Florida Man's matchup chart
https://twitter.com/Florida_Man_SC/status/1343913189747003392?s=20
Favorable
Favorable matchups, they're good but not Very Favorable, just Favorable. These matchups are annoying for the opp. I don't think Haohmaru has a matchup that is Very Favorable.
Zasalamel
Zas's best tools all contain strings with risks associated with haohmarus deflect parry and being heavy slash whiff punishable, and usually puts himself in situations frame wise to be deflected at all times. Zas main strengths as a character become counterintuitive and he must play around haohmarus mechanics in order to succeed. Zas will lose in a dmg race and put himself in more disadvantageous situations more often vs haohmaru who takes limited risks and is able to evade zas frame traps with his S+ tier backstep. ( it also helps Zas CE doesnt work on ronin cancels )
Talim
Talim suffers against characters with good evasive moves, good backsteps, good keepout and characters who generally can make plays on her stance options that yield higher reward than her for doing them. Haohmaru can do all these things and keep her out very effectively with step duck and backstepping, and his plethora of keepout tools. Haohmaru also has enough frame advantage on hit to CH her for big damage the majority of the time. I could really go into detail about his anti stance counterplay but I want to finish this tonight lol, so just trust me on this one.
Voldo
Voldo is a character known for being evasive and tricky at times, while also having good neutral and good whiff punishment. Voldos main problems suffer from poor block punishment and slowness in front turn, and only being able to maintain a offense in blind stance when he has momentum. The majority of voldos movelist has tech crouch properties on moves that haohmarus 44K and 8A+B can just jump over, blind stance offense is really risky because of the punishment potential of haohmaru and that his deflect can kill voldo frame traps, shifting momentums and life leads in his favor. Voldo has good gap closers but these moves are all slow enough haohmaru can still space them out and entirely control the pace of the match. Haohmarus 44K creates a invisible wall underneath him that cannot be passed through, so Mantis stance when given the opportunity can be lethal hit by 44K even if voldo rushes forward. Closing out further, voldos poor block punishment and overall low damage make him suffer against heavy slashes and can give haohmaru more opportunities to take more risks and yield higher rewards more often than voldo, while also maintaining the entire pace of the match with his movement.
Yoshimitsu
This matchup is 6B backstep. You just keep yoshi out all day for free and dont give him any room to do shit. This matchup is favorable but yoshi is a versatile character with lots of tools; and benefits from stages more than haohmaru does, because yoshis wall game and ring game are far superior. If you get a good big map, its a favorable MU day, you get kaer morhen or other bullshit maps, it goes downhill and that's just how it is. You have really good keepout and knockdowns with amazing oki to abuse but at the end of the day you still have to outplay the yoshi player and play well, punish well and not let them steam roll you. The keepout really really really helps that not happen though.
Good
Slightly favorable matchups. These are good, but they're only so good. You can still lose to coinflips, dumb soulcharges, damage difference and not knowing 1 or 2 things in these matchups quite easily if that applies to you. That being said you still have to play these well because your damage output is either bonkers or subpar.
Cervantes
Cervantes has extremely poor i16 and below punishment meterless making tools like heavy slashes; 22A series; and other unsafe moves relatively less scary to use versus him. Cerv movement is good when he can backstep cancel, but it's astonishing how many moves you can run counter him with for low risk in comparison. Cervantes classic frame traps with a6 do NOT work on haohmaru, haohmarus backstep can get him out of these situations and put the risk reward slightly more in your favor in the neutral game. Haohmarus movement denial tools are excellent and cervantes is heavily reliant on being able to create this whiff punishement opportunities that are possible to make very rare, because you just kill his movement all day since he cant use zoning tools to keep you out since you are just always going to be in range. That being said, cervantes when given the opportunity can create a life lead large enough to struggle to take back from him just because he does so much more damage than you. So the best way to take the matches are to play it safer than -20 when he doesnt have a bar and watch your highs, contest his movement, and take control of the pace of the neutral game as best you can because if you lose grip he will quite literally run away with the lead.
