Nightmare's weakness(es)

^I don't understand why Sieg and NM even have that throw damage that isn't even standard damage. It's like they wanted us to pay some retarded price for picking a character with good throw range.
 
flapjacks are overrated.

They have no range, you can break them, block them, jump them, AND you can punish the shit out of them. i19 is slow enough to be somewhat react-able, especially since a crouched NM should give you the clue that they might flapjack.

But just like others have said, I too believe that good players have been making him look scary when in reality the players are that good. Don't believe me? Pick him up yourself and you'll see why. He's literally the most unsafe character in the game, even more so than Sieg!
 
flapjacks are overrated.

They have no range, you can break them, block them, jump them, AND you can punish the shit out of them. i19 is slow enough to be somewhat react-able, especially since a crouched NM should give you the clue that they might flapjack.

But just like others have said, I too believe that good players have been making him look scary when in reality the players are that good. Don't believe me? Pick him up yourself and you'll see why. He's literally the most unsafe character in the game, even more so than Sieg!

Flapjacks are good in certain matchups because they are less unsafe than having an actual throw ducked by the opponent.

For example, Cervantes can WS B+K or WS B if he ducks a regular throw (80-120 damage), but only gets WS K (~15 dmg) if he blocks a flapjack.

Nightmare crouching doesn't mean anything. He can still do WS B or FC 3B.
 
If NM is crouching, whether he does FC 3B, WR B, or flapjacks, all you have to "react" to is the low grabs. You should be standing guard, if you see the flapjack animation, duck.

Seriously though, his crouching "mixups" are not scary at all. Only thing you have to worry about is 1K or flapjack, when flapjack is reactable and 1k is peanuts for damage.
 
If Nightmare is crouching, stay in stand-block and just mash A or B depending on which flapjack they're favoring or what you think they might do. Depending on your ring position, it probably won't be a big secret. And it's definitely not a big deal unless you're really low on health should your 50/50 guess not work out for you. If you're reading a flapjack coming, the by all means block it, but you're minimizing your risk a hell of a lot in most situations just by guessing the break and not ducking into a rising B or FC 3B.

Don't pretend this character has real mixups. Mindgames yeah. Best yomi in the game. Mixups? Ehh...
 
Gonna double post here.

I'm not so sure it's because Nightmare is necessarily weak so much as it is a lot of people having a fuckton of Nightmare experience.
 
Gonna double post here.

I'm not so sure it's because Nightmare is necessarily weak so much as it is a lot of people having a fuckton of Nightmare experience.

Nightmare went backwards while rushdown went forwards (see what i did there? :D). But now its full of broken stuff and Nightmare is quite unbroken...
 
He is punishable, steppable and, in many cases, slow. Not quite sure but Pyrrha Omega, Cervantes and Astaroth seem to be one of his worst matches.

oh and he is high tier, I believe he is worse than Siegfried and Astaroth but he is still good, you can't really say that he is "weak" because in the right hands he can be really deadly.

oh and don't forget 2K, it's quite cheap.
 
Try whiffing it.

Isn't every move in the game bad if you whiff it? I mean, Pat 66B or Viola 3B for example aren't bad moves just because you get murdered if you whiff them.

Are there whiffing issues with the actual move that I'm not aware of? Or are we talking about making spacing misjudgements?
 
I think I had problems with it whiffing right thru leixia at point blank range awhile back. Hasn't seen it happen in awhile though.
 
Isn't every move in the game bad if you whiff it? I mean, Pat 66B or Viola 3B for example aren't bad moves just because you get murdered if you whiff them.

Are there whiffing issues with the actual move that I'm not aware of? Or are we talking about making spacing misjudgements?

The tip of the sword whiffs sometimes. Its like -30+ on whiff as well. Why I meant "try whiffing it" is that unlike some moves, its extremely unsafe on whiff.
 
(Fair warning, it's a little after 4 AM and I'm on a fair bit of (prescription) opiates, so I may or may not just end up rambling like a lunatic, so hang in there for me)

So, let's say that everyone involved in the development of this game were allowed/decided to act like it actually exists (fat chance, I know), this is what I think should be done with Nightmare:

1. Throw damage back to normal
2. 3AA from -20 on block to -12
3. 2A hit level change to special low, +4 on hit

Reasons?

1. It was stupid the throw damage was nerfed in the first place.

2. It would be nice to have a safe spacing tool other than iagA. Considering all 3AA gives is a knockdown and a short distance RO to the right, I think this is suggestion defines 'fair'. Yes, I know it's basically tradition that this move be fucktastically bad on block. But... um... Why?

3. I just threw that in there because I don't understand why 2A is so uniquely shitty. It's TC starts one frame earlier than 1K but it's two frames longer to impact and seriously, -4 on hit. Yeah, I get that it's a low. So what? 1K. Even with this suggestion it's still bad. Just not as bad.

I'm sure there's some other stuff that I'm just too apathetic to list. But moving on: I don't think Nightmare is so bad... unless I'm fighting a Greek, lawl. Outside of that situation, I really don't feel like I've ever lost because of my character choice. That being said, sometimes it does really feel like Nightmare was almost purposefully designed to be a zoner that sucks at zoning. Zoning + unsafe = no sense made.

