Hey guys!
Recently I have been placed against more projectile spamming characters in multiplayer. As we all know, Gief hates projectiles and its hard for me to even get close to an Akuma who will just spin kick to the other side of the map mid air after I get remotely close to him.
How do I counter projectile happy characters?
Akuma is hard to corner because of his teleport, but if he is using the hurricane kick to get out of the corner you can beat it by giving out headbutts when he jumps to do it. You can also neutral jump headbutt regular hurricane kicks.
As far as the fireballs go you can green hand under them or into them and depending on the timing you can either follow up with another lp. banishing fist (to keep following) or use the ex banishing fist (to knock him out of the air). You don’t want to hit him with the lp. banishing fist on the ground as they can punish you; even on hit.
Don’t get too crazy chasing with banishing fist. If you do another lp. banishing fist too early you will go underneath their backwards jump arc and they can lay a nice hard punch or kick on your noggin.
If the projectile is a single shot and you’re close you can always focus absorb it then dash forward to EX banishing fist. The bottom line is that EX banishing fist is your friend so don’t waste your meter!
I’ve found that the players that spam projectiles like there’s no tomorrow lack patience or depth of strategy beyond spamming fireballs. Such is the case with Akuma spammers.
My strategy against Akuma spammers? Wait it out. If a ground fireball comes your way, jump straight up and avoid it. Air fireballs? Block them.
What spammers are doing with their fireballs is to set the pace of the match. Break that pace, and they start getting sloppy. Blocking and avoiding projectiles without retaliation effectively allows you to set the match to your pace. Some spammers have more patience than others, but I’ve seen that they all eventually break and try going for haymakers. This is where it’s your turn to do some damage. Find an opening, then punish. A simple knockdown combo will be just fine. You don’t have to go for major damage; just as long as you bring their life bar down lower than yours, even if it’s just by a hair, you would have done psychological damage to your opponent. The effects become more apparent when their life bar is low. They start screwing up more frequently, and you punish accordingly.
While this may not be a very flashy way to beat them, it’s still a win, if you care for that sort of thing. If you’ve done this strategy correctly, you will see that your opponent is locked up by mid Round 2, because they don’t know what to do to beat you. I’ve had some of my opponents just stop moving. I’ve been lucky to not have seen many Rage Quits from this strategy. It’s just so satisfying to see your opponent so broken. 
Good stuff. Trying to use this “passive aggressive” strats against all characters that try to “troll” me to death. Then i get kicked for being lame. Lame begets lame I say…
And is it me or does Hakan not have these problems with Akuma…
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Hakan deals with projectiles really well. He has the blood-oil trade and slide.
Usually when I face an Akuma that likes the fireballs I focus absorb them a lot until they have Ultra, mostly for the reasons that it gives Gief potentially 2 Ultra opportunities (or at least one full ultra with a bunch of life left) and it lulls the Akuma into not expecting much else. I would think that U2 makes more sense in this matchup but I find myself sticking with U1.
I LOVE U2 against Akuma just for fb spammers, FA until you got an ultra, then work your way in, if you see the oppurtunity…go for it.
