I am a 2800-3300 PP Bison (PC) and have always wanted to play akuma, i have a decent amt of knowledge of the char and started playing him
I absolutely suck dong on him
Not quite sure why i am gettin pummeled by ppl i usually dominate on bison so i ask what are must-know and must-do’s to start becoming a decent akuma
i go to 3k pp bison w/o rlly testing safejumps, unblockables, option-selects etc is that required for akuma? I know the char is def. executoin and mixup heavy
I think right now im losing because:
execution errors
terrible footsies
unsafe hadoukens
panic under defense
to start off the char, how should i start? Should i try to go for a zoning/footsie akuma and slowly integrate mixups or what…
You need everything, really. Akuma may be able to do all the things, but he also asks the player to be able to do it all too. The main things are learning good footsies, fireballs and defense, no doubt - you’re frail, so staying alive is priority #1. After that, it’s character specific setups, and damn there’s a lot
But yeah. Calm down, concentrate on blocking correctly and playing footsies and zoning first. Setups can come later.
The biggest change for you will be footsies. Unlike Bison Akuma doesn’t have a catch all normal that can dominate the footsies war. All his normals must be used for specific circumstances. So if you find yourself pressing a button and getting smacked for it it’s because you’re using the wrong button and/or timing.
What is it with Bison players wanting to play Akuma? xDDDD I have a friend on PSN, he’s a 4k+ PP Bison player, wanned to learn Akuma hard too, wasn’t able too, desided to stick with Bison and play around with Seth once in a while, to satisfy that mix-up hunger xD
Anyway, back to the topic, as people said here, the biggest change when switching from Bison to Akuma is footsies, Akuma has decent buttons, some could say he has awsome buttons and to some degree it’s true, but in order to make those footsies shine u need to learn the exact ranges and character specific stuff in order to make the most out of those cr.mp frame traps, sweep and ofc far standing HK. Also anti-airing with far HP and crouching HP is really important to stop jump-ins and reckless cross-up attempts, anyway u should be able to find tons of information on Akuma’s buttons on this forums, just search around.
What I believe nobody mentioned so far is how important the positioning for Akuma is, it’s kinda an obvious follow-up to the statement that u need to know the ranges for Akuma’s normals, but still I feel it’s really important to keep in mind that Gouki ALWAYS needs to correctly position himself in order to place himself in that max range sweep distance, or a range where his far standing HK will only hit on the second kick which will make it safe, or to know the position where you’re HP will trade and where it will not and etc etc etc. It really all comes down to trial and error, that means youre gonna suck and lose a lot and I mean A LOT and there’s no escaping that.
Off-topic - I beleve that’s actually the reason we don’t see people jumping on Akuma’s bandwagon even after he took EVO and many other major’s in a row, he’s just so damn tough to use and requires a shit load of experience to be effective with, almost no one want’s to put that much time and effort into a character, easier to pick-up a simplier top-tier, imho ofc.
I have some questions that I haven’t found answers yet in this forum
Can crmp to sweep work on all chars?
Ch crmp to s. Hk work on all chars and how to link it?
When do you use Lk or l.p. after a s. Hk ? This link seems random to me
How do u time sweep after Lk tatsuu?
It doesn’t work on anyone, it is only possible to link sweep from cr.mp on counter-hit, and that, of course, works on everybody.
Works on everybody, timing is strict, but not that strict, try plinking if you can’t get it right.
Lp is easier to link, but has less range then cr.lk, top players link cr.LK when they know they won’t hit with cr.lp because it’s out of reach. Nothing random about the link, just learn the timing. Also it is pretty useful to learn to do a s.HK —> cr.mp link, it has more range then lp and does more damage. But not crucial, u should learn to at least do the links into lights.
First of all, sweep after tatsu is character specific, so go learn on what characters this works. Second - the timing is very strict, it’s essential to plink it, otherwise it’ll be pretty hard to land consistently… Also learning this link can take weeks, even months, so good luck with that xD
don’t worry, you will get better at akuma sooner or later. you probably got to 3k PP bison due to lack of competition on PC and bison’s safe pressure game that many are not familiar with.
to improve:
you need to stop execution errors, get better at footsies, do safer hadoukens and don’t panic.
execution errors can be prevented by practicing
footsies can be improved by learning your normals
safer hadoukens can be done outside of jump-in range. bison doesn’t have hadouken, so I can understand why you don’t know how to use hadoukens.
keep calm and carry on will prevent panicking situations.
get an arcade stick, sweep reset is very useful. don’t go for hadouken after mp, imo that’s too slow.
I play both since Vanilla SF4 and I guess what they have in common is the evil/badass villain aspect lol. Plus Bison is a charge character so it would be good to be comfortable with both game mechanics, he also covers Akuma’s difficult matchups pretty well e.g Viper so he was the perfect alt for me.
Plinking sweep can be done easily on a pad and that’s very useful (plink R2 & circle buttons on a PS pad), cr.mp/OS tech is a bitch on a pad though which is also useful specially vs dive kick characters.
yes cr.lp to s.hp is a frame trap, but the close fierce must be cancelled into something like a frieball because it’s unsafe on block.
Sweep is the most used option after getting a counterhit crouching strong.
I’m the same lol. Not that points matter. I’m 4k PP on PSN, and 3.3k PP on Xbox (gave up on ranked), Bison wanting to play Akuma. This is the first game I haven’t played Akuma, dunno why. Maybe cause he’s frail? Same goes for Ryu, but I blame online for that, it’s made me sick of seeing him. Right now I’m stuck between Cammy, Akuma and Viper and keep switching between the 3 when I play online. I was doing okay with Seth until for some reason I kept failing SPD and getting tanden lol, but I can do his combos n stuff just fine. I just don’t think Bison is that good. He’s a good character but seems very “meh” at times. I wanted to play a mixup character cause they’re fun.
