Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14640999-20140724024429/@comment-3387274-20140726145421

well, Ruby was in an inclined space, still needed a lot of line up time to use it, and while it pinned everyone to the wall absolutely everyone, whatever their side, was shown completely unfazed barely ten seconds later. Also, in a serious fight Pyrha would still have her shield. In short, this is so far removed from a combat situation that it cannot possibly give an accurate representation of outright power levels.

Besides, who fights seriously in a food fight? Pyrha escalated it somewhat by using her Semblance, Ruby replied in kind. it just so happened that under those exact circumstances Ruby's semblance was marginally more effective, mainly because it made everything fly, and not just the cans. Compare to earlier when Ruby was first repelled by Pyrha rather easily, and then knocked flying by Nora. Even if you take the non serious fight seriously, all it shows is that certain circumstances favour different characters. Kinda a given.

Back on topic, Penny is capable of very powerful ranged and area of effect attacks, as well as countering them. There is no indication how she would handle close quarters melee combat, and while she can bring the swords in close, they're no more powerful than a regular weapon based on her movements at that point. Therefore a character who could get in close to her should fair quite well. This requires either high speed or some means of defleacting the initiall sword assault, and possibly retaliating through it.

Ironically enough, the characters with the best fighting styles for the job seem to be Pyrha and Ruby.