As a logia (elemental type) devil fruit user, Smoker is able to turn his entire body into smoke. He can spread out the smoke over large areas and yet still keep it firm enough to grab pirates and arrest them. Physical attacks have a small chance of hurting him, swords simply cutting through him, and punches going through him. He's very strong and can easily carrying several large pirates over his shoulder like it's nothing. Likewise, he's tall and over muscled in a way only an anime character could be. He is resistant to fire, going toe toe in a fiery explosion with the fire logia user, and he doesn't seem to be any weaker to rain or the cold, as he never wears a shirt and is always seen leaving his jacket unbuttoned or off altogether.
He is well-trained as a marine, and experienced in hand-to-hand combat -- he, in fact, prefers to use this before his devil fruit, both so as not to rely too heavily on his smoke, and also to challenge himself against weaker foes. He uses a seastone tipped jitte with great strength and proficiency, and has even developed techniques to carry it while turned into smoke -- even though because it's seastone he has to avoid touching the tip itself since it drains devil fruit users.
He has heavy endurance and was flung through several brick building's walls, only to get back up and dust himself off. Slightly mad, but in no way all that damaged. He has a short extra fight with Luffy in the anime, which leads his fighting style to look American in nature (fitting with his theme and how his attack names are all in English) and accidentally wound up kicking Luffy far further than he'd originally intended to. Most of Smoker's tags appear to grappling in nature and even though smoke would usually be used to choke and kill someone, Smoker appears to prefer to take in his pirates alive when he personally fights them; most likely due to his personal sense of honor and justice.
In One Piece, conviction is a major theme, a "strength" mentioned by Gol D. Roger (the pirate king), and later brought up again as why some pirates are so weak; because they had no conviction behind their actions. Indeed, it's believed the "War of the Best" was so dangerous because it was a war between superpowers with very strong faith in their convictions and belief. Smoker is extremely convicted of his beliefs in true justice, which gives him a strong determination in the battles he believes in -- namely capturing pirates and protecting civilians. While this makes him a terrifying foe; as Luffy quickly realized, it can also make him a pretty valuable ally -- if their goals match up.
Because of his strong faith in True Justice, Smoker has a tendency to inspire loyalty from his friends and men. Tashigi has defended him a number of times and gets outraged on his behalf when he's called a monster, even though he doesn't seem to care at all, Hina has bailed him out of trouble frequently, and Aokiji even agreed to do a favor for Smoker and deliver a message to Straw Hat Luffy (though he was unable to carry through on it.) Even though Smoker is a loner, without the help of his friends, he couldn't have even stayed in the marines as long as he has, much less reach the rank of Vice Admiral.
Vice admirals in One Piece must be familiar with haki which allows even non-devil fruit users to fight incorporeal logia users, defend, or in high levels completely knock foes unconscious. Up to now all the vice admirals have also been shown having familiarity with rokushiki, enough to modify their own attacks based on it, and in some cases, teach it to their men. Having now achieved the rank of vice admiral himself, Smoker at minimum must have a better knowledge of both, and some proficiency with haki, which would be very fitting considering his own ambition and constant drive to get stronger to fulfill his determination to capture Straw Hat Luffy in the New World.
He's also shown having successfully been assigned to the marine base G5, and even led the notoriously unruly men, clearly demonstrating his continue strength as a marine and his ability to clean up the bases he's assigned -- just as he did with Loguetown. He is also now far more experienced with the insanity that can be commonly found in the New World section of the Grand Line; and he successfully navigated his ship through lightning rain. He continues to demonstrate his knowledge about the world and its history, with regards to Punk Hazard and an incident that happened several years prior.
And he continues to be the Straw Hat crew's number one stalker, tapping their phone lines the minute they got a call, (really, what are even the odds) and when pirates who'd been set loose from Fishman Island by Luffy were telling Smoker who beat them up and where Luffy was, Smoker bluntly informed them, he already knew all this.
Despite being in extremely hazardous or stressful situations; like the New World and lightning rain, or in the middle of a war having someone who was supposed to be an ally "betray" and fight him instead: Smoker is able to handle these unpredictable turns of events quite well. In Crocodile's prison, despite being trapped in seastone with his enemy and surrounded by pirates, Smoker kept out a keen ear and told them which banadile ate their key, and also explained that Nico Robin was just dangerous as Crocodile -- if not more. He's able to bounce back quickly and handle the stress well.
