Wow great info, I think this makes me hate you though. Bummer.
Hey great post, just read this and wanted to comment on what I knew about this part. If you start your FA during EX rainbow roll start up right next to Blanka, it is armor breaking. But from a distance as soon as you see it coming towards you, you can start you FA and when he lands in front of you let go for I believe to be a level 3 focus (making for an instant crumple to).
Some handy stuff there. Yes, 1/3 to 1/2 screen is Blanka land, he can slide you as soon as you let go of d/b and use Blanka Balls to kill all your focus attempts against the slide. Short Ball into throws, repeated Blanka Balls to chip and force mistakes, Rainbow Balls, move in for jump-ins, pokes and cross-ups etc etc.
Making a retreat to 3/4 and full screen is a really good initial bet. By being outside the effective ranges of his Blanka Balls and slides, you can provoke him with some fireballs and bait those tools, making it so he has to chase you be be able to get a hit in. Use Teleports to escape his shenanigans and play some runaway. When he has to be following you around like this, he’s dropping his charge to be in any kind of effective range and this helps dillute his options and make it easier on your defense and offense.
At this stage, you can keep him at arms length and set your ranges to bait out his tools and set about shutting them down one by one. Once you can do this and get him precautious about them, you buy yourself more time and space to go about your own offense. It’s still not an easy match, but by doing this you give yourself a good chance.
It’s true that he needs and EX bar to deal with those ultra deep Dive Kicks because Lightning and Up Ball will lose to it if you’re at his head height by the time he’s able to reverse. He’s able to do his special hop under or away from you if your Dive Kick is not especially deep, and if it is deep enough to beat them, he can backdash away all the same.
Though this is more than many Blanka’s will think to do in the situation. If you do find him backdashing out of your Dive Kick pressure, you can add in a low Slide or two to trip him out of this.
On punishing Blanka Balls, reversal Raging Demons are the only hope. Again, Teleports last at least 50 frames and Blanka is at just -25 or so on block. As someone who cannot yet rely on consistent reversal Supers vs. online Blanka Balls, I’m not yet completely on top of this match.
Cool, thanks for this. Are you referring to the EX rainbow’s startup in general or it being performed as a reversal? All reversal attacks gain armour breaking properties irrespective of their regular properties. Think wake-up reversals on focus chargers, etc.
I tend to find that sometimes the spacing becomes so erratic with rainbow roll that I prefer to focus absorb and then dash towards where he will land. (Once you absorb a hit from the rainbow roll, it removes any further ‘hitting’ properties so he’s basically a punching bag from that point forward.)
I find that trying to slug him with a focus attack rather than dashing out of it can be somewhat difficult to judge quickly and I opt for the safer option; that is, focus absorb > dash cancel > sweep or lp srk > fadc > redball provided I get close enough to him.
Or, (and bare in mind I am new to Akuma) could we not focus absorb > dash cancel > Ultra? Is there any reason why this is not possible? Slow Ultra start-up perhaps. Thoughts?
Awesome Blanka stuff! I think something I need to focus on in that match up is antiair… I’ve only recently started trying to demon his jump ins because they are just so fast and his feet stick out so far, but I’m having surprising success with it. Now I need to start uppercutting. I uppercutted a couple of Blankas out of horizontal roll today. That felt great and definitely rattled him. Thanks again. Now I gotta process it all.
Oh, and I MIGHT be interested in maintaining this thread if the OP still needs someone to take over. It would give me incentive to seek stuff out on the boards and stay up to date.
Yeah I did. Glad you brought that up.
Hadn’t tried or thought about that, I’ll definitely give it a go. Has this been something you tried in game and in training? Or just in training?
Hmmm, hadn’t thought about this but I would imagine that by the time the start up of the animation of the demon came out, Blanka would have time to jump out.
Yea I thought about doing this the other day, but you definitely have to get your execution down when it comes to doing an srk when Blanka does an EX ball (as the speed of his horizontal ball is annoyingly fast). Also check your PM.
I’ve been having fun focusing Guiles L.HK, but I can’t seem to get more than a Lv1 focus, and I can’t seem to follow it up with anything better than blocking to bait a flash kick.
Anythinig more interesting to do here?
Reversal fireballs don’t break armor.
