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Issues With Aokiji's Tier
The Issue
Currently, Admiral Aokiji (Kuzan) sits at Small Country Level on the wiki by virtue of being "Comparable to Akainu" and having participated in this feat wherein the Three Admirals all halted one of Whitebeard's Quake attacks. Seemingly pretty straightforward.
There's also a straightforward issue with this: the shockwave in question is a form of Haki known, for now, as Goken. It is the generation of one's Haki into a tangible shield/armor of sorts around their personage which demonstrably amplifies their durability and striking prowess. The issue, for those who haven't connected the dots yet, is that Kuzan's base physicals and ice-generation cannot meaningfully scale from an esoteric ability.
The Explanation of The Issue
The fact that this is an esoteric ability wherein his own body does not meanginfully tank the attack means it in no way scales to his Durability, and the fact of our not knowing how well Aokiji can concentrate his Haki (and also lack of objective striking feats of his utilizing said Haki) leave us incapable of scaling Aokiji's canon feats and fights to this singular interaction with the only thing that gives him his entire AP rating.
What we have, instead, is him scaling off of Akainu (who gets two-shot by Whitebeard) for durability and scaling to Akainu for his AP (whose main damage is Durability Negation anyway as officially accepted on his profile) as well as a Mountain-level calc by Damage, itself something that doesn't apply to base physicals since it's ice-generation-only.
Further Issues
Further complicating things is the entire context surrounding Whitebeard's Quakes and their consistency of damage output: Whitebeard going all out and using his Gura Gura no Mi powers to shake Marineford and the surrounding ocean accomplishes this; notably, Marineford and its town just barely begin to take noticeable structural damage, with the ocean surrounding it having huge upheavals. In no way is this a Country-level feat, and this is Whitebeard concentrating all of his power into shaking Marineford solely to throw his foe off their feet. If Whitebeard's casual combat quakes were Country-level, simply shattering the entirety of the island at his leisure would be a simple task to accomplish, yet.....it doesn't occcur. Even when several persons outright state Whitebeard is attempting to sink the island and he's assaulting the island, he fails to do so, and when Whitebeard is bloodlusted and trying to kill Akainu,his assault simply splits the island in half
Further STILL, Whitebeard using the same pose for his ability accomplishes merely the breaking apart of two glaciers ; he doesn't obliterate them, just shakes them apart barely, with the debris falling straight down instead of being thrown away.
And to even further muddy the waters, the attack Aokiji+the other Admirals scale from was a quake attack that went directly through John Giant and then traveled the width of Marineford before slamming into their Haki Forcefield; to claim an attack that dispersed much of its energy before reaching its target is equivalent to Whitebeard's infamous and calc'd quake is ....suspect, at best.
Solutio
We go by what we can quantify for the Admirals, and cease usage of Whitebeard's quake calc to scale to the Admirals in any meaningful way due to the absurd context surrounding the entirety of their interactions which nullify any meaningful quantification of the feat. Even if you accept that Whitebeard's attacks are (laughably) all the exact same strength, and even if you accept that the Admirals blocked such an attack of that level (which they did, but via esoterics), there's no logical way to accept that Aokiji's esoteric ability (Haki) scales to his Ice Generation, and there's no logical way to accept that his esoteric ability scales to his base Physicals; anybody who scales from either his Ice or Physicals needs said scaling removed from their profile as well, namely Jozu for physically hitting Kuzan without any proof of Haki involvement in the blow and Donquixote Doflamingo who merely takes being coated in a thin layer of Kuzan's ice. Additionally, there's no way to cop out and claim him fighting Akainu is proof both can tank Haki blows of that level, since the very feat in question showcases all three perfectly halting the quake attack in unison, meaning their Haki blows would simply cancel one another out with perfectly-matched power, leaving their Physicals out of the equation still; as such, we would need a new tiering for Kuzan's base Physicals as well, and likely the same for Akainu's base Physicals (Akainu's single leg-against-bisento clash with Whitebeard didn't involve Whitebeard's Fruit, so would be meaningless to scale to Whitebeard's maximum output).