He has a good understanding of the pirate mindset and has been shown bluffing them out of information they meant to hide. Though in Luffy's case, this has more to do with Luffy's inability to lie, but Smoker has used it when investigating other criminal organizations, such as shown with Mr. 11.
Smoker also has sensitive hearing, as shown both with his ability to differentiate bananadile growls and his complaining that his men are always too loud. Which comes in handy when constantly eavesdropping on pirates.
Despite being physically strong, and always focused (even obsessed) with getting stronger, Smoker is very smart too. His bookshelves in Loguetown are stacked with various books, often misaligned from use, he keeps up to date with events and he's shown on various occasions to have a keen analytical mind that sees to the heart of problems and where to strike first. Two years later in the New World have only heightened this skill, and without even skipping a beat, Smoker was able to transition from his first instinctual guesses about where Luffy would go and switch to where Straw Hat was actually headed instead. He displayed his knowledge both in some of the cover-ups about Vegapunk's accident on Punk Hazard (which he would have had more access to information about as a vice admiral) and the ensuing fight between Aokiji and Akainu -- though as both someone who knew Aokiji, and a logia himself, it would only make sense to keep up to date with it. Still, he knew much more than the rest of his crew (including Tashigi) and instantly understood what was even more out of place with the island -- showing that his detective instincts are still finely tuned, if occasionally overly suspicious.
Weaknesses:
As a devil fruit user, Smoker cannot swim. He is cursed to drown and be weak to the ocean. This weakness also carries over to seastone, which he himself carries despite being weak to it. Contact with seastone will drain a devil fruit user of strength and energy, mimicking the effects of the ocean itself, and is commonly used in marine handcuffs and prison bars. It's also the hardest substance known to man in One Piece; even tougher than diamonds.
Smoker heavily underestimates people, he initially dismissed Luffy as an idiot weakling and claimed that the headquarters was setting the bar too low for how they gave out bounties. And even later, despite knowing that Luffy has a tendency to be rescued by world class friends and family, he continued to be surprised by it -- though he did mention that he intended to get strong enough that even his crew wouldn't be able to protect Luffy.
Emotionally, Smoker, while not quite "stunted" is certainly hampered by his tendency towards distance and tough love. To put it bluntly, he's really tsundere. He doesn't expect people to like him, and doesn't care if they don't, but he's taken off guard and reacts extremely flustered when they do like him. He's fine at dealing with insults and handles those from his best friend Hina just fine, but compliments confuse him and he doesn't know how to handle it other than being tsundere. In the anime, Smoker has a tendency to get more flustered or frazzled, and it shows. He can stay restrained, but even though he tells his men not to yell because it "disrupts his flow" when he's flustered, he does a lot of yelling himself, at Boa, at Luffy, at Tashigi, and so on. He tries to act cool, and sometimes he can pull it off, such as with Dragon, but other times, his reactions are over the top and nearly explosive.
Smoker also doesn't let things go. Whether it's a perceived betrayal (such as from Boa Hancock), a pirate nearly out of his league, an unanswered curiosity (such as why would the most wanted man in the world help out a random pirate? This stuck with Smoker all the way from Loguetown to Marineford when he found out Dragon was Luffy's father, and indeed, he seemed to care more than Luffy does) or something more mundane that bugs him, he obsesses over it and in extreme cases he develops tunnel vision and completely shifts his priorities -- dangerously so, since he abandoned his post at Loguetown to chase after Straw-Hat and that could have had him court martialed so he'd lose his job. In point of fact, Smoker's motivation and primary reason for being so obsessed with Luffy is that both Luffy and Gol D. Roger smiled on the execution stands when they knew they were about to die -- a fact Smoker still observed 22 years later after having seen the Pirate King's execution when he was 12. However, it should be noted that it is that obsessive nature that lets him be the hyper-focused obsessed stalker that he is, so it's more of a double-edged sword in nature.
He's stubborn, and hates taking ANY orders (even imaginably ones that could be for his own good) or even advice from friends (such as when Hina told him not to talk back to brass and just accept that this was something he couldn't change.) He believes so strongly in going his own way that while he won't break laws he agrees with, even his own friends thought he might break hugely important laws out of a stubborn principle that he was "doing the right thing." (Hina thought Smoker might have used some of the boogie powder Smoker himself confiscated from Crocodile.)
