Dragon Ball Full Explanation

Introduction

This will also be an in-depth explaining why we have the Dragon Ball tiering the way we do, I'll essentially be merging all of the different Dragon Ball blogs into this one, though I'll leave them as their own separate blogs for people that want to read the singular arguments specifically or discuss those.

Anyone that's dead set on Dragon Ball being above planet or Goku being able to effortlessly destroy planets while breathing are not going to agree with this so I'd suggest you just stop reading here, I know you're not cause that's how the community normally is but it's just a suggestion so you don't waste too much of your own time.

There will be some informal terms here as this was initially made for a blog post, though it was edited to be far more formal.

Canoncity

I already made an entire page that details the Dragon Ball canon, but I'll grab some quick excerpts from here so people will be able to understand why I'm using things like the anime or video games.

Dragon Ball Z Anime
Dragon Ball has various media that essentially re-tells the story from the manga, along with an anime adaptation, while there's great debate over how the canon works, Dragon Ball Super alone dispels any argument over whether or not the anime and manga are two different continuities or not. Toriyama directly notes the Dragon Ball Super anime is followed by the Dragon Ball Super movies, which the official continuation that take place between the Majin Buu Arc and the final chapter, the movies and anime are both canon to each other as Toriyama has officially said movies like DBS Broly are the next story in the series currently airing on TV (Dragon Ball Super). Now why does this matter? Not only does the Dragon Ball Super anime directly show anime flashbacks, but characters such as Gregory exist in the Dragon Ball Super anime, when he's a character that did not exist in the Dragon Ball manga, showing the Super anime acknowledges events and characters in the Toei anime. So with this in mind, DBZ anime is considered not it's own separate "toeiverse" as some fans say, but the same continuity as the manga.

Dragon Ball Z Kakarot
DBZ Kakarot is considered canon with Toriyama directly noting how it will include backstories that haven't been told in the manga, giving it even further expansion into the canon as it gives more context for things. Kakarot also now contains the Peaceful World Saga.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse
An actual common misconception in the Dragon Ball fandom is that Xenoverse is not usable in canon discussions though this is not further from the truth. The way Xenoverse works is that there's a time patrol that preserves the canon, with Xenoverse Trunks directly noting in Xenoverse that there is a "Scroll of Eternity" that contains all of time and history with everything listed in there. This is further shown DBZ Kakarot where Towa and Mira appear to fight Goku, taking place before Xenoverse 2. Xenoverse also has events from DBS within its scroll of eternity.

Dragon Ball Fighter Z
Android 21 has her canon backstory within Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.

"Toeiverse"

There's a term I see thrown around a lot for Dragon Ball and it's a "Toeiverse", there is no Toeiverse however, Dragon Ball has one singular multiverse. The Toei Anime is outright considered to exist in "one dimension" with the manga. The closest thing to a "Toeiverse" are the movies, but they just merely take place in another dimension.

I put this section here to dispel anyone trying to shift any of the problems I list here with a "well in Toeiverse".

"Ki Control"

This is what needs to be discussed immedieatly cause this is the most commonly used argument for why Dragon Ball feats are visually far lower then the tier most people have them at, and it's weird because none of them ever send a direct scene of this concept being explained in depth. Well, luckily for everyone, I'm somewhat of a Dragon Ball reader myself. So I am here to explain the concept in full.

Interestingly enough, unlike most other Shonen series where there's a chance to fully sit down and explain the power system within the verse, Dragon Ball has that in far more vague ways, likely since Toriyama thought it'd be boring for the reader or cause he didn't care enough to give an explanation.

The name "Ki Control" itself, I don't directly know the origin of, in Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3, there's skill types called "Ki Control" and "Compelete Ki Control" the former halving the ki used to use dragon dash while lowering their defenses in the process and the latter allowing all moves and techniques to require less or no ki. I know it's a commonly used term, but from what I can see, it comes from Dragon Ball characters saying "controlling energy", no one officially says "Ki Control" itself as far as I can remember, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not completely confident in this.

The earliest explanation we can see of ki control starts with Goku vs Mr. Popo, where Mr. Popo notes Goku has considerable power, but he doesn't use it well. Interestingly enough, fights as early as Goku vs Tien in the 22nd Budokai makes note that Goku separates a "tournament level" power and a "battle level" power, though this is the far simpler forms of power suppression, it's something people can do in real life, so I don't really know if this can be directly called "ki control". Popo's version of it allows one to completelty mask and control the prescence of oneself and their power, so they do not use wasted movements or attacks. Essentially fully controlling their energy, so this one fits ki control more. So in essence what "ki control" itself is the ability to mask and control the amount of energy one uses so they don't waste too much energy from their attacks. Piccolo further explains that in battle they can amplify what one calls energy in one tremendous burst, thus they are not at this level of energy at all times.

Gohan explains ki as the latent energy in one's body and to do things like fly requires one to control ki, and this is about as much as we get for an explanation of the power in the verse.

Now time to clear up some misconceptions, such as ki control being the reason for energy blast not blowing up everything, this is simply not true:

The Raditz fight introduces how Raditz is not aware of being able to focus all of one's energy into a single point and by proxy other Saiyans. Though this in itself is misunderstood as ki control, this was something that existed with certain charged blast for a while, and was first introduced with Roshi's kamehameha. Vegeta's galick gun does a similar thing, with him even making note that the kamehameha is similar to his blast. These cannot be ki controlled as they are directly using all of one's dormant energy and focusing it into a single point.

We see this further when Vegeta uses his final flash, where Trunks and Krillin were freaking out as if the beam would've destroyed the planet but Vegeta narrowed the beam so that it wouldn't hit the planet.

Cell shoots out a fully charged kamehameha that would've destroyed the planet if it hit but curved it to follow Goku.

Goku does the same thing back to Cell, though instead he teleports to hit Cell and not the Earth.

