Astaroth Matchup

Astaroth's 4A is a HIGH, and one of his best mid-range step killers. Mixing up with 44A to kill movement has always been a solid, viable option. Post patch upgrades this move to a necessity. When you're stepping Astaroth, you're really trying to step bullrush. Backdashing helps in grab situations, and 4B. Sometimes 4A will whiff if you're far enough, though that's shaky. Avoid GS transitions as much as possible against Astaroth. Bullrush kills pretty much every option. Close range, 1K/3K/Throws/4K are going to be your most reliable tools, close range, VS Astaroth. As people mentioned before, 22_88A, and 3A are going to be your best mid range tools in this match up. And, of course, 3B as a whiff punishment.

Honestly, Nightmare can force Astaroth to rely on his grab game. Turtling can hurt him a lot in the long run. With movement like Nightmare's, it makes this match up a 5:5 in my opinion.
 
Pernicious-Soul said:
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66KGSA beating out bullrush just like in 4, Astaroth only needs to delay it slightly just to TC and it will always win. And depending on the timing sometimes his BE bullrush will still hit revenge GSA.
And unlike SC4 where GS A was faster and TC better, he can just throw you or 2B+K you.

iAga or Aga if you actually don't get countered by a bullrush. On block astaroth can crouch grab you out of 66K if that's your go to option. Otherwise he can counter 3K, 4K with 6AA CH leading to throw mixups, and his BE bullrush does beat out your 4KBE. There's nothing full proof here iAga just gives you a mixup opportunity.

There's a difference between twitch ducking and a full crouch duck. If you're twitch ducking it means you immediately stand after. So you can't do WRB. Unless you're talking about countering throws with iWRB, in which case you can still get thrown out of any WR moves especially in SCv since the crouch state out of iWR is very small.

Astaroth can't punish huh? He's surprisingly very fast, faster than NM and Sieg in some areas.

3AA if not on tip range is Bullrush punishable all fast versions and 66B punishable.
1AGSA CE, 2K, WRKB interruptable.
22B if in range is crouch grab punishable.
44A CE punishable.
22AA 66K punishable, BE Bullrush can interrupt the second hit.
22AGS of course he can crouch grab you.
If he goes for JG on 22AA I am sure he will can crouch grab you out of 22AGS on reaction.
1K and Flapjacks are crouch grab punishable of course.


But hey man not every Astaroth player knows what I know...

Xeph I wish it was 5:5, but it isn't.
 
KingAce said:
66KGSA beating out bullrush just like in 4, Astaroth only needs to delay it slightly just to TC and it will always win. And depending on the timing sometimes his BE bullrush will still hit revenge GSA.
And unlike SC4 where GS A was faster and TC better, he can just throw you or 2B+K you.

iAga or Aga if you actually don't get countered by a bullrush. On block astaroth can crouch grab you out of 66K if that's your go to option. Otherwise he can counter 3K, 4K with 6AA CH leading to throw mixups, and his BE bullrush does beat out your 4KBE. There's nothing full proof here iAga just gives you a mixup opportunity.

There's a difference between twitch ducking and a full crouch duck. If you're twitch ducking it means you immediately stand after. So you can't do WRB. Unless you're talking about countering throws with iWRB, in which case you can still get thrown out of any WR moves especially in SCv since the crouch state out of iWR is very small.

Astaroth can't punish huh? His surprisingly very faster, faster than NM and Sieg in some areas.

3AA if not on tip range is Bullrush punishable all fast versions and 66B punishable.
1AGSA CE, 2K, WRKB interruptable.
22B if in range is crouch grab punisable.
44A CE punishable.
22AA 66K punishable, BE Bullrush can interrupt the second hit.
22AGS of course he can crouch grab you.
If he goes for JG on 22AA I am sure he will can crouch grab you out of 22AGS on reaction.
1K and Flapjacks are crouch grab punishable of course.


But hey man not every Astaroth player knows what I know...
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Glad you cleared up punishment. Astaroth can punish, and 66B is being slept on. Having a 32-40dmg punisher goes a long way, especially with the distance it covers.

One thing about this match up, iAg:a can be a good meta game-tool. Mix up iAg:a with step. Making Astaroth throw out bullrush in prediction of iAg:a gives you a step-3B Whiff punish. Because, in reality, Astaroth countering iAg:a with bullrush is prediciton.
 
Good info on delay bullrush. Didn't know that thanks but Nighty just throw out 66k and QS your bullrush and punishfor big damage. The delay gives him enough time to get the he'll out the way lol. Each character has options here just a matter of who guess right.

Exactly what Xeph said about iaga and kills gauge good, plus on block to keep your offense going, clean hit damage 40-50. Dont not use this move cause Asta can TC it. Just be wise about using it and it will help you out in this match.

Not sleeping on Asta 66b. Its good if Nighty doesn't transition into GS after 66k and 1a but loses to GS A.

A couple of your punishments you mention aren't really punishment. I would call them mixups cause I can break any throw attempt with a correct guess and I take no damage. Punishment is guaranteed damage. Although I hate damage I get for wrong guess lol.

This is a 5/5 matchup to me using Nightmare great step to balance it out. Good shit KingAce and Xeph I like!