Hwang
This is still just a working theory but basically hwangs mid range neutral is irrelevant vs haohmaru because he can never establish enough frame advantage to brawl with him up close or hit him from mid range and then contest his movement again. Haohmaru overall takes control of the neutral game the majority of the game and its up the hwang player to outplay you entirely. That being said hes so versatile that he can adopt strategies to make closing games out on him hard because of his mechanics, and mix you with a large amount of safety. This matchup is still being worked on but so far I think haohmaru does good here.
Astaroth
Have you ever just wanted to go absolutely wild and heavy slash all day? Well you can in this matchup, and you might even want to because of Astaroths plentiful armor moves. This matchup is like, how well can you risk mitigate but also how well can you place your moves so that they are actually impossible for Astaroth to deal with. In that case also Astaroths block punishment is abysmal so yeeting out all these -16 or less moves is relatively careless and free because even if he punishes you with 66B, you're +0 and still can move for free and do what you want. Just like in any matchup though, if Astaroth can guess right and place his throws well in the set, you can literally lose to coinflips, so this matchup is ideally favorable but you never know what is going to happen when you have to play this dumb character in bracket.
Xianghua
This is basically the same as the yoshi matchup with that you superior frame advantage and obnoxious zoning but X kills you also for breathing and near death with a bar, its fucking hard as hell to kill her Haohmaru has good punishes vs X tools and can also play very safe into her and do well with zoning, the main problem lies in her ability to kill you at all times with CE and her i18 3B being a big punish on DP. This matchup is good but things can go awry really fast in just a couple sequences. Overall have to create the life lead and play boring till she dies.
Setsuka
Setsuka is very very very very good at using her tools to CH people, and can catch everyone in the cast with her horizontals and 66B to mitigate movement albeit with a large margin of risk for all these things. Ok now do all these things vs a character who can safely maneuver away from all these tools, constantly knock you down, zone you out and slow the pace way down so they have to make big plays to win and you have this matchup. Haohmarus backstep can beat 66B and doing 66A or 8B+KA vs him is asking to get ducked. Her tools for CHing are normally good due to evasive properties but the majority of haohmarus tools can beat these out or he can get away from them fine. The reason why this matchup is slightly favorable is because given the opportunities to whiff and block punish you, setsuka will murder you. But not one setsuka player in the world is perfect and optimally punishing 100% of the time. Overall, very easy to play safe and create more favorable situations, but also possible to get punished a couple times and die; due to overall safety of haohmaru though it can be mitigated entirely.
Geralt
Haohmaru but he does less damage than you all the time and his grab mixup isnt as good as yours, you beat him in damage, mixup and oki opportunites and overall meter usage. Geralt is absolutely terrifying to rage explode or soul charge against though, and can beat you in the nooch given the opportunities.
Maxi
If there was a character than had a lot of the tools needed to counterplay maxis, haohmaru would be one of them. Good TC moves, good verticals, good movement denial, good whiff punishers from full crouch and amazing auto GI with deflect. OK so you have all these tools so why is the matchup only just good? Because you have to coin flip in a lot of these situations. A lot of the coin flips come from reading maxis options in mostly RO, LO and sometimes other stances, and preventative measures taken by using RI against NG/HG mean you sometimes don't have the meter to rage explode, or you are in rage explosion but you are blocking forever.
Mitsurugi
Mitsurugi absolutely suffers from characters who can move away from him enough to negate his offense and that he also cannot stop them from doing this. so this matchup is simple in that, you can outdamage him, you can outpunish him sometimes, and you can suppress his movement while he cant do anything about yours. Mitsurugi however gets higher rewards on his mixups and haohmarus strength in his good FC game can quite literally make you eat a bunch of dmg from 3B LH. So played right, its a pretty good matchup, give mitsu leeway to run one or two mixups? Hope you're good at making comebacks.
Taki
Haohmaru has naturally good FC tools, deflect is excellent vs taki frame traps and PO tools, and PO B is heavy slash whiff punishable easily. Her CE is basically a death wish if used on a read because of deflect, and haohmarus overall ability to zone and have more frames than her make his gameplan complete vs her. Taki can out mash you though and if you get map with a lot of ring outs, my prayers go out to you because you will have to play so well just to not get 3B'd and lose.