Even when Goku is charging up something like the spirit bomb, he's afraid of it crushing the planet because it'd be "too powerful", if ki control did control AoE, he'd have no reason to be scared of this.

These three cases show one consistent thing, none of these blasts' area of effect or power can be "controlled" the characters need to keep moving the blast to go into outer space so that it won't hit the Earth. Ki control has never been explained in series either that it can control the area of effect.

Another misconception deals with ki in itself being "passive" and always up:

Ki Control is not passive, as we see what happens to Tien has a blade slice his chest, showing that one's ki isn't passively protecting their body against piercing-based weaponry, this would explain why Buu Saga Son Gohan even while in super saiyan catches the bullets instead of just no-selling them. This also shows why Krillin can be pierced by bullets in Dragon Ball Super, and why Goku got hurt by a rock being thrown at his head, Krillin even makes note that he was expecting the rock to move at slow motion from Goku's perspective but it didn't. Not training for a while either can mess with their body, Goku blocking a bullet slightly scratches him because he's been slacking off.

I did this section for a couple of reasons:

• To give a concise answer to ki in Dragon Ball since there's never really a deep enough explanation beyond some scenes slightly explaining the concept in vague ways.
• Clear some of the misconceptions because it's gotten so bad that people will say "Ki Control doesn't exist" because some fans use completely wrong ideas of ki control never once brought up in the manga, anime, etcetera. Ki Control DOES exist, it's just not at all an excuse to use for AoE based attacks being far lower.
• Cause I like explaining power systems for verses.

Large Explosions

Dragon Ball is pretty popular for having very large explosions, a good example of this is Nappa where we see him cause a massive explosion that can be seen from outside the planet, though this is what it actually destroys. Now why is this when the explosion is far bigger then the actual damage? This is mainly due to the "Sphere of Destruction" trope, where one makes an ridicolously big explosions that don't really meet the actual aftereffects an explosion such as this would have, being handwaved as a "rule of cool". This is to say that immensely gigantic explosions in Dragon Ball are there for visual effect and not to be taken completley literally and pixel measured, Nappa's example alone shows this with what the after effect actually did.

Denying Toriyama Is Dumb

I have to add this section real quick because of something I said in the old Roshi moon blog
"Along with this, Piccolo's own moon feat took effort to do, with his veins popping out, him breathing hard after performing the feat. If you want to get really fucky, in DBZ Kakarot, which is considered canon, they straight up retconned Piccolo's moon feat with him "creates an illusion in which the moon only appears to be destroyed. We don't use DBZ Kakarot as the main canon and just ignore this retcon, but this just goes to show how fucky you can get with this scaling, if Toriyama doesn't consider Piccolo being a moon buster to be right, imagine how he really thinks about Roshi's gag manga time moon feat. "

So I don't know why we have it as that, the original arguments I saw was cause Toriyama had "alzheimers and dementia" (in the case that he forgets a lot, from what I can look up it doesn't seem like he had these two things, no one could confirm if he's officially diagnosed with these) but... So what? This is still the new canon he has and he directly acknowledges it. Toriyama being stupid and forgetting shit doesn't really matter when it's carried into the canon and is a canon part of the series. Like Goku being a bad father is stupid but it's objectively stated in the DBS manga, no matter how much people want to dispute it.

So basically we're not going to handwave things anymore because of simply "it's stupid", Dragon Ball is not a deep written series, it's very in your face, even Toriyama will admit to that, if we want to handwave stuff because of how stupid it is, there's so much we'd need to remove to the point that there shouldn't even be profiles anymore.

So basically any retcons Toryiama puts in are just going to be put on the profile, no matter how stupid they are, because that's what's going to happen with a series where fights are more prioritized then the writing.

Small Expert: I initially wrote this a long time ago when Toriyama was still alive, though as he's now gone obviously he won't be able to add anymore retcons. The power now goes to I believe Toei and SHUEISHA for any retcons, along with Toyotaro.

Outlier

As shown in our Outlier page it is considered a feat inconsistent with the other feats shown, this concept doesn’t originate from vs debating but from statistics, it’s basically a point that’s radically far off from other points, here’s a picture as an example. I explain this to basically note that in statistics, which is what we use for the powerscaling idea of an outlier, we do not consider that scatter point does not exist, we consider that it’s best to discard the scatter point as it doesn’t support the line of best fit. The same thing with outliers for feats, we don’t assume that the feat suddenly doesn’t exist anymore or that the author believes the feat doesn’t exist anymore. I mention this to say that any guidebook reaffirming that Roshi destroyed the moon doesn’t help support or debunk the argument of Moon level Roshi, all it does is re-affirm that yes, that event indeed existed, which is not what we’re arguing. We are fully aware Roshi destroyed the moon, it’s an event that objectively happened. So like the scatter point, we don’t consider the Roshi feat doesn’t exist, we consider it best to discard the feat as it’s not consistent.

So when you see me say "this feat isn't legit", I'm saying not scalable due to it being an outlier, not regarding it not existing.

I only have to say this cause outlier somehow got so misconcepted within a certain community that people think now that an outlier means the feat doesn't exist.

Explanation

Destroying the Moon

Roshi Destroying the Moon

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So the obvious argument for why he is the very feat he did:
https://imgur.com/a/FazVoYg

But as stated by us, it’s an outlier. Reasons?

For one, you have how his other Max Power Kamehameha nuked part of a mountain and only got calculated around city:
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:FanofRPGs/Master_Roshi_destroys_Mount_Frypan

The feat itself can never be argued a moon level attack that overwhelmed the mountain as the total destruction it did still left a good majority of the building intact.

Counter argument made for this was Roshi wasn’t going all out cause he laughed at the end of it or didn’t have a serious face on him after doing the deed, but if you see the specific statement in the scene itself:
https://pm1.narvii.com/7525/ca801ba45b1a6c43c75164ac3391b19d190aea05r1-1080-1593v2_hq.jpg
He specifically implies that he went a little too overboard. All this scene implies is he didn’t control himself, mind you this was still back when Dragon Ball was a gag manga, so it wouldn’t make any logical sense to portray this as a serious scene.