The Issue
Currently, Admiral Aokiji (Kuzan) sits at Small Country Level on the wiki by virtue of being "Comparable to Akainu" and having participated in this feat wherein the Three Admirals all halted one of Whitebeard's Quake attacks. Seemingly pretty straightforward.
There's also a straightforward issue with this: the shockwave in question is a form of Haki known, for now, as Goken. It is the generation of one's Haki into a tangible shield/armor of sorts around their personage which demonstrably amplifies their durability and striking prowess. The issue, for those who haven't connected the dots yet, is that Kuzan's base physicals and ice-generation cannot meaningfully scale from an esoteric ability.
The Explanation of The Issue
The fact that this is an esoteric ability wherein his own body does not meanginfully tank the attack means it in no way scales to his Durability, and the fact of our not knowing how well Aokiji can concentrate his Haki (and also lack of objective striking feats of his utilizing said Haki) leave us incapable of scaling Aokiji's canon feats and fights to this singular interaction with the only thing that gives him his entire AP rating.
What we have, instead, is him scaling off of Akainu (who gets two-shot by Whitebeard) for durability and scaling to Akainu for his AP (whose main damage is Durability Negation anyway as officially accepted on his profile) as well as a Mountain-level calc by Damage, itself something that doesn't apply to base physicals since it's ice-generation-only.
Further Issues
Further complicating things is the entire context surrounding Whitebeard's Quakes and their consistency of damage output: Whitebeard going all out and using his Gura Gura no Mi powers to shake Marineford and the surrounding ocean accomplishes this; notably, Marineford and its town just barely begin to take noticeable structural damage, with the ocean surrounding it having huge upheavals. In no way is this a Country-level feat, and this is Whitebeard concentrating all of his power into shaking Marineford solely to throw his foe off their feet. If Whitebeard's casual combat quakes were Country-level, simply shattering the entirety of the island at his leisure would be a simple task to accomplish, yet.....it doesn't occcur. Even when several persons outright state Whitebeard is attempting to sink the island and he's assaulting the island, he fails to do so, and when Whitebeard is bloodlusted and trying to kill Akainu,his assault simply splits the island in half
Further STILL, Whitebeard using the same pose for his ability accomplishes merely the breaking apart of two glaciers ; he doesn't obliterate them, just shakes them apart barely, with the debris falling straight down instead of being thrown away.
And to even further muddy the waters, the attack Aokiji+the other Admirals scale from was a quake attack that went directly through John Giant and then traveled the width of Marineford before slamming into their Haki Forcefield; to claim an attack that dispersed much of its energy before reaching its target is equivalent to Whitebeard's infamous and calc'd quake is ....suspect, at best.
Solutio
We go by what we can quantify for the Admirals, and cease usage of Whitebeard's quake calc to scale to the Admirals in any meaningful way due to the absurd context surrounding the entirety of their interactions which nullify any meaningful quantification of the feat. Even if you accept that Whitebeard's attacks are (laughably) all the exact same strength, and even if you accept that the Admirals blocked such an attack of that level (which they did, but via esoterics), there's no logical way to accept that Aokiji's esoteric ability (Haki) scales to his Ice Generation, and there's no logical way to accept that his esoteric ability scales to his base Physicals; anybody who scales from either his Ice or Physicals needs said scaling removed from their profile as well, namely Jozu for physically hitting Kuzan without any proof of Haki involvement in the blow and Donquixote Doflamingo who merely takes being coated in a thin layer of Kuzan's ice. Additionally, there's no way to cop out and claim him fighting Akainu is proof both can tank Haki blows of that level, since the very feat in question showcases all three perfectly halting the quake attack in unison, meaning their Haki blows would simply cancel one another out with perfectly-matched power, leaving their Physicals out of the equation still; as such, we would need a new tiering for Kuzan's base Physicals as well, and likely the same for Akainu's base Physicals (Akainu's single leg-against-bisento clash with Whitebeard didn't involve Whitebeard's Fruit, so would be meaningless to scale to Whitebeard's maximum output).
The only "flaw" that can be made up is that "Doflamingo is absolutely nowhere near the level of the Admirals" which is probably the biggest head-canon made up by the community.
