Lets talk about fusions

Fusions throw the power scalling out of the window.
As soon as Gotenks shows up in the Buu Saga the whole power scalling goes wild.
We have 2 options, none of which is perfect:

Option 1. Blow up the numbers, make base Gotenks stronger than a Super Saiyan Goku. Then when he goes
Super Saiyan 3 make him 50 times stronger than Super Saiyan 3 Goku (with fixed multipliers it will end up that way). Make Ultimate Gohan also 50 times stronger than Super Saiyan 3 Goku.
Make Vegito extremely powerful.
It might work in Buu Saga. What is the problem?

There's no way in the upcoming 4 years to Dragon Ball Super to make it work:

- Goku in 4 years won't get 50 times stronger (especially that Beerus in the anime/movie mentions that Base Goku wouldn't take out Frieza, I know it doesn't happen in the manga but it's important not to stray away from the anime/movie canon anyway).

- Gohan in 4 years won't get so weak that he can't take 1st form Frieza (also anime/movie canon I know).

- Gotenks wouldn't give Beerus such a weak fight, being many times stronger than Goku/Vegeta

- Vegeta, whose showed power is surpassing Gotenks and Gohan when Beerus shows up wouldn't in 4 years get what, over 200 times stronger? Because if we take option 1 then in Buu Saga he's around 4 times weaker than Goku, who is 50 times weaker than Gohan/Gotenks.

- if fusion is so strong we have other things to worry about later- Kelfa, even if at the time of her forming Caulifla and Kale were weakened, Kefla would be multiple times stronger. If Kale was able to surprise Blue Goku then with like *5- *10 fusion multiplier she would wreck Jiren. Fusion Zamasu wouldn't be stopped by Perfected Super Saiyan Blue unless this state was like ~50 times stronger than regular Super Saiyan Blue, which also seems like a stupid idea.

I don't like the above problems, even if some feats here and there suggest it's the right way (the biggest problem is Piccolo being amazed by Base Gotenks power and base Vegito in DBS blowing a huge chunk of Fused Zamasu, which is the most stupid scene in the manga if we think about it, since in DBZ Vegito went Super Saiyan as soon as he showed up).

So, Option nr 2:

Downplay the fusion, fuck with the multipliers.
Super Saiyan is *50? No, lets assume that fusion steals some of that power and the multiplier for a Super Saiyan is *5. It helps make the base fusion characters a bit stronger than usually, *5 is enough of a difference to still make Super Saiyan viable.

We know both fusion methods are unstable- Super Saiyan 3 made Gotenks defuse faster and Super Saiyan Blue Vegito lasted also probably only a few minutes. We can bullshit a theory that Super Saiyan is fucking with fusions to make it work in the power level list. Also it's really easy to assume that fusions weren't made with super saiyans in mind so they wouldn't be super compatible with them.

So, what are my multipliers for fusion and which fusion is better?

At first I had an unpopular opinion that Fusion Dance is actually better, because the feats observed from fusions were more impressive in Fusion Dance cases, Fusion Dance is more restricted and needs both a flawless dance and great ki control and Potara is basically a magic tool while a technique should be stronger.

And before we go to my conclusions let's talk a while about known fusions and their feats, just that we are all on the same page.

Gotenks is made of Trunks and Goten, kids who in their Super Saiyan state can surprise Android 18, but are probably weaker than her. Base Gotenks doesn't have any feats outside of impressing Piccolo with his power, he gets badly beaten up by Fat Buu.
Even after training in Room of Spirit and Time Base Gotenks can barely make Super Buu move with his attacks.
Even after turning into a Super Saiyan, Buu still doesn't need to take the battle seriously. Gotenks is definitely much weaker than Buu.
Super Saiyan 3 is a different story, he puts Goku's to shame and definitely is stronger than Super Buu when Gotenks  gets serious.

It's important to say I don't see Gotenks being stronger than Goku or Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super- Goten and Trunks don't take training seriously.