This also can’t be argued ki control since Roshi literally admitted he went overboard and such, mind you there’s still pieces of the castle left in tact after the feat, so if this was the true moon busting kamehameha he would’ve atomized the castle pieces, unless we’re going to say the moon is smaller than that.

Another point mind you is that Roshi wasn't aware of his own strength here very clearly, Roshi hasn't fought for a long ass time before this moment in the manga because he's been a hermit for so long.

We also know that this isn't a casual feat because one, Roshi went to MAX power. Now contrary to popular belief, MAX Power Roshi isn't a form that Roshi controls, it's literally in the name. It's Roshi at his maximum power, just like 100% Final Form Frieza isn't a form. Now we also know with the kamehameha that Roshi is using is directly explained by Yamcha to be using ALL of his dormant power and condensing it into a single blast:
https://imgur.com/a/gH4gyZq

Now let's get the counterargument to this counterargument out of the way, which is that Yamcha is just lying/doesn't know what he's talking about here.

I'm not joking either, this is unironically an argument people used. So the very point of this scene is for Yamcha to explain to the audience what the kamehameha is cause this is the first time in history we've seen it. This is an exposition scene. These are two objective points that are the very basics of narrative, there's no denial here. Thus, tell me why the fuck would Toriyama have Yamcha LIE in the exposition scene trying to explain what the kamehameha is? That goes against the entire narrative structure of this scene. He's never once called out for being wrong, no one says he's lying, he has no reason to lie here, etcetera.

This also goes against the VERY NAME of the attack, which is the MAX POWER Kamehameha:
https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/MAX_Power_Kamehameha

Objectively, Roshi used his maximum power here, also ki control wasn't a concept yet as ki concealing wasn't taught by characters until Goku was trained by Popo in Dragon Ball. Hell, ki sensing wasn't even a thing until Goku drank the sacred water.

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The second counter argument is King Piccolo himself, since his strongest attack was calculated at 7-B:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160504180642/http://www.narutoforums.com/xfa-blog-entry/19133

Before we get into the other parts, this along with the rest have been argued to just be “ki control” now for those who don’t know, I’ll give a brief description of what ki control is. It is controlling the flow of ki within one’s body, allowing one to channel larger or smaller amounts of their ki reserves. In essence, they can adjust their strength to match the situation, and generate attacks which contain larger concentrations of ki than they are normally capable of.

The full explanation of it is here:
https://imgur.com/a/3wfId5C

So basically, when a dragon ball character is exerting ki control it’s not for a full powered charge, it’s for holding back how much ki they’re using. If they are using their full power, they're going to curve the beam or send it upwards, away from the planet in order to stop the planet from being destroyed. Such as when Vegeta curved his final flash when Trunks thought he was going to destroy the planet.
https://imgur.com/a/XvBvtbH

King Piccolo using his strongest attack is most definitely not him holding back how much ki he wasted and he never once curves it when he does use said attack. Goku even directly reaffirms this during their fight.
https://imgur.com/a/4unGjls

We even have Yajirobe comment on King Piccolo as "a creep who could blow a city to smithereens" and is surprised as Goku being able to beat someone like that, which wouldn't make sense since Yajirobe power levle wise would be far beyond 21st Budokai Roshi in power, who is the one that destroyed the moon in the first place.
https://ibb.co/Ytn2J1W

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The third counter argument comes from the Red Ribbon Army Arc. Roshi notes that Goku surpasses him in power.
https://imgur.com/a/VXMSwIV

Now before we get into why this matters, let's quickly deal with a counterargument I see people use. That the statement of Goku surpassing him in power is in reference to his base form. This statement makes no sense as Roshi doesn't have "forms" as noted above, Max Power Roshi is exactly what it is, maximum power, not a separate form of his, so it's obvious Roshi is taking that state into account when saying Goku has surpassed him.

Now the reason this matters, Goku during this fight would've died to a missle that destroyed a mountain if het let it hit him, along with this it hurt his feet when he kicked it. The missile can't be 5-C because the missile doesn't have ki control and it does not destroy more then just the mountain.

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The final counter argument comes from the Goku vs. Tien fight. Roshi admitted during their fight he would've lost to Tien if it went on, and Tien has an official higher power level then Roshi during this arc. Even then, he matched a Roshi that specifically trained during this arc to catch up with his students, so he's stronger then himself from the 21st budokai tournament.

Tien's attack destroyed the entire arena, now what matters about this is that Roshi openly comments on the destructive power of the arena blast and notes how the kamehameha doesn't even compare to it.

Kami Scaling

Kami himself re-created the moon during the 23rd Budokai Arc.

To start off, we can't even scale Roshi to Kami. King Piccolo and Goku have listed power levels of 260, Kami casually flicked away Goku after their first meeting and this is after his King Piccolo fight where he would've gotten a zenkai boost. Just note Roshi believed there's no way for him to defeat King Piccolo. So Kami far more powerful then Roshi and shouldn't at all be used as a reason for Roshi's feat not being an outlier. Though secondly, Kami's standard of "creation" is far different from what we consider an attack potency creation feat. Popo notes that he molds the creations and Kami "breathes life into them". Along with this, the feat is done off screen, so there's no way to gauge how he did this, thus this feat cannot be used.

Sheron Scaling

This applies to Kami then anyone else but the argument is since Shenron notes a wishes power cannot surpass Kami's he therefore has to be moon level for Shenron to restore the moon, which is an extra moon feat that can be added on to support Roshi's moon feat.