It's not completely confirmed in canon whether or not Smoker is weak to winds being made of smoke, but it's widely believed that he is, as he was unable to fight against the winds that swept through Loguetown and help free Luffy with Dragon the Revolutionary, and he wore motorcycle goggles in Alabasta to avoid getting sand in his eyes, even though he didn't worry about the rain in Loguetown, implying that he has a harder time controlling the smoke in high winds (which really makes sense.)
Smoker's sense of justice entails protecting people more than punishing people the way Absolute Justice works so if someone were capable of killing his marines, he'd jump in their way to protect them (as he did against Ace) and he would probably do the same for civilians. He let pirates go so that they could go fight a greater enemy and he is capable of discerning who's a bigger problem. Thus if someone forced him into the position of letting a pirate go free or catching an innocent civilian, Smoker would almost certainly choose to rescue. Aside from it being used against him, this is out of favor with Absolute Justice as Akainu and his like follow which makes it harder for Smoker to stick to his principles in war, and even follow the new fleet admiral who believes in killing civilians and marines if it means getting rid of pirates.
For the most part, Smoker will sit and think through problems rationally and logically, which makes him a great detective; however, he has a sort of tunnel vision when it comes to chasing his prey. When Luffy is in the area, Smoker homes in on just Straw-Hat, and ignores the rest of the world to the point of near-obliviousness. This is how he chased them into a pit trap which led to a seastone prison instead of escaping in smoke form while he had the chance. Later on, it's alway what allows Boa Hancock to hit him so easily. Even with a Whitebeard pirate in the area, Smoker was so obsessed with getting to Luffy, he trampled Ace and later ignored him completely even though this turns out to be a mistake as Ace helps Luffy get away.
Matching his inability to let things go, Smoker also has an easily addicted personality. He smokes two cigars at a time, drinks on the job (rum, and beer on two separate occasions, both at lunch time and while he's working), drinks far more coffee than a normal person even of his size should be able to, and it's been hinted that he likely has other similar problems.
Smoker | One Piece | Canon Update (hopefully)
As a logia (elemental type) devil fruit user, Smoker is able to turn his entire body into smoke. He can spread out the smoke over large areas and yet still keep it firm enough to grab pirates and arrest them. Physical attacks have a small chance of hurting him, swords simply cutting through him, and punches going through him. He's very strong and can easily carrying several large pirates over his shoulder like it's nothing. Likewise, he's tall and over muscled in a way only an anime character could be. He is resistant to fire, going toe toe in a fiery explosion with the fire logia user, and he doesn't seem to be any weaker to rain or the cold, as he never wears a shirt and is always seen leaving his jacket unbuttoned or off altogether.
He is well-trained as a marine, and experienced in hand-to-hand combat -- he, in fact, prefers to use this before his devil fruit, both so as not to rely too heavily on his smoke, and also to challenge himself against weaker foes. He uses a seastone tipped jitte with great strength and proficiency, and has even developed techniques to carry it while turned into smoke -- even though because it's seastone he has to avoid touching the tip itself since it drains devil fruit users.
He has heavy endurance and was flung through several brick building's walls, only to get back up and dust himself off. Slightly mad, but in no way all that damaged. He has a short extra fight with Luffy in the anime, which leads his fighting style to look American in nature (fitting with his theme and how his attack names are all in English) and accidentally wound up kicking Luffy far further than he'd originally intended to. Most of Smoker's tags appear to grappling in nature and even though smoke would usually be used to choke and kill someone, Smoker appears to prefer to take in his pirates alive when he personally fights them; most likely due to his personal sense of honor and justice.
In One Piece, conviction is a major theme, a "strength" mentioned by Gol D. Roger (the pirate king), and later brought up again as why some pirates are so weak; because they had no conviction behind their actions. Indeed, it's believed the "War of the Best" was so dangerous because it was a war between superpowers with very strong faith in their convictions and belief. Smoker is extremely convicted of his beliefs in true justice, which gives him a strong determination in the battles he believes in -- namely capturing pirates and protecting civilians. While this makes him a terrifying foe; as Luffy quickly realized, it can also make him a pretty valuable ally -- if their goals match up.
