Akuma's "Turtle" tactic

[iamPowPow]

I put “turtle” in speech marks since it’s not really turtling…

I had a situation yesterday where I absolutely bodied a low-skilled Akuma in the first round, but then proceeded to get destroyed when he resorted to the tactic of jump back fireballs, charged standing fireballs (the orange one).

If I jumped over the fireball I ate a sweep, if I dashed in he used spinny kick. I couldn’t find my way in at all.

How do I deal with these sorts of tactics?

I guess for continuation as well, since I’m freshly learning Cody and dropped back into the “cheap tricks” level of ranked play, rather than cross-up, mix-up, safe-jump, frame-trap, footsies that I’m used to with the level I see on my Juri – are there any other counters to “cheap tricks” that people like to pull online?

I’ve managed to punish jumpers quite hard, Cody has really nice anti-air options, and I’m blowing up reversal mashers with Cody’s solid safe-jumps, but that’s as far as I’ve got so far.

[Ramma]

lol just like dealing with some of the worst Ryu’s in the world, I can fall into this trap still with Akuma (oddly enough I just spent a week getting Cody from 0bp to B+ rank, and had a like 95% win rate versus Akumas, good ones and ones who use this “tactic”). Whether Gouki zones hard or vortexes, this match is a pain in the ass for Cody.

This isn’t something just low level Akumas do (Helnova does it to me here and there, and he’s one of best Akumas I’ve played). It’s a common part of his zoning game. Cody has a few options around the fireball game of Akuma. Ex Ruffian Kick will go under ground fireballs and air fireballs that are still pretty high. You can cr. MK under air fireballs easy enough as well. Red ones too. You can focus absorb them and dash in. If you’re getting hit by his tatsu after focus absorbing an air fireball, you’re either doing it when he’s perfectly spaced it to the ground or you are spending too much time charging the focus attack. Unless you meant a regular dash under a fireball, which seems weird that you would get hit with a tatsu still.

You should also be using your rocks. Remember, you don’t have to do HP rocks, you can do LP rocks if it’ll hit the FB. LP rocks has the fastest recovery. Of course, once you stop throwing rocks, every Akuma is going to try to catch you with a demon flip.

Up close you should have that zonk ready. If he throws a ground fireball, murder him. If he throws an air fireball, and you’re that close, you should be able to dash, cr. MK or zonk under it and punish it. Once you’re in, be ready for that teleport, it is undoubtly coming.

When it comes to his red fireballs, it’s pretty simple. They are slow with garbage recovery. Gives you plenty of time to move forward. Also, HP rocks will make him put that tool away when he gets hit once or twice out of the start-up.

As for learning Cody, you’re still new to him, so a big part of it is just putting in the hours with the character, reacting to situations with ideal punishes and combos.

All that said, you could have asked this is the match-up thread or at the very least, the “Shoto Army” thread.

[L-A]

Hey,

This can be one of the most frustrating things to face. Above is good advice. Depending on the spacing I lean towards:

vs Air Fireball:
Dash in. You can focus dash if you like.
Focus dash.
Block and walk forward.
Walk forward and c+mk under if needed.
Walk forward. Neutral jump. Walk forward.
Zonk through.

vs Red Fireball
Rocks then block. I think it’s possible to get HP rocks, LP rocks, block in (it’s been a while since I’ve faced this type of Akuma).
Walk forward. Neutral jump. Walk forward. Just be careful of his dash/sweep though I’m not sure it’s a threat off red fireballs.
Zonk through.

Zonk is great - it builds meter and moves you forward. Everytime you see a any fireball considering zonking through. Most importantly - just keep moving towards him until you back him into the corner. Then, really take your time because you don’t want to let him out to start his nonsense as he runs again. This is your chance to get some damage. I do the following:

Make sure you’ve got a zonk charged - if he tries to teleport when you’re not hard knocked down wait until he goes ‘through’ you, dash towards him and release the zonk. He get’s out of the corner but it hurts his low lifebar. A lot. You can also dash after a zonk to take up stage space and hasten his being in the corner again.
If he tries a red fireball at a stupid distance jump in and punish.
If he tries an air fireball from about half screen dash and mk+rk.
You can dash under poorly space air fireballs and get hk+rk in. Sometimes (depending on where you hit him) you can get mk+rk follow up. Have zonk ready because he’s probably going to do something stupid - like teleport on wake up - and you can make him eat that too.
You can zonk air fireballs and hit him with the right timing - it can be trickly.

Once you’re ahead on life, every time he does a jump back fireball trade with rocks. I’m pretty sure its in Cody’s favour. That and just patiently walk him towards the next corner and/or hold him in the corner. He doesn’t want to be in the corner and when he makes a mistake trying to get out you get a free punish

Cheers,

L-A

[sunyear]

IAmPowPow, I’ll use your topic to ask about a problem I had today: Everytime I put a Akuma player in hard knockdown and tried to cross him up (he ate a lot of cross-ups, before starting to teleport) he wakeup and teleports to safety. I saw this behavior and tried a lot of OSes to get him, but none worked. I tried the rk EX, f.HK, U2 (but I confess that maybe I screwed up the timing of the U2 Os). What should I do in this situation? Not cross him up and use other kind of pressure? Akuma doesn’t can be crossed up by Cody? Thanks in advance and forgive my bad english.

[ostkatten]

@sunyear You can OS with EX Bad stone. Also, if you’re willing to guess which way he will teleport, you can jump in that direction and do U2 when you land, it will catch the teleport. If he uses U2, you have to wait until he is in his teleport’s recovery frames before you input your U2. Hope this helps.

You can also OS with f.HK. If he backdashes it will catch that, and if he teleports, you can react with EX Ruffian after your f.HK recovers. I don’t remember what else you can use after f.HK has recovered, maybe U2?

[sunyear]

@ostkatten, I think the f.HK OS and EX Ruffian will be the answer before U2 is active (this dude do that all the time, it’s so annoying…). Thank you very much for your help, I’ll try this today if he is online, and will post the results here.