I feel like including elemental jutsu doesn't actually detract from stealth and strategy, especially if you keep it low powered.

 

If you remove elemental jutsu then it's no longer Naruto.

 

It's not like elemental jutsu are a problem, either. They never were. The only person who ever threw elemental ninjutsu around was Kakuzu, by virtue of his kinjutsu, and it wasn't like he was a huge problem in the end.

I know I've said it before in this thread, but the power creep wasn't a problem until the war arc.

Look at the Naruto v Pein or Sasuke v Itachi fights. Strategy, tactics, necessity of information. They had all of those. The closest thing to "world breaking" we had was Pein creating a meteor through gravity, and that was to combat the 8-tailed Kyuubi. Additionally, Pein was much weaker after using it.

It wasn't until the very end of the manga that we saw ninjutsu employed on a spam scale, and even then only by the top tier people.

Sasuke's fight against the 5 Kage was the first real fight that didn't make much sense within the confines of the story. And even it was shown to take a massive toll on Sasuke, evidenced by his fight against Danzo and the clash with Team 7. It was, at the very least, balanced.

The war is where everything went off the rails. Obito shows up with fucking jinchuuriki as Paths, Hashirama is basically a god, and Madara isn't far behind him. Madara is broken. Hashirama is broken. Naruto and Sasuke, by the end, are broken. They don't fit.

You can write a perfectly compelling "low powered" Naruto story by simply ignoring the entire war. Don't let the Sharingan have a giant glowing mecha, don't let the Rinnegan summon meteors from space (admittedly dope), and don't have bijuu throwing around nukes like candy. Do all that and suddenly your top tier ninja can be dealt with through all the things that made part 1 awesome. Information, subterfuge, strategy, and a few kickass techniques here and there.

 

Yeah, I usually skip the war arc in all of my writing. It's such a mess, and I lost interest in it fairly quickly. If everyone gets to be godlike, being godlike isn't special anymore.

I do think it's fine to let Susano exis, but I'd much rather it stays an Itachi-specific ability. He's a fucking beast. I've got no trouble whatsoever to believe that he drove himself to the heights of the Sharingan. But don't give everyone with three connected bars in their eyes such a power, not even Sasuke after he gets them. He should get his eternal sight, maybe even some feeling that his brother is with him, but not all the techniques just because he got handed an eyeball.

I won't even start in on Susano becoming a samurai armor for the Kyuubi. That particular scene didn't make me go "holy shit" in awe, but rather had me in tears of laughter while I simultanously wanted to bash my head on a hard surface.

I can't recall if this picture is from the anime or one of the movies, but it exemplifies everything that's wrong with power creep:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...noo_K11.png/revision/latest?cb=20141030114650

Edit: Huh. The picture is getting resized automatically. It's tiny now, but I think you get what I mean anyway.

 

Itachi's Susano'o was really what should have been the peak of that ability, aside from being able to use it painlessly with an eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, where it immediately goes from a skeleton to an armoured figure that surrounds him like a fortress. Although the sword that can seal anything inside and the shield that could block anything were a bit much.

Later on, it felt like Susano'o had too many 'levels' to it and it got progressively more powerful and tough as it went from the skeleton to the humanoid to the armoured god and, somewhere between all that, even grew legs.

Then there was Complete Body Susano'o which speaks for itself and truly exemplifies how bad the power scaling in the war is.

Edit: Actually I sometimes think that Susano’o would have been better if it worked more like the Nine-Tails Chakra Mode i.e. a humanoid shroud of bone and armour that wraps around the Uchiha which, perhaps exclusively to the eMS, can then become the giant construct we saw with Itachi.

Consudering Sasuke’s inevitable conflict with Naruto, it parallels nicely with his Jinchuuriki powers and wouldn’t have been nearly as jarring as seeing a giant spirit during Sasuke vs Itachi.

 

I don't know, I think the early points about Orochi v 3rd Hokage being the peak of power/skill is probably better. Pretty much everything in the time skip was ridiculous to me. Giant Skeleton from the eye included. As for Elemental Ninjutsu, I think just taking inspiration from the real world works best. Basically take inspiration from circus shows and perhaps theater. Then again some of the best jutsu were the non-elemental stuff in my opinion. Like your average ninja should well be a ninja, replacement jutsu, clones, maybe poison clouds and a fireball or such. Only top tier ninja should be capable of throwing around the elemental dragons and such. But then I guess I like the idea of a low-powered universe which never reaches even Pein Arc level because that arc was fucking dumb. Ninja able to take on an entire village and win is just flat out stupid to me.

 

I don't mind it in context and if you take Pein as the ultimate power he was originally billed as. I remember, back before we knew who he was, there were some small rumors that Akatsuki's leader was actually the Yondaime given how big of a reputation Minato had (only SS-ranked shinobi ever).

Think about it: Akatsuki are the boogymen of the Naruto world, wreaking havoc and battling jinchuuriki (freaks of nature capable of much more than average shinobi) and biju (literal natural disasters capable of taking out full villages). Pein leads them, keeps them in line, etc. Ipso facto, he's the strongest, best of the best, most terrifying missing-nin of them all. Nine other S-ranked ninja follow his lead for a reason, after all.

