"Critique My Akuma!" Video Blog Thread

I know exactly what you mean, I was getting a serious taste of my own medicine when I tried to jump over a Zanku only to eat SRK. I bait people like that all day, but nobody has ever done it back to me before :). I messed up on the spacing a bunch of times, but I credit you for doing the safe jump that was just pixels out of my SRK range before you could land and block – I need to be more careful about throwing out the SRK on that when I’m not positive about the spacing.

Yeah you really did a nice job of rattling me there. Usually I’m pretty good at landing my demon but you had me guessing and kept me off balance the entire time we played. I was having trouble doing what I wanted to do, I felt like you were in control of the pace of the game and I couldn’t seem to get it back except for in little spurts.

I actually though of one more thing that I forgot to mention earlier. I think you could be more conservative with EX and not use FADC combos when you don’t need to. For example, a few of the times I messed up on spacing and whiffed SRKing you jumping over my Zanku you punished me with cMP xx FB -> FADC -> cHP -> BnB. In those situations I usually hold on to my meter and just do a non-EX combo unless I’m pretty sure the opponent still has some stun damage that hasn’t reset yet and I’m going for the stun.

Maybe you were just practicing your FADC combos and not really trying to use meter as sparingly as possible, but I just thought I’d say IMO it’s better to save the EX bars for when you can get more damage out of it. If I FADC in a combo it’s usually because I can’t finish the combo without an FADC, like if you hit with a cMK xx FB poke turn it into a BnB combo with the FADC.

I hope that’s a good suggestion… but maybe I’m a little over conservative with my EX meter at times.

Does more damage than the typical LP SRK -> FADC, Red Fireball – and if it’s guaranteed damage, why not go the extra mile with the FADC? c.MK and c.MP might as well be the same attack, since they do the same amount of damage. The EX would have probably been spent elsewhere and done the same amount of damage.

akuma gets meter fast, im finding myself sitting on super meter alot lately, i fadc a lot and im actually trying to do it more

Ok, heres the first video:
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Hrm. Well, when fighting a Ryu (Skilled or not) he has a pretty large advantage in the health department, so trading your close range mix ups can end up in his favor.
Usually against Ryu’s, if you lose a clash you will be punished for about 25 - 35% of your health. You have a pretty big advantage however, in your keep away and your methods of attack.

Akuma controls a huge amount of air and ground in front of him at about a 45 degree angle with fireballs and air fireballs. I usually spend the first round against Ryu’s just nickle and dimming them with Fireball control usually off neutral jumps. lp if he is trying to rush you, hp to keep him at full screen, ex for combos. Rarely do I attack from a neutral state against Ryu. Then, if he starts to make a frantic offense, mix him up and BnB him for hand shakes.

You have no reason to launch an attack against Ryu. Your advantage is spacing control and speed. Just use it right and you should win. :slight_smile: Hope this helps.

PS: I saw a lot of fireball wars. Akuma (imo) has the best answer for this. If you predict a fireball, just ex flip kick. if you are off the ground before the ball leaves his hands, you get a free combo… if you have an ult you can input it on the way up and hit the final input right as your foot lands and you can grab his arms and ult him. (Same works for Sagat but the timing is stricter)

How would this work? Using the punch input to also drop from the flip kick?

I meant I wouldn’t have used FADC at all and went with cHP -> LK tatsu BnB. cMK has way more range and does different things to your hitbox than than cMP, but anyways, I’m talking about starting a combo off of a footsie cMK xx Fireball rather than when a person is wide open coming down from a whiffed SRK.

I guess I like to save my bars to cancel a reversal SRK, start BnB combos off of cMK pokes, EX Demon Flip, and EX Tatsu combos a lot more than I like to use them adding 40-60 damage in a combo. The exception is when you know it will stun or when it will end the match, of course.

For me, that seems to be the best strategy for using my EX bars.

Especially with your aggressive style…

I think I use EX Zanku and EX Demon Flip too often to have meter sitting around wasting away.

Mind if I add you on XBL? I’d like to try my hand at handling that onslaught :).

Nah you just dive kick -> cHP -> BnB combo them because the EX flip flies fast enough that they are still in recovery frames from the fireball.

Here’s my tips based on the first video. When you tried to do Roundhouse Far into bread n’ butter, you tried to link Jab instead of Strong. When your crossups are blocked, do a crouching Jab and go for a throw. Change it up though with the Jabs and Shorts so you don’t get predictable. When you have full Super, Kara Demon, [media=youtube]8ZO5H5Gw9lo[/media]. After a jump in Hurricane, instead of following up with a Roundhouse, do a Fierce Shoryuken.

Heya Rugi

since you asked for critique I thought I’d share my opinions with you. Now, first off, I’m no Gouki expert by any stretch of the imagination but I play him as my 2nd next to my main Viper. One of my hobbies of late is watching a LOT of e-sports videos (SF4, 3S, BB, GG and Starcraft) and I so happened to come across this thread. You’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on your vids and rightly so, but I feel a lot of people are missing a lot of mistakes you made or not pointing them out out of respect or w/e. I just thought I’d share some of the things I noticed because IMO you seem to be mixing expert play with some unnecessary mistakes.

