Video/Tutorial - Nimble Why Nimble is Reptile's Best Variation

[dribirut]

Nimble has absolutely everything reptile needs and more for every mu. Although I still think he has a some losing mu's, he now has an answer to everything.

Everything I'm about to talk about is not new at all but more of a summary of why reptile players should stick with nimble instead of deceptive.

Although I do think deceptive is very good in its own right, I believe reptile has enough mixups now to where ex invis cancels are not as necessary and also on the cancels on which his is actually plus (f412) he cannot confirm into much damage at all if he lands the hit.

The Main reason I believe nimble to be Better come Down to 3 things:
1. Corner carry
2. Damage
3. Hit conversions

Reptile in this variation has the best corner carry in the game and in the corner, reptile is a monster. Off a f412 mb ballistic, he can take them to the corner from anywhere on the screen and the same goes for b1d4 cancel.

One of reptiles main threats now imo is his b1d4 string. Although in its own right it should not be a mixup, I hits almost everyone for some very good damage. This is because the opponent has too many things to worry about and is also looking for the overhead in f41. Also reptile can stagger f41, b1, b1d4 strings ontop of his b2 and b3 50/50..
Off of this string he can also cancel into ballistic for some huge damage according to how close he is to the corner

So once reptile gets you in a combo and into the corner (and he will), now ontop of his insane mixups he has ridiculous damage to back it up

Also now since he can cancel f412 into swipe or pounce, f412 mb ballistic become much more viable on block since the opponent will always be looking out for the swipe cancels which leads to a whole new real if mixup possibilities.

Again all this I'm showing is now new so don't blow me up. Just trying to share what has gotten me great results these past couple of weeks

 

[Olcadan13]

deceptive got buffed so that automatically makes it top 5

 

[FinalBoss_FGC]

Play Deceptive for a week then come back and we will see if you still believe that.

 

[xInfra Deadx]

 

[dribirut]

Play Deceptive for a week then come back and we will see if you still believe that.

I did play deceptive for a week and still do

 

[lm Tweakk]

Couldn't tell how damaging these were as they were recorded with a potatoe

 

[Scott The Scot]

Man that corner carry is like Raidens superman move except with a hell of a lot more damage.

 

[dribirut]

Couldn't tell how damaging these were as they were recorded with a potatoe

iPhones not a potato but close enough. They all do 40-50% besides the first one

 

[JDM]

I still main Nimble but I'm messing with Deceptive more and more. Since they took my OS's away I feel like Deceptive is better now because you can hit confirm and be safe on block/pressure more. Even B1D4 on block is really unsafe if they are ready to punish FFB before it comes out.

 

[dribirut]

I still main Nimble but I'm messing with Deceptive more and more. Since they took my OS's away I feel like Deceptive is better now because you can hit confirm and be safe on block/pressure more. Even B1D4 on block is really unsafe if they are ready to punish FFB before it comes out.

Yea it is but not if they block the fb. I mean it also can be argued deceptive is better but for these reasons it's better for me. For example. F41ex mb invis cancel is not plus and neither is b1d4 cancel or b3cancel. At first people were respecting it but not good players are poking out much more easily out of that pressure.

 

[4x4lo8o]

Although I do think deceptive is very good in its own right, I believe reptile has enough mixups now to where ex invis cancels are not as necessary and also on the cancels on which his is actually plus (f412) he cannot confirm into much damage at all if he lands the hit.

I don't know anything about Nimble, so I'm not arguing with your main point (I think invisibility is sick and am playing deceptive regardless), but this part is misleading.

When you do the f412 you can confirm whether the f4 hits and choose what to go into. On hit go into dash for full combo, on block do invis pressure. However if for whatever reason they block the f4 but get hit by the second or third hit of the string(or you just fail to hit confirm, it happens) and you go into invis you can easily end the combo in f412 pounce for 26%. That's not great damage for a bar, but considering it's a setup (invisibility is up and you have knockdown, time to go ham) and the fact that you would have done significantly less damage if you hadn't cancelled into invis I'd say it's not a bad deal.

