Thread:Omega64/@comment-4503935-20190703001710/@comment-10330822-20190705083138

I kind of figured. Armament Haki is simply weaponizing your spirit. So the more intense your spirit, the stronger your Armament Haki. So let's say Luffy gets into a fight, he's not going to fight intensely against fodder enemies. But if he faces someone sigificantly strong, the intensity with ignite his spirit, his spirit will grow more intense, and his Haki will get stronger.

Observation Haki is pretty much the same thing, but with focus/sensitivity. You make it better by focusing and developing your ability to sense the "presence" of your enemy.

And Hyogoro is right. At the first level, Armament Haki is basically just like hardening your skin with your spirit, increasing the durability of your defense and the strength of your offense. Like Rayleigh said, its like wearing armor.

However, it can get more advanced than that. Armament Haki basically has two skill trees in the first level, the Full-Body Armament and the Concentrated Armament. The Full-Body is obvious, where a person learns to develop their Haki to cover their entire body, giving the same amount of defense across their entire body. But there are faults to this. As Law and Zoro showed against Vergo and Pica, the Full-Body Armament is only as useful if your Haki is stronger than the enemies. If it is, you become a Juggernaut, becoming completely unstoppable, if it isn't, then you just get cut down.

The Concentration variation is an unnamed concept focus where instead of focusing on convering your whole body to increasing the surface area of your defense, you focus on increasing the intensity of your Armament Haki to do more damage with less surface area.

It doesn't sound all that different, but its pretty obvious that there are some fighters that don't use Full-Body because its a waste of Armament Haki and instead focus on increasing intensity with certain body parts, and only using the coating on certain parts when they are defending. Doflamingo, Cracker, and Katakuri are big examples.

This latter concept is more useful if you have Observation Haki, as you can focus your Haki at the point of impact and as a result, defend yourself much more efficiently.

Ideally, what you should strive for is to increase your intensity as much as possible, and then strive for Full-Body with that level.

However, that might still not be enough. Both Kaido and Big Mom are known for having nearly impossible levels of strength and durability. Kaido can't even big executed because his body is so tough that blades shatter, chains break, and prison ships just fall apart. Big Mom is also illuded to be like a "human cannon ball" because her body is so durable its like its made of steel.

So, how do you deal with that, simply enhancing Haki is not enough. Rather Wano is illuding that Armament Haki is more flexible than it seems.

The second stage is a sort of expanded field of Haki. In other words, you expand the surface area of your Armament Haki outwards off the surface of your body. And in doing so, you create a weaponized field around your body, like an actual invisible set of armor.

You can even use this armor to attack an opponent as if you are holding a weapon. Literally shooting your Haki at them. This is very useful when trying to attack or defense a large surface area. In fact, if you think of Naruto's Frog Kumite, the concept is pretty much the same.

Now, the third stage is even more advance. Because Armament Haki is not a "physical thing" it can go into another person's body and damage them from the inside.

So, in the first stage, you learn to manifest the Haki onto your body. The second stage, you learn to expand that Haki from the surface of your body to around you like a field or bubble. And in the third stage, You can that expanded Haki and place it into the body of your enemy, and attack them from the inside, where their defense is weaker.

To me, this third stage is like Gentle Fist. But instead of chakra, its Haki, and instead of chakra points its just the raw organ damage that Gentle Fist could also do.

What's funny is that Oda made it seem like Kaido and Big Mom were so untouchable, but then he introduces such a simple power concept to make it workable.

So, yes, Oda is introducing a way for Luffy to actually damage Kaido and Big Mom, but the problem is that even if you can damage them now, its still a question of how much damage can you truly do. All that third stage does is give you the ability to hurt them, so its just makes it a level battlefield, but it doesn't change the fact you still have to fight them.

Honestly, I feel that while the Armament Haki will allow Luffy to harm Kaido and Big Mom, he will still need something more to actually overpower them, like a Fifth Gear or an Awakening. Because even though the third stage would cause Luffy to do so much more damage, the fact he hasn't even able to even scratch them, makes me feel that simply improving his Haki is not enough.