Even
Self explanatory
Seong Mi-na
Mina does the same damage as haohmaru almost, and is terrifying when given oki. However Haohmaru can equate damage, he can literally run from her and his 44K is quite good vs the large majority of her TC moves. 44K and the rest of Haohmarus tools always carry risk vs mina and his basically mid low throw gameplan has a larger risk. Overall, you guys get to dish out equal damage, she has better mixups than you, and better ringouts than you. You have higher comeback potential, tools that can reach her when normally only she can reach other characters in mid range, you can out mash her, and you can deny her movement well. I'd call this one even as it gets.
Hilde
Hilde does what you do other characters with charge moves, and slightly slower verticals, and overall faster horizontals, she does the same damage as you, and her CE is better than yours. Hilde mixups are mediocre in comparison to even haohmaru warrior focus. But her whiff punishment potential and ability to kill your movement (yes she can kill our movement) can really offset the normal haohmaru gameplan. She can be outpaced and beat out in a damage race, and she can be deflected a little easier than some characters because of predictability, but like the matchup feels like haohmaru vs lip mole bae haohmaru if i had to say it in a sentence. I think this one is even but hilde without resources is significantly less scary than you.
Groh
Groh players keep telling me that he beats haohmaru and that his tools make it hard to haohmaru to mash at him but thats normal soulcalibur things and haohmaru is a samsho character. You have all the counterplay you could want to avenger and really good horizontals to stop him in his tracks, you also do more damage than him, and generally speaking have a better mid low throw mix than him, better oki too. So why is it even then??? Groh soulcharge vs haohmaru is actually stupid. It's one of those things you'll learn playing the character where unless you are in rage explosion you just have to outplay them completely because you don't have any real counterplay to it.
Raphael
Raph is a character designed to be played offensively with good defensive tools that blow the opponent up for making mistakes quite criticially and good offensive tools to keep up guard pressure and plus frames. Raph doesnt really have anything special over haohmaru with QP because of 22A, shadow evade isnt a big deal because of 44K and haohmarus large amount of good mids, his pressure is not scary if you just keep it solid and play slow and his offense is very linear. Raph can form dodge ronin cancels but he can also get LH by them. Raph can potentially do more damage than you but you can also get a lot of rewards for just moving well and counterplaying prep well. Haohmaru has good FC punishment which is good for dealing with PR and some strings, he can be relatively RE safe, and he can deflect raph all the same. It feels in the matchup the only real advantage raph has over you is being able to out mash you. Otherwise the nuetral is awkard and you both have equal counterplay to each other.
Weird
Siegfried
Reason for this is because Siegfried's basehold takes away chunks of your movelist, and the basehold into chiefhold transition and every other stance transition has to be defended well against. Specifically basehold makes this matchup really annoying, is it bad? Maybe, maybe it's dogshit, but personally I think it's only very slightly bad. The matchup requires you to quite literally use 4 moves and the up close neutral is really awkward, siegfried just is absolute bullshit and it's no difference vs Haohmaru. 22A, 66B, 6K or 1K, and 22K are your best friends in the matchup because 22A is good at dealing with the SCH transitions and can CH them, 66B can catch side hold even after side hold buffs, is good in the whiff punishes and good to get him off you. 6K is basically your hori poke do use to be safe and not risk getting baseholded, 1K can also do the same thing a bit better and its a low. 22K is your mid poke to catch them ducking Siegfrieds and can frame trap him with WF, and can also make for a awkward exchange on block being +0. It's also not bad vs basehold or just ever really. Siegfried can be killed before he hits DL with 66B CE which is really really good. Also Haohmaru bK is good for avoiding being hit by FC 3K[K] in DL. Facing vs Siegfried requires you to really play around basehold and also not let him run you over because he can outdamage you all the time and can keep you out when he has a life lead. Haohmaru is better at holding the life lead vs sieg however and can poke him down as long as you decide to not swing a hori mid into base hold and die. This matchup some say is hot dogshit, some say its okay just the slightest bit annoying to have to deal with (me). Play it and figure it out yourself if you don't believe me.
Unfavorable
These are slightly unfavorable to just Unfavorable matchups. These characters gameplans either do not change or are made better by your innefectiveness to deal with them because of character flaws.
