Luffy just unlocked Gear 5, so I feel that for this battle with Kaido, we’ll only get a small taste of what it can really do. In the future, with more mastery and dexterity, Luffy’s Gear 5 will be able to do much more with his abilities. Maybe even some amber resin abilities like I’ve heard around the net, which could serve to be his logia-like abilities.
I think Luffy’s awakening would be an absolute maximization of all the traits of rubber. Enhanced elasticity, resilience, insulation (Red Hawk on steroids, anyone?), high tensile strength and abrasion resistance, stickiness or bonding to various items, vibration and blunt force dampening, enhanced hardness to even higher levels when imbued with haki, etc.
Naturally, his combat abilities would become insane. Luffy would become faster, immune to sonic attacks, resistant to heat, stronger, and practically impervious to most forms of damage.
He would be able to hit harder than ever and he would eliminate his gear drawbacks and enhance his stamina with the naturally rebounding properties of rubber instead of having to waste energy moving his muscles. He might even start to resist cutting attacks, despite those being a weakness before awakening, as there are rubbers that are pretty resistant to cutting in our world.
I get this feeling that with his fruit awakened, his non-Gear 5 abilities will be greatly enhanced, especially Gear 4, by not only an increase in power but also reducing the strain and drawbacks, thereby allowing for far longer duration and if not completely negated, greatly reduce the cooldown time and maybe not be as helpless. This will also help with his haki usage as well. This will all go a long way towards his endgame fights.
Imagine Gear 2, 3, and 4 all rolled into one with no drawbacks and better in all ways BEFORE Luffy even uses his haki. Maybe he can manifest Red Hawk’s flames over his entire body for an entire fight, too. To master his awakening, Luffy would need to master the control over these insane new powers. The awakening will be powerful but it will be Luffy’s lack of experience with it that demands work.
The sky and Luffy’s imagination are the limits as said by the Gorosei, so anything can happen. But I would like to hear your thoughts.
Theory by ArcadiaJ (https://www.reddit.com/user/ArcadiaJ)