Because of his strong faith in True Justice, Smoker has a tendency to inspire loyalty from his friends and men. Tashigi has defended him a number of times and gets outraged on his behalf when he's called a monster, even though he doesn't seem to care at all, Hina has bailed him out of trouble frequently, and Aokiji even agreed to do a favor for Smoker and deliver a message to Straw Hat Luffy (though he was unable to carry through on it.) Even though Smoker is a loner, without the help of his friends, he couldn't have even stayed in the marines as long as he has, much less reach the rank of Vice Admiral.
Vice admirals in One Piece must be familiar with haki which allows even non-devil fruit users to fight incorporeal logia users, defend, or in high levels completely knock foes unconscious. Up to now all the vice admirals have also been shown having familiarity with rokushiki, enough to modify their own attacks based on it, and in some cases, teach it to their men. Having now achieved the rank of vice admiral himself, Smoker at minimum must have a better knowledge of both, and some proficiency with haki, which would be very fitting considering his own ambition and constant drive to get stronger to fulfill his determination to capture Straw Hat Luffy in the New World.
He's also shown having successfully been assigned to the marine base G5, and even led the notoriously unruly men, clearly demonstrating his continue strength as a marine and his ability to clean up the bases he's assigned -- just as he did with Loguetown. He is also now far more experienced with the insanity that can be commonly found in the New World section of the Grand Line; and he successfully navigated his ship through lightning rain. He continues to demonstrate his knowledge about the world and its history, with regards to Punk Hazard and an incident that happened several years prior.
And he continues to be the Straw Hat crew's number one stalker, tapping their phone lines the minute they got a call, (really, what are even the odds) and when pirates who'd been set loose from Fishman Island by Luffy were telling Smoker who beat them up and where Luffy was, Smoker bluntly informed them, he already knew all this.
Despite being in extremely hazardous or stressful situations; like the New World and lightning rain, or in the middle of a war having someone who was supposed to be an ally "betray" and fight him instead: Smoker is able to handle these unpredictable turns of events quite well. In Crocodile's prison, despite being trapped in seastone with his enemy and surrounded by pirates, Smoker kept out a keen ear and told them which banadile ate their key, and also explained that Nico Robin was just dangerous as Crocodile -- if not more. He's able to bounce back quickly and handle the stress well.
He has a good understanding of the pirate mindset and has been shown bluffing them out of information they meant to hide. Though in Luffy's case, this has more to do with Luffy's inability to lie, but Smoker has used it when investigating other criminal organizations, such as shown with Mr. 11.
Smoker also has sensitive hearing, as shown both with his ability to differentiate bananadile growls and his complaining that his men are always too loud. Which comes in handy when constantly eavesdropping on pirates.
Despite being physically strong, and always focused (even obsessed) with getting stronger, Smoker is very smart too. His bookshelves in Loguetown are stacked with various books, often misaligned from use, he keeps up to date with events and he's shown on various occasions to have a keen analytical mind that sees to the heart of problems and where to strike first. Two years later in the New World have only heightened this skill, and without even skipping a beat, Smoker was able to transition from his first instinctual guesses about where Luffy would go and switch to where Straw Hat was actually headed instead. He displayed his knowledge both in some of the cover-ups about Vegapunk's accident on Punk Hazard (which he would have had more access to information about as a vice admiral) and the ensuing fight between Aokiji and Akainu -- though as both someone who knew Aokiji, and a logia himself, it would only make sense to keep up to date with it. Still, he knew much more than the rest of his crew (including Tashigi) and instantly understood what was even more out of place with the island -- showing that his detective instincts are still finely tuned, if occasionally overly suspicious.
Weaknesses:
As a devil fruit user, Smoker cannot swim. He is cursed to drown and be weak to the ocean. This weakness also carries over to seastone, which he himself carries despite being weak to it. Contact with seastone will drain a devil fruit user of strength and energy, mimicking the effects of the ocean itself, and is commonly used in marine handcuffs and prison bars. It's also the hardest substance known to man in One Piece; even tougher than diamonds.
Smoker heavily underestimates people, he initially dismissed Luffy as an idiot weakling and claimed that the headquarters was setting the bar too low for how they gave out bounties. And even later, despite knowing that Luffy has a tendency to be rescued by world class friends and family, he continued to be surprised by it -- though he did mention that he intended to get strong enough that even his crew wouldn't be able to protect Luffy.
