also has connections or friendships with many other pirates and their crews. For instance, he is allied with the Heart Pirates and Trafalgar Law, and together they are on a mission to defeat the young Kaido, who is considered the strongest creature in the world. This alliance will definitely be a key factor in accomplishing that goal, and seeing as they already overthrew the Doflamingo family, with their alliance we can see that together they can accomplish some great things Luffy is also allies with Boa Hancock who is a Shichibukai. Without his alliance with her, Luffy would not have been able to break into Impel Down or temporarily save Ace.  She is also very powerful and has a big influence on many people so it's good for Luffy to keep her close. Luffy is also allied with Jim Bay and the fish man pirates - which having the influence of the entire Fishman Island in addition to Jen Bay and the fish man pirates is a very good alliance to have. Along with this, Jim Bay is pretty much confirmed to eventually become a member of Luffy's crew so with his influence and power it will be awesome to have him aboard.

 Luffy is also allied with Silvers Rayleigh, who was the first mate of the former Pirate King himself. Rayleigh helped train Luffy in many different aspects over the time-skip, including how to control his haki. Without this training luffy would definitely still have a very long way to go to get to where he is now and having such a powerful and wise man on his side has proved to be a great asset. Luffy also carries a strong relationship with Shanks who is a Yonko and captain of the red-haired pirates. Although they may never fight together in the near future, Shanks is Luffy's role model and the person Luffy aims to someday grow strong enough to defeat or surpass. His relationship with Shanks is very important because it shows the level Luffy needs to reach to truly become the King of the Pirates. There are also a bunch of other pirate alliances or friendships Luffy has made but these were the ones I felt were most notable. Luffy also has a small connection to the Marines with Koby and connections to Alabasta, Skypiea and Dressrosa for helping save their kingdoms. These aren't even all the allies Luffy has, and the list just goes on and on. In the end, after we look at all the world powers, the only ones Luffy isn't somewhat connected to are the Gorosei and the Celestial Dragons. This means Luffy has connections in all the right places which will definitely help him throughout his journey and all of these connections are very important in calling Luffy one of the strongest characters in the One Piece world. 

Now that we have finally finished all the important information about Luffy, let me explain to you why I believe he is strong enough to be in this top 10 list and why I ranked him 10th for that matter. We just went over a lot of information… probably too much information for that matter, but knowing everything you can possibly know about these characters and looking at every angle is very important. Although many will argue whether or not Luffy deserves to be placed in this list, he is definitely one of the strongest characters in the One Piece World.

To start, I want to discuss his relationships. Since Luffy is the main character and having progressed this far, he has created a seemingly endless amount of allies and compared to other characters who will appear on the list, Luffy has more allies than almost every single one of them. Even if he doesn't have more allies, he has debatably more important ones. Luffy gets special treatment as the main character and to reach his goal of becoming the King of the Pirates he is going to need lots of help and tons of allies in important places to make that possible. As stated earlier, Luffy has at least one ally in every single type of World Power aside from the Gorosei and the Celestial Dragons so he really isn't missing out on much there. He also has a fleet of over 5,000 men ready at a moment's notice to help Luffy with whatever he needs. He has a powerful crew helping him achieve his dream, he has other pirate crews allied with him such as the Heart Pirates who are working together with the Straw Hat Pirates to take down a Yonko which will be no easy task, he has kingdoms such as Alabasta who are indebted to him, he has allied Shichibukai both current and former and there are so many more alliances that he has. In terms of influence and connections, Luffy is much more powerful than a lot of people who will appear on this list.

In regards to Luffy's normal physical strength he is definitely stronger than most thanks to Monkey D. Garp’s training when Luffy was a kid. Although he is not the strongest in the series, he is by far one of the strongest, especially with the creative use of his devil fruit. Speaking of which, it’s important to start out by saying that if Luffy wasn't as creative as he was with his devil fruit, he would be nowhere near as useful as he is right now. Creating new and exciting techniques all throughout the story to combat different enemies and to grow stronger really makes him stand out as one of the strongest. That being said, a huge downfall in regards to his fruit is how dangerous it can be. A lot of Luffy's strongest techniques take a huge toll on his body after he uses them, such as gear second slowly taking time off of his life span with every use, and gear fourth leaving him unable to move after prolonged use. At one point, he was not able to move for three whole days after using it twice in his fight against Doflamingo. Although his techniques are powerful enough to take out some of the most powerful foes, it comes at a big cost and unfortunately for Luffy, other characters in One Piece are able to perform impressive techniques as well but their abilities don't come with any backlash making them automatically better in comparison. It is important however to note that although Luffy’s devil fruit is not as powerful as other’s, he has been capable of still beating those people in combat through his creativity when it comes to using his abilities. Along with this, Luffy has found many ways to incorporate armament haki into his techniques to boost their potential, along with using haki to create entirely new techniques such as gear 4th. Without haki, gear fourth likely wouldn't even exist.

      When it comes to Luffy's haki abilities, he is definitely one of the more proficient haki users from what we've seen. Luffy has access to all three types of haki, which is already a very impressive accomplishment. With Conqueror’s haki, Luffy can already takeout any normal human with a weak will without even touching them, and on top of that, since Conqueror’s haki is based on willpower, Luffy has pretty much every other character in the series beat because Luffy's willpower is almost unmatched. His observation haki is also very impressive, but not as impressive as many were hoping. We’ve seen that Luffy can easily anticipate his enemy's moves yet he still manages to let his opponents strike him far too many times. It’s understandable that a lot of his opponents are very powerful and sometimes unpredictable, but Luffy really needs to step up his game and avoid some more hits. Without a doubt,observation haki is his weakest of the three. Finally, in regards to haki, his use of armament haki is also a force not to be reckoned with because Luffy has learned to easily cover his limbs quickly while fighting his enemies for both offensive and defensive purposes. Whether he is blocking an attack, or performing an attack his armament haki is on par with a lot of the other strong characters in One Piece. Additionally Luffy has incorporated his armament haki into many of his techniques as previously stated earlier, including gear 4th to create his currently strongest technique: the king kong gun. This is also one of the stronger techniques we've seen so far in the One Piece world. Lastly let’s look at his intelligence. In terms of intelligence, Luffy is definitely lacking. That being said, what he doesn't have in intelligence, he makes up with willpower. As stated just recently, Luffy has the most willpower compared to almost every other character. This really helps him when it comes to intelligence as he makes up for it with his very strong willpower. Also, since Luffy has a high immunity to poison now, he would be able to easily fight Magellan once again without having to worry too much about getting hurt, or dying for that matter. Thus, this makes Luffy superior to him which is why Magellan won't be on this list. Also, Luffy's devil fruit seems to be the natural weakness to Enel's devil fruit making it so Enel’s lightning techniques do nothing to him. For this reason, and the fact that Enel is not in the current storyline, he will also not be featured in this list: even though he is a very powerful character. Although Luffy is one of the strongest One Piece characters, he should be placed any higher than ten on this list. The main reasoning for this is because a lot of other characters on this list are just much stronger than Luffy in quite a few different ways. Although they may not stronger in every aspect but in the majority, they definitely are. Many will probably disagree with this when they see who some of these characters are because *spoiler alert* some of the characters that are on this list have battled and been defeated by Luffy. That being said, just because Luffy won those fights, does not mean he is the stronger character by any means. In fact, many of those fights were decided purely on the help of others, or just Luffy's overwhelming willpower in general. Although both of those things do factor in to making someone stronger, sometimes you're going to need to battle without them. 

 The other reason I cannot place Luffy any higher is because of one unfortunate issue: and that is the fact that he is the main character of the series. Because of this, he gets special treatment, or as many call it plot armor. In many situations, plot armor is a blessing and automatically will make these characters stronger in one aspect or another, but to me it is almost cheating. We know for a fact that when Luffy goes up against the newest enemy that he is almost guaranteed to defeat them somehow or someway. Although this isn't always the case, it is about 90% of the time, which is just unfair. The best example of this is Luffy's fight against Doflamingo. There is no way Luffy could have won this fight if the plot didn't depend on it. In addition to this, by the end of the story Luffy is going to end up being the strongest character, or at least one of the top five, no matter how you look at it. That being said, Luffy is still far from that point and has quite a long way to go. Since Luffy is undoubtedly one of the strongest characters in One Piece right now, in pretty much most of the aspects we are looking at, he takes the tenth place on this list. Since he is not as strong as some of the others on this list and he's not as strong as some of the opponents he managed to defeat in the past, sheerly because of plot armor, it would not be fair to place him any higher than number ten. 

#9: Kuzan

Just like Luffy, the first thing we're going to be going over is his physical abilities. Considering that Kuzan was formerly an admiral of the marines, he has immense physical strength. For instance, he was easily able to battle against “Diamond” Jozu and even White Beard himself while being seemingly equal in power to them. He was also able to take a haki imbued kick from Marco the Phoenix and come out seemingly uninjured. Also during his battle with Jozu, he took on a haki imbued strike from Jozu while he was covered in diamonds and Kuzan came out of it with only a small scratch on his lip showing that even some of his powerful attacks barely affect his defensive capabilities. He can also jump a very great distance in only a matter of seconds very similar to the techniques Soru. Which his speed could either be Soru or just his natural speed in general. We can also assume his endurance and stamina is unmatched because he was able to battle Sakazuki alone for ten whole days on an island before finally being defeated. Kuzan also has very good hearing as he was able to hear something in the water before the war at Marineford began. Also as a testament to his strength, Jaguar D. Saul, who was capable of lifting warships himself, has said that Kuzan’s strength was abnormal even before he became an admiral. We can safely assume that there's even more we have yet to see about this man's strength.

In regards to his intelligence, Kuzan is a very complex and hard to read character. He acted very lazy and aloof while he was an admiral so it often appears as though he isn't very intelligent but considering he was a marine admiral, I think it's safe to assume he is much smarter than he looks especially considering how he easily shed his lazy attitude once the Marineford War began. So although not much is known about how smart he actually is, I think it's safe to say we shouldn't underestimate his intelligence but I also don't think he's a genius either. 

Next, let's discuss his ability to use haki. Unfortunately, we haven't seen Kuzan use haki very much at all. However, we do know that he possesses it because it has been stated that all Marines with the rank of vice-admiral or higher had the ability to use haki and when Kuzan was a member of the marines, he was an admiral so we can safely assume his ability to use haki is definitely way above average. So far we have only seen one instance of Kuzan using haki which was armament haki and he used it along with Kizaru and Sakazuki to create a shield that stopped White Beard from destroying the execution platform. Now with the two-year time skip, it is also safe to assume that his haki has gotten stronger as well.

Now moving on to his devil fruit which is the Hie Hie no Mi otherwise known as the Chilly-Chilly fruit. This devil fruit is a logia type and allows Kuzan to turn both himself and the area surrounding him into ice. It should also be noted that this fruit is superior to the Yuki Yuki no Mi making it automatically a bit higher on the list even though Monet is dead so she is ineligible for this list anyways. It should also be noted that this fruit was able to go up against the Magu Magu no Mi for ten whole days and that fruit has been said to be this fruits natural weakness. So the very fact that this fruit was able to go up against the fruit it is weak against for ten whole days and actually put up a decent fight is a huge accomplishment by itself but in addition to that this fruit was also powerful enough to turn half of an island into a frozen wasteland over the course of that ten day battle and the fact that this fruit can also change the environment from prolonged use is also a big accomplishment in terms of how powerful this fruit can really be. This fruits main use is for combat purposes but it can also be used for other things. This fruit allows the user to freeze anyone or anything that comes into contact with them whether or not Kuzan makes contact with the object in question or the object makes contact with him. If a person were to be frozen and any area that is frozen is not treated properly and immediately that person will become frostbitten which leads to permanent tissue damage. Additionally if anyone he freezes completely is not thawed almost immediately, they will die. However, that person will also remain alive while frozen inside the ice for a short period of time and if the ice is broken with the person still inside they will also shatter killing them. This devil fruit also makes Kuzan himself very resistant to the cold, meaning he can easily survive in harsh frozen environments without freezing to death. Also unlike most other logia this fruit’s element is solid, meaning that although Kuzan could turn into his element to bypass attacks he will still be physically hit. Although, any ice that is broken from the hit will just reform right away, meaning that parts of his body were not in danger of being broken.

Along with his fruit, Kuzan has also created a number of different techniques that he can use, such as Ice Age where he places his hands on large bodies of water such as the ocean and can freeze the whole area in an instant along with everything else the water touches. This ice can stretch for miles and will not thaw for a whole week and Ice Age can be very useful for creating a platform to walk on or say freezing an enemy ship in place so it cannot escape at sea. The Ice Time Capsule, where Kuzan creates a wave of ice that travels along the ground and anything it touches will completely freeze. The Ice Ball, where Kuzan freezes a victim in a gigantic ice sphere from a distance and the Ice Block: Pheasant Beak, which is where Kuzan releases a gigantic wave of ice in the shape of a pheasant all at once. It should also be noted that Kuzan can create weapons such as a spear out of his ice and throw this spear at enemies from afar as a method of having a long-ranged attack because many of his techniques involve directly touching his enemies, meaning that most attacks need to be performed in close proximity. Also, this fruit is one of the few that can counteract its weakness to falling in water because Kuzan can simply freeze the water around him and then walk on the surface to escape the sea and that about does it for his devil fruit.

Lastly, let's look at his connections. Although Kuzan is no longer a marine, I think it's very safe to say that he still managed to remain friends with many of his allies who are still Marines, such as Smoker and Sengoku. It has also been said that while he was in the Marines, he was very popular with Marines of all ranks, which leads me to believe that even though he is not still a member of the Marines, he still has his connections from within to a certain extent. Unfortunately for him when he resigned from the Marines, he also cut all ties with the World Government so a lot of his useful connections are no longer available and although we currently don't know much about the situation, it seems as though Kuzan has allied himself with the Underworld Brokers in some way. It was also confirmed by the Gorosei that Kuzan has also allied himself with the Black Beard Pirates. Although we don't know what their working relationship is, having any alliance with a Yonko is a connection to be feared by many. 

So right away compared to all the information we have about Luffy, it feels as if Kuzan falls a bit short, which I can definitely see but there are a couple reasons why I think Kuzan is stronger than Luffy. The first being that Kuzon’s fruit is superior to Luffy's fruit. Although rubber itself can't exactly freeze, when rubber gets exposed to very cold temperatures it becomes hard and brittle, making it very hard to stretch. On top of that, when Luffy first fought Kuzan he was almost immediately defeated and at Marineford, although they didn't encounter each other for very long, it was very easy for Kuzan to take advantage of him once again. Two years later, Luffy is obviously much, much stronger but I'm also guessing Kuzan is as well. So although I feel like Luffy would put up a decent fight against him, I feel like the power of ice would end up doing nothing but slowing luffy down until he is ultimately defeated. In addition, if Kuzan was able to battle against the Magu Magu no Mi, which his fruit is weak against, for ten whole days, what do you think he could do against a fruit he has the advantage against? 

Although in comparison to Luffy, Kuzan has his advantages and of course, his disadvantages. Even though Kuzan puts on a very lazy demeanor, I still believe he is decently intelligent, whereas Luffy is not very intelligent, so I think in a battle of brains Kuzan would be able to take the cake. Physically, I feel like the two are about even, but Kuzan likely has the upper edge when it comes to raw physical power. In terms of haki, Luffy has the edge but only because we truly don't know what Kuzan can really do. I imagine he would need to be very proficient with it to achieve the role of admiral in the first place, but even so luffy has shown a great deal of mastery when it comes to haki and since Kuzan likely doesn't have conqueror's haki, Luffy has him beat. In terms of connections, Luffy definitely has the upper hand, but Kuzan also has allies and places Luffy does not, which also gives him some leverage. Not only is he somewhat allied with Marines from his time serving with them, but he also has some sort of relationship with some of Luffy's enemies, the Underworld and the Yonko, Black Beard. So although Luffy has many allies and some very important ones, Kuzan has allies that Luffy likely never will. So compared to Luffy, I think the two are about even in most aspects. Something Luffy is lacking, Kuzan reigns superior and something Kuzan is lacking, Luffy reigns superior but even with all that give-and-take, it ends up coming down to which one would have the advantage in a fight and because Kuzan has the superior devil fruit I think he would end up being stronger than Luffy. 