And besides that, there's other places to use invis that gives you pressure and better combos. F21 is +7 or more (b2 beats Cassie's flipkick) and leads to the optimal f21 combo. F4 is as positive as f412 and confirms into nearly optimal damage. S4~invis combos into f412 on hit and jails into that same string on block. 21, f3, 12, 34, 3 and probably others that I don't know off the top of my head all combo well and are slightly positive

 

[dribirut]

I don't know anything about Nimble, so I'm not arguing with your main point (I think invisibility is sick and am playing deceptive regardless), but this part is misleading.

When you do the f412 you can confirm whether the f4 hits and choose what to go into. On hit go into dash for full combo, on block do invis pressure. However if for whatever reason they block the f4 but get hit by the second or third hit of the string(or you just fail to hit confirm, it happens) and you go into invis you can easily end the combo in f412 pounce for 26%. That's not great damage for a bar, but considering it's a setup (invisibility is up and you have knockdown, time to go ham) and the fact that you would have done significantly less damage if you hadn't cancelled into invis I'd say it's not a bad deal.

And besides that, there's other places to use invis that gives you pressure and better combos. F21 is +7 or more (b2 beats Cassie's flipkick) and leads to the optimal f21 combo. F4 is as positive as f412 and confirms into nearly optimal damage. S4~invis combos into f412 on hit and jails into that same string on block. 21, f3, 12, 34, 3 and probably others that I don't know off the top of my head all combo well and are slightly positive

I'll def give you f21 mb invis. That's very handy but idk why you would do f4 mb invis. There is no mixup there. Might as well do f412 mb invis. And you're right you can hit confirm it but you can also hit confirm nimble for 40% all the way to the corner.
And although it is def nice to end f412 mb invis for plus frames, I feel like he has so many options to cancel out of now off of his f412 (slow ball, swipe, pounce, mb slow ball, mb ballistic, slide, no cancel) the plus frames are not as needed. He is also so meter hungry that i find it hard Justifying the mb invis for mixups when he has plenty meter less already.

Again like I said these are my opinions and you can definitely argue that deceptive is better. Both are solid

 

[dribirut]

@cossner @Milkman @THTB @RapZiLLa54 @OFIDYAN

Was wondering what you guys thought

 

[Derptile]

Couldn't you just use Xbox DVR or something?

 

[Wam-Zlay]

I love it. Good work

 

[legion666]

Isn't it called Ex Basilisk or Basilisk Runner and not Ballistic?!

 

[haketh]

Was wondering what you guys thought

Gonna play alot of both Nimble & Deceptive this weekend but I side with you in Nimble having th esliiiiight edge over Deceptive.

 

[THTB]

It could go either way. Nimble gives Reptile a ton of reward for getting the hits in. Deceptive doesn't really require hitting the opponent to get the benefits of ex invis, and invisibility meshes much better with his toolset than in MK9. I'd give it to Nimble since the corner carry and damage comes in handy in matchups like vs Quan, and even slowdown active works better with the better forceballs and stuff. But Deceptive is powerful in its own right.

 

[dribirut]

It could go either way. Nimble gives Reptile a ton of reward for getting the hits in. Deceptive doesn't really require hitting the opponent to get the benefits of ex invis, and invisibility meshes much better with his toolset than in MK9. I'd give it to Nimble since the corner carry and damage comes in handy in matchups like vs Quan, and even slowdown active works better with the better forceballs and stuff. But Deceptive is powerful in its own right.

I think maybe if the opponent is extremely familiar with the reptile mu and his strings, deceptive might be better. But generally I'd say nimble

 

[M.D.]

I played Nimble as my first variation, and I tried to make it work constantly after noxious and deceptive got their buffs respectively, but unfortunately I had to rely on two things:

1. I feel the variation relies too much on f412 to connect, which against experienced players is actually quite hard
2. I had to refrain from doing block mixups with ex basilisk because almost exclusively everyone I have played that knows the reptile matchup armored the shit out of me the instant I cancelled into it from a block string.

