Unlike someone like Crocodile, who can turn into his element reflexively, Ace needs to be able to react, and Natsu is much faster than him, or at least had way more opportunities to demonstrate his speed. (plus, if Ace did change into his element, it would give Natsu the option of eating Ace)
What suggests that Ace needs to react? Are you judging off the RT (it says that, and I find that questionable)? I don't think anything suggests Ace is atypical as a Logia and can't automatically turn into flames to dodge.
While Natsu probably has better concrete feats for speed, I disagree with the assertion that he's straight up faster. Ace has a decent amount of scaling from characters who do have good speed feats. At the very least, the idea that Natsu could speedblitz Ace to hit him with lightning is laughable.
Finally, Natsu being able to eat the fire Ace turns into doesn't add up. Ace can exert control over his fire, and I have yet to see anything to suggest Natsu could supersede that control.
Luffy was able to hit Smoker in Alabasta because he caught Smoker off-guard (edit - he also hit Ace at the same time, in chapter 158), and Ace got his Devil Fruit fairly recently (somewhere in the three years before Luffy set out). Logia users turning intangible isn't automatic; it seems to take a lot of practice or having absurd Observation Haki like Enel does.
I don't know much about specific feats, so I can't comment on how scaling Ace to other characters would pan out. I just figure that Natsu gets stronger from Ace's fire attacks, and Ace didn't demonstrate much in the way of fighting without his Devil Fruit (he only demonstrated a single use of Conqueror's Haki, unconsciously and when he was a kid, and showed no signs of knowing the other two), so it didn't seem like there's much that Ace could do here.
Ace has fighting feats as he was a pirate for a long time even getting so fast as joining white beards crew prior to getting the flame flame fruit. I believe he was normal while fighting jinbei as well.
but that skews it ridiculously in favor of those who are main characters. We have no choice to use logic to scale people logically when they don't have enough screen time.
It seems like that would become the question of where we stop. Do we assume that Ace could use haki in the present day when he only demonstrated a single unconscious use of it? Do we assume that he's stronger than people like Big Mom's Sweet Commanders because he was on Whitebeard's crew, even if he didn't demonstrate that level of strength? (maybe he has; this isn't something that I've looked too deeply into)
There's no reason to believe that Ace wasn't going all out against Blackbeard. Even if he couldn't use his Devil Fruit thanks to Blackbeard's Devil Fruit, it still gives us something to work with as far as things like speed, durability, and his fighting ability without his powers are concerned.
Well he has two devil fruit powers for one thing. We don't know what the dark dark fruit can do but it's already shown to be extremely powerful beyond any other fruit we've seen. Its enough to immediately put him on the level on the Yonko.
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u/Megadoomer2 May 03 '17 edited May 03 '17
Unlike someone like Crocodile, who can turn into his element reflexively, Ace needs to be able to react, and Natsu is much faster than him, or at least had way more opportunities to demonstrate his speed. (plus, if Ace did change into his element, it would give Natsu the option of eating Ace)