Whistles
That’s quite an argument there. ^_^’
Guess I’ll have to bring up mine now, which admittedly isn’t as big as XSquared LOL. Or... at least I think it won’t be...
Anyway, since she knows everything he can do, Lucy will try her damnest to get out of Rock’s range which I guess she can arguably do given most of Rock’s options (except Time Stop & Gravity Hold) don’t stop her from doing so. That and she has the tendency to use the objects in her surroundings as distractions & all that other jazz to help herself. Given the above, and the fact that it is in character for her to spam range and has better consistent mobility, I can see that happening.
Lucy also has a valuable advantage in the fact that she can more easily multi-task: she can use forcefields while using AOE attacks, range attacks, dura neg, etc. Something Rock can’t do with much proficiency being limited to being able to use one-two weapons at a time (idk if we’re counting Mega Man 8 & 11’s ability to use both a special ability and the Mega Buster since this is Pre-Stardroids). Essentially, she can attack while defend at the same time. This with a touch of invisibility and unpredictability will help the mutant queen big time in dealing with his hax so to say. Not only that, but also sort of control the battlefield more.
There is also the fact that Rock has no real answer to an Island-sized vector literally just ramming him from above or below, really. Especially while enraged (which then one can argue Lucy has the AP advantage very briefly). At that point, it just gets too overwhelming for him to handle because the vectors are just too large to deal with speeds equal. It is still very hard for him to deal with the vectors in normal size due to the fact that Rock can’t see them or interact with them, and that’s gonna be all the more troublesome when they start changing sizes lol
Her not knowing Rock’s physiology also shouldn’t really stop her from at least trying to rip out circuits to see what it does. It may not be as effective, but a dura negging advantage is an advantage and she’ll try to use that in some way especially when Rock can’t effectively answer without the usage of certain special weapons.
I just realised that her knowing how Flash Stopper works will just give her ALL the more reason to get out of his range and stick to that strategy given a flashbang she didn’t see coming nearly got her killed (in her rematch against Bando in case you’re curious). So she’s not taking her chances here knowing about that ability.
I guess Lucy can stop herself from getting BFRd if she keeps a vector anchored to something like the ground or a building, since Rock’s Gravity Hold just yeets them into the air so hard they end up in space and it’s not constant gravity being applied to her. At least that’s how I interpret the ability.
And this brings me to this last paragraph regarding the following: her weakness. Lucy knows damn well she can’t keep abusing the hell out of her abilities forever or else she’ll eventually die. As I’ve outlined, she can -more or less at least- answer to most, if not all, of Rock’s options for quite some time. However, Lucy cannot really respond to these forever, and she knows this well. And she even knows Rock can’t keep up his tricks forever either ‘cause lolpriorknowledge. Due to this, I emphasize that Lucy will try her damnest to keep away from Rock’s range ASAP and try to finish things before she melts herself to death.
TLDR; gonna keep my vote for Lucy for better and more consistent mobility, better range, better AOE, better multi-tasking capability, invisibility, intangibility, the ability to momentarily reverse Rock’s minimal AP gap and matching level-headedness. Except this time, instead of it being low-diff, I say high-diff. For more elaboration on my points, just read the goddamn essay I just wrote