Now, I get the high risk/high reward thing. Shit like 33B, 3(B), blahblahblah, yeah, unsafe. Cool, reasonable. There's fuckall reason in the universe why 3AA is so freaking unsafe. Backdash is unsafe now because movement in this game is supposed to be unsafe in general. I actually really think backdash was fine the way it was at launch because I've always known Soulcalibur as defensively-oriented, but whatever, we're gonna have to deal with that...

This is really just a long and drawn out way of saying that Nightmare's only real weakness would be his god fucking awful pokes. Which is really fucking stupid on a character designed for spacing. 3AA getting buffed to -12 or better on block would be extremely helpful. This character is never going to be like Mitsu, dominating matches with single digits of moves, but he should at least be good at his own goddamn strategy.

Whiff-baiting will only going to get you so far. Especially at this stage in the game where most people have pretty much figured out what happens when they whiff on Nightmare and have a handle on how to prevent that. Most characters also have no shortage of moves that will shit all over your backstep too.

So I feel at this point he should be about keeping opponents the hell out (at which he is bad to mediocre), guard crush (at which he is great) and eating people who whiff attacks on him (at which he is also great). Basically he should kind of be the anti-rusher. Throw/mid mixups are great until you realize they're only truly real in that situation where the chip damage from a throwbreak will kill you, or against people that don't realize they can option select throwbreak/guard. Also, throw/mid is a "guessing" game that EVERY CHARACTER HAS. I don't know why it's treated like something special within the Nightmare forum.

Anyway, TL;DR:

The tools he has that are designed for whiff punishing and/or lead to huge damage, see: High Reward should remain high risk. The tools he has that are low reward shouldn't also be high risk. Jus' sayin'.

I mained Zasalamel last game. I did play a lot of Nightmare but not nearly as much... I remember him (or at least I think I do) as being better at actually zoning people out back then...

EDIT: Also, 2[K] guard cancel back please. Seriously. Fucking seriously.
 
1. Throw damage back to normal
2. 3AA from -20 on block to -12
3. 2A hit level change to special low, +4 on hit

Reasons?

1. It was stupid the throw damage was nerfed in the first place.

2. It would be nice to have a safe spacing tool other than iagA. Considering all 3AA gives is a knockdown and a short distance RO to the right, I think this is suggestion defines 'fair'. Yes, I know it's basically tradition that this move be fucktastically bad on block. But... um... Why?

3. I just threw that in there because I don't understand why 2A is so uniquely shitty. It's TC starts one frame earlier than 1K but it's two frames longer to impact and seriously, -4 on hit. Yeah, I get that it's a low. So what? 1K. Even with this suggestion it's still bad. Just not as bad.
I am going to start off with suggestion two because you wonder why its unsafe. This move needs to be unsafe why? Look at iaga it is very similar to this move in many ways, both are stepkiller, both can be used as a punisher, somewhat similar dmg output, quite fast and huge range. Now what is the drawback of iaga? Its a high! That is literally the only thing that stops it from being braindead broken. Now 3AA is a MID! horizontal, so it NEEDS! to be unsafe or else it would have no drawback at all and nothing would stop you from whoring it out all the time without thinking. Its unsafe for the same reason that moves like Tira's 66AA are unsafe.
You could like half his dmg and make it a poke like siegs 22A but then again his punishment would suffer and i believe this would be a bigger hit to his game.

Regarding suggestion one, as a sieg player, i personally love both NM's and Sieg's throws because of the huge range they have. I don't mind the lower dmg output because the utility is much much better. Whenever i play a different char i always feel like man i would love to have my long range throws back. For that reason i say, they both should deal less dmg with their throws then all other chars.
Maybe a small dmg buff would be ok though but only like 5 dmg max imho.

For example three i don't really have an opinion. You would basically make it another move, sounds reasonable i guess.
 
1. It was stupid the throw damage was nerfed in the first place.

Mmm, I think it's good as it is. If he gets that close, his foe has to worry about a lot of different things and gamble on what Nightmare himself is going to do.

Sidestep? agA, a :g :A, 6A, 3AA, throws, FC A+G, FC B+G, WS A, 3K, 1K, 2A/FC A.
Backstep? GS, FC 3B, throws, 6A, 3AA, 6K, 4KK, 3B, GS B, GS K.
Attack? Throws, A+B, NSS tech step-to-whiff punish, FC A+G, FC B+G, FC 3B, WS B, WS K, FC K, 2A/FC A.

With his throw range being what it is and the position it leaves both characters in, I think B+G A+G is the most powerful option Nightmare has up close. If the enemy guesses wrong, they eat that throw damage and are forced right back into the same situation they were just plucked out of. Nightmare can interrupt anything they try to do if they guess his attack wrong and he can just keep piling on the pressure with B+G A+G and FC 3B to keep them where you want them(well if you're a fan of point-blank Nightmare pressure like I am anyways). And hey, if they manage to weasel out of it somehow or guess right and push you out you get to go into whiff punish mode :)
 
Only thing he really needs is his throw damage returned to pre patch. He really don't even need that to be competitive but I'm greedy :)
 
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