Same problem as the prior two, Roshi is nowhere near comparable to Shenron, Kami, or Piccolo so these can't be used to argue his feat legit. Along with this, Shenron's powers are reality warping, Shenron's statement isn't in relation to physical power, it's in relation to Kami's magical powers. Or else Guru, a obese, dying namekian would not have such a powerful dragon like Porugna.

For those trying to remember what Shenron's moon feats are by the way, both are hypothetical and aren't confirmed. The first one is that Kami used Shenron to recreate the moon, the second one is that Shenron re-created the moon during the Frieza-Android saga interlude by some unknown person.

Some Extra Takes

I think a very important thing people have to understand is narrative cohesion with this scene. When Roshi did this feat, Dragon Ball was still largely a gag manga where characters could do whatever. Roshi destroying the moon was a mere gag scene to deal with Goku becoming a giant monkey. The minute Dragon Ball became a battle manga, the feats went to being more gradual, they very clearly were not treated as moon level until the beginning of early DBZ and I think that's an important factor people have to accept.

Piccolo Destroying the Moon

So let's talk about Piccolo destroying the moon.
https://imgur.com/a/4swh2gT

Dragon Ball Z Kakarot directly states they straight up retconned Piccolo's moon feat with him "creates an illusion in which the moon only appears to be destroyed.

Though for extra reasons wrong with this feat.

So an interesting thing to note is that first and foremost, Piccolo did this with a charged energy blast, which in the same saga and in an early fight, it's noted that charged energy blast are greatly above the users power level:
https://imgur.com/a/d0JUlCg

So this would mean the attack wouldn't even physically scale to Piccolo, it'd be a tier with a charged blast.

But another thing to note is the moon in Dragon Ball, kind of isn't a moon. Dr. Slump is canon to Dragon Ball, Arale directly appears in the General Blue arc along with Penguin Village and they appear again in Super.

Dr. Slump directly explains how the moon came to be:
https://imgur.com/a/FnIMQqz

The moon was actually the asteroid that was gonna kill the dinosaurs, this is why dinosaurs exist in Dragon Ball, since Arale stopped it from hitting the planet.

So the moon isn't even an actual moon, it's an asteroid.

Along with this Piccolo before this moment just dealt with Raditz, he was scared of Raditz's blast that dwarfed a bunch of mountains in size. Reminder also that Raditz does not have ki control, he doesn't even understand how Goku and Piccolo are able to control their power levels.

Planet level

Now I keep hearing people say we don't think Dragon Ball characters can destroy planets, this is kind of a weird claim because we do think they can, it's just extra context behind it. As much as one will disagree with that, it's still us saying Dragon Ball characters can destroy a planet, it's just not with a finger with their eyes closed, or with their pinky finger like most people say (unless you're Beerus). There's an entire long list of reasons as to why too.

Let's begin with a point from the Frieza fight:
https://imgur.com/a/vb8jHJt

Frieza throws a destroy the planet death ball attack but it doesn't destroy the planet. Goku then interestingly notes the reason the planet didn't blow up is because Frieza was too scared of getting caught in the blast and this is when Frieza introduces an interesting mechanic to destroying planets in Dragon Ball. There's instantaneous destruction and a core detonation.

Initially, the assumption would be that the blasts at the planet level are instantaneous destruction. However, something is interesting with the Frieza vs. Trunks fight.

So during this fight, Mecha Frieza, who is stronger than before mind you, far stronger than his final form, immediately goes for his strongest attack, the Supernova. In the original Z anime King Kai even states this is ten times stronger than the power he used on Namek:

• DBZ Kai Version.
• Original DBZ Anime Version.

Now this attack is directly stated it's going to destroy the planet, King Cold directly states it in both versions, King Kai states it in the original DBZ Anime, but Trunks catches it before it hits the planet, and Frieza detonates the blast, and causes a huge explosion, yet as we can see in both versions it just leaves a massive crater. This lets us know something, planet attacks destroy the planet through a specific method, this is consistent with the fact that every time a character is going to destroy it, they aim down towards the planet.

Also playing Devil's Advocate and allowing for the argument of ki control, Frieza would have no reason to be ki-controlling here, for one he doesn't have one, he uses forms to withhold his power, and for two, this attack was in response to Trunks insulting him saying "A fight is something you finish all at once." With him responding with shooting Supernova. King Cold is even freaking out from seeing this and tells Frieza he's going to obliterate the planet with Frieza saying "We can always finish off Son Goku in space!" He also shoots another ki blast to outright detonate it and again, King Kai says this one is ten times stronger than the energy he used to destroy Planet Namek.

King Cold even states to hurry back onto the spaceship before the planet explodes, so it's clear they were not confident in tanking it.

Vegeta notes with a charged galick gun he's going to destroy the planet:
https://imgur.com/a/zDxDUGw

So one of the biggest issues I always, always had with this scene was one major thing.

Vegeta can't breathe in space. He also would not be able to survive this explosion if the likes of Frieza and SSJ Goku wouldn't have survived Namek's explosion, don't even get me started on how inverse square law and how far they are from the explosion since they're fighting in the sky would massively lower the energy they're actually tanking. Vegeta also notes in the statement if Goku moves out of the way the planet would get destroyed, so if Goku stood there and took it the planet wouldn't have been destroyed.

So what makes far more sense is Vegeta was going to shoot a blast that hits the core, or he was baiting Goku to let himself get hit by the blast by threatening the entire planet would be gone if he dodged it. Vegeta himself has a saiyan pod he would've likely used too to just leave if the core was detonated, he already had everything he needed from Earth on top of this, so he would have no reason to stay.

Now we need to talk about another interesting thing.

