User blog comment:IamJakuhoRaikoben/Chapter 447: Escape Battle, Review./@comment-26451407-20150805081453/@comment-1776824-20150805225351

You guys seem to forget that Gildarts' "travels" are him going out on SS and SSS-rated jobs. He doesn't need to conventionally train because his arduous journeys and powerful foes are his adversity. They keep him strong. He's gone for all this time doing job after job after job to keep himself strong. So in a way, yes, he does not train in the conventional sense, but to say that he just sits on his ass, fucks bitches and gets drunk 24/7 while everyone else around him continues to escalate in power is absolutely retarded. Gildarts is always getting stronger, and to say that old age is a handicap in regards to strength is ludicrous, because fictitiously, the strongest wizards were actually almost always the oldest ones (Zeref, anyone? Makarov? Warrod ffs?).

Tl;dr: Saying Gildarts is weaker than Natsu (wtf, guys) and Laxus is dumb. He is the strongest wizard in Fairy Tail, and one of the strongest wizards on the continent. Start using actual in-series sense in your arguments instead of trying to pull figurative shit out of your ass to make your favorite characters more powerful than the canonically most powerful wizard in the titular guild.