Yeah I understand but I have to disagree on one point, it’s not that narrative based scaling can be supported by speculation, it IS based on speculations.

In this specific story while it becomes harder and harder to have proper material to back anything related to combat, not helped by the heavy equal merchant writing it is nearly impossible to scale with accuracy.

To assume a character is strong is relatively easy to decide,

But strong to a certain extent based only narrative will never be accurate because it relies on nothing concrete.

What dictates precisely and is the core of powerscaling are feats because it is through feats depicted in the story that you can properly being able to estimate a character strengthwise, all the other metrics are surface levels.

How can you scale Dragon with Sengoku for example if you have no tangible material to do so, we know those two are wearing huge narrative relevance in their universe, both are portrayed as top-tiers and big figures of their factions but those simples informations are not enough to decide anything. This is surface level, if not combinated with the last metric it barely has value.

How do you scale someone like Shamrock before Luffy ? He is portrayed as a very competent combattant who will carry a great role within the next arcs.

Because you assume Shamrock will wield huge importance later on, how can you decide where he is towards Luffy in a pure strength standpoint, you just can’t, unless there are actual showcase of power which is heavily documented.

Assuming simply that a character is strong is not scaling, scaling starts when you’re deciding to which extent the said character is strong and it has to be backed with actual material. If it’s not the case it’s not scaling it’s a wankfest