Vegeta's final flash is noted it's going to destroy the planet and Perfect Cell, who is FAR beyond Vegeta, couldn't tank the blast and had to dodge it last second or it would've killed him:
https://imgur.com/a/XvBvtbH

Other Showings that they are not casually Planet level

Cell Saga

Cell's kamehameha was going to destroy the earth and Goku notes since Cell knew he was going to jump and Goku responds "You're not that stupid" implying Cell would've died to the blast too:
https://imgur.com/a/Dbv7BDE

Goku's kamehameha was going to destroy the earth and Cell cannot tank this blast, needing to regenerate:
https://imgur.com/a/UM1wIch

Semi-Perfect Cell explosion was consistently noted it was going to destroy the planet and Gohan and it straight up killed Goku:
https://imgur.com/a/WAMQQNH

Buu Saga

Ultimate Gohan dies to an attack that destroys the earth, his guard was up too since this was when he was fighting Super Buu:
https://youtu.be/P2YcIpLYQFc?t=549

Kid Buu shoots a blast trying to destroy the planet, with Vegeta noting he's going to take himself out with it if he lets it off:
https://ibb.co/album/68YXVB?sort=name_asc

Buu couldn't tank the blast either, he had to regenerate:
https://ibb.co/album/vXWn4R?sort=name_asc

Dragon Ball Super Anime

Frieza destroyed the entire earth, killing Vegeta in the process.

Toppo told Frieza to give him everything he had and Frieza responding with using a blast that had enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Dragon Ball Super Manga

In the Dragon Ball Super Manga, Gohan straight up tells Goku that he doesn't need to hold anything back and can go all out because anything that happens to the Earth can be restored with Dende and the Dragon Balls. Yet, none of Goku's all out attacks destroy the planet but just heavily causes shockwaves around it:
https://imgur.com/a/ziIiyzu

Some Other Feats Not Directly Planet Based

Saiyan Saga

Raditz shoots a blast that just destroys some mountains that leave Goku and Piccolo absolutely shocked. it should be also noted that Raditz does not have ki control, he doesn't even know what that is:
https://imgur.com/a/bF6ElWL

Tien is absolutely shocked by an attack from Nappa that destroys a huge portion of a city:
https://imgur.com/a/5jcZL8n

Namek Saga

Vegeta doing an all out blast, unleashing all of his power caused a massive explosion but nowhere near anything planetary:
https://imgur.com/a/e5agho7

Recoome's full-powered erase gun shoots a blast that is noted by Krillin it warped the planet and had incredible power:
https://ibb.co/album/gyQBNw?sort=name_asc

Son Goku straight up just admits he can't beat Frieza just because he saw 50% Final Form Frieza slice part of Namek:
https://imgur.com/a/AsAVnf9

Cell Saga

Semi-Perfect Cell unleashes a several blast that destroys several islands:
https://imgur.com/a/8c2UTSy

Android 16 notes that the attacks are just strong enough to not kill Android 18:
https://i.imgur.com/GP5ziW5_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand

Buu Saga

Gotenks shoots an entire bloodlusted shot of attacks that Piccolo notes eventually he'll destroy the Earth, Gotenks notes that everyone's dead anyways, so he's not controlling his power here or anything, he's going all out here:
https://ibb.co/album/Z1yfyK?sort=name_asc

This is how much damage is left behind:
https://ibb.co/Qr69QY7

With these facts in mind, destroying the planet seems to have much context to it.

Possible Counterarguments

Some possible counterarguments will be quickly addressed here.

Q: Wouldn't a character like Cell, who is far above Frieza, be 5-B without a strongest charged blast?

A: There's no real reason for this since Frieza's strongest attack as Mecha Frieza fully detonated does not destroy the planet. I've already displayed a large list of feats that go against this factor above. There's also the case where characters' strongest attacks are far beyond any of their other techniques, such as Tien with his Shin Kikoho pushing back Semi-Perfect Cell and blasting away Buutenks blast. Take into account too that even all the way in Tournament of Power arc, Toppo told Frieza to give him everything he had and Frieza responding with using a blast that had enough power to destroy an entire planet. So planet destruction is still considered one of the most powerful attacks even this late into the series.

Q: Frieza has noted he can easily destroy the planet if he wants to and references when he destroyed Planet Vegeta. Wouldn't this imply Frieza is casually a planet buster?

A: Frieza's one statement is contradicted later in the fight where Goku notes he was too scared of being caught up in the blast. Along with this, Frieza's ki control isn't as proper as others, and instead he uses his transformations to suppress his overwhelming power, this essentially means his blasts aren't really controlled so all of them unleash a large amount of energy, with his most powerful blast doing such. We can even look to video games, where they treat the attack that he uses to destroy planets as his strongest and ultimate attack. Him using the same supernova for an attack that is ten times the energy he used to destroy Namek too doesn't destroy the planet if it doesn't hit the core. This is once again backed up in Tournament of Power arc, Toppo told Frieza to give him everything he had and Frieza responding with using a blast that had enough power to destroy an entire planet. So either initially Frieza was meant to be a casual planet destroyer and this fact got retconned later on or he was bluffing.

Q: Frieza notes that Goku cannot survive due to not being able to survive the vacuums of space, wouldn't this mean Goku can actually tank the planet being destroyed, he just can't survive in space?

A: Well this is what one would initially think from that statement, but realistically the statement is just Frieza reaffirming his species can survive in the vacuums of space, he never really actually states Goku would survive the planet being destroyed. Frieza himself actually isn't even sure if Goku would survive the planet exploding or not, listing that either he'll kill him, Goku will die to the planet exploding, or he'd survive both and die to the vacuum of space, and these were really just comments trying to mess with Goku. When the planet does explode, King Kai's first instinct is to check the destroyed wreckage to see if he could find a body, when there's no body there, he assumes Goku's dead. We find out later on how Goku actually survived because there was a spare pod from the Ginyu Force members that took him to Yardrat. Also when Frieza destroys the planet in Dragon Ball Super, we see that no trace of anyone's bodies remains, what some try to argue is that this means the bodies of the character were sent into space, though if one's durability is meant to be "cosmic tier", why would an explosion send them flying like this? We see explosive waves and stuff can only send back those that are lower then them in Dragon Ball, such as when a massively weakened Vegeta used an explosive wave and still pushed all of the remaining Z fighters back due to still being stronger. Thus "they cannot breathe in space" is not a valid argument for why they can't tank planets being destroyed.