Tira
Jolly Tira is maybe a slightly favorable to 5-5 matchup. Not a whole lot of risk from either characters, lots of good pokes, decent frames, and good horizontals. Gloomy Tira is where this shits fucked up. Gloomy Tira will find you and fucking murder you with every horizontal in the game, and her 3B is safe to haohmaru basically because of the pushback, and her new FC 3A is really annoying. She beats you in damage, mixups, frame traps, brawling, meter usage, and risk reward and can catch you basically anywhere with her horizontals, and can punish you anywhere sometimes it feels like with her CE. Your strength in being able to move with your godlike backstep is irrelevant here, because she can still delete it. Thankfully Tira is RNG, and you can get lucky. But more often than not it's really easy to get stamped out by gloomy tira and tira soul charge. You have to outplay her completely or pray to the RNG gods.
Cassandra
This character is a thorn in your side, all the time. Greeks do well into haohmaru because they do better in the small calibur and can keep their turns better, leaving you no room to mash back and you just kinda have to wait out the storm. The greeks are not really that unsafe and sometimes finding meaningful punishment opportunities is hard, so the best you can do is just outplay them in small calibur and hope you outlive them. To foreshadow, Cass differs from Soph being just slightly unfavorable because her main reasons for being good against you is in her frame data and her fast moves, her high damage and her superior brawling coupled with safety. It's still comepletely fine because you can establish mid range neutral against her (you can deflect her beyblade on reaction for a guaranteed punish! who can do that?) and you can zone her a bit, not a whole lot but it's there and if they mash they will get CH a bunch. Move and play well and maintain your keepout and you can do fine here just understand it's not your place to be in her face.
Ivy
Ivy is a zoner and Haohmaru is a character with bad gap closers. That makes for a bad recipe. Your possibility of winning against Ivy is entirely dependent on how well you can move. There arent really any buttons to save you on your approach save for a opportunity to maybe deflect a long range 66[A] on reaction but thats it. She does more damage than you and keeps you out well. To counterplay her tools you have to use moves like 8A+B, deflect, 22A and 6B to close gaps or punish mistakes, make reads on ground throw and just compete in her mid range. Her mid-long range is entirely superior to yours, and you just manage to be faster than her because her 2A is i16. If her 2A was i12 the matchup would be different. I would call this a Unfavorable matchup, but it's not impossible. Just slow this one way the fuck down and move well.
2B
Character doesn't play the fucking game, your tools and backstep? Irrelevant. Aren't DPs anti airs? Not vs her. 2B gets to do what the character does regardless of every move you have and dealing with her is overly committal, meanwhile AGS go brrrr. You (can) win in the neutral game if they decide they want to do that today and are feeling spicy. Unfavorable.
Bad
3 Very Unfavorable and one Unfavorable with a caveat. These matchups are dogshit, and if you beat the player playing these characters (aside from kilik), they got outplayed plain and simple. They win here a lot in many areas.
Amy
Basically, Amy being the snowball character she is, at first the matchup is fine. You make the correct calls with sidestepping or staying grounded in situations to avoid her getting red, the risk mitigation is low and her rewards are not phenomenal at all. However her getting red is inevitable. You can put it off as long as you want, but eventually she will get it. The longer you put it off the greater chance you might have of winning ideally. Red Rose Amy is a nightmare to deal with and is the tournament meta. For every answer you have in the matchup, she has counterplay for it, but specifically vs Haohmaru, the defensive guessing is against you by a 2:1 ratio. In this 2:1 ratio, it just feels like a large endurance test to see if you can keep guessing right or keep her out because in each interaction she will outdamage you or put you into a mixup/reverse mixup with your reward always coming out to be behind hers. Her get in tools are effective against Haohmaru and Red Rose AmS raw advances far forward with buttons making her very very sticky. She will out brawl you and can read your options with parries making you have to get overly creative with mediocre buttons aside from three being 6A; WR B; and 22A. The fact that it's nearly impossible to heavy slash her and really setup anything meaningful makes it a recipe for disaster. If you want to really just not have fun play this matchup, but god knows I probably need answers here since so few people play my character.