KingAce I think a lot of your problem with Asta is your playing like you said the best Asta in NA lol. Which is great by the way but could be Xeph gameplay which makes you doubt evenness of this fight.
 
Pernicious-Soul said:
This is a 5/5 matchup to me using Nightmare great step to balance it out. Good shit KingAce and Xeph I like!

KingAce I think a lot of your problem with Asta is your playing like you said the best Asta in NA lol. Which is great by the way but could be Xeph gameplay which makes you doubt evenness of this fight.
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Nope it's because I play Astaroth myself, whatever guesses you're making you're doing it because Astaroth is dictating the pace not the other way around. He doesn't really have to commit to anything in most of these situations, but he can if wants to fuck you up.

By no means is it a 5:5 match-up.
 
I respect your opinion on the match up.

Yes I was referring to iWS B vs throw. In this situation if I duck in anticipation of your throw I get WS B bA for 58 damage and pressure but if I guess wrong you get 66k for 28 damage and mixup. So really not a bad trade off for Nighty here.

Also an open GS A is very good against him as all Asta can get is 15 damage on a simple K punishment. Nightmare gets roughly same on normal hit with good + frames but CH he gets 78 damage 1 full BE stock and great wake up games with the 6(b) a+b 2a+b.
 
Yeah, no way is this a 5:5 matchup. It was a 5:5 in SC4 though.

In SC5, NM's whiff punishment isn't even 100% reliable. If you're even a little late with 33b or 3b or wrb, you get to eat a bullrush. Against most characters, if you're late, you at least have NSS K or bA or GS A. Against Astaroth, you have no option except to play perfectly.

66K is an invaluable tool against him. Yes, a 1-frame duck into the FC3K bullrush will stuff all options, but not only is that easy to mistime and thus interruptable by GS B or K, an empty 66K is safe to bullrush. The tech crouch is beautiful, but Astaroth still has those crouch throws. The good news is that if 66K triggers revenge bullrush, you can hit confirm into GS A to stop the follow up launch... but only if you entered GS to begin with. An empty 66K hitting revenge bullrush means half your life or more gone. I did some testing, and for whatever reason, astaroth is sometimes able to hit 22b BE into 28b+g from a 66k hitting revenge bullrush, which is insane.

And that's not even half of it.

This matchup is either 6:4 or 7:3, in Astaroth's favor, all though astaroth can't just walk all over NM. The astaroth has to be on point with his bullrush interrupts, or else NM has a much easier time.
 
I could be swayed to think 6/4 Asta but noway it's 7/3. If your getting hit that much from bullrush, your spacing sucks as it's very easy to SS with proper spacing. I don't think think Nightmare has a 7/3 matchup against him in this game even against the Greek stampede and their ridiculous punishment. 7/3 lol really?

You can't say his whiff punish isn't reliable because you were off on your inputs. That's human error nothing to do with game mechanics.

Watched your vids DIME and your very solid. Good shit!
 
Eh, 7:3 might be exaggerating a bit, but who knows? If the Astaroth has some godlike reaction/prediction and can react to/correctly predict an empty 66K to punish with whatever he has that's i16, it could be.
 
Dime should make a room invite all the Astaroth players he knows and just fight them best way to learn the match up and the different options Astaroth has against Nightmare.
 
Tiamat said:
I dunno about it being 5:5 in SC4. It feels like an easier matchup in SC5 to me, though I'll admit I haven't played it a lot. 22AA and 3AA make it much easier to space him compared to SC4.
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It was debatable, but I just feel NM had an easier time in 4. Bullrush couldn't just destroy his stance game, since he could vary his GS A timing among other things.

Thermidor said:
Dime should make a room invite all the Astaroth players he knows and just fight them best way to learn the match up and the different options Astaroth has against Nightmare.
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But I do know the matchup, really well actually. Aside from playing Astaroth in 4 myself, my main offline competition is an Astaroth, plus I play Xeph fairly often.
 
I would say it was 7:3 in SC4. You can come with whatever strat you used and I can find a number of ways Astaroth would've done you in. I would say it's 6:4 in SCV, because NM's a bit faster, and does good guard damage.
 
KingAce said:
I would say it was 7:3 in SC4. You can come with whatever strat you used and I can find a number of ways Astaroth would've done you in. I would say it's 6:4 in SCV, because NM's a bit faster, and does good guard damage.
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King you had no idea how to play the match-up in SC4 so please man shush about that. I went up against some great Astas in SC4 and the end result was always about 6:4 to 5:5 in NM's favor. Asta had big problems getting in against a competent Nightmare and thanks to his piddly throw range in SC4, Nightmare had nothing to fear by stepping against Asta at close range (don't theory fighter here cause that's the fact of the matter, Asta did have step kills but most of which had pathetic start-up times or were high and such not reliable).

In SC5, I believe that the match-up is much harder for Nightmare due to Asta's now longer throw range (and conversely NM's reduced throw range), Nightmare's now horrible throw damage and bullrush's improved step whiff recovery (in SC4, if you stepped Asta's bullrush, you would get 1A guaranteed. Now it recovers in time for it to be 3B safe.)

IMO, study will have to be done to see exactly how safe is bullrush to QS. I have some things to test regarding Nightmare's backstep and 9K against bullrush/throw mix-up which should help Nightmare deal with that mix-up.
 
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