Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-131.123.61.0-20140416144504/@comment-24400457-20140623075447

It's possible that Pyrrha doesn't actually like using her semblance in fair conflict. Why would you want to end a fight immediately? She learns nothing from using her polarity to immediately end the match. Ruby we've seen fight absent her semblance. Did Blake use her shadow clones in the Black trailer? And Weiss... I imagine air step isn't actually that taxing on her, and half of her dust abilities aren't tied to her semblance. It's also possible Myrtenaster designed to help her use her glyphs.

As for mages: It's likely all hunters are trained in hand-to-hand combat. Glynda may also have training is using that riding crop as a weapon. And for what it's worth: Cinder appears to do a good job of avoiding Ruby's attack in the opening cinematic.