Now compared to other people who will appear on this list, Kuzan would still put up a good fight with each of them, but I believe that all of the other characters on this list would be able to defeat Kuzan in one way or another. Some of these characters have defeated him or went up against him in the past, while others on the list are simply just speculation. I feel it is also important to note that after Kuzan’s fight with Sakazuki, he has a lot of scars and possible tissue damage. He also ended up losing his left leg in their battle and now uses a leg made out of ice as a prosthetic, so I also feel that his missing limb could cause Kuzan a lot of problems during a battle. Whether his ice leg is broken during the battle and he doesn't have enough time to form a new one or it simply doesn't work as well as an actual leg, I feel it does hurt his combat potential. So overall, Kuzan is definitely one of the strongest characters in One Piece, but there are still quite a few characters that I feel are stronger than him and characters who have superiority to his abilities, so because of that Kuzan will remain at number nine.

#8: Don Quixote Doflamingo

Much like Luffy, we've got a lot of information to cover with Doflamingo, so go grab some more snacks, but like the rest we'll begin with his physical abilities. So I honestly don't even know what to start with regarding his physical abilities because Doflamingo has massive strength, insanely fast reflexes, incredible speed, great defensive abilities and endurance and that's not even everything. 

So let us begin with his physical strength, which to say the least is monstrous. For a few different examples, Doflamingo was never even injured until the Dressrosa Arc and with that you need to keep in mind he also participated in the Marineford War where so many big names were injured in one way or another, yet Doflamingo made it out without even a scratch. It has also been said by Trafalgar Law that if Doflamingo were to resign from the Shichibukai, the Marines would send their most powerful members, which are the admirals, to take him down because Doflamingo is so powerful that anyone else wouldn't even be able to put up a decent fight against him. Doflamingo, himself, also has a very monstrous build, being 10-feet tall and with that build and the strength he possesses, he is easily able to carry around a human being without ever getting tired. His arms are obviously very strong but his real strength lies in his legs because his fighting style specializes in immensely powerful kicks, being able to easily destroy large rocks, metal and even entire buildings with a single kick. Doflamingo's leg strength is also so immense that he was able to create a 360-degree shockwave with one swing of his leg that was powerful enough to cut through all three of the Dressrosa palace towers. When it comes to raw physical strength, Doflamingo is vastly superior to the majority of characters in One Piece. 

When it comes down to speed, Doflamingo is tremendously fast. Some of this, of course, comes from his devil fruit ability being able to pull himself in directions if need be, but by himself he is also fast enough to easily dodge most attacks that come his way. If he is unable to dodge it in time, he is still fast enough to block the incoming attack with ease, making both his speed and reflexes very hard to counter. He was also able to easily dodge Oars Junior’s attacks and jump over him, along with escaped Crocodile’s sandstorm without taking any damage. So although he is by no means the fastest character, he is fast enough to give most powerful characters a run for their life.

 Last but not least, Doflamingo’s defensive abilities and endurance are on a whole other level. Even at the very young age of eight years old, Doflamingo was able to withstand numerous sessions of torture from mobs of people without cracking under pressure, but instead swearing his revenge against them. So now over thirty years later, his pain tolerance is almost non-existent because it seems as if there are very few ways to actually hurt him. For instance, in the beginning of the Dressrosa Arc, when Baby 5 hit him with an explosive round to the face and it didn't damage him or faze him in the slightest and he just continued with what he was doing as though nothing happened, meaning his body must be so strong to the point where it takes a lot of power just to make him feel something. Another good example of his defensive capabilities was his ability to easily block Sanji's Diable Jamble kick and a barrage of Sanji's other kicks afterwards without taking any damage, which in comparison, Sanji's kicks are easily able to destroy a Pacifista’s body effortlessly, so the fact that Doflamingo could block those attacks so easily while taking no damage and not even using his haki is very very impressive. He was also able to take a direct hit from Law’s Gamma Knife, which must have been painful even for him and then he was able to still continue on as if his organs didn't just get badly injured. He was also able to take a barrage of Luffy's attacks without taking too much damage and even being able to still get back up and fight stronger than ever after getting pummeled time and time again by Luffy's Gear Fourth attacks until the point where Doflamingo was finally defeated. You still need to keep in mind that he did all of this while his organs were badly damaged, so during that situation imagine what Doflamingo could withstand if his insides were unharmed.

Moving on to his intelligence, Doflamingo may not be what we would consider a down right genius, but he is definitely very intelligent and a mastermind whenever it comes to his schemes. A few good examples of what I mean would be the way he attempted to separate law and Luffy when they entered Dressrosa by offering the Mera Mera no Mi as a prize because he knew that Luffy would never let anyone else have his brother's devil fruit. Sure enough, Doflamingo was correct, which shows that he has great insight and his plan ended up working heavily in his favor just like he thought it would, even if it would backfire later on. Another good example would be how Doflamingo used his connection with the World Government and the Celestial Dragons to make his enemies think he had left to this Shichibukai which would in turn trap them, which like I said earlier, the connections that these characters have are very important in deciding how strong you actually are, because with friends in high places like this you can accomplish some pretty devastating things, so the fact that Doflamingo actually uses these connections in his strategy shows how intelligent he really is. My last example would be how Doflamingo found a way to reclaim Dressrosa by offering the people their lives along with prize money for taking down the ones who overthrew him in the first place, which moved most people back to his side of the playing field for a little while at least. This example here truly shows that even if Doflamingo is seemingly backed into a corner or his plans are crumbling beneath him, he can still quickly think of a way to turn the tables back in his favor and then swiftly execute his new counter-attack, showing that there is more than meets the eye with this heavenly demon.

Next up is his ability to use haki and something I forgot to mention earlier when we were talking about his strength and defensive capabilities was that the majority of what we discussed was without his use of haki. Before I even begin to talk about his haki, can you imagine how much more powerful he is when he applies haki to his attacks and uses it for defense. He really is a monster! Anyway, Doflamingo was able to use both armament haki and conqueror's haki, which since we talked about what these are earlier, I'm just going to assume you guys remember what they do for the rest of the article.

The sheer fact that Doflamingo can use conqueror's haki is already an accomplishment by itself because there are currently only six living characters in the series who have access to it. Additionally, unlike the other characters, his conqueror's haki was first awakened when he was only ten years old. Unfortunately, we don't get to see Doflamingo use this haki too much, but he does use it against the G-5 soldiers during his fight with Smoker. We also get to see its effect when his haki clashes with Luffy's, but even if we don't get to see it too much, the fact that he still has it is enough to give him an edge on this list.

 However, when it comes to his armament haki, it's not as good as it could be, but don't get me wrong, it is still way above average. The reason I say it's not as good as it could be is because although he has no problem blocking powerful attacks like Luffy's Jet Gatling without taking any damage and using his haki to soften the blow from Luffy's Gear Fourth techniques, but the problem is his haki is not powerful enough to defend from sharp objects or blades because we can visibly see that his hand is cut when he grabs Law's sword. So defensively, on top of his monstrous endurance, his haki is pretty darn good but not the best and offensively, it basically just makes all of his attacks a bit more powerful, but that's what armament haki does for pretty much everyone else. Since Doflamingo already has immense strength his attacks can only get so much stronger with the use of haki, so offensively, I would say his haki is better than his use of it defensively because it seems to benefit him a bit more. Also, one thing I wanted to add was that Doflamingo can imbue the strings from his devil fruit with haki as well, meaning that his already overpowered strings can now injure logia users and when Doflamingo used this against Smoker who is a logia user he was severely injured because of it. So even if his haki doesn't necessarily make his devil fruit ability much stronger,  it does make it useful against other devil fruit users, specifically the logia, giving him a better edge in a fight.

Now since we just brought it up, let's move on to his devil fruit which is the Ito Ito no Mi or the String-String fruit. What this fruit does is it allows the user to create and manipulate strings. These strings are very thin, razor sharp, and virtually indestructible and can be attached to pretty much anything from people, objects and even non-solid objects like clouds. These strings can be generated from seemingly any part of the users own body, including their organs, and are mostly seen protruding from the users palms and fingertips. These strings can be used a ton of different ways as well such as swiping his hands to release piano wire looking strings that can slice through pretty much anything from people, buildings, weapons and more, creating bundled up strings that can be constructed into rope, bullets, and even an identical clone of himself. He can also control people like a puppet by attaching his strings to their spine and in addition to that, he can control multiple people at the same time and he can even fly or transport himself through the air by attaching his strings to nearby clouds, so the possibilities for this one are seemingly endless. Also like we stated earlier, Doflamingo can also use these strings to stitch up his internal organs when they are badly injured. Like I mentioned before, these strings are also so durable to the point where they are virtually indestructible because so far there are very few ways to damage them whatsoever. These strings are also so thin when they are not compressed to the point where if you weren't aware he had this ability you probably wouldn't even see the attack coming. Additionally, one small downfall is that these strings can seemingly cut through anything, but they are unable to cut through Sea-Prism Stone and these strings can also be blocked or deflected with armament haki. So if you were to say cover a sword in haki, these strings would not be able to cut through it.

Now that we know what this devil fruit can do, let's look at some of his signature techniques; Parasite, which is basically where he controls one or more people like a puppet. Goshikito, which is where Doflamingo swipes his hand to send string from each finger flying at his opponent or other object and these strings can cut through almost anything like we recently stated. Overheat, which is a bunch of string condensed into a giant whip used to basically whip his enemies, also in the anime, it should be noted that this whip appears to look as if it is emitting heat, but this is animeonly and as far as we know this whip does not actually generate heat, a Side note, this whip can also travel many kilometres so good luck running away from it. Termite, which are bullet strings that he fires from his fingers. Black Knight, which is Doflamingo's almost identical clone of himself made entirely out of strings it should, also be noted that Doflamingo is in control of this clone and the clone itself is pretty damn strong considering it's just moving string. This clone is strong enough to slap away a jet pistol from Luffy and since it does not feel pain it is very beneficial to use in a fight. It should also be noted that unlike Doflamingo’s normal strings, these Black Knight clones can be damaged such as one Kyros cut off a clones head. Although this could just be the strings separating rather than breaking, so that is up for debate. Athlete, which is where Doflamingo attaches strings to his foot and then sends a powerful kick to his opponent. This attack was also powerful enough to injure luffy even when he was defending with armament haki. Finally the Torikago, better known as the Bird Cage. This is considered Doflamingo's ultimate technique. To perform this technique, Doflamingo shoots an enormous amount of string into the air that forms what appears to be a giant bird cage around Doflamingo's location that covers a very great distance. The string pillars then trap anyone on the inside of the cage because there is no way to escape without defeating Doflamingo himself and the reason for that is because these pillars will cut almost anything they come in contact with. Doflamingo can also choose to bring the cage boundaries closer to him, forcing people on the inside to inevitably come closer and closer to his location and he can also control the speed in which the cage moves at will. Although the wires cannot be stopped without defeating Doflamingo, the cage can be slowed down with enough physical forces pushing it back Like we stated earlier, most of these techniques can also be applied with haki to make them both stronger and able to hit logia devil fruit users who were previously intangible making this devil fruit something to really fear.

But it doesn't even stop there, Doflamingo has found a way to awaken his devil fruit, which is something we have not seen very much of yet in the series. As of making this article, he is currently the only confirmed paramecia devil fruit user to awaken his fruit. This awakening allows him to transform his surroundings into string, so the ground nearby buildings and other objects can become Doflamingo’s strings at will, making this fruit seem like a whole other beast entirely. With these new strings, Doflamingo has also created a whole new plethora of techniques which we will go over now; Break White, which is where Doflamingo creates two gigantic pillars or sheets of string that wrap around his opponent and crush them. Off-White, which is where Doflamingo creates two masses of string as a shield or defensive measure that can also push away his opponent. Flap Thread, which is where Doflamingo uses tons of strings from the surrounding environment to form his string into a bunch of points which all fly at his opponent in the form of wings and are said to feel like 1000 arrows piercing all at once and God Thread, which is where Doflamingo forms the strings into 16 thick strings that he sends at his opponent all at once. Although this attack was deflected by Luffy's King Kong Gun, it still managed to pierce through Luffy's arms slightly before being overpowered. However this was done with the help of Doflamingo imbuing haki into the God Thread as well, so it is possible for him to add haki to his awakened abilities, making them even stronger if you can believe that, but that pretty much covers his devil fruit abilities.

So lastly, let's talk about his notable connections and allies. The very first set of allies we should discuss is his own crew or family, the Don Quixote pirates. These allies are by far the most important to Doflamingo and he shows undying love and respect to each member in his upper ranks and will continue to show respect unless one of them were to betray him. Each member of his family is very powerful in their own way and many of them have a devil fruit, meaning that he also has a small army of different devil fruit abilities at his disposal. With this crew, he was also able to take over the entire kingdom of Dressrosa and rule it accordingly. Although each member of this elite family are notable in their own way, let's talk about the very important ones. The most important are definitely his four elite officers, Virgo, Treble, Pica and Diamante. Each one of them are responsible not only for Doflamingo's well-being, especially when he was young, but they are also each insanely powerful, not by any means on Doflamingo own level of strength, but they are strong enough to go toe-to-toe with a member of the Supernovas like Zorro. Virgo was probably the most important member of the four, regarding what he was tasked with doing, which was infiltrating the Marines from the inside as an undercover agent. Doflamingo has also said Virgo is his most convenient and trustworthy Marine officer, meaning that Doflamingo likely has other undercover agents hiding within the Marines, but now that Virgo is dead and we have no proof of others on the inside, this is no longer valid. 

Another important member of his crew would of course be Sugar, specifically for the use of her devil fruit ability, which allowed Doflamingo to have an even tighter grasp on Dressrosa and what happens to his people if they disobey. Doflamingo also had the undying loyalty of Bellamy and the Bellamy Pirates and though they have defected since, it opens up the discussion as to whether or not Doflamingo has other pirate crews who are allied to him, which I would say he definitely does. So even though we don't know any of them offhand, Doflamingo definitely has other crews working under him that could help him whenever he is in need. Although his defeat definitely took a hit on this next connection, Doflamingo also has connections to the Underworld and he himself was one of the most influential Underworld Brokers because of this we can only imagine that Doflamingo has a lot of very dangerous connections that we aren't even aware of . Considering that Doflamingo was an owner of a slave trading house and he sold Caesar Clown’s artificial devil fruits through the Underworld as well as along with other items, we can only assume that for his services, other members of the underworld would be willing to help him out if he were in need. 

Which because of the Underworld, it leads me to his next connection which is his connection to the Yonko, Kaido. Doflamingo, along with Caesar Clown, supplied Kaido with the SMILES he uses for his crew of beasts. Kaido purchases these through Doflamingo via the Underworld and although Doflamingo fears Kaido and was afraid Kaido would kill him if he could not produce the SMILES, Kaido still sent one of his strongest men, a member of the three Disasters, Jack the Drought to try and rescue Doflamingo from the Marines. This right here proves that Doflamingo's connection to Kaido is a very important one to the point where Kaido would send one of his strongest men to try and set him free. Doflamingo having a Yonko as his ally is definitely a very important connection to have.

Finally, Doflamingo also has a weird connection with the World Government to say the least. Doflamingo himself has descended from one of the twenty kings who founded the World Government eight hundred years ago, so Doflamingo himself was a World Noble back in the day, before his father forfeited their rights as Noble to live among the people. Since then, Doflamingo has found a way to blackmail the World Government or more specifically the Celestial Dragons with his knowledge of the national treasure in Mary Geoise. From this, Doflamingo blackmailed the world government into making him a Shichibukai and the Celestial Dragons to get somewhat equal rights to them so because of that Doflamingo is able to accomplish things that many people never could, such as when he got a false story printed in the newspaper about himself leaving the Shichibukai to fool Luffy and Law. There is literally no one else besides the World Government and the Celestial Dragons who could pull something like this off. Although he's not exactly on good terms with the World Government or the Celestial Dragons for that matter, he still has the ability to use their power for his own benefit, which is something pretty much every other character on this list will never be able to do. Also as a side note, it was revealed that the person who commanded Doflamingo to kill Gecko Moria was somebody above even Sengoku at the time. So Doflamingo has connections in high places and that pretty much does it for all his notable allies.