Vegito is made of Goku and Vegeta both in Buu Saga and in Zamasu Saga. It was very hard at first to set any numbers, because Dragon Ball Z ended with Super Saiyan Vegito being the strongest character shown, some sources even said that his power equals the power of Goku multiplied by the power of Vegeta. That number is absolutely insane, even without a Super Saiyan. And since we don't see such feats shown in a short fight between Zamasu and Vegito in Super I'm going to ignore it.

What we see in a manga canon is Vegito entering Super Saiyan and totally dominating Super Buu (Gohan, Piccolo, Goten, Trunks absorbed). There was a debate if Vegito is using a Super Saiyan or Super Saiyan 2, but sadly most sources suggest it's a regular Super Saiyan.

For the numbers it would be much easier if Vegito was a Super Saiyan 2 in that fight, because even if Goten, Trunks and their fusion Gotenks is much weaker than Vegito, when we put all the multipliers of Super Saiyan 2 and Super Saiyan 3 then it turns out their power is similar. But more about it later, since I managed to cheat a bit and make it work better.

Kibitoshin is an another fusion of Potara but he never fights anyone so we will ignore him.

Dragon Ball Super introduces a few problems with Potara fusions. They retcon the fusion running time and actually show that Vegito can defuse even faster because of how powerful he is.

First fusion we see there is a Fusion Zamasu, a fusion between Future Zamasu (who is weaker than Super Saiyan 2 Trunks) and Super Saiyan Rose Goku Black.

And he doesn't have outstanding feats compared to Goku Black. He dominates Goku and Vegeta initially, but Goku manages to blow a hole in his chest, Vegito before turning Super Saiyan Blue manages to destroy his arm and later a Gamma Burst Flash from Vegeta blows him to pieces.

He is totally outmatched by Super Saiyan Vegito and matched by Mastered Super Saiyan Blue Goku.

When it comes to numbers I would say fusion isn't much stronger than Goku Black because there's a huge gap in power between the fusing characters.

Vegito makes his return in Super and he outclasses Fusion Zamasu in a very short fight. Sadly he plays around with Zamasu and defuses before firing his ultimate attack. Supreme Kai says Vegito might be stronger than Beerus but we know he isn't a reliable source of information.

There is one problem with Vegito, and it's blowing the Zamasu's arm before he goes Super Saiyan Blue. This is one of the reasons why in my previous post I added Saiyan Beyond God state, because base Vegito wouldn't be strong enough to deal such damage to Fusion Zamasu. Saiyan Beyond God Vegito has much closer numbers.

Kefla is a fusion between saiyans Caulifla and Kale and it's a similar case to Fusion Zamasu, where the fusion is between characters with a huge difference in power, as Super Saiyan Caulifla is weaker than Base Kale.

The worst part about Kefla is that she's much weaker than she would be if the fusing characters weren't already battle worn. Caulifla got her ass seriously beat by Frieza and Dyspo, while Kale after having a monstrous power in her Legendary Super Saiyan state (called in the manga Power Stressed Super Saiyan) had a majority of her power spent and she was close to collapsing.

She was definitely still very strong, blowing away multiple fighters after fusing but he draw the battle with Gohan.
The powerlevel of Gohan is a subject for another post since he's the most inconsistent character in Dragon Ball. But many fans online agree that Gohan at this point is weaker than Goku and Frieza, while being stronger than Android 17.
It's fair to assume that Kefla during the Tournament of Power is much weaker than Power Stressed/Legendary Super Saiyan Kale. She is formed from weakened fighters, Kale's Legendary Super Saiyan is not compatible with Caulifla's regular Super Saiyan and there's a huge power gap between the fighters fusing like with Zamasu.
I put her slightly above Super Saiyan Kale, who managed to surprise Frieza but he was still confident he would win a battle with her if he went full power. And of course she's at 50% of her power, if both Caulifla and Kale were at their 100% before fusing then Kefla would be stronger than all fighters at the time except for Jiren.

