I don't think lick is as bad on defense as the numbers currently show. The problem with fast attacks like that comes with dodging. Zen headbutt is fairly easy to dodge and worth doing so, 4 water gun rhythm works fine... But lick either cuts out a ton of your damage as your ratio is 2:1 not 4:1 as a percent of your DPS and EPS from fast attacking.

I think this means you just take the lick damage, but I find myself getting more hurt doing this than dodging zen headbutt.

Likewise hyper beam has the top damage numbers... but it's so easy to dodge. So easy. The animation telegraph's it ages ahead of time, it also gives you tons on time after the move to respond and you know it will be a while to recharge. Yes, body slam got nerfed a while ago, but it's still not bad, it's a lot harder to dodge, it comes up a lot more frequently giving them more chance to miss one, it gives less recovery time so slow long charges won't fit in the rhythm after it, and they can stack up 2+ of these so if you're off rhythm you may be stuck in a slow move and get hit by one.

So the numbers right now show that to be pretty bad compared to the top, but I'm really not sure it is. I think some of the slow easy to dodge stuff is overrated both in fast attacks and in charge moves.