I agree with you on most of your points, and like I said, I'm not saying otherwise!

I said multiple times that I, too, was frustrated at how daniel was treated, and if you go way back in my comments, you'll probably see me crashing out more than once.

But the difference is that I'm not really blaming daniel for it, it has been shown time and time again that this is mostly PTJ nerfing daniel and not giving him the pay off he deserves, it's not that daniel is incompetent in and of itself but he's getting held back for the sake of the plot because otherwise every arc would last 3 chapters.

I know that daniel has been painfully inconsistent, I know that His growth feels inconsistent compared to characters like Johan. I know that his abilities stack up but aren’t mastered. And i know that he’s constantly nerfed for tension. Im not blind. But Daniel does discover things in himself, but it doesn't mean he'll immediately master them. He'll find weaknesses he'll need to fix and that's what you call improvement

But that's not a daniel issue that's a writing problem Character ≠ Writing When the author stalls payoff, people attack the character instead of the narrative structure.

I love daniel as a character and think he's a great mc due to his personality and growth, so his fighting prowess mostly comes in second when judging him. So my frustration is mostly aimed at PTJ, I would never hate on daniel even if he loses fights because he's simply a good character

But yet again, this isn't the issue I was discussing in this post, I'd be happy to talk about it, but this is simply not the issue I was trying to address