So… How the fuck am I supposed to beat guile consistently, it seems this matchup is pretty much in guile favor. Akuma can’t get in at any time if guile decides to zones him. The only way I seem to win against good guile players is to somewhat play him in a fireball war with red fireballs and suchs in attempts for him to approach me. Guile’s fireballs and normals are way better not to mention meterless flash kick beats air fireballs clean and if you decide to bait him with a ex air fireball he can bazokka knee on reaction to cross under and then air throw you during the animation. Again not complaining against the character, its just that i think that guile is Akuma worst matchup along with gief and rog.
Yes, I have problems against Guile too.
Rog is also tough, but having SRK and teleport do come handy against Gief.
Hey guys I’m trying to level up my Akuma I’d appreciate any tips any one could give me on my gameplay CFN: Mr_Mulatto
I know, it’s like you’re never really able to punish normals once Akuma has v-trigger activated and full bar. st.MP~V-skill punch usually puts him in 1 frame Raging Demon distance too.
Just a guess here but… Try to clear as much space as you can between the two of you and then V-skill+punch to counter and knock him down after a sonic broom. He’s a charge character, so if you don’t take advantage of that and go super heavy on the offense, you’re going to lose. Keep the pressure on him as high as you can after a knock down. It’s definitely a tough matchup.
Gief is tough, I win about 50% vs my friends Gief. It’s a straight footsies match where 1 fuck up you get behind and Gief out pokes you the rest of the match. Gotta be super patient and corner Gief. A lot of our matches end with less than 20 seconds left.
Also f+fp is ass vs gief. Free parry punish.
Anyone know why sometimes when you reversal EX.DP -> Trigger cancel the opponent floats very close to you (enabling B.HP link -> whatever combo) and sometimes they get thrown at the correct distance to do the left-right Zanku?
I’ve woken up EX.DP -> Trigger many times fully-expecting to start the left-right mixup, and get surprised when they land just in front of me. Is it just spacing, counterhit, airborne-hit or what?
C.fp and s.fp canceled to V trigger let’s you dash and do a Raging Demon. The s.fp is best since it’s -1 you can trade vs 4 frame attacks and catch them off guard.
you have to cancel the first hit of EX-dp to combo into b.HP, or cancel the second hit for the left-right-mixup. not sure how consistent it is though, i havent tested yet. if we can get the combo after 1-hit dp consistently i see hardly any reason to go for the mixup option.
So I played Akuma for a few weeks. Maybe it’s too early to come to conclusions BUT: I don’t think he has anything overly powerful to warrant his low health/stun. His V-trigger air fireballs ARE good - but V-reversals/anti-FB specials can deal with that for the most part.
In SF4 he had a legitimate vortex so his low health was definitely worth it. Coupled with his (pretty stupid) sweep, I think he was simply broken the whole way.
I feel like there are characters who have better tools and are scarier than Akuma e.g Necalli. I’d give him low health/stun instead of Akuma to be honest.
Your suspicions are correct. Akuma is a victim of being balanced to death (balanced to middling?). Which is fine… it’s just that normally he’s an instant high pick of a character because of his obvious weaknesses coupled with his obvious and usually more rewarding strengths that are really able to be brought out by solid play (to the degree of negating those weaknesses almost entirely), so he feels a little weird at this point. Reason of course being, as he is now, he has the same obvious weaknesses plus a few more very obvious weaknesses without really any of the benefits that typically put him in the realm of being close to “problematic” when it comes to the rewards he gets for those weaknesses.
All the benefits that warrant his low health are effectively locked behind V-trigger, which is only achieved by sacrificing combo damage to use his v-skill followups in combos, being nearly dead and praying your opponent drops a combo and/or doesn’t have 3 meters to kill you with any combination of two completed combos, or trying to utilize his horrible v-skill that will ensure you die faster than you already do because white life may as well not even regenerate at all at this point. Oh, and when you get v-trigger, fireballs and DPs eat laughably large chunks of the bar even though there’s no actual legitimate reason that it shouldn’t be a Necalli-style vtrigger considering the circumstances of him achieving it in the first place. MAYBE it’d make sense not to if he got faster walk speed in v-trigger, which he doesn’t. Not to mention having to burn meter not to get beat to death by some characters on wakeup due to DP globally being nerfed to mediocre.
I also feel like he has more slightly bad (6-4) matchups than usual, and few, if any, legitimately good ones. Balrog, Guile, Cammy, Laura, and Urien all give him fits; and he even might be literally the only “good” matchup for Nash at this point.
The version of Akuma we have is definitely, definitely for the fans. Everything about his current iteration SCREAMS “just play another character,” but of course we stubborn few are hellbent on banging our heads against a wall to try to be successful anyway.
…I will admit though that I’m thinking of developing a pocket Urien, Cammy, or Chun for when I really want to win without having to try so damn hard. Not to mention I’d like to be capable of playing footsies with actual whole limbs instead of what feels like elbows and knees.
TL;DR - Akuma is now the poster child of aggressive mediocrity, aka, high mid tier instead of being his usual top tier self. But it’s fine; just awkward, unusual, and a little bit annoying. While he has an expansive toolset, he needs that expansive toolset to win whereas other characters have less tools because they don’t need very many to be just as, if not more effective than, Akuma.
Mmm, I suspected as much, thanks man. I’ll test it out some more to make sure as well.
Agreed, the combo is far more optimal than the left-right, hence was trying to figure out how to leave them close.
I think so too; as can be seen in all the other DLC chars introduced in SFV, Capcom seems particularly-loathe to have a repeat of the Twins fiasco in SF4:AE.
All of the DLC chars were rather underwhelming (only Guile and Urien were pretty good) and Akuma has been no exception (compared to his previous iterations in other games). If Capcom’s balancing trend is anything to go by, Akuma might get a bunch of unneeded buffs come S3 ala Urien, Guile… but ayylmao that’s a year away.
Really hoping for a balance patch before the CPT, I fucking hate having my deep DPs stuffed by jump-ins b/c the invincibility doesn’t kick in. Just make it upper-body invincible first 2 frames, you Capfucks; Guile learns that shit in AFROTC while a bunch of Ansatsuken-users who throw fireballs apparently dunno how to.
I haven’t been keeping up on what’s been found, but I noticed with L.Tatus-> c.MP you can meaty a 3Hit Fireball by cancelling late into the hit stop.
You can even meaty the EX fireball.
In corner, can use this to setup the EX Fireball->Xfactor [instant overhead,low short] mixup, or simply to Activate.
It works midscreen also (and with regular fireball). It doesn’t look like it setups a better situation than any of the Tatsu or Palm combos though.
Takes practice I’m at 100% with cc and 50% normally
Who would be a good sub for Akuma?
I really hate fighting some characters (Guile, Boxer) with him.
You probably aren’t going to find a char that fights those two very well, just because they’re both so solid.
Still, hypothetically, you’d want something like Laura or a mixup char for Rog (no projectile chars as he just Skills through everything), and an anti-zoner like Juri (my friend swears by Ibuki, as you can float over his flash, build Trigger by absorbing booms, and EX Kunai as reaction to his booms or just to get in) to fight Guile.
Mika fucks his bad matchups in the ass.
She does indeed, being the antithesis of Akuma 
For her (especially in S2 with no meterless reversals), there’s no such thing as a “bad matchup” once she’s in there with the 50/50; le most balanced 5:5 character /kappa.
Maybe Urien can keep her out better than most just because he’s plus on everything.
I really need help for zangief matchup. I feel like impossible to win