User blog comment:FairyRaven/Fairy Tail Chapter 427: Pitched Underground Battle, Review and Commentary/@comment-96.24.244.24-20150407112525

I don't get why people are so shocked these avatar dudes were one shotted. First off you don't go from one shotting Bluenote to struggling with these fodders. Unless any of the members(besides Gray) or Jackal level or above I don't see them not getting one shotted or the protagonist having a low difficulty battle against them. or these members to be a threat to Natsu they need to be atleast 2x stronger than Bluenote and that would only make it go from a stomp to a low diff, if that I would probably argue atleast 4x stronger. For these characters to be a threat to Lucy the weakest member would have to be Kai's level and more than likely that is a one shot and the mid level member would have to be Jackal's/Torausa's level or above and that would only introduce a mid difficulty battle. At this point Natsu and Lucy have trained and grown way stronger than what they were when they were fighting Tartarous members and they were already stronger than Tartarous for the most part before the time skip.

Right now these chapters are doing comparisons to show of characters growth. For Natsu it is to show he in relation to Gildarts(Bluenote) and Atlas flames(DeS magic) using these battles. For Lucy it is a comparison between her and Erza. Were are't going to get any real battles any time soon.