So in conclusion, let's talk about why I believe he is one of the strongest, if it's not obvious already, and why I placed him where I did on this list. To me Doflamingo is one of the physically strongest characters revealed in the series so far, in terms of both his offense and defensive abilities. Do I think Doflamingo is the strongest out of everyone else physically? Not a chance, but compared to some of the other characters on this list, I still think his physical capabilities remain supreme and his pain tolerance is also on a whole new level. Now personally, I believe some of that has to do with his willpower which, in turn, goes hand in hand with his ability to use conqueror’s haki. Speaking of his haki, I think Doflamingo is a weird case because I feel like his armament haki is of course way above average but compared to some of the other characters it seems as if it's a bit lacking because Doflamingo is already physically a monster so because of that I feel most of his attacks wouldn't see a big increase in power when he uses it versus other characters like Luffy whose haki greatly increases his attack power, but because Doflamingohas access to conqueror's haki he still gets a big thumbs up when it comes to his haki abilities. 

Regarding his devil fruit, I think Doflamingo has one of the most powerful, useful and versatile devil fruits in the One Piece world and he has definitely shown what it is capable of. I won't repeat everything because we went over a lot, but the main points I make is the amount of things this devil fruit is capable of doing is astronomical. The ability to apply haki to his strings to hurt logia users is only a big benefit and the shear factor that Doflamingo was able to take over an entire kingdom with his abilities is crazy. That just shows on a larger scale what he is capable of. On top of that, he is also one of the only characters who have been confirmed to have awakened his devil fruit giving him an entirely new range of abilities and making it seem as if Doflamingo has a different devil fruit entirely. The final thing I want to mention about his devil fruit is that compared to a fruit like Luffy's Doflamingo's devil fruit does not harm him physically with extended use of certain techniques which automatically gives him the edge.

Regarding his intelligence, I feel like Doflamingo is one of those characters people don't really think of as being overly intelligent, but to me he is one of the smartest characters revealed so far. Now, I don't think he is at the level of a genius by any means, but he's pretty darn close. I've already went over a bunch of examples above but basically he has a plan for seemingly every possible situation or outcome and he knows how to easily manipulate anyone he comes incontact with. Finally, Doflamingo has a lot of good connections in some powerful places. He has a Yonko, powerful crew, people in the Marines most likely and the power of the Celestial Dragons at his fingertips so although he may not have as many allies as say Luffy he does have some of the most powerful at his disposal, making him someone you don't want to make an enemy of. 

So in regards to why I think he is stronger than Kuzan, it brings me back to their encounter when Doflamingo was attacking Smoker. Kuzan came up and froze Doflamingo completely and Doflamingo was able to easily break himself out of the ice, which is something we have not seen many characters able to do yet. For instance when Kuzan fought against Jozu, Jozu was completely frozen and was unable to break himself out resulting in Jozu losing an arm, whereas Doflamingo was able to easily break out of the ice. Now in terms of raw power, I feel like Doflamingo has the edge, but Kuzan would still be able to give him a pretty difficult time. I also think Doflamingo is more intelligent than Kuzan giving him a better sense of strategy so I feel like by himself Kuzan would not be able to take Doflamingo down, but he would be able to give Doflamingo a solid run for his money. Another reason why I believe Kuzan wouldn't be able to defeat Doflamingo is because in regards to Luffy, I don't think Luffy would have ever been able to beat Doflamingo if it wasn't for Law’s Gamma Knife and of course Luffy's famous plot armor. If Luffy himself needed help to defeat Doflamingo, I feel like Kuzan would also need some sort of help to take Doflamingo down.

Now moving on to Luffy, like I just said, it would be impossible for Luffy to beat Doflamingo if Luffy wasn't the main character and the only reason why Luffy was able to take him down was because of his allies, which does help make a character stronger, but like I've already said before, sometimes you need to do things on your own. Don't get me wrong, the fact that Luffy is strong enough to go up against Doflamingo and even defeat him is one hell of an accomplishment, but just because someone beats someone else in a fight doesn't always mean they are the stronger individual. So what I'm looking at is would Doflamingo be able to beat Luffy's and Kuzan's raw physical power? Yes. Would he be able to beat them in a battle of intelligence? Yes. How does his devil fruit compared to theirs? It's definitely on par if not better. How is his haki compared to theirs? It's not quite as good as Luffy's in my opinion, but I think he has equal at least against Kuzan and How does his allies fare with theirs? Now interestingly enough, they all have a different set of powerful allies and I feel as if all three of them were to have some sort of three-way war against each other's allies, Doflamingo would put up one hell of a fight, considering his connections with both a Yonko and the World Government, but would he win that's up for debate. I feel like because of all of this Doflamingo definitely deserves to be above both of those two on the list and Doflamingo has without a doubt earned his spot as the eighth strongest character in One Piece but if he's only number eight who could possibly be stronger than him? 

#7. Charlotte Cracker

 Let us start with Charlotte Cracker’s physical abilities! Without even talking about specifics, Cracker is without a doubt very powerful. Cracker is powerful enough to be one of the three highest ranking members in the Yonko’s Big Mom’s crew, which are dubbed the “3 Sweet Commanders”. To be considered strong enough to rank highly in a Yonko’s crew is definitely something that cannot be achieved without some serious power. Additionally Cracker currently also has the third highest bounty revealed in the series so far which is 860,000 million bellies. This means that the world government considers him a highly dangerous individual.

 Before we continue on, something else that needs to be brought up really quick would be the other two sweet commanders: Charlotte Smoothie and Charlotte Katakuri. As of right now, Katakuri hasn't even been revealed. Since we know nothing about these two, they will not be on this list. When it comes to smoothie, she was only revealed a couple chapters ago so we do know a little bit of information about her, but not nearly enough to put her on this list, that being said it is important to acknowledge that if Smoothie and Katakuri are anything like Cracker in terms of abilities, they would definitely have a place on this list; however, as of right now, we simply don't have enough information to decide where they would land on this list. It is also important to note that Smoothie has the second highest bounty revealed in the series, which is 932,000,000 bellies, so she is without a doubt on the same level or higher than cracker based on bounty alone. As stated previously, since there is not enough information about her abilities she will not be on this list. They do deserve an honorable mention regardless and it is fair to assume that she would be somewhere near Cracker on this list if she were to be placed on it. Let’s get back to Cracker!

In One Piece, Cracker is so powerful, that even the sound of his voice is enough for the nearby homies to cower in fear. This implies that Cracker is so powerful that even his comrades fear of what he can possibly do. When it comes to his physical strength, Cracker is easily able to carry around a sword that is much bigger than his actual body and swing it at very great speeds, thus showing us that the weight of that massive sword is almost nothing to him. He is also able to physically repel Luffy and his attacks without any problem whatsoever. In regards to his durability, Cracker is a bit lacking because of how he was knocked unconscious from Luffy's tank man technique; however, to be fair, he flew quite a long way crashing into multiple objects along the way as well so it must have been a very powerful attack that consequently did a lot of damage to him. That being said, it is highly probable that the other characters on this list would still be able to get back up and fight after taking on that attack, thus his durability could be a tad bit better. It’s still not too bad because Cracker was easily able to withstand some of Luffy's other powerful attacks without even being injured. 

What Cracker lacks in durability, he makes up for in stamina as he was able to easily fight and chase after Luffy for 11 hours while constantly using his devil fruit ability; which does take a small toll on his stamina. The fact that he was able to keep going even after that is very impressive. Another thing worth adding is that his physical attacks are also greatly increased with armament haki, but that will be discussed soon. In regards to his intelligence, Cracker is a lot smarter than most people think, especially when it comes to deception. Although we will talk about his actual devil fruit ability in a little bit, Cracker used his devil fruit’s ability to hide in a biscuit soldier he created as a suit of armor, and because the biscuit soldier looks nothing like his actual appearance the world government and the Marines don't know what Cracker’s actual appearance is; that or they think his biscuit soldier is Cracker’s actual appearance. Due to his deception, his wanted poster even features this false appearance. This goes to show that Cracker is so crafty that he successfully fooled the world government this entire time. 

Another example of his deception is the way he tried to fool Luffy into thinking his devil fruit ability was the ability to multiply his limbs and weapons. Finally, on top of all of this, he also made his biscuit armor cough up jam that looked like blood to make it appear as if he was badly wounded, when in reality, he wasn't even injured. This led into a very tricky counter-attack! 

The fact that Cracker is smart enough to not only deceive the world government, but also deceive his opponent more than once in the middle of a battle, is something that most characters wouldn't be able to do. Although he may not be a genius, or close to one by any means, he is still a rather smart individual.

 Moving on to his haki abilities, Cracker only has the ability to use armament haki. However, his armament haki is definitely the strongest we've seen on this list so far. Luffy, who was our previous best armament haki user on this list, has even said during battle that Cracker’s haki was extremely tough; that right there is saying something in terms of its defensive capabilities. When it comes to his offensive use of haki, Cracker can not only apply this to his normal attacks, but he can also apply it to his gigantic sword. When he does his swords cutting power, his overall attack power is greatly increased, to the point where Cracker almost cut off luffy's arm with his haki imbued sword while luffy was using gear fourth! In comparison, Doflamingo’s awakened strings imbued with haki were only able to slightly damage Luffy's gear fourth arm, so the fact that Cracker would have been able to cut it off shows how powerful he and his haki really are. 

Cracker can also apply his haki to his biscuit soldiers and armor to make them even more powerful as well. When it comes to his ability to use armament haki, he is definitely the best on the list so far.That being said, he does not possess Conqueror’s haki or observation haki so his haki is not quite as good in terms of variety.

Next to discuss is Cracker’s devil fruit: Bisu Bisu no Mi. This devil fruit allows the user to generate and to manipulate biscuits at will. Making them a biscuit human with this ability, the user can seemingly create an unlimited amount of these biscuits and the biscuits themselves can be manipulated in a ton of different ways. It is really only limited to the user's imagination. Considering that Cracker himself is somewhat of a master craftsman, he is capable of manipulating these biscuits into large moving human-like figures that are very realistic. Cracker can also create weapons for these figures and if he so chooses, extra limbs and weapons. Cracker can control their movements at will, and so far there does not seem to be a limit to the amount he can control at once. Additionally, he can also get inside a biscuit soldier and control them from the inside. These biscuit soldiers are extremely strong and durable, but they can still be broken with enough brute force; water will soften the biscuits to the point where they can be eaten, so this devil fruit does have a slight disadvantage in rainy weather or wet areas. With this devil fruit, we've only seen Cracker use two different techniques so far one of which is biscuit soldier. This is where Cracker creates and controls his soldiers made out of biscuits. His second technique is hard biscuit. This technique is used when Cracker himself is inside a biscuit soldier. He then multiplies his biscuit shaped shield and covers it with armament haki. Then he slams it into his opponent, mainly to pin them to the ground. It could also be used as a way to repel or stun his enemies. 

This devil fruit is definitely a very powerful and useful one however some of the others on this list are better, mainly because this fruit affects his stamina with prolonged use, and in certain situations it is also much weaker, in particular when it rains.That being said, this fruit can be used in a lot of different ways, other than just creating soldiers and weapons; just think of all the potential things Cracker could create with all these biscuits! Because of all the extra possibilities this is still one of the better devil fruits for sure. 

Finally, let's look at Cracker’s notable connections or allies. His only big connection that we currently know about is the Yonko and his own mother, Big Mom, and her crew. Cracker himself is one of her three commanders so because of that, he has great authority within the crew itself. This gives him the capability to single-handedly command large fleets into battle. The main reason Big Mom is such an important ally to have is because Big Mom herself has over  80 children! Cracker himself is her tenth son. That being said, what Big Mom strives to do is marry each of her children into a family that will somehow benefit or strengthen her crew. With over 80 children who will eventually be married into powerful families, therefore creating powerful allies because once these allies are married into her family they are automatically considered part of her crew, the amount of allies that Big Mom possesses could be somewhat endless. Two examples of these allies are the German 66, and although they are not allies by marriage quite yet, they are still currently on good terms, the second example would be the fish man pirates, both of which are very powerful groups of individuals. 

Another thing that should be noted is Big Mom's crew and children themselves are each powerful in one way or another from what we've seen. Thus, having this crew on Cracker’s side proves to be a very beneficial and powerful asset to have. Additionally when Cracker was defeated by Luffy, a whole entire army of Big Mom’s crew were summoned to take Luffy down. From that alone, it can be seen that this crew does not take things lightly. Big Mom also has a deep connection with the underworld similar to Doflamingo. What this connection consists of is currently unknown, however the fact that she has ties to the underworld is enough to secure her, and in turn Cracker, a higher role on the playing field. Other than this huge example, Cracker does not have any other known allies that we are aware of.

 Now that we have gone over everything, let's discuss why Cracker is one of the strongest and why he is placed at number 7 on this list. Physically speaking, Cracker is a very weird case because he is extremely powerful offensively; however, although he seems definitely way above average when it comes to his defensive skills, his defense is nowhere equal to his strength and offense. With that being said, he can still take some of the most powerful attacks head on with no issue. As stated previously, what he lacks in defense, he makes up in stamina. Along with this, because his devil fruit takes a toll on his stamina with prolonged use, it is very beneficial for his stamina to be extra high: which it definitely is. In regards to his lack of defense, he also makes up for it with his army of biscuit soldiers who will continue to defend him whenever he chooses so. Physically,  he is definitely one of the strongest but once again, not close to the overall strongest on this list. 

His intelligence is really something that is surprising to many because he is very smart when it comes to the art of deception, which is something that isn't easy to do if you aren't very intelligent. When it comes to deception, Cracker is some sort of genius because he managed to fool the world government and the Marines with his false appearance for years, and with what we saw during his fight with Luffy, you can tell that he can easily think of ways to fool or throw off his opponent in a mere instant. It is safe to say that Cracker is above average when it comes to intelligence.

 His haki’s are definitely top tier and when it comes to armament haki, Cracker is our strongest example of it so far; being able to easily overpower other proficient armament haki users with no problem whatsoever. That being said, Cracker doesn't have access to the other two types of haki. His full potential with haki simply cannot be accessed.

His devil fruit is a very interesting one to say the least, and Cracker has found ways to use it for his deceptive ways helping him have a great offense and a better defense. One of the downfalls of the fruit is definitely that it takes a toll on Cracker with prolonged use and this is  automatically considered as a bad thing, considering that we have characters out there who can use their fruits to a better extent without causing problems to themselves. On top of that, this fruit is also less useful in certain environments so that too adds another strike against this fruit. This however does not mean that this is a bad fruit. The fact that Cracker can create a seemingly unlimited amount of these biscuits means that he basically has his own army ready to assault his enemies at any given moment, but because cracker is also a master craftsman with these biscuits it is safe to assume that he could also transform these biscuits into other useful combat tools such as different types of weapons, barriers, and traps. Because of this, this fruit has even more unexplored potential which is something many fans would like to see. 

Cracker can also apply haki to his biscuits which means not only do they become stronger and more durable, but they also now have the ability to hurt logia users. This means that this devil fruit could easily go up against almost anyone, so this devil fruit deserves a solid 7 out of  10 with what we know about it right now. By no means is it a bad devil fruit but compared to some of the others that will be on this list, it falls a tad bit short. 

Finally, in regards to his connections, at the moment it feels as if he doesn't have nearly as many as others on this list but it is important to consider that there are probably plenty of allies the audience doesn't know about. When it comes to Big Mom and the allies she has gathered, Cracker pretty much has the biggest army we've seen at his disposal. Because Big Mom has done nothing but marry allies into her crew we can safely assume she has some of the most powerful allies ready to help her and Cracker at any given time. Not only is her crew enormous, but they are also probably one of the most powerful. Along with this, the ties Big Mom has to the underworld and the New Fish-Man Pirates we can predict that there is even more than meets the eye. Cracker has some of the best allies on his side and they are also something that other characters we have explored so far don't have on their side.other than the underworld, this in turn, gives cracker an edge. With all of this being said, how does Cracker hold up when compared to the other characters we've looked at so far, and how is he superior to them? 