You can focus absorb the hit and probably ultra, but there isn’t really a reason to do it unless you would get ultra by the damage you’d be absorbing. Cause you can just ultra without absorbing.
Sure…you can ultra between hits. Poke between hits as well. FA the second hit, let go and then dash back cancel
I’m not going to look through 17 pages but I didn’t see anything on Viper and she is killing me right now. There are some really good vipers in my area and I don’t know what to do. When I try to rush down ex seismo and crMK->TK keeps me from putting to much pressure and when I runaway she seems to good in the air.
Can’t say I’ve had trouble with Vipers good enough for me to look too deep into the matchup, but don’t neglect the match-up vids resource as checking a number of those will collectively show you the sure-fire approach for cutting out as many of the threats she poses as possible.
From what little I know of the match that may be handy:
Don’t bother looking to counter or defend against her Thunder Knuckle pressure because she covers each of your your choices safely, comfortably and with good recovery from the same range. Her overhead here is good, sets up tick throws and more crap, low goes into Thunder Knucle to chip and add more pressure, Thunder Knuckle for chip and more pressure and to kill focuses. I’ve even seen Thunder Knuckle fakes into cross-up Blaze Kicks. Damage and stun for her can rack up like this, her recovery advantage and speed here is too good to stuff with your own pokes and footsies generally aren’t effective because she can toss out the occassional Blazing Kick low to the ground quite safely and beat your pokes to reverse any momentum.
You can backdash out of this guessing game and might just have something to sweep, Teleport of course, and if another Thunder Knuckle is apparantly coming you can do a short neutral jump and could catch her on the way down.
Her aerial game is difficult to counter because of how she can change her trajectory. She can cross-up from anywhere. Generic approaches with Blazing Kick however are vulnerable to focus and can be combo’d for a good swing when they come about. So far I’ve found trading in the air more reliable than SRK’s for her.
Her reversal game is rather solid but not too extreme. Her most efficient choice is an HP Thunder Knuckle into FADC. She’s not as solid for reversing cross-ups, the QCB reversal motion doesn’t option select so well and EX Seismo is slow enough to be safe jumped when your crossing her up on wakes. Try to be as tricky as you can with them and make the most of the block string you get.
I teleport when waking more often in this match because her mixup game from knockdowns is so good that I don’t want to give her any chance for nothing.
I find her Seismos difficult to stop as well. I don’t tend to risk focus absorbing them because she can chain them to beat that, and I rarely chance beating them with jump-ins and EX Flips because of her fakeouts and damage potential from her AAs. I try to keep evading them and use passive air fireballs rather than looking for trouble.
Viper’s a very rounded customer, so there’s nothing that seems immediately exploitable to me, just seems like you gotta have the edge on the other player. Cross your fingers for her whiffing Ultra’s, she hates losing rounds like that.
PS. Anti Air Ultra is practically useless here, but I’ll guess this isn’t breaking news.
6 matches. Take the good, leave the bad.
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^Nerd got better damn hit confirming the super with cLP. Good matches West to bad you can’t cMK buffer demon you had some free rounds in that series with him jumping at you.
no kidding
Don’t play Chun in footsies is my advice. You have to be comfortably better than her at it to keep your head above water in terms of damage from what I’ve found.
Her shorts have great range for their speed and make it difficult to get momentum in cr.MK range and difficult to move into jab range for an Akuma block string. She has a much easier time for hit confirming into basic combos also. The range on those pesky shorts plus the range on her throw makes it very tricky for me to cope with her ticks.
My friend likes to use her quick dash up for either a throw or EX Legs in order to stop me from fishing for any sweeps or hasanshu’s to focus.
If there’s one thing Chun hates in the match it’s air fireballs. They’re risky for her to attempt to Ultra through, (unless your positioning was asking for it) and her floaty jump means she’ll usually either get cut out of the air when looking to get through them or descend too slowly and land on a Shoryuken once you’ve recovered.
Because of the way ground fireballs get swallowed up once her Ultra is ready, I find the second stage of the match highly tedious and while it’s a 5-5 the approach is a lot like Tokido was using against Nemo (or Nuki?) at God’s Garden.
It sucks to watch and it sucks to play. You can sometimes beat a Chun Li with nothing more than air fireballs and Shoryuken.
That’s the approach I found at least, I haven’t had luck with other approaches as I don’t feel as if I’m on equal footing at closer ranges.
