You're failing to see their potential. Lee and Gai with open gates is far more useful than fodder Anbu members and Neji and Hiashi should be capable of taking out the weaker 3 paths by themselves. They were all conviently out of town during the invasion so they wouldn't steal Naruto's chance to shine.Shikamaru and kakashi were there and failed, guy's team don't make no difference than all anbu, and shinobis of konoha
If all six paths are in the fight together at once they will win against Konaha. Strategies change in that kind of situation. During the attack on Konaha they were mostly separated from one another so it does not surprise me that in some situations the smartest thing would be to flee. Naruto used up his sage mode and was captured and could not escape. Hinata shows up and nearly gets killed causing Naruto to freak out letting Kurama take over the fight. Nagato used up almost all of his chakra to try to beat the tailed beast and it wasn't enough. Bringing everyone back to life also killed him. If Kurama wasn't a factor then it would have been good bye Naruto. I'm not saying that Konaha would lose easily but they would lose.Naraka path would get his ass beat by Hiashi. If he's noob enough to lose to Konohamaru, he has no chance against the strongest Hyuuga. Preta path's fat ass was running away from Kiba and his mother because it can't handle taijutsu and if Lee took off his weights to chase it down or open gates, he's dead meat too. I strongly believe Kakashi and Gai could handle Asura and Deva path. With those four paths taken care of, a number of shinobi could deal with the human path and after they could gang up on animal realm. Animal realms summons aren't unbeatable either. The only one that is a problem is the cerebus summon but the rest were mostly soloed by Jiraiya when he wasn't even in sage mode yet.
Also, what? Naruto was winning that fight thanks to sage mode. The only thing Kyuubi really did was help him break free but in the end Deva path was finished off by a rasengan followed by having the chakra emitters removed, not Naruto in his six tailed state. Don't see how forcing Nagato to use his most powerful technique's is a downside for him. He apparently had enough chakra to revive the dead of Konoha anyway.
LOL this. too much speculation just because it looks like he "almost" beat deva. well no, nagato knows deva and asura is enough to kill kakashi with no sweat, using asura to protect him is part of his strategy countering what kakashi plotted. If nagato sees he is having hard time he could always send some more paths to aid him.It was not meaningless because he is the one who saw through Devas weakness and without that, Naruto would have been captured for sure.
Alone, Kakashi(without infos at the start) managed to outsmart Deva and Asura Path 2times:
- With the raiton kage bunshin. At that moment, Deva was not on his guard. I think he had good chances to kill him at that time if he wanted. Anyway for Asura Path it was almost over at that time since he could get him with the raikiri he had prepared.
- The second time is when he did made a plan with the help of Choza and Choji. There again he could have killed Deva.
That shows that he could have deal with them alone even without infos, so with infos before, he could make a better plan to win this. And don't forget he didn't even used kamui at that time. I don't see what Deva Path or Asura Path could do against that. And if Kakashi needs help he could get support from Gai and Tsunade(better support than Choza and Choji).
With infos, they will know before fighting what is the speciality of which Pain, and will make a good strategy to fight them.
Gai could deal with Gakido, and the one who revives other(who is the weakest Pain).
Tsunade could handle animal Path and the other one who takes souls.
That's why i think the 3of them could beat Pains if they have infos before.
I think you're the one who overestimate Pain or underrate Kakashi, Gai, and Tsunade.
I agree. By the way, I don't really like Guy and Lee. They aren't cool (PEACE) but damn yeah if Choza wasn't there it wouldn't turn out like this. Even if Team Guy's there they aren't strong enough. Neji IMO couldn't handle Pain, (since Hinata with the same abilities was defeated).Kakashi is sure to tell Guy about Deva path. And you guys are forgetting Neji, Lee and ..............Tenten, yeah she's useless lol