Compared to Luffy, Cracker has the edge when it comes to raw physical power but his defense is not quite as good as Luffy's. Since they were both able to continue fighting for that 11 hours it's safe to say that both of their stamina is pretty great. Cracker is definitely more intelligent than Luffy and his armament haki is far superior to his; however, Luffy does have access to the other two types of haki giving him a variety and a little bit of an edge. In terms of devil fruits, Cracker’s is honestly better or about the same in0 usefulness compared to Luffy because Luffy's is a little more versatile from what we've seen and Crackers does have a couple downfalls like his weakness in the rain; whereas Luffy's doesn't have as many downfalls. Other than that, it takes a huge toll on his body and so does Cracker’s with prolonged use, but luckily for Cracker, his does not harm his well being, it just wears him out. If there was nothing else to evaluate this would be a stalemate because they both have their pros and cons. Regarding their connections, Luffy has some pretty powerful allies, but Cracker’s connection to Big Mom gives him more allies and sometimes numbers is all you need. However, it is important to remember that Big Mom has some very powerful people in her crew, a lot of which we probably don't even know about. It is highly possible that Cracker’s allies might even be more powerful than Luffy's. When it comes down to Luffy versus Cracker in a fight, Luffy beating Cracker in the story is yet another instance of Luffy's plot armour. If Nami wasn't there to aid Luffy in softening Cracker’s soldiers for Luffy to eat, Luffy would have been toast; especially because cracker would have been able to cut off Luffy's arm with haki, even when luffy was in gear fourth. This shows just how powerful Cracker is! Because of this, Cracker is stronger than Luffy.

 In regards to Kuzan, ice would probably be pretty effective against the biscuit soldiers to slow them down but we do not know for sure. Albeit, if Doflamingo was able to break through the ice without any help, Cracker should probably be able to do the same thing without a problem. Freezing Cracker himself wouldn't be very effective as Cracker’s haki and physical abilities are also far greater than Kuzan’s. In terms of allies, although Kuzan is allied with Blackbeard, that alliance would not be enough to takedown Big Mom's crew, so Kuzan is definitely taking the L on this one.

 As for Doflamingo, the main deciding factor would be the fact that Big Mom was extremely confident that Cracker could defeat Luffy knowing full well that he took down Doflamingo. This means either Big Mom knows nothing about Doflamingo, she really underestimated him, or she knows for a fact that Cracker is stronger than Doflamingo. Considering Big Mom has connections to the underworld, it's safe to say she knows a great deal about him. It is a difficult decision to place Cracker above Doflamingo because in almost every aspect, these two characters are even or one of them has a slight edge. For instance, physically, Cracker has the edge offensively, and Doflamingo has the edge defensively. Doflamingo is more intelligent than cracker but Cracker is still intelligent enough to fool even Doflamingo in a fight. In terms of haki, Cracker has much more powerful armament haki than Doflamingo, but Doflamingo also has Conqueror’s haki, giving him a better variety and showing more willpower. In terms of devil fruits, Doflamingo would probably prevail against the biscuits, but Cracker could use armament haki with his biscuits to block Doflamingo’s strings; that being said, we don't know for sure. To be safe, we will give the edge to Doflamingo in terms of devil fruit abilities. Connections wise, they are close to equal because they both have Yonko on their side and ties to the underworld, but Doflamingo does have the power of a world noble to use as well. However, this is where things get interesting  because there is a chance Big Mom has a world noble allied into her crew. This would give Cracker these same exact tools through his allies. Obviously, this would not be quite to the same extent but Cracker may have more powerful allies, simply because of how massive Big Mom's crew is.It seems safe to assume that these two are pretty much even in that aspect. Although Doflamingo and Cracker are extremely close, with what we have seen of Cracker so far, he would probably end up having the edge over Doflamingo locking in his position at number seven.

#6. Marco the Phoenix

 To begin, Marco is very well rounded when it comes to his physical abilities, having a lot to offer for each area. Regarding his physical strength, he is definitely very strong and he generally uses a fighting style that involves a lot of kicking. These kicks are also proven strong enough to kick both Kizaru and Kuzan hard enough to the point where they flew a great distance away. Regarding his normal physical defense, we don't get to see much of it because of how he usually defends himself with his devil fruit ability, but we'll talk about that later. Although regarding his defense, Marco was able to take a powerful hit from Monkey D. Garp head-on and crash into the ground without taking much damage so we have seen that Marco can easily take a hit. He also possesses great endurance and stamina, being able to take multiple direct hits from Kizaru laser beams, while he was unable to defend himself because his devil fruit ability was shutdown with Sea-Prism Stone handcuffs. Yet after all these laser attacks, he was still able to get back up. Lastly, he also possesses incredible speed, being able to quickly get from one place to another, such as when he defended White Beard from Kizaru's laser attack in only a matter of seconds. So although in terms of his physical abilities his defense is his weak point, he more than makes up for it with his devil fruit ability, which we will soon discuss, but otherwise physically, Marco is definitely very well-rounded and very strong making his physical abilities useful in almost every situation and allowing him to fight toe-to-toe with some of the strongest characters in the series.

In regards to his intelligence, Marco is what I would like to call moderately intelligent from what we've seen about his character. It's hard to classify because Marco hasn't really shown any signs of stupidity or any signs of being very intelligent. So in terms of intelligence, I would like to say he is just your average man but since we also don't know much about his intelligence I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's smarter than your average person. Marco does know how to think fast and react quickly during a fight along with how to properly execute his attacks at a moment's notice and he's also very perceptive so I would like to think that because he has such a quick mind he would be smarter than your average person. But to be fair, since we can only assume we'll just say that he's somewhere between average and above average intelligence. 

When it comes to his haki, we know that Marco is able to use armament haki and he is able to use it pretty proficiently. In fact, he was able to successfully use his haki to kick away both Kizaru and Kuzan whom are both logia users and can only be physically forced to be tangible through the use of armament haki. Marco also hits Sakazuki with a haki imbued attack but all it did was irritate him. So from this, we can likely assume that Sakazuki’s haki is just some sort of next-level shit because being the successor of White Beard's crew who was a Yonko, we can assume that Marco is on a similar level to White Beard himself. Maybe not quite on White Beards level, but he's still pretty close. So with that, we can also assume that his ability to use haki is definitely much stronger than it appears. However since Marco cannot use conqueror’s haki or observation haki, he does lack variety.

Now onto his devil fruit, which let me just say, his devil fruit is one of the main reasons I believe Marco deserves to be on this list. Although the devil fruit itself has not been officially named, it is one of the only two currently revealed Mythical Zoan devil fruits and it allows Marco to turn into a phoenix. Like all normal zoan devil fruits, this one gives Marco increased physical abilities and it also gives him the ability to fly when he transforms into the phoenix. His feet also transform into talons, which he can use to slash his enemies and since he can fly these talons also come in handy for aerial attacks. Just like most others own users, Marco also has a human beast form, where he can transform into a mixture of his human and phoenix form. However unlike other zoans, Marco can choose where he wants his body to transform at will so for instance, if he wanted his head to transform into the phoenix, while the rest of his body remains in human form, he could do that. Marco generally just chooses to transform his arms into wings so he can still use his powerful kicks on his enemy and Marco also occasionally likes to transform his arms and legs, but keep his torso and head in his human form. Now so far this might just sound like your average zoan devil fruit, but it gets much, much better. 

This fruit also has an additional two different abilities that make it seem like a zoan, logia and a paramecia devil fruit all in one. These abilities come from the blue flames the phoenix emits. You see these flames allow Marco to regenerate any wounds he receives and because of this Marco is able to take enormous amounts of damage and still come out as if he was never hurt in the first place. Also since Marco can generate these flames selectively on his body, he can also heal whichever parts he wants whenever he wants and the process of regeneration takes only a matter of seconds so because he has this regeneration ability his fruit also has the characteristic of a paramecia devil fruit which is very useful. This regeneration ability is essentially his ultimate defense like I was talking about earlier because any hit Marco can take he can also heal instantly, meaning that he must have a high pain tolerance and endurance to be able to take so many hits even if they only hurt him for a moment. The reason this fruit also appears to have some logia capabilities is because it appears as though attacks can pass right through him when he is in his phoenix form. We first saw this when Marco flew up to the execution platform while being shot multiple times by Marines and each bullet passed right through him and didn't seem to affect him whatsoever. However shortly after he was struck down from a punch by Monkey D. Garp, which was more than likely infused with haki. This fruit is so unique because it has the characteristics of a zoan, logia and paramecia, making it one of the most useful devil fruits of all time. 

Finally, let's talk about his connections. His biggest and most notable ally was definitely White Beard before his death. Although since White Beard is dead, this can no longer count as an ally, but since White Beard’s death, Marco has taken over as the captain of the White Beard crew. So although White Beard is dead, his crew still remains as Marco's most notable ally. Which this crew was made up of 1600 men and I do imagine that many of these men fell the Battle of Marineford or have since left the crew, but I'm willing to bet at least 400 of them remain, which is still quite a few. On top of that, White Beard also had 43 different crews who were serving under him, so I'm willing to bet that Marco still has at least half of these crews as his allies even if they don't directly serve under him. They would be willing to help him if need be. So already Marco has a crew and potentially a fleet on his side along with great influence. Jinbe and the New Fish-Man Pirates are also allies of White Beard, meaning that they are likely now allies of Marco. On top of that, he also now has Luffy as an ally and as we stated earlier Luffy has a great deal of allies on his side, giving Marco a much bigger set of connections from the ones he already has. Finally, although I wouldn't exactly call them allies, Marco is on good terms with the Yonko, Shanks, meaning that if the two had some sort of common enemy, they would probably be more than willing to help each other out. So although he may not have the most powerful allies on his side he still has some very powerful ones. Although it should also be noted that since Black Beard defeated the White Beard Pirates along with Marco during the timeskip, his current whereabouts or status are currently unknown meaning that a lot of his allies also could have perished.

So even if it may seem like Marco is lacking a bit compared to some of the other characters we've discussed, I do have to disagree and say there's much more to him than meets the eye. Marco was the first division commander in a Yonko’s crew meaning that he had to be nothing but the best to achieve that role. Physically, Marco is very strong and pretty well-rounded and as we discussed, he does have the ultimate defence. So although Marco is lacking a bit in physical defense, he does not need a good physical defense, but considering that Marco does have the ultimate defence on his side, it in turn leads to some amazing endurance and pain tolerance on his part. Marco may not have the same monster strengths as say Doflamingo or Cracker, but at the same time he could also be just as strong and we just haven't seen his full potential. 

Intelligence wise, I don't believe he would beat a character like Doflamingo or maybe even Cracker in a battle of brains, but I think he would do prettywell because of his ability to quickly think and react to the situation at hand. Marco is by no means an unintelligent character and because of that like I said, I think he's slightly above average if not a bit better. Marco's haki is something we didn't really get to see a whole lot of because haki was just being developed at that point in the story but from what we've seen him do versus what characters in the series can do now, I believe that Marco’s haki is much, much better than it appears to be. Even so, he was still able to inflict damage on two of the three admirals at the time, which are all logia users so the fact that his haki was enough to injure some of the most powerful characters is still very, very impressive. Although since he only has access to armament haki, he is lacking in variety, but if I had to compare his armament haki to someone else I would say it's probably closest to Doflamingo’s level but for all we know it could be much better than that or much worse. 

Now when it comes to his devil fruit ability, I would say that so far on this list Marco has the best one by a longshot. Previously, I would have said Doflamingo’s fruit took the cake, but Marcos fruit wouldn't even let him have a piece in comparison. All zoan users get an automatic strength boost so this makes Marco physically much stronger than before, pushing him ahead of other characters on this list in terms of physical strength and he also has the ability to fly, but Marco is also not limited like Doflamingo with clouds. On top of that, he is able to let attacks pass through him like a logia, whereas Kuzan’s ability is not tangible and still needs to be struck and for his paramecia like abilities because he can use his flames to heal any part of his body at any given time. Since this ability is regeneration, I'm also willing to bet that Margot could regenerate say his whole arm if it were to get cut off, making him practically invincible. Of course, Marco was still able to feel pain and get hurt but he will be good as new and only a matter of seconds. So with his great endurance and pain tolerance, this fruit is perfect for Marco and is without a doubt the very best devil fruit on this list so far, giving him a major advantage over other characters. 

Regarding his connections, at this point in the story, I will admit he falls a bit short compared to other characters but he also has another character on this list Luffy on his side meaning that the two could join their forces if need be giving Marco a huge edge and even giving Luffy more of an edge for that matter, but I will say since Marco’s connections took a big hit with the war, his biggest downfall in terms of strength is his connections, which is the main reason why I won't be able to put him any higher on this list. So because of all that, I believe Marco the Phoenix is the sixth strongest character in One Piece.

#5: Jack the Drought

Let's begin with Jack the Drought’s physical abilities. Jack is without a doubt the physically strongest character on this list so far. To put this into perspective let's talk about how he received his nickname “The Drought”. Whenever Jack decides to rampage on an island, it is said to be left in such a devastating, decaying state that it looks as if the island was suffering from a drought. Without even looking at what he can do we also know Jack is very powerful because he is one of the Three Disasters, which are the Yonko, Kaido's three right hand men and possibly women. To be strong enough to stand directly below a Yonko definitely implies that he is one of the strongest characters in the series, but the reason I wanted to bring this up is because just like Smoothie and Katakuri from Big Mom's Sweet Commander's, we know little to nothing about these other two disasters. That being said, from what we know about Jack, we can only assume that these other two disasters will be just as powerful as him or maybe even stronger, so if we knew more about these other two disasters or anything about them for that matter, I would be willing to bet that they would also be on this list. So, in addition to Jack, I would like to give the other two disasters an honorable mention. We know literally nothing about them but I would guess that they would be right around the same number as Jack on this list so now back to Jack!

His physical strength, endurance, and stamina are also off the charts, as we saw Jack fighting the Minke tribe’s leaders for five days and five nights without taking a single break or really suffering any injuries while Jack himself was constantly fighting the two Minke leaders had to take turns fighting Jack, however another testament to his strength was the fact that when he went after the Marine warships to rescue Doflamingo, Jack himself completely destroyed two of the four ships. Unfortunately, though due to the fact he was overpowered by five powerful characters who were on those ships, which were three vice-admiral's, Admiral Fujitora, and the former fleet Admiral Sengoku. Needless to say, it makes sense to me at least that these characters ganging up on Jack was enough to suppress him; however, after this fight even though the news reported Jack was dead, Jack more than survived and only received a few minor injuries. 

Another testament to his strength would have to be the fact that he was hit with Zunesha’s gigantic trunk and still survived, and finally Jack also has the ability to survive underwater for very long periods of time which is something that we have yet to see any other devil fruit users do in the series. The reason why this is possible is currently unknown, but it appears as if he's just really good at holding his breath when he's angry. From this, we can clearly see that Jack has some great lung capacity or some other great physical trait, To sum it all up, Jack is an absolute monster.

Moving on to his intelligence, I have no problem saying that Jack is not an intelligent character and that is his biggest flaw. The only thing that is ever on his mind is absolute destruction. All Jack is out to do is get his way, and then destroy everything else. Jack is a very quick tempered character who will use any method possible to do whatever it is he sets out to do; one example of this is when his crew suggested they not attempt to rescue Doflamingo because he is so heavily guarded but because jack is not level-headed he completely refused to listen and did it anyway. Although Jack caused a lot of destruction, he was ultimately defeated so this right here just shows he won't even listen or comprehend logic. From this, I would say that Jack does not have a lot of intelligence, but he is by no means completely dumb; instead, his mind is just corrupt with madness.

 Moving on to his ability to use haki, we actually have no idea if Jack is capable of using haki. Normally this would be a huge downfall, but I would like to give Jack the benefit of the doubt. I feel like being as powerful as he is, we can deduce that Jack has haki and just hasn't used it yet because he is thee right hand of the Yonko Kaido himself. It would be a little bit odd if he was that high up on the food chain and couldn't use haki. Even the Sweet Commanders, or at the very least Cracker, can use haki and he is at the same prestige as Jack, but in Yonko Big Mom's crew, and his haki is the strongest we've seen thus far. This being said, I would be willing to bet that Jack has at the very least armament haki and his haki is on the same level as Cracker’s. However, if he does have haki and it isn't quite as strong as Cracker’s I could see it being on the same level as Doflamingo's armament haki. Since the individual is already physically very strong their haki doesn't really boost their attacks too much at all, so I would be willing to bet that Jack does have haki. The other possibility would be that Jack does not have the ability to use haki, but even if he doesn't have haki he doesn't need it either because he is literally physically stronger than any other character we've seen so far. Even if we find out Jack doesn't have the ability to use haki, I really wouldn't think of it as a bad thing in Jack's case. Compared to other characters on this list, it is a bit of a downfall, but for now we're just going to assume that Jack does have haki and we just haven't seen it yet.

