Someone needs to link me to a page explaining this SS mastery cause im pretty lost as too where its explained
When Vegeta and them got washed by the Androids, Goku and Vegeta decided that they wanted to "exceed" the Super Saiyan power level.
There were various methods of doing this. There's Super Vegeta, which we'll call Super Saiyan Second Grade, and what Trunks became, which we'll call Super Saiyan Third Grade.
Both are technically "beyond" Super Saiyan. Second Grade is a relatively successful form, but it's not powerful enough to fight Cell. Third Grade is powerful enough to go toe to toe with Cell, but the muscle mass severely diminishes speed so you can't hit him.
Goku realized that both of these forms were flawed, so he decided to forget about "exceeding" Super Saiyan. He and Gohan resolved to treat regular Super Saiyan as their base state, training, sleeping and eating in it. That way they can unlock massive amounts of power while in regular Super Saiyan mode.
But Gohan transformed into a completely new form against Cell: Super Saiyan 2. This is the true way of "exceeding" Super Saiyan, it's a massive increase in both power and speed. Eventually Goku and Vegeta learned it.
Goku discovered Super Saiyan 3 in the afterlife, but it's such a ridiculously powerful form that it's impractical for battle because it runs out too quickly. Goku didn't realize this because he used it while he was dead and in the afterlife, where exhaustion doesn't really happen. Notice that every time SSJ3 has been used, it didn't work out:
Goku used it against Fat Buu, but in consequence he ate up all of his remaining time in the living world and had to go back to the afterlife. Dude was sweating puddles and breathing heavy even AFTER returning to normal and going back to the temple with everyone else.
Gotenks can only use SSJ3 it for 5 minutes canonically before defusing. Meaning, the regular time limit for Fusion is cut down to 25% of what it's supposed to be.
Goku tried to fight Kid Buu with SSJ3, and thought he could kill him, but he simply couldn't muster up the ki because SSJ3 is way too taxing of a form.
So basically, SSJ3 = mostly useless for most of the plot. SSJ2 is a great form but it doesn't stack up against the later villains.
After Battle Of Gods, Toriyama said that SSJ2 and 3 are too taxing on ki, and he decided that he wants Goku and Vegeta to focus on becoming stronger in SSJ1 from now on. I disagree with this, as SSJ2 was always shown to be sustainable and at least marginally useful, but whatever.
I assume that by "SSJ1" Toriyama now means this new God version of it.
KingdomFlatbush
in that SS2 now being negated makes fairly little sense, as within the work it was put forth as an upgrade of SS in every single way. Ki loss was never noted to be a major issue, so if anything was going to be mastered it should be that state. SS3 I easily understand as the drawbacks have been noted since the introduction. But in general i'm kind of burnt out on all these new variations and think it'd be better for the series to come to an end.