Cosmic Tier Feats in Dragon Ball

This is now to discuss the cosmic tier feats in this series.

Cell Saga

We'll start with Cell's feat, where he said he'd destroy the entire solar system. Now we never actually visually see how he'd do this due to Son Gohan winning the beam clash against him, but we have games that directly show us what would've happened if Cell won the beam clash, where his kamehameha expands the sun and causes it to supernova. Another game even has note that he will destroy the sun along with the Earth, showing the process is through causing the sun to supernova. Along with this Dokkan Battle shows what would've happened if Cell only aimed it at the planet, with just the planet being destroyed.

Buu Saga

Now for the Buu Saga feat, Buu was going to cause alternate dimensions to crash into the main universe, people believe this can be used to physically scale, but this is not the case, it's directly noted that the process of doing this is through him removing the border between dimensions, causing the other alternate dimensions to crash into the universe. This is a textbook Chain Reaction.

Dragon Ball GT

Omega Destroys the universe

The feat comes from Dragon Ball GT where Omega Shenron's minus energy power ball he notes he will use to destroy the universe.

So you already know what my refute is going to be to this, but I know there is a blog that tries to refute it, and I'll deal with those arguments first.

"1: The Minus Energy Power Ball is a chain reaction and only works by destroying the universe over a vast period of time
Rebuttal: While it's true that the area of effect of the Minus Ball is not Universal, that doesn't matter as per our standards on attack potency. What actually matters is the condensed attack potency displayed by it:

Attack Potency

A character with a certain degree of attack potency does not necessarily need to cause destructive feats on that level [. . .] We are aware that this technically violates the principle of conservation of energy, as it should logically disperse upon impact, but fiction generally tends to ignore this fact, so we overlook it as well [. . .] The attack potency depends upon the energy output of the attack, not the area of effect of the attack. I have provided the quotes that state the Minus Energy Power Ball is the combined negative energy of the Evil Dragons, which can destroy the universe, except heavily condensed and concentrated on a focal point, as you may have already seen.

Likewise, the highlighted bit I pointed on Elder Kaioshin's explanation of the Minus establishes that the Minus Energy Ball concentrated on Earth is the source of all the overflown energy that destroys the rest of the universe; the Minus Energy Ball merely radiates small pockets of negative energy onto other worlds until its energy source is fully depleted, but by that point the entire universe is already gone."
AP is essentially a concession in fiction as we have to accept that authors won't consider AoE, however Elder Kai in the scans directly notes it slowly corrodes the planet and has it die and it's corrosion will spread to the other planets. Explaining the idea behind attack potency doesn't really work when the point of contention revolves around the method the universe is being "destroyed".

An analogy I can use for this point to be better understood is the following:

The energy required to destroy the universe is 1,000,000,000 units of energy. The Minus Ball has a condensed power source of 1,000,000,000 units. The energy required to destroy a star is 0.1 units. The Minus Ball radiates 0.1 units of negative energy onto other worlds, lowering its original condensed power. By the time all 1,000,000,000 units have been spent, the entire universe will have already been destroyed. Another example:

A character that is 3-C can fire an energy blast; said energy blast will destroy a galaxy, but after it destroys the galaxy it will vanish/dissipate, because all of its energy will have been spent in order to perform such feat. A character that can destroy 52 galaxies can fire an energy blast. Said energy blast will destroy a galaxy, and after it destroys one galaxy it will keep going, destroying another and so on, until it has destroyed 52 galaxies; when that happens, it will dissipate because all of its energy will have been spent to perform this feat. Likewise, the Minus Energy Ball, by virtue of being a condensed energy attack of the 3-A order, fits into the above. This argument ends up not working at all."
These analogies in specific don't work. The minus energy is not 1,000,000,000 units, all Omega Shenron says is that it's condensed energy that once it's released, will corrode the Earth and overtime the rest of the universe. He's not saying at all the power to destroy a universe is within that blast, he's saying the power of negative energy, evil, corrosion, etcetera, are all in that blast, which is why Gogeta purified it.

The 52 galaxies analogy doesn't work either because that's not how the power of 52 galaxies would work. the length of how long an energy blast can last is not purely of power but moreso of Stamina.

The Shadow Dragon Can destroy the universe

This comes from a short introduction of Episode 48 of Dragon Ball GT, a translation is here for further clarification. The important bits are these: "The Evil Dragon seems to have been created because Goku and his friends overused the Dragon Balls, and if left unattended, it is said that not only the Earth but also the entire universe will be destroyed.

What is the evil dragon's power to destroy the universe? And will Goku be able to overcome that unknown power? Now, a fierce battle for the fate of the entire universe has begun."
Now not only in the Dragon Ball franchise is "character has the power to destroy the universe" never a statement that should be taken hyper-literally, because has always used "X has the power to destroy the universe" as hyperbole for their big villain. The Shadow Dragon is no different, especially since Omega's minus energy ball has full context from how it "destroys the universe".

Dragon Ball Super

Goku and Beerus Will Destroy the Universe

The feat comes from Dragon Ball Super Episode 12 where Goku and Beerus do a clash that makes a massive shockwave that has Elder Kai explain that they will destroy the universe if they keep going.

Now the first issue with this even being 2-C is that Elder Kai proceeds to explain what destruction of the universe means. Everything will become an empty void, this doesn't mean mind you that all of space will be destroyed, this is Elder Kai saying all matter will be destroyed thus resulting in an empty void, so this isn't a 2-C feat, this would be High 3-A at best.

Now here's where the second issue comes, it is stated here that the waves are the ones that eventually become more and more powerful and destroy the universe, the initial clash isn't outputting this power. This means that the waves eventually become High 3-A.