 Regarding his devil fruit, Jack ate the Zou Zou no Mi model mammoth, which is an ancient Zou and devil fruit that allows Jack to transform into a mammoth or human mammoth hybrid. Like all Zou and devil fruits this one gives the user increased strength, and in Jack's case he gains a lot of strength! In his mammoth form, Jack grows much, much bigger than his already huge build. Jack also leaves footprints in the ground just by walking, and Jack can level multiple buildings with a single swing of his trunk. Once he starts rampaging, he can destroy pretty much everything in his path. The one downfall of this fruit however, is the fact that Jack becomes very slow due to his massive size, thus faster characters will be able to land high speed attacks much easier because jack is too slow to dodge or block the attacks. This is by no means the best devil fruit but considering it gives Jack the ability to become much stronger than he already was I must say I'm impressed. Additionally, while he is in this form, he also increases his defense and endurance, just due to his sheer size. Even if you were fast enough to land multiple attacks on Jack, he might not even feel it unless you have a lot of power behind it. Because this devil fruit turns Jack into even more of a powerhouse, I give it a thumbs up.

Finally, onto Jack's connections. Jack's biggest and most notable ally is of course the Yonko Kaido, who is regarded as the strongest creature in the world. Having an ally to someone who was stronger than Jack himself is definitely a big plus, but on top of that, since Jack himself is one of Kaido's right-hand men, Jack has authority over anyone below himself. Therefore, he can command the majority of Kaido's crew leading Jack to essentially have a whole fleet at his command. Kaido also has many other powerful allies, such as X Drake and the Drake pirates, Stratchmen Apoo and Doflamingo. Along with this, since Kaido has ties with Doflamingo, he also has ties to the underworld where he would purchase his SMILES. Because they are allies to Kaido, they are also allied to Jack. Thus, Jack has some very powerful allies on his side and because of that you should definitely never mess with him.

Now why did I place Jack as number 5 on this list and not higher? Jack is without a doubt the physically strongest character on this list so far, and his strength alone would be enough to overpower everyone previously on the list and his physical strength is also further increased with his devil fruit ability, meaning that it is very beneficial to Jack, helping him destroy islands, kill people, and whatever else he wants to use it for. Jack also has a very powerful set of allies on his side, although I don't think he would ever let them help him, simply because Jack seems like the kind of person who doesn't work too well with others. Out of these three things, his strength beats the rest of the list so far. His devil fruit is equal to, if not better, than some of the other devil fruits previously mentioned. For instance, since it shows no signs of physically harming Jack with use or with certain techniques, it is so far automatically better than Luffy and Cracker’s devil fruit. Along with this, he has the most powerful connections so far on this list, but definitely not the most powerful overall. Even though these characteristics are definitely some of the best we've seen, he does have two downfalls which are his haki, or lack thereof, and his intelligence. For his haki, I won't repeat myself too much, but I personally believe Jack has the ability to use haki and we just haven't seen him do it yet, so I don't really want to count his haki as a downfall quite yet. That being said, even if Jack ends up not being able to use haki, I will take back what I said. For now, I'm willing to likely say he can use it very proficiently. Now, with his intelligence, that happens to be a different story because I feel like Jack would not do very well in a fight against Doflamingo or Cracker because they would be able to easily use their intelligence to get the best of him. In a game of minds, I feel like Jack would lose every time and because of that main fact, I simply cannot place him any higher on this list; however, I will also refuse to put him any lower because Jack's overwhelming strength alone is enough to overlook his weakness. Due to all of this, I believe that Jack the Drought is the fifth strongest character in One Piece.

#4: Dracule “Hawk Eyes” Mihawk

Regarding his physical abilities, they are nothing short of amazing. Mihawk is called the greatest swordsman in the world of One Piece and there is a good reason for it. So in terms of hand-to-hand combat or fist to fist, we have yet to see him show his skills, but his true strength lies behind his swordsmanship and from his abilities with a sword. We've seen time and time again that he possesses superhuman strength. To begin, Mihawk has two different swords that we've seen him use. The first is Kogatana which is basically Mihawk’s butter knife that he wears around his neck and uses it to eat, but if he also deems his opponent unworthy he will use this weapon against them and you may think well what the hell could he do to me with a butterknife? Well, let me just say even a mere butter knife is a deadly weapon in the hands of the greatest swordsman in the world and we know that because he was able to easily defeat Roronoa Zoro back in East Blue and Zoro was by no means weak back then so the fact that Mihawk was able to take him down with such a puny weapon is super impressive. His second weapon is his legendary sword Yoru, which is a gigantic seven foot tall black blade in the shape of a crucifix. Because this sword is so huge and Mihawk can still swing it with both immense strength and speed, we can easily see that he is a physical powerhouse and with this sword Mihawk can cause some serious damage, such as when he single-handedly took out 50 ships and over 5000 men by himself when he went after Don Krieg and right before a vicious storm for that matter. Another thing that should be noted is that his first appearance to the audience he cut a humongous ship in half with a single swing of his sword. Mihawk was able to cut through a ton of wood steel and more with just one swing.

Additionally, Mihawk has a number of different techniques that he can use with his sword which are; Kokuto Issen, which is where Mihawk swings his sword to create a gigantic invisible flying slash attack that can cut through anything and everything in its path. We saw this technique at Marineford and it was able to cut a gigantic iceberg completely in half, Kokuto Kogetsu, which is where Mihawk slashes his sword so quickly that it creates some sort of cutting energy that can also seemingly cut through anything. However, this cutting energy does not travel a great range, Kokuto Saku, which is a counter-attack that Mihawk uses by grabbing his sword while it's on his back with both hands. He then waits for his opponent to get close before launching a lightspeed downward slash at his opponent, Chi o Hau Zangeki, which is where Mihawk creates a downward slash so fast and powerful that it creates more cutting energy that travels a great speed through the ground and from this attack we also learned that this cutting energy is powerful enough to cut through steel as it easily took down Mr. 1 and finally this last attack is unnamed but was called the world's strongest slash by a marine. Mihawk used this technique to gauge his power in comparison to White Beard and sent a giant flying slash attack towards him it traveled very quickly and had enough power behind it to cut through tons of ice but this attack was stopped by Diamond Jozu so from this we can either assume that Mihawk can cut through diamond but he was not expecting to need to cut through diamond so he held back his true power or he is not strong enough to cut through diamond. As the final testament to his strength, Mihawk also used to have legendary duels with the Yonko, Shanks, and saw him as a worthy rival. The fact that Mihawk is able to go up against someone at that level of power by itself is amazing, but the fact that they fought near equal truly shows how strong Mihawk really is.

 Aside from his strength, Mihawk also has amazing eyesight, being able to easily track Luffy while he was used his gear second speed in the middle of a chaotic battlefield and being able to pinpoint his exact location and release a long-range slash at Luffy while so much chaos was happening around them. Now that's impressive! Mihawk is also so skilled with his eyesight and swordsmanship that he is able to block bullets with his sword or even change the trajectory of the bullets with the flat part of the blade. It is unknown if his amazing eyesight has anything to do with his hawk eyes themselves or if he possesses observation haki. 

Moving on to his intelligence, Mihawk is definitely one of the most intelligent characters on this list mainly shown in his analytical fighting style and decision-making. Mihawk is very good at judging someone's strengths and knowing when he needs to test them. For instance, he was able to judge that Zoro was nowhere near his own power and therefore used his butter knife against him or when Mihawk was unsure how strong White Beard was compared to his own strength so he sent a flying slash attack at him as a test. Mihawk clearly knows his own strengths and capabilities and that is one of his greatest assets because he also knows when he is in over his head and should back down. He is also skilled enough to travel around the Grand Line and nothing more than a coffin shaped raft with one sail all by himself, showing that he is also able to navigate the Seas easily. The final testament of his intellect involves his teachings which we will get to momentarily, but overall Mihawk is a very smart character who knows his own limits and is good at seeing the potential in others making him even more dangerous. 

Next we'll talk about his haki, which unfortunately we have not seen him use. However, Mihawk did teach Zorro how to use and infuse armament haki into his swords over the time-skip, which shows us that not only does Mihawk know how to use it, but he is also so proficient with it that he is able to teach it to someone else. On top of that, I'm also willing to bet he can use observation haki but we don't know for sure, but let's just put this into perspective, Mihawk is already one of the strongest characters we've talked about so far and that is without him ever using haki. So imagine what he could possibly do if he imbued his sword with haki. For instance, I bet that with haki Mihawk would be able to easily cut Diamond Jozu right in two. So the fact that he could improve his strength with haki and he can use it so proficiently that he can teach it to another individual is very impressive.

Next up, let's talk about his devil fruit. Oh wait a second, that's right, Mihawk is so far the only character on this list that does not have a devil fruit, which means that he has the ability to swim unlike all the rest. Definitely a plus, however two things I want to bring up is that Mihawk is strong enough with his sword to the point where he would never need a devil fruit and if he were to eat one it would just potentially make him weaker and the other thing I want to bring up is that some people out there do believe that Mihawk has already ate a devil fruit. Personally, I think that's a load of crap, so I guess we'll have to see, but for now we are going with the assumption that he has not eaten one. 

Finally, let's talk about his connections, which, honestly, he doesn't have very many. He was formerly a rival to Shanks, but since Shanks lost his arm Mihawk wants nothing to do with him, but I guess the two are still somewhat friendly and Mihawk is also currently allied with the World Government because he himself is a Shichibukai, but Mihawk only really allies himself with them when it is convenient for both the World Government and himself. So calling the World Government an ally to Mihawk is a bit far-fetched when it comes down to needing the World Government's help for a change. Mihawk also has a connection with Perona who I think would fight by his side if need be so I mean it's something, but at the same time, his lack of allies also works in Mihawk’s favor because he is more of a lone wolf. He fights alone, travels alone and that's just the way he likes it. Mihawk is what I would consider a one-man army even up against some of the toughest foes. So although I do need to give him the L when it comes to having powerful allies, in his case it kind of works out because he wants to work alone, but sometimes you can't always do things by yourself. 

So why do I think Mihawk is more powerful than the other characters previously listed? Well to put it simply, Mihawk is a very special casein this series. He is physically a superhuman. His strength alone is enough to cut through almost anything with a sword in his hands. His speed is equal if not faster than someone like Luffy who is incredibly fast with some of their techniques. He has incredible eyesight and observation skills, being able to quickly pick out everything in his surroundings and even pick out his target like a needle in a haystack. He is also considered the greatest swordsman in the world, a title that is by far something that's not easy to obtain. Just imagine how many people must try and challenge him for that title and what Mihawk had to accomplish to get that title in the first place. Also, something that I want to bring up is that so far Mihawk is the only character on this list that has yet to receive even one little scratch, meaning that he is one of the best of the best if nobody can even land a hit on him. He is also a very smart character, being able to analyze any situation or character and execute a plan accordingly. He is also smart and skilled enough to teach haki, showing that he is also very proficient with it himself. It may also be a downfall to some that he doesn't have a devil fruit but Mihawk is so strong on his own that he will just never need one. Finally, I must say his lack of connections is really his only big flaw.

So compared to Luffy, Mihawk is the obvious winner in terms of strength and intelligence. When it comes to haki I feel like Mihawk is probably better at it but we also don't exactly have any examples. I would like to say that if Cracker was almost able to cut off Luffy's arm while he was in gear fourth that the greatest swordsman in the world would be able to do it without a second thought because although Cracker isn't bad with a sword by any means he's not even close to Mihawk’s level. So personally, I would put Mihawk’s haki above Luffy until proven otherwise and although Mihawk doesn't have a devil fruit, he proved at the Battle of Marineford  that he would not need one to take Luffy down, but if for some reason he did need one, Mihawk could always just swim out to sea where Luffy can't get him. In regards to connections, Mihawk will lose pretty much every time, but since he excels at everything else, Mihawk surpasses Luffy. 

Compared to Kuzan, I feel like Mihawk would still be able to defeat him. When it comes to physical abilities, Kuzan is indeed very powerful but he is definitely not strong enough to stop a sword slash from Mihawk. Mihawk is also more intelligent so he would be able to easily counteract anything Kuzon throws at him and since Mihawk is able to use haki, Kuzan also isn't safe to use his logia abilities for defense. We've also seen that Mihawk has no problem cutting through the ice Kuzan creates as we saw him cut through it easily multiple times during the Battle of Marineford , so Kuzan is definitely at the disadvantage except even Kuzan has stronger allies so I guess Kuzan got that going for him. 

Compared to Doflamingo, I feel the two would have a very interesting fight because I feel like Mihawk may be one of the few people who could actually cut through Doflamingo strings with his sword but will likely never know for sure if that's actually possible but the two are very similar with both strength and intelligence. Although when it comes to haki I feel like Mihawk would have the upper hand because I believe his haki abilities would be something above even Cracker’s abilities. Doflamingo’s devil fruit would definitely be a problem for Mihawk to deal with, but I don't think it's enough to defeat Mihawk by any means, especially if Mihawk is able to cut the strings but because Mihawk has such good eyesight he would be able to easily see the strings and find a way to get around them or block them or whatever else. Finally, once again, unfortunately for Mihawk, Doflamingo has the better connections so Mihawk falls short on that end.

In regards to Cracker, I feel like they are both equal in strength. Mihawk has equal or better haki to Cracker from what I stated earlier and in terms of intelligence, although cracker is very deceptive, I think Mihawk would have the edge because he is more observant and would be able to easily see through these deceptions. In regards to Cracker’s devil fruit ability, I feel like his biscuit soldiers would be like cake for Mihawk to take care of no matter how many Cracker produced and finally once again, Mihawk’s only flaw compared to Cracker is his connections.

Next up is Marco the Phoenix. Now this one comes pretty close as I'll explain but even so Mihawk still comes out on top in my opinion so in regards to strength Marco is definitely very powerful even without the boost from his zoan fruit but Mihawk is definitely stronger, being able to effortlessly cut through steel is something I can't see Marco being able to do. Intelligence wise, Marco also falls short because since Mihawk is so observant and analytical, while Marco is not, Mihawk would be able to counteract anything Marco threw at him. In regards to haki, I feel like Marco is a lot better than what was shown but I still feel like Mihawk has him beat as well. Now with his devil fruit, this is where things get a little tricky because I feel like Mihawk would have a very, very hard time with this, since Marco can regenerate at will, so even if Mihawk were to deal some serious damage to Marco, that damage is likely not permanent. With that being said, if it really came down to it, I feel like Mihawk may try to chop Marco into a ton of pieces while using haki to try and defeat him, but who knows, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. I also feel that Marcos attacks wouldn't be enough to stop Mihawk, which leads me to call this one a stalemate because we simply don't know how that fight would play out. Finally, Mihawk loses in terms of useful allies once again. 

Now finally, when compared to Jack the Drought, I think this one is also very close. Jack is definitely as strong or probably stronger than Mihawk because they both have the ability to destroy pretty much anything they come in contact with. In terms of overall physical ability, Mihawk has amazing eyesight to help him see through Jack's attacks and Mihawk also has great speed whereas Jack is very slow, which I would say gives him the edge physically, but not by much. Intelligence wise, I don't even really need to explain myself because Jack is not a very intelligent character. In terms of haki, since we haven't really seen anything from either character, we'll just assume that since they're around the same level of power. Their haki would be about equal. Now for Jack's devil fruit, although he becomes much stronger, I feel like since he also becomes very slow. Mihawk would had the edge because he can move very quickly, but since Jack is also much stronger in this form if he did manage to hit him, Mihawk might be done for. So for this one I also want to call it a stalemate and finally for connections Mihawk takes the L once again. 

So as you can see, Mihawk only comes out on top by a very narrow margin compared to Jack, which is why I placed him above, but no higher than that. I feel like as you can see Mihawk is fitting for his name as the greatest swordsman in the world, but when it comes to Mihawk’s allies that's where he will lose every time. Because of that, Mihawk is the fourth strongest character in One Piece. 

