Sakura's Skills AKA Not Useless

Abilities

As a genin, due to her focus on her studies, Sakura lacked any particular combat skill, other than the basic skills she learned in the Academy. This greatly limited her role in missions, to the point where she frequently noted how much she relied on her teammates, Sasuke and Naruto. On one occasion, she is even stated to be: " A kunoichi with no particular talent." Determined to change herself, she undergoes intense training with Tsunade for two-and-a-half years. Following in her master's footsteps, others remarked that Sakura would inevitably surpass Tsunade, which became even more apparent when she formed the Strength of a Hundred Seal during the Fourth Shinobi World War. Two years later, she rises to the rank of jōnin, and was capable of single-handily defeating Kido Tsumiki despite the Anbu being empowered by a Tailed Beast Drug. As an adult, Boruto remarked that she was a suitable replacement for Naruto as Hokage.

Chakra Control and Physical Prowess

While Sakura has rarely been seen using taijutsu in Part I, she was able to hold her own against Ino, one of the top students in her class. After Tsunade's training, Sakura's taijutsu improved to the point that she could easily destroy several of Sasori's hundred puppets. As an adult, she could go toe to toe with a Mangekyō Sharingan wielding opponent like Shin Uchiha.

As seen in Part I, Sakura's most defining skill was her proficiency in chakra control. Such exact use of her chakra allows her to perform a jutsu with maximum efficiency without wasting much chakra. Due to this, Kakashi Hatake noted that she is well-suited for genjutsu. While never actually seen using genjutsu, she is frequently been shown to quickly identify when it is being used, and release herself or others from it.

After training under Tsunade for over two years, her chakra control increased tremendously, becoming a vital part to many of her abilities. By building up chakra into her fists (and infrequently her feet) and releasing it on contact with a target, it grants her what Naruto constantly refers to as "monstrous strength". Sakura's strength is enough to destroy buildings or upend the earth. Furthermore, she can send chakra throughout her entire body to lift greater mass, and improve her ability to withstand crushing blows.

Another objective of Tsunade's training was to increase Sakura's available chakra supply to complete the Strength of a Hundred Seal, something that took three years to accomplish. When the seal is released, Sakura has access to all the accumulated chakra, allowing her to perform techniques of a greater scale than she is normally able to. Among other things, her physical attacks are also enhanced to the point that she could damage Kaguya with one blow, breaking one of her horns off. She can also transfer this chakra to others.

Ninjutsu

By the Fourth Shinobi World War, Sakura could use the Summoning Technique, and like Tsunade, summon the giant slug, Katsuyu. Noted to be incredibly impressive by Hashirama and Shizune, Sakura could have Katsuyu split apart and attach itself to others, Sakura could remotely monitor many allies at once, healing and replenishing their chakra as needed. Sakura could also use Earth, Water, Yin, and Yang Release.

Medical Ninjutsu

The main purpose of Tsunade's training was to teach Sakura medical ninjutsu, which demanded Sakura's refined chakra control. As such, Sakura can heal even the most fatal of injuries. Tsunade remarks that her proficiency for healing are exceptionally rare. When dealing with an enemy with an extremely resistant body, she could combine her chakra-enhanced fists with her medical ninjutsu to heal the resulting damage, eventually killing the affected cells from over-replication.[44] By releasing the Strength of a Hundred Seal, Sakura can put her body in a state in which it heals itself so that she doesn't need to stop to treat herself or even be fazed by injury. In the anime, she could perform a highly difficult operation alone to regenerate a missing section of a person's body.

Poison Removal

If healing proves ineffective, Sakura can make incisions in her patients to try and directly treat her patients' vital organs. She can also cure those who have been poisoned by extracting the poison from their bodies, while simultaneously repairing the damage — something which even poison-experts like Chiyo cannot do. To ensure a complete recovery, Sakura can create an effective antidote after analysing the poison's contents, even for poisons that Sasori did not believe anyone but himself could make antidotes for.

After Kurama was removed from Naruto, during the war, Sakura was able to extend Naruto's near death condition, until Minato arrived and eventually saved him. During The Last, she again saved Naruto from chakra deprivation, by pouring her own chakra into him and Kurama, which took her three days.

Her medical expertise extends to more standard medicine as well, enabling her to perform autopsies and examine cells with a knowledge of genetics. She was taught by Tsunade how to make fast-acting sleeping gas, and was taught by Shizune on how to concoct poisons that, when coated on weapons, could debilitate or paralyse a person with a single scratch. In the anime, Sakura even created her own version of Military Rations Pills, intended to have more medicinal purposes and be easier to consume. By the time of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, she had also learned the Healing Power Alteration Technique (癒力変生の術, Yuryoku Hensei no Jutsu), although it is unknown what this entails.

Intelligence

While she was at the Academy, Sakura received consistently high test scores. It is because of her diligence in her studies that Sakura initially struggled in combat situations, for this reason, she was added to Team 7 so that she could benefit from the more battle-oriented Naruto and Sasuke, while in turn, they would benefit from her knowledge. She was able to answer the written portion of the Chūnin Exams all by herself without needing to cheat, something that genin were not expected to be able to do. Sakura's intelligence is nevertheless consistently useful, making her observational enough to guess an opponent's tactics from a brief scan of the battlefield and pick up on otherwise minor inconsistencies in conversation. Sasuke deemed her analytical skills to be superior to his Sharingan.

She has an excellent memory, able to quickly piece together multiple pieces of information she's previously come across in order to form a hypothesis. In actual combat, Sakura frequently relies on misleading her opponents, either by letting them think they've outsmarted her so that they lower their guard, or letting them think they've defeated her so that they will approach her, and she can defeat them with a single punch.