Where does buff cell stand in comparison to SS2 Gohan?

[Pyro]

I don't agree with the two Gohans being the same minus rage either. That shit's turds.

 

[Papasmurf]

All Vegeta can go on about ever since he met Gohan as a high schooler (suppressed, I might add) is that he looks out of shape. This is reinforced twice later in the series. Gohan definitely got weaker in all forms, rage or not.

 

[Captain Cadaver]

So the general consensus here is that Kid Gohan = Teen Gohan outside of rage?

Not the general consensus, since only Tapion, SIAD and I follow something close to that due to several Daizenshuu statements (and I'd go with simply a lower gap than most would between them when the general rustiness and lowered battle instincts would still cause a drop in shouki logically).

The whole reason Goku and Vegeta even bring up rage is that even despite Gohan's atrophy, there's no telling how powerful he'd become because his latent potential is completely unpredictable.

In terms of discussing the scaling of enraged Gohan and its usage in manga statements, it's being brought up here because both the manga and Daizenshuu present the idea that it was factored into several statements due to the scaling involved. For the Daizenshuu, it states SPC is perhaps as strong or stronger than SS2 Gohan and says Gohan brought forth his strongest power when he killed Cell, making a pretty clear chain of Enraged Gohan > SPC > SS2 Gohan.

This can be applied to several character statements in the Boo Arc to fix up some scaling issues. Vegeta was confident in his superiority to Gohan even before seeing he'd weakened/had gotten rusty from slacking off, yet Goku's burst of SS2 was enough for him to be aware of the gap between them and let Babidi possess him, despite later making it apparent he only guessed Goku had surpassed Gohan from when he beat Cell. In other words, SS2 Goku = SS2 Majin Vegeta > Enraged SS2 Gohan ~ SS2 Goku's burst > SS2 Vegeta ~ SS2 CG Gohan is the only real way to make these statements line up consistently.

The manga made it very clear that Gohan had powered down due to lack of training and dulled fighting instincts.

To some extent, yes, though the question to be posed is by how much? I wouldn't say Gohan's Boo Arc self needs to be drastically weaker than 7 years ago to have things line up the way the manga portrays when he wasn't at a complete physical disadvantage against Dabura yet was still lagging behind enough in skill that Dabura was confident enough to call him trash when prepared for Round 2 despite Gohan having been restored to his full stamina, showing just how absolutely debilitating his rustiness in skill and poor stamina were more so than any drop in Ki.

 

[SIAD]

But wasn't Vegeta SSJ2 (Pre Majin)> Dabura> SPC> Kid Gohan SSJ2?

 

[Captain Cadaver]

That's what I'd agree with. My point with the chain there was to present the bare minimum as to why the rage boost was necessary for the characters to take into account without bringing in the can of worms that is the Dabura power debate.