Sophitia
I already talked about why the greeks do well into Haohmaru with Cass. But the thing here is all the reasons Cass has a hard time, aren't there for Soph. Soph still has good frames and moves to side turn you or put you into grab 66B oki all the time. She can punish basically everything you do really hard and misplaced horizontals are equal to death because of TAS B. I believe it's a struggle to setup a mid range gameplan against soph and it's nigh impossible to play her up close, her annoying pokes are not punished by you well at all and she will beat you in the damage race because of all the pokes adding up. Soph differs from Cass in not having a i10 but in the matchup it's not as neccesary when your AA is i14. So as Soph if you mash out moves generally speaking they are either fast, tech crouching or she isn't and is trying to get you to put out a counterpoke so she can whiff punish for a lot. So the problems stem from having a hard time or not able to establish pacing in the mid range, not so meaningful block punishes and a struggle to whiff punish her, with you basic mid low throw mix being blown apart if she guesses right, again being another situation where for the action you take if you guess wrong you eat twice as much damage as you tried to do. And also problems with brawling her up close without risking feeding into her post GI game or just being beat out.
Nightmare
Nightmare vs Haohmaru originally was in my head not as bad of a matchup. Here we are several patches later and a million nightmare buffs. This character is a glaring fucking problem and is unbalanced but that's unimportant for the topic anyways. Basically, Nightmare can brawl you out up close just fine now since you guys are the same speed basically and he has more tools to do so, exception being you have a 2A and he has a i12 crouch throw. You're not going to get to establish a mid range game on him, he has more range than you, and in this range he's gonna do guard damage and a lot of damage in general, and playing in iagA range is kinda scary and doing anything about it is also nearly impossible is because he has good enough movement to even make your 6B whiff. in terms of block punishment, he has some of the best in the game moving up from -14, which is generally where you'll be at. The only exception to this is bK and 66A which is -12 standing making him unable to punish. Why mention block punishment? Because Nightmare will beat you in damage from block punishes by A LOT. He will also beat you in damage on whiff punishes too and his ring out game is better than yours by so much. His wall game exists where yours doesn't and his frame data has improved enough to matter across the last couple patches. The Nightmare matchup is similar to the Ivy matchup because you have to solely rely on your movement to get in, but it's a lot harder because it matters so much here. Doing anything meaningful vs his zoning is just not there. Nightmare's armor moves also matter quite alot, because swinging ronin cancel moves into him just guarantees the GI on you giving him damage and meter. So to summarize, he beats you in damage, range, he works your guard more, he can zone you out leaving you just your movement to deal with it until you get in, and his armor is really annoying to deal with. Did I mention he also has a LH for whiffed verticals? There are so many things that are contributing to your downfall in the matchup, and the only nice things here are that 6B and heavy slashes beat armor, and at least when he whiffs something big you get the full heavy slash. Otherwise he doesn't have to deviate from his core gameplan without much for you to do about it.
Kilik
Ok so gonna start off with that this matchup is just unfavorable, but not very unfavorable. Kiliks core defensive zoning gameplan similar to Ivy's and Nightmare and Siegfrieds being annoying and better than yours matters a bit, kiliks being alright in comparison. The meat of why this shit is not so good is because of Kiliks 4B deleting a entire aspect of your character. If he blocks a heavy slash and you don't do anything afterwards you will eat anywhere from 80-100+ damage, since Kilik's 4B will LH on blocked heavy slashes. But that adds in with pretty alright zoning and good frames and overall safety, he's never really unsafe enough for you to get a meaningful punish. Basic Kilik wins here, not by a whole lot but there are things here and there that are enought to matter. Monument is actually pretty decent against Haohmaru, and haohmaru has to use RE GI or RI back when swinging into it since deflect is not a base game mechanic. So trying to contest Kilik with your own horizontals carry their own weight in risk. Overall feels like Kilik just kinda one ups Haohmaru in every area here in the matchup and only in this matchup, but doesn't do that vs other characters which is why I have him here just out of a very large distaste.
If you got this far, thanks for reading and stuff, a lot of this is just from experience and my personal take on it. My opinions are always subject to change with time and I'll be the first to concede a point given a strong enough argument, should you have one. - Florida Man
