Akuma FAQs: Quick questions & answers!

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1761

Well, I know it’s the Akuma board here and it might sound a bit biased, but the match is in Adon’s favor, though it’s sure far from hard or impossible. All comes down to the fact that Adon wakes up so fast that we basically can’t do sh*t on his wakeup, and Akuma in this iteration is all about vortex. His high damage, and tricky ground/air game sure doesn’t help. That’s why we will all rejoice in AE, this matchup will be even, if not slightly in Akuma’s favor.

As far as your concerns with st.HK: that move is one of the best tools Akuma has, against those characters where the 2nd hit doesn’t whiff. As you know, Adon is among them, so we try to exploit that. The move leaves you at +0, so you can forget about punishing it. Knowing that though, you can adjust your game.

Since it doesn’t leave him at disadvantage, Akuma often tries to follow a blocked st.HK for more pressure. If you got 2 bar and you see your opponent go crazy after st.HK, don’t hesitate to DP him.

As far as normals go, if Akuma is on point and follows up with crouching Jab (3f startup), your option is pretty much blocking and crouch teching, or you can try your luck with your crouching Jab, but you’ve got to have the timing down (and it should just trade, so it’s not that much of an option imo). Also, be careful for counterhit fishing, if your opponent has conditioned you to stay put, he might wait a bit and then throw a quick normal.

Keep in mind that if the Akuma notices you mashing normals after the blocked st.HK, he might also go for a Fierce DP (6f invincibility) which will beat pretty much everything. Pay attention to his EX meter, Akuma doesn’t want to DP unsafely.

Backdashing is an option too, but a cr.LP OS Sweep/Raging Demon should take care of that.

Hope it helps, but wait for more experienced players to come, we’ve got several around here. :smiley:

1762

dont worry about sounding biased, in a way I sort of want a biased response in that I want it from an akuma player pov. I find alot of matchups are usually listed as being in adons favour but personally I find them to be pretty hard or about even. Hearing it from the other side is good as I personally suck at playing Akuma and I dont see many decent Adons online to teach me :stuck_out_tongue:

1763

GamerBee told us when he was here that the match-up is in Akuma’s favour provided he knows what he’s doing.

If you’re having trouble VS Akuma, you might want to revisit your disdain for blocking for starters. Last I checked, its kind of important.

1764

haha thanks for the input. My dislike for blocking doesnt mean im no good at it, I just hate being on the defensive is all :wink:
I guess im just not used to someone putting on such high pressure. I have a similar issue against good abels, but jaguar kicks are more effective against him from my experiance ^^
I was having more luck with late airjags recently against akuma, it seemed to beat out the hk sometimes, so I guess its just spacing and blocking :wink:
thanks again for the replies guys, ill work on the matchup. Its interesting to know that Gamerbee feels its in Akumas favour :wink:

1765

Now’s in Akuma’s favor? I really fail to see that, lol.

1766

Don’t forget there is a lot more that goes into a match up than just a single aspect such as wake up games. And besides you can still do stuff against Adon on wake up, but you have to come off of auto pilot to do it.

In all honesty though I keep seeing a lot of players call many match ups “bad” when in reality it is just a match up that requires experience. I especially hate it when someone calls the Blanka match up a bad match up for Akuma because Blanka punishes fireballs and Akuma can’t pressure on wake up. Yet when you stop mindlessly chucking plasma and you stop Blanka’s antics you start to find he really can’t do jack against Akuma. Blanka kills noobs, but has a hard time against experienced players.

What creates a bad match up is when the other character can do so much more against you than you can do to them. I haven’t seen any major reason the Adon-Akuma should be anything except for 5-5. I think both characters can do a reasonable amount of work on the other character.

1767

we talking about super matchup against adon or ae matchup?

imo super is 5/5 and ae is 5.5./4.5

btw, i still lose more games to adon still. but somehow i am not that scared anymore as previous 2-3months ago.

1768

I’ve found placing an emphasis on spacing helps a lot in the Adon match.

fs.hp is invaluable VS this bastard too.

Its an even match, but I find him very difficult to deal with. His array of safe specials makes for some annoying guess-work for us and relatively safe pressure for him. Combine this with Akuma’s minimised ability to take a great amount of risks and you’ll find Adon can be a real handful. I’m glad he has to block both hits of fs.hk tho and the ability to tatsu sweep is a great way to bait out over-eager wake-up crap (dp, or dash) from the more impatient Adons.