The match up section talks about “options” akuma has against rog, but isnt specific. I have a lot of problems with this match up. can all dash punches be punished with cr.lp -> bnb? I seem to just freeze up during these match ups, all he has to do is block and throw out dash punches when I fireball.
Balrog’s straights, sweep and things can technically be punishable with things like Super and combos from cr.MK and such, but those things have extreme degrees of pushback so punishes will only work out when you’ve blocked them deep enough to still be in cr.MK range, which means they often go untouched. Trying to punish when the pushback has you just little too far means you’ll eat something for your troubles.
It’s definately not an easy match, a large part of it for Akuma’s side revolves around ranged fireball baits and looking for a way to set up his Ultra. I’d find it nicer if Balrog didn’t have 1,100 health or a microscopic jump in that made him so very difficult to anti air on reaction.
I also feel more advise with this match is in order, because I’m finding that expecting Boxers not to be familiar with the range at which charging in with a special or beating fireballs with EXs/Turn Punches will work is becoming an out-dated tactic.
In the OP, I looked at the VS. Blanka section. It lists that ultra and super can punished blocked balls at anytime.
But you don’t always have ultra/super.
Does this mean blanka gets to have a field day w/ blanka balls?
Basically, what’s the best way of punishing the damn blanka balls on block? What can you do vs. blanka ball spam if you don’t have meter?
The main tip is to “make it look like you are in a situation where you will do FB and punish blanka ball after”. But what can you punish it w/ other than ultra?
VS Balrog play defensively with zoning and making him constantly lose his charge. When Balrog loses his charge he cannot throw out dashing straights/whatever at anyytime. Make him lose his charge with well placed fireballs, both grounded and in the air.
Do not be afraid to use focus to let him know he can’t just toss out dashing straights whenever he wants. This mixed with a strady dose of fireballs makes this match a lot easier. Of course, keep in mind that there is risk with the focus due to his dashing lunge and overhead shattering focus, so be careful.
Also keep in mind that a well timed cr.lp meaty beats out ALL of Balrog’s options on his wakeup except his ex headbutt and, I think(not fully tested) his ex dash attacks(which throw will beat). I know for a fact if you cr.lp and he does his ex headbutt you will recover from your cr.lp before the headbutt touches you, allowing you to punish. Essentially, Balrog is forced to either block or backdash to avoid Akuma continuing his pressure.
Knowing that you can meaty him pretty much anytime he’s not knocked down makes your advantage over him when knocked down pretty big. Also keep in mind that a well timed crouching mk will completely beatout his non ex headbutt on wake up if he tries to attempt that.
Also, relax on the use of st.hk. It’s a fantastic tool, but oftentimes this move puts you in poorer positioning vs Balrog than you would be if you had not used it. Balrog’s cr.lp is simply amazing, and you want to be far away from it as much as possible. St.hk puts you right in cr.lp range, and if you misread the range you do st.hk, the second hit will whiff, giving you a free hit.
Punishing his jumps is absolutely key. Time your shoryus so they don’t trade, but rather beat him out cleanly. When in doubt, crouching fierce is alright, but it gives Balrog a reset, which means he can retain his charge, which sucks. As for the anti air raging demon, Crouching when inputing his demon greatly increases your chances of anti airing with it since Akuma avoids much of the duration of the hitbox this way. This is good not just against Balrog, but any character.
Soooo Balrog jumps at you, you crouch and tap lp lp twice, then finish the input as soon as the timing is right for the AA demon.
Also, Akuma’s c.mk goes right under Balrog’s best jumping attacks. Use this to help with demon and shoryu timing if you’re having trouble. It also allows you to sneak in a throw every now and then upon their landing since they are expecting contact(blocked or hit) when they do it, not a full whiff.
c.mk in general helps a lot against balrog. Use it often, but always be aware of balrog’s st.hk and dashing straight which will beat it out if they anticipate you doing it.
Hope this helps a little. My friend who has a very good Balrog is getting a capture device soon, so I should be able to post up some fights.
sHP beats Blanka ball or just mash sLP and it will still stuff it. Use LP fb to bait ex ball full screen and punish with HP SRK on reaction. Play footsies with Blanka mid screen and against those who like to slide alot use focus and bring the pain.