I want to include Gogeta here, because Dragon Ball Super movies are in that weird, joined canon between anime and manga, where no one is using Mastered Super Saiyan Blue or Kaioken Super Saiyan Blue. As of writing this post I don't have all the numbers figured out, but I'm positive that after including Saiyan Beyond God and Super Saiyan Beyond God transformations I can make them work.
So let's talk feats shown- Gogeta is a fusion dance character created by Goku and Vegeta fusing and unlike Vegito he's serious, not playing around when fighting. In his Saiyan Beyond God he only dodges some of Broly's blasts and he transforms into a Super Saiyan Beyond God after that.
In this state he's stronger than Super Saiyan Broly, forcing Broly to go Legendary Super Saiyan/ Power Stressed Super Saiyan, where Broly is shown to surpass Gogeta.
But after Gogeta goes Super Saiyan Blue it's game over for Broly, even if we assume that he still gets stronger (unlike Kale, who in the Tournament of Power started losing power after power stressing) he is not able to close the gap to Gogeta and is nearly killed after sustaining a bunch of powerful attacks.


Ok, we talked about fusion characters, so which fusion is stronger?

Based on feats I was previously stating that Fusion Dance is stronger than Potara. Other argument was that a technique that requires perfect movements and precise ki control should be stronger than a magic earring.

But the Broly movie, which I really wanted to include to manga canon really flipped every idea I had for numbers- Gogeta was just too strong in his Super Saiyan Blue, the numbers went absolutely insane.

And I really got tired looking at the discussions online having good arguments for both fusions. So as you can expect I went with:

Fusions are equal in power.

It's a really, really boring idea, but it works best.
So what are the numbers?

(power_x + power_y) *100 (but the Super Saiyan multiplier is lowered to *5).
Additionally for Fusion dance the power levels need to be equal, and in potara fusion case a huge difference in power between characters fusing means the multiplier is
(power_x + power_y) *2

Therefore Goku was right when thinking that fusing with Mr.Satan could make him weaker.

There is one issue with these numbers though and I need to cheat in order to make it work.

Goten and Trunks are multiple times weaker than Goku and Vegeta, but when we start stacking that Super Saiyan 2 and 3 multipliers ( *8) then we have a problem with Super Saiyan Vegito in Buu Saga.

Hopefully we can all agree that the difference in power isn't extremely huge between adults and kids- Goten was weaker than Gohan but it's about a *2 - *4 difference as he was close to hitting Gohan in fights while Gohan is about *2 weaker than Goku. Trunks is much weaker than Vegeta, but he managed to touch Vegeta's face during the training so *4-*8 difference is also very likely.

With *8 difference between the pair of adults and kids and using official (?) multipliers for Super Saiyan 2 and 3 we see that Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks is very close or even stronger than Super Saiyan Vegito. And Super Saiyan Vegito outclassed Super Buu (Gohan,Piccolo,Trunks,Goten absorbed).

We want it to work so we cheat by saying: hey, we never saw Super Saiyan 2 Gotenks, right? And both Trunks and Goten can't go Super Saiyan 2 on their own, right? They only had about 1 week to train in the Room of Spirit and Time (people always assume Goten and Trunks got 2 times more powerful in that time which I call major bullshit) so I openly cheat and state that they skipped Super Saiyan 2 and went to Super Saiyan 3, which would skip Super Saiyan 2 multiplier.

Therefore in my powerlevel list Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks is 4 times stronger than Super Saiyan Gotenks, not 8 times.

And yes, I'm aware that Super Saiyan Vegito seems too close in numbers to Buu. But we know that Vegito has at least one more transformation up his sleeve, so please be aware that he's still majorily holding back. That's the worst part- if it was officially stated Vegito was in his Super Saiyan 2 state then we wouldn't have to cheat with Gotenks and there would be a nice huge gap in numbers between Buu and Vegito.

Our next topic is Gohan, Piccolo and human characters and then we go straight to the numbers, I promise