If you take that to be true, he has to be god-mode. Anything less and he wouldn't be fit to lead all the others. Thusly, him taking on a village solo isn't out of the realm of possibility. That power makes sense if he's Naruto's final villain. The problem is, as @DrSarcasm pointed out on the first page of the thread, if he's not the final guy the power gets scaled up again.

Honestly, Pein was the perfect final villain. His power level was balanced. He had a long-thought dead dojutsu that belonged to the guy who like invented chakra. He had powers no one had ever seen before, but the powers had flaws. They were still more than enough to kill 99% of other shinobi, but Naruto was never meant to be anything less than the world's strongest anyway. By manga's end, Naruto could kill Pein ten times over in the blink of an eye. And that's the problem.

 

Personally, one of my issues with the power-scaling was the lack of creativity when it came to attacks. Every character seemed to have a single attack that they just created variations of.

Let's take a look at Rasengan with a simple google search of "Types of Rasengan"

Spoiler

Rasengan
Ōdama Rasengan/Giant Rasengan
Chō ōdama Rasengan/Massive Rasengan
Senpō: Chō ōdama Rasengan /Sage Art: Massive Rasengan
Rasenrengan/Rasengan Barrage
Ōdama Rasen Tairengan/Giant Rasengan Barrage Line
Rasen Chō Tarengan/Rasengan Super Barrage
Senpō: Chō ōdama Rasen Tarengan/Sage Art: Massive Rasengan Barrage
Wakusei Rasengan/ Planetary Rasengan
Rasenrangan/Rasen Rampage
Rasenkyūgan/Rasen-Absorption
Oyako Rasengan/Parent and Child Rasengan
Bijū Rasengan/Tailed Beast Rasengan
Chō Mini Bijūdama/Super Mini Tailed Beast Bomb
Fūton: Rasengan/Wind Style: Rasengan
Gufū Suika no Jutsu/Hurricane Vortex JutsuGufū Suika no Jutsu/Hurricane Vortex Jutsu
Senpō: Jiton Rasengan/Sage Art: Magnet Style Rasengan
Shui Rasengan/Vermilion Rasengan

For fucks sake, that doesn't even cover the various types of Rasenshuriken...

A greater focus on versatility and attack variety reduces the need for every attack to be stronger than the last one they learned.

With a supporting cast like the Third Hokage, Jiraiya, Tsunade, Kakashi, etc. - Naruto could have learned something unique from each of them and ended up as a versatile powerhouse who took parts of each and formed them into a greater whole. Instead it was always "A stronger Rasengan! A deeper bond with Kyuubi!"

Rasenshuriken would have been a fantastic final attack against 'Pein as the end boss' where Naruto completed his father's idea of combining an element with Rasengan, it gives that 'Child has surpassed the parent' moment.

 

I guess our difference Inert is you see Pein as a good final enemy and I don't. I just find him going "And all those other guys? Beating them was kind of worthless because I'm pretty much stronger than all of them combined and I can pretty much do the entire plan solo." which while a standard trope for shounen... is still fucking stupid then again that fits for how dumb his plan was in the first place but that's a different discussion entirely. As for leading Akatsuki, I mean, I kind of always thought their leader was probably a "First among equals" type until the manga showed otherwise and that he was leader more because he had the plan, and didn't tell the full details on the off chance one of them would then kill him and use the plan themselves.

 

Always wondered this idea came from. There's no such thing as an SS-rank and the only ninja who appear to get classed as S-rank are missing-nin.

 

I'm not at all surprised that such a rating came up. It's a simple (if lazy) way to denote strength. S-ranks are monsters (cf. Akatsuki), but Minato - being a fan favorite, overall badass and having had a flee-on-sight order during the Third War - stood above such monsters even. Hence the SS-rank.

At the start it tripped me up, though. As a German I've got vastly different associations with those letters than Namikaze Minato.

 

Might be kind of appropriate, considering what he apparently did to Iwagakure during the Third War.

 

I don't think so. To make that comparison apt, he would have had to lead an extermination campaign against Earth's civilians. He was a terror on the battlefield, sure enough, but that wouldn't make him any worse than every other good soldier ever.

 

meh, Iwa ninja bitching about Minato killing 300 of them or thousands in minutes.
I always find it weird.
Minato just followed the ancient words of wisdom.
Instead of dying for your village, make your enemy dies for his.
Just took it to the extreme.

Shippuden was kinda disappointing, I hoped to see the Akastsuki start a 4th ninja war among the great villages as a method to both weaken them and use as cover to obtain the various Biju.

It is also bothered me that 15 years old Obito could go toe to toe with Minato.
Minato should have trashed him.

Regarding power levels.
Just ignore most of Shippuden, especially the clones training method and the infinite levels of sharingan, rasengan, eyes mutations in general and Kyubi modes.

 

Minato did trash him.

 

He didn't
He just defeated him.
I expected Minato to own him, to just a degree he will stay dead.

 

Minato did own him though. Literally one shotted him. Obito only survived because of the zetsu body that Minato couldn't have anticipated. Then he ran. His use of the Kyuubi, taking advantage of Kushina's weakness, using naruto as a Hostage and his kamui were the only reasons he wasn't put down permanently. Minato trounced him when they actually fought.

 

Is that so?