Could we maybe stop downplaying the action/battle part of this manga?

It's a shonen manga inspired by Dragon Ball, it's action packed, it has a lot of formulaic shonen style battles. So you can bet your ass a large portion of the readers care about this aspect of the manga.

This is directed at the high and mighty attitude some people here seems to exhibit whenever a controversy or debate occurs on how a battle is portrayed or how a character is being portrayed.

If you are thinking "When did people start caring about power scaling in One Piece?" or "It's OK that Sanji is a walking punching bag now, he's got massive gains as a character because new backstory", then hey good for you, you are able to enjoy One Piece for the non-power/battle related stuff on its own, that's great. But not every shonen manga reader is able to do that. Just because One Piece created a much more immersive and detailed world and varied and fun characters, doesn't change the fact that at its core it is still Action/Adventure. In fact many still categorize this series as a battle manga.

sorry for the rant but the whole "oh you kids care too much about power levels, i enjoy the story for its finer things" is pretty BS to me.