I love tab complete; it is very handy, especially for long names. However, it seems you are limited to cycling through nicks in alphabetical order. It would be nice if there was an option to change how it cycles. Perhaps A-Z, Z-A, last spoken, etc.
My first question here would be, how many nicks do you encounter which are similar? Maybe you need to type more letters of the nick. In my experience tab completion is fast enough after the first two nick letters.