First of all, you take WAY too much free damage. In the vs Sagat videos (mitmot or smt?) you take at least 30% of damage simply from walking into fireballs. As Gouki that is almost as vital a mistake as you can make. With his stamina you simply can’t afford these types of errors.

Second, you say you are a zoning type of player, often lurking for counter opportunities and whatnot, and that’s ofc a valid tactic. However that strategy hinges completely on your ability to do exactly that, counter. More importantly to make those counters “count”. First, I’ve noticed multiple times that you eat a jump-in due to your staying in a crouching position. I’m assuming you’re trying to get a SRK out but whether it was due to lag (willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here) or due to poor execution you’d basically end up eating the jump and the consequent combo. Now the players you played against didn’t really capitalize on it as much as they could have, but there’s a serious hole in your game right there. You’re baiting your opponent to go for big openings and punishing them for it, but when you miss the punishment you basically just give them a big opening.

Third, as stated above, you need to work on making your counters count. The idea of the counter strategy is that you are under pressure (or at least on the defensive) most of the time and, while taking the occasional damage from a misread or a bad guess, you are able to make up for it by making that one big opening count for all the damage that’s been done to you. Right now, you need too many openings to deal major damage imho. I advise you to go into training mode with attack data on and find out what Akuma’s most damaging punish combo’s are. Your favourite seems to be cr mp into BnB. You could add a ton more damage to this by making it into a cr. mp xx Hado > FADC > s. HP into BnB. Just one example. As Akuma you tend to have plenty of EX (I find) because of the fireball zoning and multi-hit combos.

Finally, I think you could improve in the area of ways of getting in. Again, against the sagat you got outzoned and basically your only way of getting in was EX flip, which you often missed (got blocked), then you resorted to blocking and got pushed back to the edge of the screen. All in all that cost you an EX stock and a shitton of chip damage and gained you nothing. I think you could work on slowly getting closer and closer into Sagat’s “unsafe zone” (if he even has one :S) where you could at least make him more wary of throwing out Tiger shots. Basically in that match I think you lacked an up close pressure game.

Overall your play is solid with decent zoning, but I think these are some areas where you could improve. Again, take this for what it’s worth because ofc I can’t judge what influence lag had on your play. Just my observations, and you did ask for them :stuck_out_tongue:

p.s. Also tick throws make for easy, non scaling damage. I didn’t see too many of them, but they can be a valuable tool in your bag of tricks.

correct me if i’m wrong, but c.lp is more guaranteed than c.mp. plus from c.mp the lk.tatsu wont connect unless you are right up close.

I don’t know. Strong is stronger and has more range. And at a distance where Strong won’t connect to hurricane kick, a Jab would? When I land Roundhouse Far at a distance where I won’t be able to combo into bread n’ butter using crouching Strong, I do a crouching Forward into Roundhouse hurricane.

Strong will push them further back, it IS harder to link from strong to tatsu, even if you do actually connect it. Forward is a very difficult link so I’d recommend short if you’re a slightly further range.

correct.

I thought I would give you some tips on your play Rugi, because you have alot of potential. In your videos against chun you are making some mistakes in the matchup and in general. If you can get rid of those you will be ok.

As posted in the match up thread i think, using far RH is not a good idea. It is easily punished for big damage on whiff. Just poke with your longer pokes instead. Dont give chun a hole to punish you for any reason.

Chuns overhead flip kick is punished in many ways. You should be able to Fierce shoryu that on reaction, and especially Focus Attack as well. If they like to whiff the move, sweep should punish nicely. Watch for this move when Chun is mid screen because it clearly goes over fireballs.

You are walking away from chun in one of the matches at the start where she has no bar and you have full bar. When you have full bar with akuma, dont be afraid to pressure people. Akuma has alot of ways to use his bar, if you have a full bar, its time to go to work.

When you land Focus to demon in some of the matches, you teleport out or spin kick away. If you knock someone down, stay on them. Akuma has all the advantage when he knocks down, its one of his biggest strengths. If you knock someone down, you should be within poking range everytime to mixup or do something. You lose all momentum if you let them get up.

Everytime someone jumps at you in the corner, it is a free teleport. If someone jumps at you teleport the fuck out if you are in the corner. This will keep chun grounded. Also use high flying spin kick to get out as well. Akuma should not put up with corner pressure, he cant handle it.

Becareful when using demonflips in poke strings, you can get jump hit out of it everytime. Use different strengths to keep from being predictable. EX demon flip is also useful in this match up.

You are looking good though.

Oops, I should have been more specific!
I meant to ask how this is possible:

^The only way I see doing demon after a demon flip is if you cancel it early so that the kick or punch doesn’t hit.

Everyone thanks for the tips, I was out at a tournament this weekend and I think I did alright. Think I went 5-2? My combos are there but I got rocked when it comes to just simple fundamentals like footsies and teching throws. Really gotta work on that. Hopefully I can squeeze in some offline play soon to up my game.

More vids up against my friend JUDDERMANG, who is switching from balrog to ryu. Tell me what you guys think.