Now one may argue that they should scale to this, however we know they shouldn't for two important reasons, it's stated here that that once the universe is destroyed Goku and Beerus would die to it and Whis himself confirms he cannot stop this feat. Some people have tried to argue that Whis is just trolling but this is an unprecedented argument with no basis, Whis has no reason to troll in this scene, especially since Mr. Satan is begging him to stop it and offering him food (something Whis loves) in return.

Another thing to note is this feat is only possible with two god level beings, we'll see later a Goku much stronger then his Super Saiyan God self clash with people and these shockwaves never happen again.

To add onto this, people will also argue that Beerus is consistently stated to be capable of destroying the universe, but this is ignoring context. We contextually see how universe destruction works in Dragon Ball, not in just this instance mind you but in the next argument I'm going to cover too and you're going to see in both instances it's not "destroy the universe" in terms of getting High 3-A or 2-C as a tier.

Beerus and Champa clashing can destroy universe 6 and 7

It's noted here that Beerus and Champa fighting would lead to the end of both Universe 6 and Universe 7, and here it's noted they will destroy the universe if they kept on fighting.

For the first feat, we directly see the context of what they mean here again. When Beerus and Champa fight a purple circular aura forms around them and expands outwards, it's shown that everything that was in this aura gets turned to brittle and destroyed. This is an overtime feat that they do not scale to at all, along with this, it most defintely was not going to affect the space-time as it once again only affects matter.

For the second feat, we already see from the fight that they didn't instantly destroy the universe, as we see above what happens when they both fight and also saw above what happened when Goku and Beerus fought, we can thus easily conclude that this feat is not a 2-C or High 3-A feat.

Beerus is above Infinite Zamasu who is a living timeline

It comes from this here where Zamasu is becoming the universe.

Now this one seems clear cut, but yet again if we look at the context we'll see the issue. Gowasu directly states that Zamasu is trying to become the universe, and we see his body specifically forming over Earth, and trying to spread throughout the rest of the universe. We especially know Zamasu wasn't the timeline yet for another huge reason when Zeno erases Infinite Zamasu, Whis later on mentions that Trunks can go back in time before the world was erased, meaning that time still existed.

Kefla says she can blow away a universe

Can't find a scan for this on youtube, but basically Kefla says she can "blow away an entire universe in one shot", now ignoring how based she is, this statement means really nothing. It doesn't even fall under the reliable statement types. It's merely Kefla hyping herself after gaining a massive surge in power and nothing more, thus it's a baseless claim.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse

Demigra destroying multiverse

This is based on a feat where Demigra notes he was going to destroy the time vault which would destroy everything, the debunk is honestly in the scan, Chronoa straight up just said he's doing it through destroy the time vault and that he would die to this as well with Demigra agreeing. It's just a chain reaction feat that specifically requires him going to the time vault to do it, a place he normally can't even access.

Demigra absorbed Tokitoki who can hatch timelines and having complete control over time

Feat is basically what I said in title Demigra eats Tokitoki, gaining his powers, who can lay eggs that hatch timelines, and that he controls time and space. So the issue with this is one simple thing, it's all hax. Tokitoki isn't physically tier 2, he just can warp time which is how he lays those eggs. We know even further that Demigra isn't physically at 2-C either because of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, which introduces Final Form Mira, a threat that directly absorbed Tokitoki's egg, and he isn't comparable to Xenoverse 1 Tokitoki absorbed Demigra, he's STRONGER then him, he easily overpowered an on-guard Xenoverse 1 Future Warrior, who should be stronger then their end game Xenoverse 1 self, and this is even before he absorbed Tokitoki's egg, along with Towa being worried with the universe being destroyed and trying her hardest to stop Mira from overloading. Thus showing that Demigra is not physically meant to be 2-C.

Dragon Ball Heroes

Dark Shenron warped all space-time/timelines with his mere presence

The statement comes from this thing, reading through this entire scene and ignoring the parts that aren't quotations because that's the interpretation of the person using this feat, this is merely Space-Time Manipulation, where Dark Shenron is just bringing people from other timelines into the current one. There's no Attack Potency here cause literally nothing is quantifiable, nothing even proves he warped ALL space-times, we just know he's bringing in warriors from other time periods and Bardock was one of them, that was about it. So this feat is defo not usable.

Mechikabura absrobs the entirety of time and history into his own body

Ths feat comes from Chapters 16-17 of Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Dark Demon Realm Mission!, and basically there's as usual, context missing, firstly Mechikabura did not absorb the entirety of time and history, he was in the process of swallowing histories, and wasn't even close to being done, we can further tell this as when they're pulled out of Mechikabura, the place they're in still has stars in the sky, and characters come from a portal from another time period finding the key sword there. Not only is this an overtime feat that's via an swalloing/absorption feat, but Mechikabura wasn't even close to being done, we don't even know if he finished a single timeline yet since the histories shown are all events that happened in a singuar timeline. What further supports that he didn't even finish a single timeline is that during a later arc in SDBH, specifically the first cover of Volume 1, Chapter 4 of Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultra God Mission!!!!, where it directly says the worst crisis in SDBH history is the disappearance of a space-time, meaning this crisis is even worse then Mechikabura.

Also Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Big Bang Mission directly has everyone get affected by the Big Bang, with universe tree amped Goku shooting out his own big bang to kill Fu, not killing all of the other people there specifically because Chronoa protected all of them. So it's pretty much shown they don't scale to this.

One could argue this statement where they say nothing remains, but reminder that "the world" isn't literally the entire multiverse, we even know this since the guy says "since the history Mechikaboola absorbed has also been sealed along with him, so we know he absorbed a singular piece of history, whether it was a timeline or just a part of time is up to interpretation, either way this would not be scalable.

