Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-65.94.50.112-20131215233249/@comment-14909251-20131219064108

Zolnir wrote:

You mean the time she tried to go ham on Roman, dived at him straight as an arrow, used her top speed from the very beginning, did not vary her speed to deceive, did not employ her Semblance shadows to distract, and got her Semblance cancelled in the end by a single counter before getting whacked 4 times in a row? You call that a much better fight?

Season 1 Blake is a disaster of a fighter and her performance was the second weakest out of everyone, and she didn't even come close to the ninja she might be hoping to be. I've said from the very beginning that Blake has the potential to become the strongest fighter in the story, but right now? She's weak and underperforming like hell. Here's a list of her current failures to date:

1) Nearly getting killed by the Spider Droid after trying to cover for Adam without any sort of plan at all.

2) Tried to use the kusarigama style against a completely shielded Deathstalker and get whacked by a pincer for the effort. If the Grimm could speak, it would've said, 'Hey! That itched!'

3) Unable to dodge out of Nora's way before getting knocked into a seemingly endless abyss. Though this is completely accident and negligible.

4) Tried to go crazy on Roman and get completely dominated instead cue Roman x Blake.

Point is, with exception to Jaune, no one else has suffered nearly as much defeat as she did so far. Note that with exception the 2), Blake could've died on all three other occasions. The near death ratio is astounding. It's time to face the facts, people, that Season 1 Blake is weak. Your description of the fight with Roman is kind of missing the point. Roman was an incredibly good fighter and it took Sun and Blake ganging up on him just to land a decent hit. Even then he manages to get the upper hand and was in a position to off Sun. The other instances you cite all involve Blake getting pwned repeatedly without posing any threat to the enemy at all. She actually did put him on the defensive for a bit. Compared to how she fared in the other instances, I think that is quite impressive given Roman's demonstrated ability. Ruby and Weiss would have fared well at a distance, but probably not nearly as well at close-quarters. Yang seems to be the only other one who has demonstrated that kind of close-quarters combat ability and I would not be confident in her chances against Roman either.