Originally posted by NewGuy01Why would that make sense though, or the most amount of sense? Goku was holding back so much power he reverted to a far weaker state, and had to use God Ki anyway? Goku never grew in power in normal forms?
Yeah, well, SSJ2 Vegeta stomped SSJ2 Black, who consistently defeated (an admittedly exhausted and malnourished) SSJ2 Trunks in base. I think it's a fair assumption that Trunks's and Goku's dick measuring scene was meant to compare Trunks to Z-era Goku.
A possible explanation is the God Ki upped Black's base form. He also did decent against SS2 Vegeta the short time he fought in Base. We either shift everything we know about Goku or we change our expectations of this new character in some strange amalgamation that gets a british accent and Pink hair when he goes God form.
I don't think Goku "had to" use SSG against Trunks. After all, Vegeta stated that Trunks' power had increased "nearly the same amount as Kakarot has in SSJ3" -- implying that Trunks was still marginally weaker than SSJ3 Goku.
The implication is that Goku only used SSG to show off his power. Hence Whis calling him "immature as ever" in the following panel. /shrug
Then he'd just have to max out his powers in SS3 to put Trunks down instead of going God... if he was lowering himself down to Buu level for whatever reason even though he turned SS3 in the first place.
Plus Vegeta was surprised at how close Trunks was as well. Not at him being near Buu level Goku, but at him being nearly powering up the same amount as SS3 did over SS2. It really makes no sense that Goku was operating at such lesser levels. Especially since like you said, Goku was showing off and could have shown the full power of SS3 instead of "supressing his powers down to only Buu levels".
Tbf, the power of Goku's 'non-God' forms is one of the most wildly inconsistent plot-points in DBS.
Sometimes his regular forms are depicted FAR more powerful than they previously were. Sometimes they don't seem to be depicted as any more powerful than normal... Which is what seemed to be the case when he fought Trunks. /shrug
I don't think there are that many new issues with the base form that weren't already present in Z, such as characters in base getting pounded by transformed characters with durability that is supposedly 1/400th of their maximum, but still surviving.
My impression from the manga wasn't really that Black was more powerful than SSJ2 Trunks in base, but rather that he's more skilled, and that Trunks was far from being in top form.