Funny, I always thought Bison was underrated and in my opinion somewhere in that top-10 characters list. Maybe that’s due to a lot of people being unfamilliar with the match-up, because you really can’t just go in this match and expect to win it just on an intuition alone, you really gotta study this match. Maybe not really a tournament character, but online? One of the most cheapest bastards in the game imo xD
i dont think theres safe setups after throw since the f throw got nerfed? maybe the cross up air fireball. im not too familiar so dont quote me on this… i wrote these down like a year ago for myself so forgive the sloppiness. I believe most of these still work but u can test them out and figure it out.
Close: cr.LP, cl.HP xx LK tatsu, sweep
Step foward, jump
j.MK = cross up 4 frames reversal = safe
dive kick = fake horizontal dp = whiff After demon flip
** **Step foward, MK demon palm = cross up
X2 s.LK -> HK Demon kick = cross up (normal height)
Dash, instant air FB
Dash, EX Demon kick = cross up After demon palm
** **Step back, air FB = cross up
Medium: cr.LK, cr.LP, cr.MP xx LK tatsu, sweep cr.LP, cr.LP, cr.MP, FB, FADC, sweep Punish wake up SRK by sweep
** **jump attack = no cross up 4 frame reversal = safe
tatsu = cross up most reversal = no autocorrect Foward Throw
** Jump attack = no cross up **5 frame reversal = safe
X2 Dash, MK/HK demon kick combo
X2 Dash, tastu = cross up
st.HK -> HK Demon kick = cross up (normal height)
st.HP -> x3 FB
st.HP -> instant air FB (corner only)
Dash, EX Demon kick
Long:
Step forward -> MK Demon Flip
c.MK -> MK Demon Flip
HK Demon flip = mixup
HK Demon kick = same side
HK Demon Palm = whiff, cross up
Safe Jumps (3f reversals) Forward Throw
** **Dash, 323 delay, EX Demon kick late
**Demon Flip **
Dash, st.LK, j.MK (cross up)
***(***4f reversals) Forward Throw
Dash, HK Demon Kick late Close Sweep
j.MK = cross up (5f+ reversals) Forward Throw
Dash, Dash, j. HK (unsafe against blanka ex air)
Dash, Dash, MK Demon Palm
HK -> j.HK (cammy, boxer, dj, sim, gen, rose, gief – they late recovery)
Character Specifics
**Dash, Dash, MK Demon kick early **
Ken – U2 trade, U1 ineffective
Guile – U1 trade
Fei – EX DP trade
Honda – U1 ineffective
Oni – HP DP & U1 ineffective
Dash, Dash, MK Demon kick late
Dan, Adon, Gief, Chun, Yun
Demon Flip
** **Back Dash, EX Demon Kick late
Viper – EX Flame trade
Land-> cr.MK -> MK Demon Flip
Gief, Abel, Rose
Option Selects
Sweep -> close -> cr.LP, cr.LP ~ cr.HK, LK tatsu, sweep (anti back dash)
Far sweep -> step forward -> cr.MK ~ MK Demon kick
Adon – EX DP & Super – ineffective
Sweep -> MK Demon Palm ~ HK Demon Slide (anti teleport, akuma)
Sweep -> MK Demon Palm ~ HK Demon Slide (anti backspring, claw)
Close -> Sweep -> LK Demon Palm ~ HK tatsu (anti teleport, dictator)
Close -> Sweep -> MK Demon Palm ~ throw (anti grab, abel)
Sweep -> j.HK ~ Ultra 1 (anti back dash)
Sweep -> j.HK ~ EX DP (anti back dash, NO makoto, dj, gen, juri, rose, cammy)
Sweep -> cross up tatsu ~ Ultra 1 (anti back dash)
Yeah, that’s how I think he is. Online he’s a beast, offline he just sucks unless the person isn’t familiar with him lol. I’ve seen so many other Bison players get away with dumb stuff online lol, no wonder people hate him.
Actually a lot of match ups are less about the knockdown and more about the fundimentals.
I think one of the problems people always have coming to Akuma is they come in expecting to learn the vortex when really that is just one piece of half a dozen. When I first picked up Akuma there was no vortex so the first things I learned playing him was his movement and zoning. IMO I was much better off for it when the vortex came around because I was actually able to set up the vortex because of my better ground game.
Footsies, zoning and safe jumps should be the primary concern when learning Akuma with vortex as a secondary. If Infiltration and Momochi showed us anything it’s that vortex is not needed to win. (though it certainly helps)
Not a chance man, not a chance. His HK flip isn’t even as much a vortex tool as much it is his mobility tool, no way I’m getting stripped from it. Removing the grab will defenetly result in an elimination of Akuma’s vortex game, because now, every time there is a knockdown and the opponent hears as doing the demonflip, there’s only 2 options, do I hold downback or do I try to escape beacuse it may be a throw, considering that the timing for the throw must be later then for the safe DF Palm bait or dive-kick I would really agree that Akuma’s vortex is overrated… It was pretty strong in Super, then from there it was nerfed to a pretty meek state, especially removing the overhead property of DF palm and adding 2 frames on our dashes (yeah, that helped a lot, no more unblockables right? Oh wait).
You want Vortex? Choose Seth, Ibuki, Cammy, heck even Fei Long seems to have as much mix-up potentianl as Akuma. But I would never trade even what we have for damage and stun, I would just be playing a twitchy version of Ryu then, fuck that.
and figure it out.