Often I found myself doing mixups and mindgames that are the same in any variation, and using nimble stuff rarely because of it getting blown up or hard to start.

With deceptive I can actually kick things up a notch more than I've been able to with Nimble.

My 2c.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

buff Noxious

 

[Cossner]

Let me get this straight, even when he had all this stuff you kept saying he was garbage. When he had his 49% for 1 bar you called him "unviable". Now you discover a 46 for 2 bars and suddenly he's da bess? I don't understand you. Even here you're not doing the optimized stuff we discovered like week 2.
What changed? I highly doubt b1d4 suddenly made him good.

Deceptive is still the best. You get free advantage out of any string. You can whiff punish without even having to hitconfirm off a F21. You can interrupt stuff you couldn't before with invis into f4. Literally anything into invisible is safer than anything into nimble.

I think maybe if the opponent is extremely familiar with the reptile mu and his strings, deceptive might be better. But generally I'd say nimble

When we discuss things, we assume the opponent is extremely familiar with the reptile mu. Otherwise the forum would be full of useless gimmicks.

 

[IrishMantis]

Good stuff

But it should be a rule not to use big ass chars, hard to know if you can hit the smaller chars as easy

 

[dribirut]

Let me get this straight, even when he had all this stuff you kept saying he was garbage. When he had his 49% for 1 bar you called him "unviable". Now you discover a 46 for 2 bars and suddenly he's da bess? I don't understand you. Even here you're not doing the optimized stuff we discovered like week 2.
What changed? I highly doubt b1d4 suddenly made him good.

Deceptive is still the best. You get free advantage out of any string. You can whiff punish without even having to hitconfirm off a F21. You can interrupt stuff you couldn't before with invis into f4. Literally anything into invisible is safer than anything into nimble.

When we discuss things, we assume the opponent is extremely familiar with the reptile mu. Otherwise the forum would be full of useless gimmicks.

Lol how did I know you were going to try and crap on this thread. Are you that dense to completely ignore the fact that his spit, fbs, swipe and pounce all got buffed as well. Coupled with what I said is why I think he is better now. I know he had this all before, it's how his new tools compliment this that make him much better. And It might be better, at that point which I have yet to see anyone master this mu yet so it's all speculation that at some point deception might be better in the future.

You're always so defiant and trying to put other reptile players down. You might actually get better if you hear some of us out. And like I said this is thread points out my opinions and I'm not stating them as facts

 

[Cossner]

Lol how did I know you were going to try and crap on this thread. Are you that dense to completely ignore the fact that his spit, fbs, swipe and pounce all got buffed as well. Coupled with what I said is why I think he is better now. I know he had this all before, it's how his new tools compliment this that make him much better. And It might be better, at that point which I have yet to see anyone master this mu yet so it's all speculation that at some point deception might be better in the future.

You're always so defiant and trying to put other reptile players down. You might actually get better if you hear some of us out. And like I said this is thread points out my opinions and I'm not stating them as facts

Spit, fbs, swipe and pounce didn't really change anything. You build .2 more meter. That's pretty much it. Pounce is still not a mix up. Spit nets you a little bit more damage but nothing match up changing. He had that damage prepatch when you were saying he was ass. FBs let you be safe on block, but they can still cross you up and full combo punish you for using them. They're still way too slow to be reliable. You have yet to see anyone master the match up because you don't play against anyone lol. I can't do nimble on anyones face anymore. Everyone knows you can armor through anything on nimble and punish me for using it. Everyone knows how to deal with force balls now. I have no idea who you're talking about when you say "anyone". Deceptive is definitely better because it closes his holes and gives you meta advantage for 1 bar. How am I crapping in this thread? I'm looking at your points and this is like someone figuring out day 1 Reptile for the first time, 6 months after saying he was crap.

I think Ofidyan, J360, Milky and Coach Steve are fantastic reptiles that I respect a lot. You know why? They use Reptile offline at a high level. They figured him out and use him effectively competitively, while you were crying on the forums without understanding why would anyone do 21 on block. You're salty because you whined and whined for months, even though it's painfully obvious it was you and not the character. I'm a big meany booboo