Writing

I will start this of by saying that powerscaling can be fun, and I get the appeal of "testing" characters against each other. But the way it is often done is often flawed. Most things I reference about powerscaling will be taken from the vsbattles wiki, as that uses methods most powerscalers seem to use (even if their results are often criticized).

The three major gripes I have is ignoring matchups, oversimplification of power and ignoring the narrative. My main gripe is with how people look at things in comparison to the narrative, you can skip to that part if you want to.

There are definitively people who powerscale with respect to these things, this is just something I have observed in general.

Ignoring matchups

One of the core tenets in powerscaling is (simplified) If character A is beaten by B, character B must be stronger (or at least comparable) But that is not necessarily true. Even if A is strong enough to destroy a building with a single punch doesn't mean B comes close to this. In fact, one of the more common tropes in fantasy is a small human facing a big dragon. Rarely does the human match the destructive capabilities of the dragon, but they manage to win anyways (be it because of ingenuity or some magical sword).

Expanding on this, it is not possible to place all characters on a straight line of power. How good a character is at fighting needs to be measured in many separate categories.

Oversimplifying power

On the vsbattles wiki, on their page for speed they talk about different categories of speed. But I rarely see anyone mention this. There is a massive difference in being able to perceive someone moving at a speed and being able to intercept it, or being able to punch at some speed and traveling at some speed.

But my biggest gripe is with how "attack potency" (the strength of attacks) is measured. The gripe I have is that people often draw a direct line between destruction and attack, ignoring the fact that the destructive feat is often spread out over a large area. Just because I can destroy a town does not mean I can condense that force into an area small enough to hit a human.

To paint a better picture: Character A summons a storm of meteors that manages to destroy a large city. This does not mean they can attack a normal human at "city level" strength (>6.3 megatons according to vsbattles) unless A has shown a capability to compress the total force into a small blast. But, running this back to matchups, they would be able to put this force against a giant opponent.

Ignoring the narrative

If you scale a character to a level of strength that would make any problems they face in the story as trivial, they clearly are not at that level. We can, without looking at feats, deduce that Darth Vader isn't strong enough to destroy planets, because then why would he build the death star?

Besides this, stories generally have a range of powers that characters have. In the marvel movies, the heroes are not strong enough to destroy continents by themselves. I know that the hulk is unable destroy a city with a punch because we see that he cannot even destroy buildings with a single punch.

Another thing that has to be looked at in the context of the narrative is statements, dialogue that hints at or directly states a character's strength. The main thing is that claims should never be taken at face value, if the evil lord is stated to be able to destroy the world it does not mean he can destroy the universe, or even a planet or country. A reasonable interpretation would be that the evil lord would ruin the current way of life. Besides that, people are often mistaken, exaggerate and may lie, this should also be taken into account.

The final things is that stories are often inconsistent and exaggerate for dramatic effect, often to extreme degrees when it is animated. Sure, spiderman can survive being hit by a truck, but he also gets beat up by (almost) normal humans. Sure, some animated character may cause the ground to shake, but are you sure that isn't just for dramatic effect?

Summary

I think powerscaling can be a fun thing that makes you flex your brain and can serve as an excuse to analyze a piece of media you enjoy, but often people oversimplify character's strengths and ignore the narrative context the world takes place in.