>>537823212
>They are both able to easily beat on 18 (while nerfed by the suit) prior to training. One blast from Trunks threatened to kill 18.
>Piccolo has been training non stop since the end of the cell games. He's for sure stronger than he was. He's in-between his old level (equal to A17) and Cell's level.
There's a lot of difference between "can threaten 18 with ease" and "Strong enough to match Cell Games Gohan". There were a lot of ballparks in Cell saga that are above 17/18. In order from weakest to strongest:
>16
>Semi Perfect Cell
>Super Vegeta/Super Trunks
>Ultra Trunks (In raw power)
>Half power post HTC Goku (Specifically stronger than Vegeta)
>Vegeta/Trunks after another session in HTC
>Cell Jrs
>Full power Goku
>Gohan
And we also have Piccolo post HTC, with an unknown power level in comparison with the rest, though, it's explicitly below Vegeta/Trunks post the second HTC, but where that stands it's unknown. So Piccolo could still be "only" Semi Perfect Cell level for example.

All we know is that Piccolo may be vaguely above Goten and Trunks, and shitting his pants at the possibility of fighting Shin (And given that Shin was baffled at how strong Vegeta is in base form, it really drags down Piccolo).

>They were measured up to Buu Gohan which is a pretty good feat.
A 7 years of peace, stopped training Gohan... And Gohan talks like Goten isn't on his level yet. Goku and Vegeta shit on Gohan for being much weaker plenty of times, so how that Gohan measures up to Cell Games Goku is unknown, but I'd bet he's much weaker.

>If you think those cell jrs are stronger than the cell games ones. Otherwise that's a sub SS2 Gohan feat. Not very impressive considering 6 years had passed since Buu
They were never comparable to SS2 Gohan, ever. And they didn't really train post Buu, so being comparable to Cell Jrs while not really training is nuts (And hilarious given how bad Gohan falls off when he doesn't train).