#3. Borsalino

 Before we get started, for this article I will be referring to Borsalino by his alias, Kizaru, as that is what he is more commonly known as. Physically, Kizaru is a monster. Being the rank of Admiral means that he is one of the Marine’s strongest fighters and he definitely shows that he is. His strength alone is enormous. For instance, he is able to hold down Whitebeard's bisento with just one foot. Considering that Whitebeard was the strongest man in the world, it's a real accomplishment to achieve that. Additionally, Kizaru was able to fight one-on-one with the former Yonko on pretty much equal footing. Most of his attacks are kick based in conjunction with his devil fruit abilities, but his kicks alone are also something to fear. Additionally, he was also able to fight against Silvers Rayleigh until their battle resulted in a stalemate. Being able to go up against the former Pirate King’s right-hand man is a great accomplishment as well, and with this strength I believe that Kizaru is by far one of the strongest.

Kizaru also has amazing durability and endurance, as for instance he was able to take a haki imbued kick from Marco and got up without even a single scratch. Kizaru also has borderline superhuman hearing, as he was able to hear activity underwater, before the war at Marineford took place and finally Kizaru has amazing precision and accuracy mainly in conjunction with using his devil fruit ability but you'll see what I mean later on. 

Next up is his intelligence, which is somewhat of a mystery to me. You see Kizaru's personality is very hard to read, therefore so is his level of intelligence. Kizaru puts on this very lazy, calm nature, making him seem as though he's only moderately intelligent like Kuzon. He also tends to taunt his enemies during battle to try and aggravate them, or get under their skin which makes me think he's doing this as some sort of technique to overpower his enemies by making them lose their minds. Kizaru also appears to be very absent-minded and irresponsible when it comes to his way of justice, such as using so much force in one kick against some pirates that he ended up breaking part of a mangrove tree. So from all of this it makes it seem as if he's rather dumb if nothing else, but honestly I think this is all just an act on Kizaru’s part so people don't figure out how smart he actually is and instead he isusing some sort of deceptive methods like Cracker for instance to fool his enemies and even his allies for that matter. So because I can't figure out if he's actually a bit dumb or if he's actually very intelligent let's just settle in the middle saying he's average or slightly above average.

In regards to his haki, since he is above the rank of vice-admiral, we know for a fact that he can use it and we also know that to achieve the rank of Admiral his haki must be something on another level. The only instance of haki we've seen Kizaru used so far is when he used armament haki in conjunction with the other three Admirals to create a shield. So much like what I said about Kuzan, it has been two years since then so his haki has without a doubt become even stronger and I also imagine it was a lot stronger to begin with, but since haki was just being introduced in that part of the story there was still a lot we didn't know and a lot that was yet to be shown. So because of the level Kizaru was on already, I think it's safe to assume he has haki abilities comparable to someone like Doflamingo or better, but as far as we know he can't use the other two types of haki, leading him to have a slight disadvantage with variety.

Next up is his devil fruit, which is the Pika Pika no Mi, otherwise known as the Glint-Glint fruit. This fruit is a logia type devil fruit and it allows the user to create control and transform into light at will, making the user a Light Human. This devil fruit allows Kizaru to not only transform into light to avoid being hit but to also create laser beams, travel at light speed and even perform a partial transformation that connects physical attacks at light speed, which are extremely devastating attacks. 

Some of his techniques include; Yata no Kagami, which is where Kizaru reflects light off of any surface he chooses include places where the light doesn't touch and after his reflections reach to the place where he wants them to go he can travel to this reflected point at the speed of light. It should also be noted that with the speed of light on his side Kizaru is currently the fastest man in One Piece, being able to travel 299,792,458 m/s. So let's just say that Kizaru is very hard to catch, Amaterasu, which is where Kizaru points his finger into the air or at a specific enemy and then emits a massive flash of light that is so bright it will blind his opponent and anyone in the near vicinity, meaning Kizaru has some useful ways of also stunning his enemies temporarily, Ama no Murakumo, which is where Kizaru creates a sword out of light and then uses it as a weapon, pretty much. It should also be noted that this light is then solidified, meaning that it is no longer intangible and cannot be broken or passed through by haki at least with what we know currently and Yasakani no Magatama, which is where Kizaru crosses his arms and fires a ton of laser particles all at once. Kizaru can also control their trajectory, being able to focus them on one single person or a whole area. These light particles also have great piercing power as they were capable of piercing right through Kuzan’s ice and deep into the ocean without losing speed or power. Kizaru can also create laser beams at will from his hands or feet that travel in a straight line. It should also be noted that since Kizaru himself is so fast he can easily keep up with others who are quite quick. Because of that, he is very accurate and precise with where he fires his lasers and it is very hard for him to miss his target considering how fast his lasers travel. Another thing that should be noted about this fruit is that Kizaru can transform his entire body into light at any given time and transport himself to a different location, so it is also very hard to land a hit on him if you don't know what you're doing or you just aren't fast enough. Since he can travel so quickly, his normal kicks also travel at that abnormal speed, leading to an insanely powerful kick. So overall this fruit is definitely one that should be feared and I'm willing to call it one of the best on this list.

Regarding Kizaru's allies, he does not have a large variety but he does have the World Government and the Marines on his side and considering that he is such a high ranking member, he has a great deal of the Marines at his command and since the World Governmentand and the Marines are such a massive entity, Kizaru has some of the strongest characters ready to fight by his side at a moment's notice such as Fleet Admiral,  Sakazuki, Admiral, Fujitora, and any of the Vice Admirals. Because Kizaru is also of such a high status, he can order a Buster Call which is one of the most feared things in the world, otherwise known as the world governments form of absolute justice where they can wipe out entire islands if they need to. Currently, only a maximum of people are able to initiate a Buster Call so the fact that Kizaru has that kind of power because of his connections gives him an even bigger edge. Additionally, Kizaru can also give permission to a lower ranking World Government member to initiate one if the situation calls for it. So although, besides the World Government, Kizaru doesn't have a lot of other options, the world government is all he needs to have some of the strongest and most feared allies in the world.

 

So what do I think of his abilities and how does he compare to the other characters on this list. Well in terms of his physical abilities, he is most definitely a monster, but for instance he is not as strong as Jack, physically. Although, his defense and durability are off the charts when it comes to the fact that even a haki imbued kick wouldn't leave a scratch on him. Additionally, with the added defense of being able to turn into light and let attacks bypass through him or even turn into light and quickly move out of the way to dodge attacks. I would say that Kizaru definitely has the best defensive capabilities so far and since he is the fastest man in the world of One Piece he also out speeds everyone else on this list, making him much more dangerous. So other than his physical strength by itself being inferior to Jack, Kizaru is the strongest when it comes to his physical abilities and beats all of the other characters so far.

In terms of intelligence, like I said, Kizaru is very hard to read but I personally don't believe that he is unintelligent by any means. In fact, I personally believe he is much smarter than he lets on but since we are unsure of his actual intelligence. I'm just going to say he's slightly above-average meaning that other characters such as Doflamingo, Cracker and Mihawk beat him in terms of intellect but I'm also not sure if their minds could move fast enough to comprehend how fast Kizaru is moving. Although they do contain the mental capacity to outsmart him, if he is indeed not as smart as I think. So although Kizaru isn't the best in terms of intelligence, he still beats characters like Luffy, Jack and Kuzan. 

In terms of haki, since he is an admiral in the Marines, his haki must be much better than what we got to see and I imagine his haki being around the same level as Cracker, but since we don't know for sure it's hard to gauge exactly how powerful it is. Although we can also assume that after the time skip his haki has no doubt improved, meaning that Kizaru is even stronger than he was before. So overall, I'm going to say that Kizaru has the same level of haki as Cracker or Doflamingo until proven otherwise which in turn means he beats many of the characters on this list. 

Moving on to his devil fruit, it is without a doubt the second-best on this list beaten only by Marco the Phoenix, but unfortunately for Marco, Kizaru beats him in every other aspect besides his devil fruit, meaning Marco takes the L for this one. But with a fruit this powerful, Kizaru is capable of many things. I feel like since his lasers are so powerful he can easily overpower almost every character on this list. Along with the speed his devil fruit gives him, it makes it so pretty much everyone on this list is hopeless intaking him down. I feel like Mihawk would definitely have a solid chance, since he has such great eyesight, mental and physical skills. But at the same time, this amount of speed may just be too much for him to handle. So I would say if the two were to fight one-on-one, it would be very hard to imagine who would come out on top, but even though the two are pretty much neck-and-neck Kizaru does beat Mihawk in one thing, which would be his connections. So because the two are evenly matched in almost every other category it only makes sense that Kizaru would be above him due to his connections and influence he has. Because honestly there is no way that Mihawk is surviving a Buster Call, at least not easily. In addition to that Kizaru can also revoke a Shichibukai’s status at any time, which means that if Mihawk does want to keep his connection to the World Government, he has to somewhat get along with Kizaru. In that case, Kizaru has Mihawk’s hands tied. 

Additionally, other characters on this list do have equal ground in terms of allies if we look at the numbers, such as Doflamingo, Luffy, Cracker and even Jack. But Kizaru also has something that the rest of them do not, which is the ability to initiate a Buster Call and although Luffy survived one before he wouldn't really have it easy the next time. Jack has already fallen when faced with multiple strong marines, so he would be toast. Whether or not he would actually be killed is another story. Doflamingo does have a lot of influence just like Kizaru because of his equal rights agreement with the Celestial Dragons, so I would put these two on equal grounds in terms of allies. With Cracker, since we don't know just how massive Big Mom's crew is along with her powerful allies, we can't say for sure if she would be even worse or better off in terms of influence and allies, so for now we'll put Crackers connections on par with Kizaru. There are very few powers that can beat the power or match the power of the World Government and right now those would be the Yonko, so because of all that I believe that Kizaru is the third strongest character in One Piece.

#2: Sakazuki

Physically, Sakuzuki is the definition of a super human or maybe a better term would be a monster. In terms of his strength, it is unimaginable. Not only did he show us time and time again throughout the Marineford war that he was strong enough to take out enemy after enemy, but another testament of his strength would be the fact that he was able to stop White Beard's bisento with just one leg, which also keep in mind that White Beard was considered the strongest man in the world at that point in time. So the fact that Sakazuki could stop his weapon was a real accomplishment. Additionally, another testament to his strength could be the fact that he was able to battle with Kuzan for ten whole days on an island in a fight to the death and came out victorious. Another amazing physical trait would be his stamina. Not only was he able to fight enemy after enemy throughout the entire Marineford war, without getting tired or worn-down at all, but he was also able to constantly fight for ten whole days against Kuzan like we just stated. So the fact he was able to continue fighting for that long means his stamina must be off the charts. Also just like Kuzan and Kizaru, Sakazuki has very good hearing as he was able to hear activity underwater before the war began. Finally, Sakazuki has what I would say is the best durability we've seen so far in the series. This is evident by the fact that he was able to take two point-blank quake blows from White Beard and even after all of that, he was still able to get back up and fight. To put into perspective how strong these quake abilities are, one of them was powerful enough to split Marineford in half. Even with all that power being forced down Sakazuki's throat, he still managed to get back up and fight. If you ask me, it seems as if there's no stopping this man.

Next up is his intelligence and let me just say that Sakazuki is a very, very intelligent man. Much like Cracker, he is also very good in the art of deception except Sakazuki deceives his enemies in a different way, which is manipulation. What Sakazuki does is use the knowledge he has about his opponents to manipulate them into doing his bidding. For instance, he deceived Squard into thinking that White Beard had betrayed him, in turn leading Squard to attempt to kill White Beard. Then we saw this manipulation once again when he insulted White Beard, knowing that Ace would take the bait and try and attack him instead of trying to escape, which ended up resulting in Ace’s death. Because Sakazuki aimed his attack at Luffy instead of Ace, knowing that Ace would jump in to save him. So as you can see, he knows how to get into people's heads to make them do exactly what he wants. When it comes to a battle of intelligence, there are very few people who would be able to resist his manipulation, giving Sakazuki a huge edge. 

In terms of haki, Sakazuki has some of the best haki abilities we've seen or at least if it was haki he was using. At the very least, we know that he can use armament haki, as he used it with the other Admirals to make a shield but something that stands out to me that truly makes this man a monster is the fact that he was hit with two different haki attacks at once from both Marco and Vista. Even though Marco and Vista are some very powerful characters, in fact Marco even made it on this list, but even aside from that, neither of their attacks were able to bypass his intangibility, let alone even hurt him at all. Sakazuki himself even commented that haki attacks were irritating and that's exactly all those attacks did was irritate him. From this we can either assume two things either Sakazuki's haki is so far beyond what we can imagine that he is able to take on haki attacks that only result in mild irritation or it has nothing to do with haki and he is just on a whole different level of power. For the sake of things making sense, I would like to say it's just that his haki is otherworldly but I also believe this could be just because he is so strong, but even if that wasn't his haki, you need to keep in mind that because he is now Fleet Admiral and above the rank of vice-admiral he is automatically capable of using haki and considering that he is such a high rank, it can only be inferred that his haki abilities are off the charts and he is capable of a lot more than what we got to see at Marineford like the other Admirals in that battle. Because of that, I believe that Sakazuki has the strongest haki on this list so far, but if for some reason that turns out to be untrue when we get to see his haki abilities in the series later on, I will take back that statement. 

Next up is his devil fruit, which is the Magu Magu no Mi, otherwise known as the Mag-Mag fruit.This devil fruit is a logia type and allows the user to create, control and transform into magma at will, turning the user into a Magma Human. The main thing Sakazuki uses this fruit for is to create magma that he can use to attack his opponents with. This magma in question is hot enough to melt large icebergs instantly and boil sea water, when the two come in contact. Additionally, the magma is so hot that when Sakazuki uses an attack, nearby weapons of his comrades were shown to melt and he is able to melt solid earth and rock easily. Because this fruit is a logia, he can let attacks pass through him as long as they are not imbued with khaki, but as we said earlier it seems as though even haki is not enough to pass this intangibility. Additionally, if someone were to use a physical attack against Sakazuki such as a punch and let it pass through him his magma would in turn melt that person's arm. So having this magma ability also serves as the ultimate defense, as it makes it much harder to hit him without risking your life. This fruit was also able to turn half of an island into a constant blazing inferno, after being used consecutively for ten whole days. When compared to the Mera Mera no Mi, this fruit is currently regarded as the superior of the two, as the magma abilities were enough to overpower the fire and in turn kill Ace who was the user. Finally, this fruit also allows Sakazuki to travel at extremely high speeds by launching himself into the air like an actual volcano. Some of the techniques Sakazuki uses with this fruit are; Dai Funka, which is where he transforms his fists into pure lava before throwing it at his enemies. This attack also causes an explosion of volcanic rock and magma that will melt almost anything it touches, Ryusei Kazan, which is basically where Sakazuki fires a ton of flaming fists like his previous technique into the air, resulting in a mixture between a volcanic eruption of flaming magma fists flying all over the place and a ton of small meteors flying down from the sky. This attack causes massive damage to the surrounding area and was used to destroy the ice covered battlefield along with everyone standing on it and it also boiled the water beneath leading to anybody who fell in getting severely burned, Inugami Guren, which is a wave of magma shaped like a dog's head that Sakazuki sends flying at his opponent and finally Meigo, which is where Sakazuki covers his arm with magma and his hand transforms into what appears to be a magma claw. He then lunges at his opponent causing massive damage if it hits them. For instance, this attack was enough to burn off a big chunk of White Beard's head with only a glancing blow. Now let's put that into perspective for a second, this attack was enough to take off part of the strongest man in the world's head. That alone shows just how powerful this devil fruit ability is and although it isn't quite as useful as Marco’s devil fruit or Kizaru, it is by far one of the most powerful fruits we've seen in the series, giving Sakazuki one of the most dangerous abilities

Finally onto his connections, Sakazuki's main and most notable connection is the World Government and the Marines. BecauseSakazuki has such a high role within the World Government, he himself holds a great deal of power. Being the Fleet Admiral, he is in command of all the Marines. He is also able to issue a Buster Call, which I won't go over what that is since we just talked about it. Basically, Sakazuki is in charge of an entire army. Additionally, he also directly speaks with the Gorosei, which are the most powerful force in the World Government, meaning Sakazuki also has high influence. Additionally, he also has control of all the current Shichibukai, meaning that they are also under his command should he summon them, although he does not trust them one bit. It has also been stated by Jinbe that since Sakazuki became the fleet admiral, the organization has become much stronger than before. This is likely because Sakazuki is all about absolute justice, doing anything he needs to achieve that, no matter what it may be. He also considers Marines who desert their post a traitor and those who do not fight for absolute justice, should not be called a marine. Sakazuki has no doubt sent to this ideology throughout the entire system, strengthening them along with it. Other than this, Sakazuki does not have any notable allies, but considering that he is the fleet admiral, he has all the vice Admirals and the admirals Kizaru, Issho and Green Bull at his command, meaning he has some of the most powerful characters under his command. So honestly, Sakazuki doesn't need any other allies to be one of the strongest in the series. 

