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[x] My defenses in general aren't on parwith my offense, and in some situations a first strike isn't good enough.
Seeing Red [Naruto]
- Thread starter Tekomandor
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Yes, overwhelming first strike (that will hit) is, in fact, a solution to the problem of being defenseless. Substitution is a purely defensive technique, and I would argue that most clones are primarily defensive - confusing the enemy, making them attack the wrong target, watching the back of their creator, serving as meat shields if needed, substituting with their creator, etc. Unless you can spam clones that can fight as well as you (besides kage bunshin, most clones can't fight as well as the creator), your best bet is using clones to protect you.
Also defensive techniques in canon: Jiraya's Needle Jizo (yes, Jiraya is S-class, but the technique is listed as B-rank in the wiki) hair technique, kaiten (yes, I know, Hyuuga's ultimate defense, but a prodigy genin could recreate it on its own).
Great Greedy Guts
Ceterum censeo Vigilam esse delendam.
Having the chakra to power through something is a form of defence, even if a crappy one, and he's got a bunch of water stuff, plus Samehada's ability to eat chakra.
Itachi used a crapload of genjutsu to defend himself, on top of more Magekyo-specific stuff.
Deidara has "fly away" which isn't easy but does give him some advantages... and for all that he's one of the weakest of Akatsuki in outright combat because of that lack, I'd say.
I think some people (not just you) aren't really clear on what "defence" means in a fight, and are thinking of it as being limited to a shield, or armor, maybe. It's an understandable mistake, especially with things like GoT pushing the whole "swordfighting is about sticking 'em with the pointy end" meme, and most games using armor/shield for just that purpose and skills primarily for attacking.
The primary goal in a fight to the death is to not die. The secondary goal is to kill your opponent. Now, usually accomplishing the second goal will help with the first goal, but that isn't always the case. After all, it's pretty easy to wind up killing each other, which is an out-and-out loss for you in terms of achieving those goals.
Defensive abilities in historical swordplay (where I have the most training) do include things like blocking, parrying, and so on. Those are also almost always part of attacking, as well. You prevent your opponent from killing you by getting control of their sword, then you kill them with your sword while maintaining that control. As such, the ability to control the flow of the fight and keep the strong part of your weapon turned to the opponent's weaker part is the paramount defensive technique around. That means you have to get a read on your opponent and last long enough to put them down, whether that takes ten seconds or ten minutes.
You say that dual-use techniques aren't defensive? I say that any good defensive technique is dual-use. Even a wall of earth blocks lines of sight and could be used to close off an enemy's available lines of attack.
Clones might help you land a hit by fooling your enemy, but the primary use is to make the enemy uncertain of where you really are. The substitution might let you catch someone by surprise/overcommitting, but the primary use is to keep yourself safe from an enemy attack. Genjutsu messes with an enemy's ability to analyze the world around them, on a larger scale than clones.
Hell, taking it a step further, I'd even say that most good attack jutsu are dual-purpose as well. A truly overwhelming first strike prevents the enemy from having the chance to strike back. The Great Fireball can cover up other moves and distract the enemy (its primary use in canon, even).
The best defence is a good offence, because a good offence keeps you safe while you attack, giving your enemy two or more things to contend with.
This is also why I think the write-in version is better than the pre-made. It isn't about not having a defensive jutsu, it's about our ability to defend ourselves. That's the far more accurate and realistic thing to have an issue with between the two. (Semi-relatedly, the lowest level of rank-up test for my swordfighting school was to fight for fifteen continuous minutes with perfect form. You had to defend against a series of challengers of various skill levels and defend yourself without breaks while they rotated out. Win or lose, just maintain form.)
Hisana right now can do the initial attack. She doesn't have the endurance for extended combat, the skill/techniques to allow her to catch her breath or hold off multiple enemies, or the certainty of her initial attack putting down most opponents. She can, on the other hand, compensate for not using her Sharingan, even if it puts her at a disadvantage. She can do that even better if she's able to defend herself against the unexpected.
I posit that not only is this Hisana's current issue, it's the big issue for most ninja, and will continue to be hers for some time. That it is perhaps a truism doesn't make it less true, or important for her to recognize.
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Only Deidara really. Itachi had Susanoo, and Kisame has his bullshit chakra absorption. Deidara's probably the biggest glass canon there - and he deals with it by flying away and bombarding people.
It's not a perfect rule - there are S-rankers that lack any real defensive abilities. But it is fair to say that, for obvious reasons, have something that makes it significantly harder for people to kill you is rather helpful in staying around at that level.
The thing is though, ninja fights tend to come down to cleverness and tactics (assuming reasonable comparability between fighters). Most of these tend to come down to "if someone is better than you, and outthinks or tricks you, they can still kick your ass". This is true regardless of whether or not we have the sharingan. As others have said, pretty much everything you might try on the sharingan would also be a good idea against normal people as well.
I mean, it's probably not a bad idea to train with and without having the sharingan on so our reflexes don't become completely reliant on it, but that's hardly a major weakness of ours.