Emotionally, Smoker, while not quite "stunted" is certainly hampered by his tendency towards distance and tough love. To put it bluntly, he's really tsundere. He doesn't expect people to like him, and doesn't care if they don't, but he's taken off guard and reacts extremely flustered when they do like him. He's fine at dealing with insults and handles those from his best friend Hina just fine, but compliments confuse him and he doesn't know how to handle it other than being tsundere. In the anime, Smoker has a tendency to get more flustered or frazzled, and it shows. He can stay restrained, but even though he tells his men not to yell because it "disrupts his flow" when he's flustered, he does a lot of yelling himself, at Boa, at Luffy, at Tashigi, and so on. He tries to act cool, and sometimes he can pull it off, such as with Dragon, but other times, his reactions are over the top and nearly explosive.
Smoker also doesn't let things go. Whether it's a perceived betrayal (such as from Boa Hancock), a pirate nearly out of his league, an unanswered curiosity (such as why would the most wanted man in the world help out a random pirate? This stuck with Smoker all the way from Loguetown to Marineford when he found out Dragon was Luffy's father, and indeed, he seemed to care more than Luffy does) or something more mundane that bugs him, he obsesses over it and in extreme cases he develops tunnel vision and completely shifts his priorities -- dangerously so, since he abandoned his post at Loguetown to chase after Straw-Hat and that could have had him court martialed so he'd lose his job. In point of fact, Smoker's motivation and primary reason for being so obsessed with Luffy is that both Luffy and Gol D. Roger smiled on the execution stands when they knew they were about to die -- a fact Smoker still observed 22 years later after having seen the Pirate King's execution when he was 12. However, it should be noted that it is that obsessive nature that lets him be the hyper-focused obsessed stalker that he is, so it's more of a double-edged sword in nature.
He's stubborn, and hates taking ANY orders (even imaginably ones that could be for his own good) or even advice from friends (such as when Hina told him not to talk back to brass and just accept that this was something he couldn't change.) He believes so strongly in going his own way that while he won't break laws he agrees with, even his own friends thought he might break hugely important laws out of a stubborn principle that he was "doing the right thing." (Hina thought Smoker might have used some of the boogie powder Smoker himself confiscated from Crocodile.)
It's not completely confirmed in canon whether or not Smoker is weak to winds being made of smoke, but it's widely believed that he is, as he was unable to fight against the winds that swept through Loguetown and help free Luffy with Dragon the Revolutionary, and he wore motorcycle goggles in Alabasta to avoid getting sand in his eyes, even though he didn't worry about the rain in Loguetown, implying that he has a harder time controlling the smoke in high winds (which really makes sense.)
Smoker's sense of justice entails protecting people more than punishing people the way Absolute Justice works so if someone were capable of killing his marines, he'd jump in their way to protect them (as he did against Ace) and he would probably do the same for civilians. He let pirates go so that they could go fight a greater enemy and he is capable of discerning who's a bigger problem. Thus if someone forced him into the position of letting a pirate go free or catching an innocent civilian, Smoker would almost certainly choose to rescue. Aside from it being used against him, this is out of favor with Absolute Justice as Akainu and his like follow which makes it harder for Smoker to stick to his principles in war, and even follow the new fleet admiral who believes in killing civilians and marines if it means getting rid of pirates.
For the most part, Smoker will sit and think through problems rationally and logically, which makes him a great detective; however, he has a sort of tunnel vision when it comes to chasing his prey. When Luffy is in the area, Smoker homes in on just Straw-Hat, and ignores the rest of the world to the point of near-obliviousness. This is how he chased them into a pit trap which led to a seastone prison instead of escaping in smoke form while he had the chance. Later on, it's alway what allows Boa Hancock to hit him so easily. Even with a Whitebeard pirate in the area, Smoker was so obsessed with getting to Luffy, he trampled Ace and later ignored him completely even though this turns out to be a mistake as Ace helps Luffy get away.
Matching his inability to let things go, Smoker also has an easily addicted personality. He smokes two cigars at a time, drinks on the job (rum, and beer on two separate occasions, both at lunch time and while he's working), drinks far more coffee than a normal person even of his size should be able to, and it's been hinted that he likely has other similar problems.