In all honesty the only passive that should be removed from our version is Passive 3: chakra scaling on super armor. Without 100% att/nin and 250% bonus defense he isnt broken anymore. Strong, indeed, but not broken like on CN. I dont see a reason why he shouldnt get books, +auto for akatsuki along with heal and debuff clear (which he currently offers) opens up a lot of teams. And dont forget pretty much nobody is using him right now, which perfectly points out why he needs those books to even be considered an option.

Lets talk about edo hiruzen, since he falls into the same category: someone higher power than you 1shots you. Thats understandable. But when during bonds people with 15-20% less battle power (me- 2x 180k vs 2x150k) pretty much wipes the field clean, there is an issue. Same thing applies to kakuzu post skillbooks. People without him start losing, what my hiruzen example says, thats all.

The difference is kakuzu right now is unplayable (unless you are so stacked you can 1shot with konohamaru corps, ergo doesnt matter what lineup you actually use). AGK example is a bad one. On my server half of the top ranking people have angel konan, some of them kakuzu and kakuzu is NEVER used in competitive team, because right now hes bad. Maybe not danzo izanagi level bad, but propably 1 tier above him. He needs those buffs, but not buffs like making his total dmg 2x higher on top of other buffs. Every skillbook except chakra passive adds something:

- mystery- 10% more nin buff, but you still need to actually kill something OR spammable interrupt with low dmg when at 50+ chakra // 1st requires thinking to make him scale while second good timing with interrupts. Mystery on its own doesnt deal that much damage.
- standard- you hit 4 people, thats actually 33% dmg increase. // cool, because right now he doesnt deal much dmg.
-1 passive- you hit 4 people and ignite them (again, 33% dmg increase because of 1 more target + ignite) OR 3 people hit + paralysis // sasuke got same buffs, did hitting 1 more person make him op? No.

-2passive- +1 auto to akatsuki on top of current heal + debuff clear //finally supportive part of kakuzu that does something better than regular healer.

-3passive- +2% att/nin and 5% def for each chakra over 50 (100att/100nin/250def buff in total at 100 chakra) OR revive. // hint, nobody is using revive because dmg part is broken.

Kakuzu with books vs kakuzu without books:

As you can see, 3rd passive is where things get ugly, since he gets twice as much damage (stacked with changes to standard and chase that actually means dealing 266% more damage than current EGF kakuzu does). Together with x2 auto passive, suddenly CN kakuzu with standard attacks just dealt 532% more damage than kakuzu without books. Then comes chase, which deals 266% more damage than current one. In total, CN kakuzu dealt over 5x more damage with autos and 2.5x more dmg with chase than regular one. This is why he is broken, and thats only because of 3rd passive scaling. On top of those over the top damage buffs, he has 250% buff to defense...

to sum it up:

2x auto damage= 2*133*2=532% vs 100

chase damage= 133*2=266% vs 100

Kakuzu without 3rd passive vs kakuzu without books at all:

2x auto= 2x133=266% vs 100%

chase= 133% vs 100%

Personally, whatever happens to him I want #2 passive to be allowed to upgrade. Additional standard on akatsuki ninjas is something this ninja really needs and might allow some akatsuki teams to be at least playable for fun.