So what do I think of his abilities and how does he compare with the other characters on this list? Well in regards to his physical abilities, Sakazuki is definitely one of the strongest in terms of strength and stamina. Even if those weren't enough for him to be considered a powerhouse, he has the strongest durability we've seen so far in the series and I forgot to mention it before but in terms of regular speed he's definitely above average but nothing overly special. However, what he lacks in physical speed, he can make up with the speed caused from his magma when he shoots himself in the air making him travel very, very fast. How does his physical abilities compared to others on this list. Well in terms of strength, I would like to say he matches well with Jack. I would still say that Jack is stronger in terms of raw strength but that's the closest comparison I can see. For stamina, Sakazuki has proven to take the cake since he was able to fight for ten whole days without stopping against Kuzan, in addition, winning the fight.  So although Kuzan was our previous winners for stamina, Sakazuki has stolen the title. When it comes to durability, he so far beats every other character on this list. Although he is lacking in physical speed, he isn't slow by any means like Jack either. So because of all that, I would say Sakazuki is physically the most well-rounded character so far. 

Moving on to his intelligence, Sakazuki is a master of manipulation and deception and he has proven himself smart enough to lead the Marines and defeat his enemies. I would rank his intelligence above Cracker but below or equal to Doflamingo and Mihawk in comparison. Although something Sakazuki can do that the others can't easily is get under their skin, which as we've seen with Doflamingo that is not very hard to do. All Sakazuki would need to do is insult a member of Doflamingo’s family and Sakazuki would already have Doflamingo’s wrath. For Mihawk, I feel like the two are around the same level because Mihawk would be able to see right through what's Sakazuki is trying to do and not fall for his trap but who knows what else he has up his sleeve. So in terms of intelligence, he may not be the smartest character in the series but he is one of the top three, at least in terms of intelligence on this list. 

Nextup is haki and like I said before either he has the best haki we've seen so far or it would be around the same level as someone like Cracker, so just from that simple comparison right there, we know that his haki is at the very least tied with the strongest sense of armament haki we've seen so far. However since he does not have access to the other two types, he does fall a bit shorter because he lacks variety to a character like Luffy who has access to all three. 

His devil fruit is by far one of the strongest and deadliest in the series, just by its destructive power alone. The only two devil fruits we've talked about that compare to it would be Kizaru's devil fruit and Marco's devil fruit. Now I do think Sakazuki's fruit is not superior to either of these fruits, but it does have a lot of useful qualities these fruits do not. For instance, when someone were to hit Kizaru without haki and have their attack pass right through him nothing happens unless you low-key get skin cancer or something like that, whereas if they did the same to Sakazuki, they would lose whatever they hit him with because the magma would melt it. If they used a sword, say goodbye to that. If they used leg, r.i.p your leg. So Sakazuki's defense also becomes a great offense. However, Kizaru’s fruit also has many destructive properties similar to Sakazuki's in terms of its explosive power with his lasers. These lasers may not cause as much damage as Sakazuki’s magma but they sure do travel a lot faster so when I compare these two fruits I feel that Sakazuki's fruit has a lot more destructive power behind it that also comes with a useful defense that is also an offense. Whereas Kizaru's makes him the fastest man alive, which in turn can lead to some devastating quick attacks that Sakazuki would never see coming, so I would consider these fruits equals in terms of how useful and strong they are, but I will be giving Kizaru’s devil fruit the win because of how scary his fruit can truly be, if he decides to go all-out with that speed and destructive power. 

Now in comparison to Marco's fruit, the two are also at a bit of a stalemate because Sakazukii’s magma has been shown unable to penetrate Marco’s flames, meaning that the two cancel each other out but of course Marco also has his regeneration and Sakazuki has his destructive power. Marco can fly. Sakazuki can erupt. Marco can let attacks pass through him and soak in Sakazuki, so really they each have a lot of benefits but in my opinion even though they both have a lot of positives and equal ground, I would still give the edge to Marco's fruit because his fruit allows him to do so much aside from the destruction aspect including constantly healing his wounds through regeneration, which is honestly something I think very few fruits will ever be able to compare to. Although Sakazuki's devil fruit beats out a lot of others on this list, I still wouldn't consider it the best. However, it is the best in terms of destructive capabilities and since he has basically all of the allies Kizaru has including Kizaru for that matter, my opinion remains the exact same for what I said for Kizaru. Although Sakazuki can also directly communicate with the Gorosei so he's got that going for him. In conclusion, Sakazuki has one of the most powerful connections in the world but so do other characters like Doflamingo and Cracker. Because we don't know exactly what Cracker’s massive amount of allies consists of we will just consider them as equal, along with Doflamingo for the time being. So because of all that, I believe that Sakazuki is the second strongest character in One Piece.

#1: The Four Yonko

The moment you've all been waiting for, Number one on the list are the four Yonko, Marshall D. Teach or Blackbeard, Charlotte Linlin or Big Mom, Kaido of the Beasts and Red-Haired Shanks. This one was probably pretty obvious since none of the Yonko have appeared on this list until now other than mentions of how powerful they are, but our number one spot is actually shared with all four of them. I do have a good reason for this, as of right now we don't know a whole lot about some of these Yonko, which because of my statement at the beginning of the article, I can't feature them on this list unless we have enough information about them and their abilities but I decided to bend the rules a little bit, considering we know a lot of information about some of the Yonko who were going to be on this list, I really didn't see the point in leaving the other Yonko off this list if they're all supposed to be just as powerful, I am fully aware that each of the Yonko are not equal in strength and some are definitely weaker than others but as of right now each of them control. They are on somewhat equal grounds being regarded as the strongest pirates on the sea. Because we don't know everything about each of the Yonko I will be considering them all equal for the time being so what I'm going to do is go over what we know about each Yonko and then at the end I'm going to give my opinion and prediction on what Yonko I believe to be the strongest in turn crowning the strongest character in One Piece. so let us begin with the Yonko we know the most about currently which would be a Marshall D teach better known as Blackbeard.

Yonko: Blackbeard

 Physically Blackbeard way more impressive than I originally thought. His strength may not be the best on this list but he is definitely incredibly strong. We've seen that Blackbeard possesses great strength because he was able to punch both Luffy and Ace with such great force that they both flew a decent distance away. You could also tell by their reaction to that punch hurt like hell. It should also be noted that since Ace was a logia user Blackbeard's normal punches are able to hit him. This is however due to his devil fruit ability which we will get to later. We've also seen that Blackbeard was able to injure white beard with a few punches and being able to injure the strongest man in the world is of course no easy task. 

We can also assume Blackbeard was very strong even before he ate his devil fruit because he was once considered strong enough to be offered a commander position in Whitebeard’s crew, and since we've seen how strong the other commanders are, the fact that Blackbeard was on their level without a devil fruit is definitely impressive. Another thing we should note is that the scar above Shanks was caused by Blackbeard himself back when Shanks still had two arms so there is probably a lot more to Blackbeard strength that we just aren't aware of yet. 

By far the most impressive part of Blackbeard physically has to be his monstrous endurance. A side note for this should be that Blackbeard's devil fruit allows him to absorb attacks, but if he fails to absorb them in time he will still feel the full effect of whatever the attack was and it will hurt him much more than it would a normal person. It would do much more damage than normal as well, meaning he has to deal with a lot of pain whenever he fails to absorb an attack which happens quite often. And to prove how incredible his endurance really is Blackbeard has taken on number of monsters attacks and came out alive even with his increase of pain and damage - for instance, he has taken two different attacks from Whitebeard like a champ. The first attack was an indirect hit and it really only seemed to annoy him rather than actually injure him, and then he also took a point-blank quake bubble attack to his head and neck while being pinned down and, although he was injured quite a bit from this attack, he didn't die, or even pass out for that matter. He was also able to take a direct slash attack from Whitebeard without any lasting damage. Additionally, he was also able to take a point-blank gear second attack from Luffy without getting hurt too badly and even a hit from Sengoku in his Buddha form while only receiving minor injuries. Being able to tank all of those deadly attacks with increased damage and pain for that matter is definitely no easy task, showing us that Blackbeard's endurance really is something else. 

Unfortunately we really don't know anything else about his physical capability so we will be moving on to his intelligence, and although sometimes it may not seem like it, Blackbeard is a very smart man and a very patient one at that. Blackbeard's intellect mainly lies inside of his own plans for personal gain making sure to get every detail just right if possible. For instance, his main goal was to get his hands on the Yami Yami so Blackbeard spent over two decades travelling with the Whitebeard pirates just to increase his chances of finding it, which of course he eventually did, thus completing the first step of a plan he waited so long to accomplish during his time with the Whitebeard Pirates. Blackbeard also recruited the first members of his crew showing that he also has great leadership of some sort. What is extraordinary is that he was capable of doing that while he was still just a crew mate. Blackbeard also deliberately became a Shichibukai so he could bypass the gates of justice and get in to Impel Down just so he could recruit some of the most dangerous criminals from level six which he succeeded in doing so through this plan. He even outsmarted the Gorosei showing just how crafty of a plan he actually pulled off. Although he is very smart as you can see he still does have a weakness - he can't really help the fact that he likes to talk a little bit too much during battle which leads to him letting his guard down so I wouldn't go as far as calling Blackbeard a genius but he is definitely a pretty smart guy. 

Next up is Haki which unfortunately we haven't seen Blackbeard use at all. However he has hinted to it before suggesting that he does have some sort of haki abilities and being that he is a Yonko it would be a little bit ridiculous if he didn't have haki so we'll just assume he does. but to what extent we'll have to find out.

 His devil fruit, or should I say devil fruits as I'm sure you all know, Blackbeard is in possession of the Yami Yami otherwise known as the dark dark fruit. He gained this after taking it from Whitebeard's corpse, the guru-guru otherwise known as the tremor tremor fruit. How Blackbeard was able to eat two devil fruits and live is so far unknown, but I personally think since the Yami Yami no Mi can absorb anything I think it may have something to do with maybe absorbing the fruit allowing Blackbeard to use its ability. That way another interesting thing is that right now the Blackbeard pirates are in search of are very powerful devil fruits and devil fruit users. For what purpose you may ask? Well, we also don't know for sure, but I think they are more than likely after these fruits so that Blackbeard can somehow gain their powers as well and just keep stocking up on useful abilities until he is absolutely untouchable. But even so right now with the two devil fruits he does have Blackbeard is already almost unstoppable. 

First let's begin with the Yami Yami no Mi which is a logia type devil fruit that allows the user to create and control darkness at will making the user a darkness human. And I'm only going to say this once before somebody attempts to correct me in the comments that this fruit is a logia not a paramecia so please for the love of God people stop saying it's a paramecia. One example I can give is the fact that this fruit can absorb things into its darkness similar to how Caribou can absorb things into his swamp abilities which is also a logia type.

Onto the explanation along with controlling darkness, it also allows the user to control the property of gravity that comes along with it, the darkness itself is like a void that devours and crushes everything it comes in contact with. Because of this the user can absorb physical matter and attacks of any type by sucking it into the darkness he creates when the user sucks something into the void. It's almost similar to a black hole but unlike a black hole it doesn't destroy whatever the darkness then, but rather just damages it and then stores the contents of whatever it sucked up inside the empty void. We've seen this ability able to suck up a whole entire town and even people for that matter and Blackbeard can also spit up or regurgitate these items he sucked up out of the void and back into the world and when he does. The town he sucked up for instance was pretty much destroyed and the people he sucked up from impel down were still alive but very heavily injured. The user can also use this ability to forcefully pull the opponent to them kind of like the forcepole in Star Wars regardless of whatever they're doing. But the scariest ability of this fruit has to be the ability to nullify the powers of devil fruits just by simply touching the user which drains them of their abilities as long as Blackbeard is touching them. This ability works on each type of devil fruit and is most useful on logia users because touching them will take away their intangibility. It should also be noted that unlike sea prism stone which just prevents you from using the devil fruit abilities, this route completely takes the abilities away as if the user never had them to begin with, such as when Luffy no longer had the ability to stretch as soon as Blackbeard touched him as if he was never a rubberman to begin with. This fruit may seem very overpowered, which it definitely is, but it does have a major weakness. Since the darkness also absorbs a text, the user of the fruit is still vulnerable to any attacks which do not pass through the darkness. If the user fails to absorb an attack in time the user can be hurt like any normal human being or even much more according to Blackbeard. 

Now let's look at his signature techniques with this fruit which are Black Hole which is where Blackbeard spreads his darkness around a large area and whatever is in this area is then subjected to large amounts of gravity and are slowly pushed into the void. Liberation which is his follow-up technique to black hole which is where he spits everything back up that he sucked into the void beforehand. And Kurosu which is where Blackbeard uses his gravity power in conjunction with his arm to pull his opponent toward him where Blackbeard can then grab the nullify their ability and attack them with his massive strength. So with everything we've learned about this for I can safely say it is extremely powerful. Blackbeard himself has even stated that this devil fruit is the most powerful devil fruit out of all of them and I can definitely see why he would say. But if that just wasn't enough, Blackbeard also has the Gura Gura no Mi paramecia devil fruit which allows the user to create vibrations similar to massive earthquakes, making the user a tremor human. This devil fruit was previously owned by Whitebeard who was regarded as the strongest man in the world and it has even been said that this particular devil fruit has the power to destroy the world. The main strength of this devil fruit is its ability to create or generate massive vibrations or shockwaves which can travel through pretty much any medium, including the ground the sea floor and even the air itself, causing massive amounts of destruction as the vibrations to pass through this destruction. It is a little too easy for this devil fruit to destroy entire islands at a time however these vibrations can be stopped if they come in contact with something strong enough to suppress them. 

This devil fruit also does have one weakness which is that its attacks do not discriminate meaning that whether you are friend or foe you are not safe from these vibrations. Now that Blackbeard is the owner of this devil fruit he can use all the abilities Whitebeard had, so we will go over those now but before that I just want to add that at first Blackbeard had not yet mastered the devil fruit when he first got it. Of course but now with a two-year time skip he has without a doubt managed to at least perfect most of these techniques. 

The first one is called Tycion which is where the user cracks the air with a punch that sends devastating shock waves through the air in the direction it is facing. These shock waves can pass through and damage almost any substance completely tearing it apart, and if these shock waves are directed into the ground the attack will result in a devastating earthquake capable of generating huge tsunamis or worse. If the user is not near water this attack also doubles as an excellent defense because it will destroy or disrupt any attacks that are coming towards the user. Gehrke Shin which is basically a close-range version of the previous attack that sends these vibrations into one point-blank attack that transfers the destructive vibrations to whoever or whatever the user strikes leading to massive damage. In Kobudo War which is where Whitebeard creates a small spherical area of energy with his hand to create a concentrated explosive and powerful blow to whatever is inside that spherical area and Shima Arashi which is where the user grabs and pulls the air around him and shifts it into many different directions which led to marine Ford tilting on its side and causing massive amount of destruction in the process. Not only does Blackbeard have the Yami Yami no Mi but he also has this powerhouse of an ability too. 

 Needless to say his most notable feature is his devil fruit abilities and it should also be noted that with these abilities he was able to defeat the Whitebeard pirates at some point during the time skip so these abilities are not something you want to challenge. And finally onto his connections - really the only notable connections we know of right now is Blackbeard's crew which is full of some very scary and powerful individuals but Blackbeard really doesn't have any big organizations on his side that we know of at least giving him a bit of a downfall compared to some of the others who have very powerful connections. However Blackbeard also has Kuzan as some sort of ally and considering Kuzan was previously an admiral not only is he strong enough to make it on this list himself but he also has knowledge from his time in the Marines that Blackbeard could definitely use to his advantage should he need to. So Blackbeard does have one useful ally if nothing else but that pretty much does it for Blackbeard. 

Yonko: Big Mom

So let's move onto the next Yonko we know about which is Charlotte Lin Lin better known as Big Mom. Let me just begin by saying we know a decent amount about Big Mom but nowhere near as much as we know about Blackbeard so there will be some missing information. 

