option 1. no recoil effect on akuma’s air fireball. you still take damage while walking forward and can still be comboed but you do have an opportunity to retaliate if you eat the fireball. it still should be able to knock down if you attempt to jump at him and get hit. this allows for the defensive purposes of the air fireball. he still will have his cheesy-ass offensive weapon but you no longer have to wake-up to the 50-50 chance of getting swept into hurricane-dp combo or raging demoned. eat the fireball and then spd or dp whatever.
option 2. forward and roundhouse hurricane kick knocks down. THEY DO NOT JUGGLE. it would take someone a lot of skill to hit with a jump-in short hurricane kick then hurricane kick-dp combo. i could live with that. this would also allow for only one hurricane kick hit if you block the air fireball and then get swept into the hurricane-dp combo if you didn’t want to eat a raging demon.
“as is” could always be better. i don’t want “more of the same.”
this argument is mostly for a certain level of play and is a hot topic of discussion. i gave possible options for ways of balancing the game a little bit more.
“fantasy” is subjective since A: they are working on a patch and B: balancing akuma is part of the debate in the future patch. so don’t assume i have problems with reality and don’t assume i can’t win when someone picks akuma.
i agree. that’s why i said you could still do it with the short hurricane kick. my reasoning as to why the forward and the roundhouse ones don’t juggle is because of the lockdown airfireball>sweep>hurricane>dp combo takes off 50% as well as lockdown airfireball>raging demon. there is something wrong when a slow airfireball guarantees 50% damage no matter what. toning down the damage of at least one of his options off of the airfireball might balance the game a little bit more.
btw your argument is flawed because if we went with how each of the characters were first introduced-the first playable akuma would never lose to any of the original characters and their first incarnations. he had a SUPER air fireball if i remember correctly.
my mistake. he had the dual air fireballs in his first incarnation and the super air fireball in his second. either way- akuma in his first incarnation would still trash any other character in their first incarnations. and still holds my argument that characters can and should be changed if the balance is way off.
i don’t mind imbalances because sometimes it’s fun to win with a shitty character or in a bad matchup. i just think that akuma should not be able to lock down with his air fireball.
You really can’t mess with the air fireball, otherwise Akuma becomes just another shoto. The air fireball MAKES him.
I’m not 100% convinced he’s unbalanced to the point of being unfair yet, but if I had to change something it would be his shoryukens and hurricane kicks, not his air fireball. Leave his fireballs alone and make his kicks and srks more like Ryu’s instead of Ken’s. He will still have an insane projectile game plus a mostly-invincible teleport and one of the better supers in the game. In fact, knockdown hurricane kicks would give him a good opportunity to set up an air fireball trap.
Besides, Akuma can’t ACTUALLY lock you down with the air fireball. To someone new to the game it might look impossible to beat, but every character can get out of Akuma’s fireball traps even when backed into the corner, they just need to choose the proper timing to do the move.
I guess another option would be just to reduce the damage on the whole hurricane kick -> shoryuken combo. That’s kind of a lame non-solution, though.
if anytihng i agree to tone down the dmg on his hurricane combos his air fireball aint crap against a half decent dhal player so i have no beef with that and im still hopeing they redo akumas ghraphics just his head…something dosent look right almost like they stuck his head on his hand or something just weird to me
Enlighten us with what gief and rog can do. I spent three+ rounds as gief locked in the corner and all brian had to was jump up and jab air fireball. Nothing worked to get out. My best shot was takin the hit so he would hopefully screw up his timing. Same thing with rog.
It’s way hard for 'gief, but I remember hearing how to get out of it. I don’t really play him so I didn’t pay attention. I assume would have to get out a lariat or green hand at exactly the right moment.
For the rog, it’s also hard, but buffalo headbutt at the right moment would do it.
I don’t really play fei either, but I believe the answer is a flame kick at the right moment.
I will admit that Akuma v Geif is a problem matchup in that Akuma essentially has to make some sort of error for Zangief to win. A good akuma with good mechanics will destroy Zangief almost virtually every time.
EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention that I would definitely fix is guaranteed Raging Demon setups. They were never meant to be guaranteed after a blocked air fireball; Sirlin said so himself in his HDR changes log. It’s some sort of glitch or oversight or something. Either way, it needs to be fixed pretty badly. Hoping this gets fixed in the patch.