Kanic said:
Certain point well-made but also certain faults:
You say we don't know about Gildarts' feats. It is true that we have only seen him fight once against Bluesting, BUT we are aware that he is the only mage to have taken on 10-year quests and the 100-years quest which stand above S-class and SS-class missions, that alone means enough. My only assumption is that if Jellal was a legal mage and not part of the council or part of a semi-dark guild he would also have achieved similar status (it has been mentioned that the dude climbed up the ladder all the way to the council from sheer mage-skill and less because of minister-capabilities). I agree though that most propable Jellal is more versatile in terms of magic-variety, though I wouldn't be so hasty to call Gildarts a one-trick pony as you did.
And finally, Makarov IS old dude XD. I think it's kinda normal that he faces a lot health problems, though I agree that Hiro takes him out during a lot of important times(but it's unavoidable since if he were to take part in each and every fray his fairy law would just wreck things up one-sidedly)
Well in serious debates we mostly use feats to judge things, so hypes are usually disregarded unless for some certain cases. Like Bacchus is hyped to be equal with Erza, but with the amount of feats he has shown, then not really.
And yeah I know he is old, it's just that FT has lots of Deus Exit Machine in general. Not only Makarov, Gildartz also suffers from it, or Jellal who has always been handicapped in his fight like having to protect his identity which prevents him from going all out. While it's understandable that Hiro needs to do that so other main chars can shine, but it seems that a lot of people just underestimate Makarov for that while he is such a beast. Old geezer still casually one shots Natsu after his outright stomp match against Sting and Rogue.