User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 526: My Name Is..., Review/@comment-30338537-20170313155029/@comment-25111584-20170314071211

I think that this might be more of a case of Mashima being a bad writer in that he couldn't explain August's Magic properly.

As I see it, August probably can't nullify while he's casting. So, with Gildarts right next to him, trying to cast a super OP Spell would be out of the question. Although it didn't matter anyway given Gildarts' prosthetic arm, but let's just say August never noticed it even though they've been fighting for quite some time. /o/

But that's all speculation though. And it still doesn't make the battle any better given the fact that August should have won a long time ago, but then... that's basically every Shield battle aside from Erza vs. Ajeel?

And I don't even think August is down yet, but that's just me being pessimistic. :P