Characters moving across time

This comes from basically the argument that the Dark Dragon Balls scattered across different points in history and people are amped by them therefore they scale to that and are thus beyond time in speed. This doesn't work for one major reason, that's not the Dragon Ball's speed, that's them being scattered, we know further no one scales to this because no one in DBH is able to fly across timelines, they are always teleported/summoned around different time periods by Chronoa, through the use of portals or teleportation. They always use portal creation or teleportation to go to different time periods, no one can actually physically fly around different time periods in SDBH, this is the reason mind you why none of them can actually resist time related stuff without the "be strongerer" argument, because they're all still bound by time. Also just to add on to this, none of the demons were able to even catch the dragon balls when they scattered, they just flew off, if they were comparable in speed you'd think at the very least they'd catch them.

Faster Than Light Dragon Ball

So initially on the wiki, Dragon Ball characters were rated as Faster Than Light for this: "FTL (Could avoid a point blank laser beam, could avoid the Kamehameha which could reach the moon in a very short timeframe, along with tagging someone who could react to a Kamehameha)" https://imgur.com/a/Eln4Gor

The reasoning is wrong as Goku did not dodge the laser during either of these scenes. The first shot he's not even close to the laser and he jumps out of the way when it already hits the ground.

The second part of the scene he was thrown away and just moved before it was shot especially with how wide the distance was.

Faster Than Light Dragon Ball also comes into question due to one technique, the solar flare. https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Solar_Flare "By gathering Ki into the upper body, the user is able to unleash a flash of light that can blind any opponent. It was originally Tien's technique, but it was simple enough for Krillin and others to learn." — Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Z Encyclopedia Terms - Skills entry

Solar Flare has been consistently used as an option for getting away and it always blitzes people all the way up to both GT and Super:
https://imgur.com/a/FtYJCL3

The only real time it was "dodged" was Goku against Tien but that was because he was already aware of the attack and ran to grab Roshi's sunglasses before he could get hit by the blast https://imgur.com/a/bRmnIi8

There's another massive SoL anti feat for 23rd Budokai Goku, when he fights Tien:
https://imgur.com/a/57M3oLU Tien shoots out a blast that's described as a light beam and it straight up blitzes Goku, he is not able to dodge it even when he's aware of the technique, he needs to ue the solar flare on Tien before he can get the technique off to beat him. Mind you also this means Tien can't react to solar flare.

Gotenks also who is far beyond 90% of the DBZ cast fastest speed feat is circling the globe a couple dozen of times in a short timeframe, with Piccolo being shocked at his speed:
https://imgur.com/a/kRXIeH3

Which only got 12% SoL:
https://thecodex.wiki/User:GiverOfThePeace/Gotenks_flies_around_the_Earth

Conclusions

Potential Upgrades

To discuss some potential upgrades that have been asked before:

Super Saiyan Goku 3 Shaking the Earth
This one is fine, but it's lower then what currently base Buu Saga Son Goku is rated at, getting only 7-A results, while he is 6-C.

Goku deflecting a ki blast that took out one tenth of the planet.
Babidi himself directly says "I bet" which is just him making an estimate and he's just trash talking Goku here, the explosion itself also very clearly does not remotely look to be the size of 1/10th of the planet, even in the anime versions the blast is not remotely depicted as that big, thus this isn't usable.

Nappa's explosion being seen from the planet
The explosion self covers this, but we directly see how much damage it causes, and he uses a similar blast in Dragon Ball GT that only destroys an area of the city, thus it's really not anything higher then 7-A.

Toppo hakaing away Frieza's death ball
Hakai is destruction of energy, something literally not possible in the laws of conservation of energy, thus it's not really Attack Potency. Hakai itself can just be dispersed if someone's stronger then the users energy, but that doesn't mean the hakai itself has energy.

Goku causing shockwaves around the planet
We are currently awaiting a calculation for this, though it is doubtful it's going to get anything high since it causes no real damage to the Earth itself.

Quick Q&A Section

To address some points that have been asked about our wiki in general, and a lot of them relate back to Dragon Ball tiering: Q: Are you doing this to be contrarians?

Q: People have claimed the pages are like this due to trolling, is this true?

A: Both of these questions fall under the same answer. It would be a massive waste of resources if we went out of the way to make an entire website, to troll people about a tier for Dragon Ball or be contrarians. These are the tierings we genuinely believe best represent the intention in the series.

Q: There have been claims that this is all for attention, what is the response to this?

A: Attention would be a pretty weird reason, since if attention was being done for this, Dragon Ball in actuality would be a far higher tier as that would grant more attention and more people using the pages for reference. Along with this, verses that are far more niche have suffered massive downgrades, like OFF.

Q: Why is Dragon Ball this tier but [insert random verse here] get to get away with being a far higher tier?

A: Either that verse has yet to be looked at, or they happen to have better proof behind their claims and nowhere near the level of feats going against the narrative. If one truly believes something is being given special treatment then it is best to note it.

Q: I feel like this is just due to not liking Dragon Ball. How can you prove this isn't out of bias?

A: I've seen the bias argument thrown around a lot and it's pretty interesting to me, because there's a lot of verses I and others genuinely like that are way lower then what other sites have them. For example, the MOTHER series is much beloved on this site, it's many of the mods favorite video game franchises of all time, yet none of them are even physically tier 2 anymore, when a lot of people would say Ness, Giygas, and Dark Dragon are tier 2. Samus Aran and Metroid is many of the mods favorite game franchises, yet she is far lower then what most other wikis have her at. To add on, the people that have agreed to the revisions and offer some insight are huge Dragon Ball fans themselves, like or dislike doesn't really affect tier in this community, mostly just affects how much the characters themselves are actually liked.

Q: People claim the wiki knows nothing about Dragon Ball, is this true?

A: This entire page is an entirely detailed in-depth discussion on the different aspects of Dragon Ball, something not really possible if the wiki didn't know anything about the series. It's also filled with scans from various different Dragon Ball media, so it is safe say Dragon Ball is well known here.