User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 511: The Hell of Starvation, Review/@comment-130.105.140.154-20161124071225/@comment-7418318-20161124145216

How was that unnecessary?

He took down the vast majority of the enemy army, an army that was about to overwhelm the FT mages.

I agree that quite a lot of things in this arc are just bad and/or unnecessary (like Chelia sacrificing her magic only for Dimaria to be active within a day or two again and then to be brushed aside by Natsu like a footnote), but Makarov's sacrifice wasn't one of them in my opinion.