Nagato fought in person until he got crippled, and fought in person again after getting healed.
Madara got stabbed to death with a Mokuton sword, and popped Izanagi.
I'll give you Hashirama and Rashomon, but his Mokuton techniques were all primarily offensive.
Orochimaru certainly; unique techniques, given his obsession with immortality.
Minato, again, used a mobility technique defensively; the one defensive technique I remember in his arsenal was the one that teleported a bijuudama.
As for puzzles, the only ones that really qualifies on that list are Kakuzu and Zetsu.
Nothing suggests Konan being impervious to a Fireball, for example, and we see oil mess her up. Without Kakuzu's intervention, Hidan would be dead regardless.
Sasori literally had his heart hanging out.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Just the fact that Minato had a seal able to deflect a bijudama is telling, I think. And Madara had Susanoo while alive.
Also, going by Danzo, Izanagi should count as a defensive technique.
Also, going by Danzo, Izanagi should count as a defensive technique.
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Good argument chum, you realise that the proposal was that 'Defensive jutsus and abilities seem to be disproportionately common in S class ninjas.'.
Nagato fought in person until he mastered the Rinnegan which made him S class.
This is literally a before and after in favour of Redshirt.
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somnolentSlumber
(Verified Proofreader)
- Location
- hell
Missing capitalization there.
This is a minor grammatical quibble, but one exceedingly common among fanfiction writers for some reason. You need to put a comma between dialogue lines and their corresponding dialogue tags. For instance, your current dialogue punctuation looks like this:
"Hello." He said.
That's a very common mistake to make. The correct way to punctuate dialogue looks like this:
"Hello," he said.
This applies even when there's a question mark or exclamation point, like so:
"Hello?" he asked.
"Hello!" he shouted.
It's a minor but common enough mistake that it frustrates me to see, especially in an otherwise well-worn quest like this.
My apologies; I can't answer all the quotes at this time.
Some will have to wait.
There is no suggestion that he was lower-powered before his legs got burned, just that he was less ruthless.
Hanzo agreed to a peace meeting because he was losing, after all.
I think we are going to have to define our terms here, for some semantic clarity; I know the argument seems to have shifted from defensive ninjutsu to defensive techniques, and now you have Yog claiming an alpha strike is a defensive technique, for example.
Some will have to wait.
This is wrong to the best of my knowledge. Nagato fought in person until he got crippled.
There is no suggestion that he was lower-powered before his legs got burned, just that he was less ruthless.
Hanzo agreed to a peace meeting because he was losing, after all.
I think we are going to have to define our terms here, for some semantic clarity; I know the argument seems to have shifted from defensive ninjutsu to defensive techniques, and now you have Yog claiming an alpha strike is a defensive technique, for example.
- Location
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Well there was the massive freakout and Nagato didn't appear to have much if any control of the husk of the ten tails. It was previously implied that the Rinnegan responded to emotions from the time when he killed those bandits or whoever because they attacked the group when he was little. (Frankly the whole thing seems to mirror Sasukes development of the Sharingan, but thats a topic for another conversation)
Because they didn't try to kill him rather than Yahiko implies that they considered Yahiko to be the greater threat.
Because if Nagato was capable of doing that all along then Rain was more than losing.
So there are three arguments.
However I do agree that clarification can help.
Honestly the best thing we could possibly get is a technique that improves both our offense and defense, while complimenting our style. It's noted that one of the main "disadvantages", and that's because every ninja would want this type of disadvantage, is that their eyes are superior to their bodies meaning that while they can see something they may not be able to physically react.
Come up with something to have mark 2 reflexes along with a mark 2 eye, and you accomplish something wonderful. The thing that comes to mind in canon is the Raikage's lightning armor, but strip the actual lightning armor portion so you just have a jutsu/chakra flow exercise that improves your reflexes. This augments your physical capabilities, and in unison with the sharingan, satisfies the goal of great offense and defense. Given we already have Iaido as a sword style, it helps that too.
The characters medical experience should actually help her here in formulating such a thing if it doesn't already exist in common usage, given it's pretty obvious in canon that ninja can enhance their bodies and senses with chakra. Hisana may simply need to learn to improve her chakra control enough that it's safe enough to learn.
Come up with something to have mark 2 reflexes along with a mark 2 eye, and you accomplish something wonderful. The thing that comes to mind in canon is the Raikage's lightning armor, but strip the actual lightning armor portion so you just have a jutsu/chakra flow exercise that improves your reflexes. This augments your physical capabilities, and in unison with the sharingan, satisfies the goal of great offense and defense. Given we already have Iaido as a sword style, it helps that too.
The characters medical experience should actually help her here in formulating such a thing if it doesn't already exist in common usage, given it's pretty obvious in canon that ninja can enhance their bodies and senses with chakra. Hisana may simply need to learn to improve her chakra control enough that it's safe enough to learn.