To begin with her physical abilities, considering that Big Mom is a Yonko it is no surprise that she is quite physically strong. For instance she is able to throw punches that pack some real destructive power, she can climb tall buildings easily and throw her servants a great distance with only one arm. Another notable instance of her strength would be that she was able to break through a metal door just by walking through it which doesn't really sound him receive but smoothie who is one of Big Mom's sweet commanders and probably one of the strongest on her crew was unable to previously break through that same metal door unfortunately. 

Other than her strength we don't know much else about big mom's physical abilities so next to let's talk about her intelligence. Really not much is known about just how smart she is because we've seen two different sides two big mom - we've seen the side where she seems rather intelligent, more or less acting like a businesswoman in the way she sets up marriages and alliances with other crews and organizations ultimately just trying to get what she wants and strengthen her own crew. Then we have her other side which is quite terrifying - this side occurs when Big Mom gets fixated on a particular type of food or sweet and will completely rampage until she gets the food she craves for, going as far to destroy and kill entire countries, her own castle her own subordinates and even her own children. So it's honestly hard for me to gauge just how smart she really is at this point in time especially with such a dangerous eating disorder, so for now we'll just say she's moderately intelligent. 

Next up is Haki which we have no clue if Big Mom can use any form of haki at this point in time although considering she is a Yonko I would imagine she possesses at least one of the three and is very proficient when using it but again we can't know for sure until we see it.

Her devil fruit which is Soru Soru no Mi otherwise known as the soul soul fruit. This devil fruit is a paramecia type and allows the user to freely interact with and manipulate human souls. This soul manipulation consists of drawing out and manifesting fragments of a human soul into a somewhat ghostly light colored substance which the user extracts by grabbing the substance that appears to surround the body and pulling it out this extraction of the person's soul is effectively the same thing as taking away a fraction of their lifespan and the amount of life taken is decided by the user. The maximum amount we have seen so far has been years from Pedro although big mom was going to take away years from Pedro instead so it is likely she can take away even more than that and a big mom can even take so little as just a second of life if desired because of this ability it is possible for Big Mom to kill her victim instantly by taking more life away than the person in question has left. So far from what we've seen this extraction process does not appear to hurt the victim but this is also only for small amounts of the victims life and a greater amount could inflict quite a bit of pain. But we don't know for sure. Another thing that should be mentioned is that the emotions of the victim affect how easy it is for Big Mom to extract their soul. We don't know a lot about this stipulation but we do know that when a victim is showing fear it makes it much easier for Big Mom to extract their soul. 

Now you might be asking “what does big mom do with the soul fragments she extracts? Does she eat them?”  What she does instead is sprinkle these fragments all over the islands of Totoland where they settle into random objects or animals to turn them into homies. So basically these soul fragments can give life to inanimate objects and give animals a more human appearance and behavior kind of like chopper in a sense, but not quite to the same extent. These homies can fight if needed but they do have two weaknesses. The first is fear because if a homie experiences extreme amounts of fear they will instantly die. Their  weakness is the very card of Big Mom because they can sense her powerful soul emanating from it and therefore will not attack whoever has it. Big Mom herself can also create these things called incarnations which are these large blackghostly looking creatures created from Big Mom's own soul. These incarnations are able to extract Souls. These incarnations are also capable of human speech and are able to understand basic orders from Big Mom herself. They also have the ability to create or summon two particular homies at will named Zeus and Prometheus which are a thundercloud anda miniature son. They will appear whenever she summons them and with them she can manipulate the weather to create destructive storms as a manifestation of her rage which is noted to be unstoppable and that is currently everything we know about her devil fruit which is a very scary ability if you ask me I'm sure there will end up being a lot more this fruit can do but for now this is what we're left with. 

Finally, let's talk about big mom's connections. Let's talk about her children as far as we know Big Mom has 85 children in total and really her only reason for having so many children is to strengthen her crew and to marry them to whomever she chooses to create new alliances and overall make her crew even stronger. Some of her children such as Cracker just happened to also be one of the most powerful characters in One Piece so far and she has at least two more children who are on that exact same level. Additionally, many of her children are generally strong fighters or have some sort of ability meaning that just her family alone is a force to be feared. But aside from her family we also have her subordinates or other crew members. 

One of Big Mom's goals is to create a nation where all the races live in harmony, so as you can guess she also obtains some interesting crew members from other races. For instance Tamago and Peckham’s are both members of her crew who are from different races. Peckham's being a mink and tamago being a member of the long leg tribe. In addition to that since Big Mom marries her children to form a family connection with other crews and organizations, she ends up making a lot of new and powerful connections along the way. One instance of this would be her alliance with the son pirates or fish man pirates by marrying her daughter praline to Aladeento form that family connection and to protect Fishman Island. Since the fall of the former Janka Whitebeard this alliance also allied her with Jinbe meaning that he is also currently a member of her crew. Another good example would be her alliance with capone Bejiwho formed the family connection by marrying Chiffon. With this Capone works under Big Mom. 

It should also be noted that if someone ever wants to sever ties with Big Mom they need to give up something important to them in return such as a limb and Big Mom uses a roulette to decide what the severity of the important thing may be. So as you can imagine by how many children Big Mom has it is without a doubt that she has some very powerful allies. But we have yet to see all of them, meaning that she could potentially have the most powerful crew in the world. Another thing that should be mentioned is her relationship with the countries or civilizations she protects. Big Mom only protects them as long as they can pay some sort of cost to her usually in candy or some other sweet, and if they fail to pay she will not only revoke her protection but also destroy the area in question.

 So through this Big Mom could also be getting a lot of useful goods in addition to her sweet candy now that about does it for the allies we know about but I think what makes big mom so powerful is definitely her connections because big mom just has potentially so many and from those that we've seen already we can tell that her allies are some very powerful people and you should definitely think twice before starting anything with this Yonko but that about does it for what we know about Big Mom and unfortunately the other Yonko we know very little about in terms of their abilities but I will make sure to relay whatever information we do know. 

So next up we are going to be looking at the strongest creature in the world, Kaido of the Beasts. Let us begin with his physical abilities. Kaido has been caught and tortured times the Marines and other Yonko have attempted to execute him several times but each time he survived because the execution weapons broke when used on him. He has jumped from over x meters in the sky onto the ground in an attempt to kill himself creating such a massive shockwave that it sunk ships nearby. From that fall all he got was a little headache. Kaido is most notable physical ability if it is physical is his inability to die as you can see there have been numerous attempts to kill him each one resulting in failure and Kaido has also attempted to kill himself multiple times each time also resulting in failure so it's pretty much impossible to kill him apparently. Kaido also has massive physical strength from what we've seen as he was able to easily hit a normal sized person with his weapon and send them flying far off into the distance and it has also been said that he has sunk nine gigantic prison ships single-handedly but other than all that we know nothing else regarding his physical abilities but just from what we've heard I think it's safe to say he will probably end up easily being one of the physically strongest if not the physically strongest. 

In terms of intelligence, which we really know nothing about so there's not much to comment on, but I personally feel like Kaido is going to end up being the least intelligent of the four Yonko. If he isn't I would be very surprised.

 Next up is his ability to use haki (which you guessed it) we have no idea if Kaido can use haki however since he is a Yonko likely can but we'll have to see if he can and to what extent.

His devil fruit or lack of because we have no idea if Kaido has a devil fruit or not at this point in time so once again we'll need to wait and see. And finally let's move on to his notable connections which we do know something about first up is his crew which is made up of a lot of powerful individuals first are what he calls pleasures which are basically your normal throw away pirates with nothing special about them then we have the gifterrs which are members of his crew that have eaten the artificial devil fruits called smiles making them beastmen.

 

It should also be noted that Kaido's dream is to create the strongest crew the world has ever seen by composing it of nothing but devil fruit users so these gift errs are superior in strength to the pleasures and then after that we have the three disasters which are Kaido’s strongest members and his right-hand men the only one we know about currently is Jack who is strong enough on his own to make it on this list so I can only imagine what the other two are like in addition to his crew Kaido also has his allies and subordinates the first we'll mention is Doflamingo and caesar clown they were in charge of getting Kaido his smiles and although Doflamingo and caesar were defeated and the smile production was stopped Kaido still considers at th every least Doflamingo and ally as he sent Jack to rescue him and like we talked about earlier Doflamingo is also on this list meaning that so far Kaido has two of the strongest allies in One Piece even though he considers Doflamingo rather weak.

 Next up is X Drake and his crew who are currently allied with Kaido and work under him. Then we have Scratchmen Apoo is allied with Kaido as of now from what we saw and finally we have the Shogun of Wano Country who we do not know much about but we can assume they are a very powerful or at least very influential ally to have. Although Kaido does not have a huge amount of connections like Big Mom does he still has some of the most powerful allies in One Piece making him an even greater force to be reckoned with. But that is pretty much all we know about Kaido currently in regards to his power.

 Let's move on to the last Yonko which is none other than red haired Shanks. Now unfortunately Shanks is currently the most mysterious member of the Yonko so he is the one we currently know the least about, at least in terms of his own abilities. So when it comes to his physical abilities all we know is that he is a swordsman he was able to block a magma punch from Sakazuki and he used to have legendary duels with Mihawk back in the day when he had two arms. Other than that we know nothing else about his physical capabilities but considering he is a Yonko and each of the other Yonko are very strong and well-rounded physically we can assume the same for Shanks. 

Moving on to his intelligence - we don't know much about that either and all we really know is that he is very good when it comes to his skills with diplomacy as he was able to convince Sengoku to agree to his proposition. Also Kaido was on his way to kill Whitebeard before they made it to marine Ford but we learned that Shanks managed to intercept Kaido and stop him from coming so either A. the Red Hair Pirates defeated Kaido easily because they showed no signs of being injured from any previous battle when they arrived, or B. Shanks managed to persuade Kaido not to attack. What ended up actually happening is still a mystery so from his ability to deal with things like this I assume that Shanks is definitely rather intelligent maybe not as intelligent as someone like Doflamingo or MiHawk. But I would place his intelligence above Blackbeard if I had to guess how smart Shanks really was. But we'll just have to wait and find out.

Next up is Shanks ability to use Haki which from what we've seen so far Shanks can use both Conqueror's Haki and Armament Haki. His Conquerors haki is also extremely powerful as it was able to easily knock out tons of Whitebeard’s crew members. Additionally an SBS volume has stated that Shanks’ Haki is so powerful that he could have knocked out all of the men and New Fish-Man Pirates back during the Fish-Man Island Arc. So from that we can see that his haki is still much stronger than Luffy's. He also used Armament Haki to stops Sakazuki's attack with his sword so from this we can assume that his Haki must be something else because other Haki attacks didn't even faze Sakazuki in the slightest. So from what we know right now I would be willing to bet that Shanks currently has the strongest Haki in the series, but, again we cannot know for sure. Finally onto his devil fruit or lack of - we know almost for certain that Shanks did not have a devil fruit at the beginning of the series because he was able to swim. However it is certainly possible that Shanks did eat one at some point after that. A lot of people have some pretty interesting theories about it but we really can't know for sure if he actually has eaten one or not so, again I guess we'll just have to wait and find out. 

Now finally on to his connections. We don't know much about his connections other than the connection he has with his own crew. We know that he is also friends with Luffy but the two will likely not meet each other again for quite some time. Shanks used to be rivals with Mihawk but since he lost his arm it seems as though the two are just mere acquaintances, but on good terms. Finally the last connection we are aware of that is notable would be his connection with Marco. The two were once enemies but now seem to be allies after Marco gave an apology and his gratitude to Shanks although their relationship as of now is unknown. It should also be noted that Shanks was once a member of Gol D Rogers’ crew and I would say this is a very significant connection. But other than Buggy and Silvers Rayleigh we really don't know anybody else who is in Rogers’ crew and we also don't know what Shanks relationship is with them now. So compared to some of the other Yonko it seems as though Shanks’ is connections follow this short but at the same time I'm sure there's a lot more notable allies that we just don't know about. There must be some reason Shanks doesn't have very many either way I'm sure we will find out later on, but that does it for Shanks so out of the four Yonko.

Which one do I think will end up being the strongest so honestly at this moment in time it's very hard to judge which Janka will be the strongest due to the lack of information, but as of right now it seems as though each Yonko has a certain quality that is vastly superior to the rest. 

Physically I feel like Kaido will end up being the strongest because of his history and just his overall size and appearance. We know that Kaido has had quite the history with people attempting to kill him and even Kaido attempting to kill himself all of which have failed, so either this has something to do with his devil fruit if he has one or he is just that physically invincible which seems to be more likely so when it comes to physical abilities.

 I believe Kaido is the weakest in terms of intelligence. I feel like each of the Yonko are at the very least moderately intelligent except for maybe Kaido but, honestly right now the smartest Yonko appears to be Blackbeard or Shanks. I feel like Big Mom is close to their level of intelligence but she's just not quite that smart. Of course we don't know a lot about Shanks’ intelligence but it's also hard for me to imagine him not being intelligent so I may just be biased in that case. But if we take Shanks out of the question it looks as though Blackbeard is currently the smartest Yonko which is absolutely crazy to me because Blackbeard doesn't really seem that smart until you learn about his master plans and how he orchestrates them. So as of right now, I would say that Shanks and Blackbeard are both even in terms of intelligence.

 Next up is Haki which as of right now Shanks is on top mainly because we don't know what the other Yonko’s are capable of in terms of Haki. As of right now, we know that Shanks can use two of the three types and one of those two is Conqueror's Haki in addition to that Oda has basically confirmed in SBS that Shanks' Haki is strong enough to take out people at once, meaning that his Haki is the strongest in the series so far. There is a good chance that the other three Yonko could have stronger Haki or at least Armament Haki, but for now Shanks has the strongest Haki.

 

Moving on to devil fruits, it's impossible not to pick Blackbeard purely because he has access to two devil fruits unlike every other character but in addition to that they are two of the strongest devil fruits in the series making Blackbeard an unstoppable force just in that instance. On top of that it is likely Blackbeard will find a way to gain even more devil fruit abilities since he is looking for them so I think we can expect to see Blackbeard get much stronger later on in the series. But for now his devil fruits make him superior to the rest.

In regards to connections, I have to give this one to Big Mom for her massive crew and a massive set of allies compared to the other Yonko. In terms of connections Kaido is the only one that compares at all but even his crew looks tiny when you compared to Big Mom's. Kaido may potentially have the stronger crew but if Big Mom has a crew and set off allies close in strength but with greater numbers, even Kaido will be toast because of her massive set of connections. Big Mom takes the cake and eat it too.

Now on to who I believe is the strongest. Before I begin I want to say that this is a very very tough choice for me to make because each of them have some sort of superior quality. So what brings me to this conclusion is the fact that both Shanks and Blackbeard have two qualities over each while the others only have one. So for now I'm going to say Kaido and Big Mom are the weaker of the two overall, which is really hard for me to say because I feel that both of them are such powerful characters. But now we have Blackbeard and Shanks. Now personally as the series stands right now I believe Blackbeard is the stronger character or at least has the potential to be the stronger character if he can continue to consume devil fruit after devil fruit, gaining a whole arsenal of powerful abilities. But even if Blackbeard becomes the strongest character, I feel like he will never be on the same level as Shanks because I feel Shanks is going to be the character at the end of the series that Luffy needs to surpass. Luffy will need to become the strongest character so I feel like Shanks also has that plot armor we all know and love. But I could also be completely wrong, and Shanks could die in the next arc. So if I honestly had to choose the strongest character in One Piece, it would be Shanks. And I honestly hate to say that because we know so little about him, but that is just a prediction and  not the actual strongest character according to this list. Like I said earlier until we know everything about each Yonko I am ranking them all as equals, so, as of right now the strongest character in One Piece is a four-way tie between Kaido, Big Mom, Blackbeard and Shanks. But if I had to put my money on one character coming out on top it's going to be Shanks 

But there you have it everybody. The top strongest characters in One Piece or the top if you want to be specific. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this article today, and if you did make sure to drop a like on this article because if this article gets enough likes I will make the next One Piece top 10 which I am currently not sure what the topic will be about. But I've got some great ideas in mind and I just want to say it will probably be a little while until the next One Piece top 10  unless those likes are out of control. But even if it will be a while it will definitely be much much sooner than the gap between this article and the last one, so just be patient guys. Hopefully you guys agree with the characters on this list at least with the qualifications I put in place but if you didn't agree make sure to tell me in the comments down below who your top strongest One Piece characters would be.