Actually, on Adon, I played a few matches against a couple tonight and I was surprised at how big the hitbox is on his crouching jab. Anyone else noticed this? It seems massive and appears to be active for good amount of time too, or am I imagining things?

1769

Yep his c.LP has great range, but at the same time he can’t chain it. All hits have to linked.

1770

I need some general help with zoning. I’m a very old-school player and thus rely on the FB-sweep combo or just walking in and poking. With Akuma I noticed a few things:

  1. His ground FB game isn’t too good against rushdown characters (maybe I am wrong?). I’m able to use it from further away, sure, but then after they jump over it I’m not sure how to follow up. Normally something like St. HK would work, but when the 2nd hit keeps whiffing on half the cast… I also noticed that some players just jump around throwing FB’s and palms hoping for that one knockdown. Bleh.

  2. One of my problems is I like to get in range and then throw out pokes in order to catch opponents. I noticed I get counter-hit way too much when I try sweeping or cr.mp’ing.

  3. I am excellent at reading obvious punish opportunities but I noticed there are so many moves which “look” punishable but are not. Usually I’ll throw a sweep to punish, it’ll get blocked, and then I’ll retreat because I don’t know what to do or I’ll be countered.

To be honest, I’ve been playing lots of Rose lately. I especially like her simple “throw-poke-and-punish-with-cr.mp>spiral” gameplan. However, I want to learn Akuma and understand his general tactics and everything else. I can also vortex to some degree, tatsu-sweep consistently, and so forth. Basically I need some fresh zoning ideas, or even general ideas. Thank you.

1771

You ask a very loaded question, but just quickly: check out the first to 100 session Daigo and Tokido had.

Tokido centers a lot of his game VS Ryu around pin-point spacing, zoning and calculated poking and this session really showcases his methods. I learned a great deal about spacing by watching a sizable amount of this session.

Part 1 here:

1772

What’s the motion for Kara Raging demon ? Is it useful to learn it ?
and btw…I got tired of beating the Dummy in training mode and couldn’t find anyone to play with :expressionless:
so I played some vs Cpu matches.I feel that playing with CPU makes u suck ! was wondering others feel the same too ?

1773

There are multiple ways to Kara Demon (I’ll assume you’re talking about the Ultra). The three most useful are:

fs. HK kara Demon - Tap :lp:+:hk:, :lp:+:hk:,:b:+ :lk:+:hp:

cr. MK kara Demon (AA demon) - While crouching, tap :lp:+:mk:, :lp:+:mk:,:b:+ :lk:+:hp:

f. MP kara Demon - Tap :f:+:lp:+:mp:, :lp: + :mp:, :b:+ :lk:+:hp:

1774

  1. Against rushdown characters (Fei Long, Cammy, Rufus), learn to space your empty neutral jumps against them. Make them play against your zoning game, and there’ll be and opening eventually.

  2. You’re getting counter hit out of your own pokes because you’re not timing your pokes/counterhits right. The better solution instead of trying to for pokes is to just block.

  3. If you’re not sure of when certain moves look punishable or not, do jab/short hitconfirms into your BnB. DO NOT use sweep as your punish. Sure it knocks down, but it’s not safe on block unless from max distance.

I play Rose too, but I’ll tell you her poking/confirm into spiral game only works against (bad) players who don’t like blocking and push buttons all day. If you get matched up against an experienced player, all of that gets thrown out the window and you have to rely on a solid footsie game because they won’t fall for the frame traps.

1775

Does Guy have no fucking hitbox when he does elbow drop? Jesus H Christ, my c.hp just goes through his whole body.

1776

Command Elbow Drop
Bushin Flip Elbow Drop
EX Bushin Flip Elbow Drop

You can use c.mk to drop your hitbox under these.

1777

c.HP loses to it. Just stop using it. The elbow out of flip is beatable, but command you have to SRK or get out of the way.

1778

Happened the same to me, but I thought I just timed it wrong…

Is it possible to cr.MK then SRK that? Would Ultra 1 work too?

1779

I haven’t met an air attack you couldn’t U1 against. Just some air attacks are harder than others.

1780

So basically, the answer is yes, he has no hitbox near his legs. >_>

I tried different timing because there were a couple times where I’d beat it. Tokido does c.mk HK Tatsu, gonna try to get that into muscle memory for reaction.