Shape of Fire
Burns
Well, the ongoing debate has convinced me that neutralizing the sharingan is not our biggest weakness (not at this level anyway). So, I'm voting the other weakness that has come up in canon posts:
[X] Being outnumbered.
In the Graduation battle we got off, what two jutsus that combined into a good aoe, but we didn't have reserves to do it twice and when we closed for melee, we were taken down fairly quickly. I believe the straight quote was something like "one on one you could take any of them, but all at once they overwhelm you". Would quote the post but I'm on a phone.
[X] Being outnumbered.
In the Graduation battle we got off, what two jutsus that combined into a good aoe, but we didn't have reserves to do it twice and when we closed for melee, we were taken down fairly quickly. I believe the straight quote was something like "one on one you could take any of them, but all at once they overwhelm you". Would quote the post but I'm on a phone.
I'll clarify: defensive technique, as I understand it, is such a technique that primarily prevents, negates, reverses or otherwise counters harm to the user of said technique. Our problem, as stated, is lack of defense in general - in combat, should our first straike fail, we can't effectively protect ourselves for a prolonged period of time. This can be negated in two ways: increase our offense, so we can kill people before they can kill us, or increase defense.
Defensive ninjutsu is ninjutsu whose main goal is to protect the user in some way. Clones, for example, absolutely fall under this category, at least some types of clones.
I hope that we'll be able to provide input into our training and suggest the kage bunshin training method. With Naruto providing chakra, and the seal, we can train faster. Even if it's only two times faster, that's still an overwhelming advantage.
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[x] My defenses in general aren't on par with my offence, and in some situations a first strike isn't good enough.
I do have an idea for a defensive technique, but our Fuuinjutsu isn't really refined enough to do it yet so I was going to save it, but... Well, the topic.
Tier 1 is... basic. It takes all of our dead skin cells and makes them as hard as steel. Or something similar. Kunai, Shuriken, Spears and the like are suddenly a non-issue for the most part.
Tier 2 would be making it spread blunt force trauma across our entire body evenly (or, even better, optimally across our body). This takes care of most taijutsu as well blunt force trauma in general.
Tier 3 is making a wind barrier around our body just off the surface of the skin. Basically it acts as a cushion making the previous two tiers much more effective. Also, emergency air supply in case someone tries to drown us. Could also make it use water in case we ever get stuck underwater and have no access to any air, so we don't lose the protection I mean.
Tier Three would be needed for blocking most chakra flows likely and may be susceptible to being set on fire? I'm not sure just how flammable Wind Chakra is to Fire Chakra. Might want to figure out a way to insert enough Water into it so it can't be set on Fire. *Shrug*
Powering it could either be through another (set of?) chakra storage seal(s) or through Nature Energy since we wouldn't be running it through our own coils.
Tier 1 is... basic. It takes all of our dead skin cells and makes them as hard as steel. Or something similar. Kunai, Shuriken, Spears and the like are suddenly a non-issue for the most part.
Tier 2 would be making it spread blunt force trauma across our entire body evenly (or, even better, optimally across our body). This takes care of most taijutsu as well blunt force trauma in general.
Tier 3 is making a wind barrier around our body just off the surface of the skin. Basically it acts as a cushion making the previous two tiers much more effective. Also, emergency air supply in case someone tries to drown us. Could also make it use water in case we ever get stuck underwater and have no access to any air, so we don't lose the protection I mean.
Tier Three would be needed for blocking most chakra flows likely and may be susceptible to being set on fire? I'm not sure just how flammable Wind Chakra is to Fire Chakra. Might want to figure out a way to insert enough Water into it so it can't be set on Fire. *Shrug*
Powering it could either be through another (set of?) chakra storage seal(s) or through Nature Energy since we wouldn't be running it through our own coils.
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It would also be interesting if Kakashi asks Hisana about her chakra storage seal to try and create one himself, as Kakashi has low reserves for a jonin (at least pre Shippuden and the stupid escalation) and he has sealing experience given he tried to contain Sasuke's curse seal. So he has the weakness it covers, and he should have the skill necessary to create it or the motivation to get the skill to create it.
I personally can't see him having lower sealing skill than Hisana's 45 (rank c) sealing, and somehow she managed to create it.
I personally can't see him having lower sealing skill than Hisana's 45 (rank c) sealing, and somehow she managed to create it.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
The sealing in this is done Dreaming of Sunshine style, in which seals are an expression of the individual seal user's mind, and individual sealing styles have differing advantages and disadvantages.
So it's possible that making a chakra storage seal is much harder in "Kakashi style" sealing than in "Hisana style" sealing, since Hisana would have a different perspective on what chakra ultimately is than him.
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[x] My defenses in general aren't on par with my offence, and in some situations a first strike isn't good enough.
Loktarogar
The Apex of Cuddling
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Also soldiers pills are much better than a seal that restores chakra.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
... well, they're much less effort to aquire, if that's what you mean. Quality wise, a seal you can instantly trigger with no negative side effects is superior.