So from what I understand, VT II for Akuma lets you cancel specials in to EX moves and consumes your V Timer for EX rather than your actual meter.
So knowing this you could probably change a lot of existing combos to get a higher damage outcome. Since we don’t really know how much of the V Timer is consumed per EX move, we’re going to ignore how much we consume.
Here’s an advanced combo I thought up
JIP > St. MK xxx H. FB xxx VT > H. FB xxx EX FB > H. DP xxx EX DP xxx CA > H. DP xxx EX DP
(At the end there is just assuming EX DP launches them high enough for you to follow up after CA with another DP.)
Now here’s a simple BnB with VT II in it
JIP > Cr. HP xxx VT > St. Mk xxx L. Tatsu > H. Tatsu xxx EX Tatsu (in air)
This is what I think was shown in the screenshot for his VT II. Essentially it’s the same combo but you’re cancelling H. Tatsu near the end of the animation with mid air EX Tatsu to finish the combo.
Now here’s a corner combo
() = Target Combo
JIP > Cr. HP xxx VT > (St. HK > St. HK) > St. MK > M. Tatsu xxx EX Tatsu > H. DP xxx EX DP
These are just a few combos I thought of, go ahead and share your own. None of these are guaranteed to work when the game comes out, these are only ideas.
It’s basically just a combo extender. After doing one of his specials, you can cancel into a EX special depending where the first special leaves you. So you can fireball and go into DP and then air fireball or if you DP then you could do air EX tatsu followed by air EX fireball since DP leaves you airborne. Damage doesn’t seem as good as VT1 unless you blow the whole thing at once and of course you lose his godly air fireballs and hard knockdown from his DP with VT1. But the main appeal of VT2 is that it’s two bars only. So you’ll likely be able to activate it twice a round unless you’re easily beating your opponent.
As far as utility goes, it does make some unsafe things safe. We can cancel his sweep into demon flip(this works for sure) or EX fireball I assume. And I’m guessing we should also be able to cancel his fireball and shaku. Imagine just spamming fireball non stop until your opponent finally jumps in on you, but you can instantly cancel into EX DP. Man that would be pretty cool if it works lol.
Maximillian had time to try out Akuma 2nd V-trigger, so far i’m not impressed. Even less if you consider you cannot use Raging Demon when on that V-trigger. People are probably gonna stick with V-trigger 1 once arcade edition comes out.
I can’t for the life of me figure out what they were trying to do with Akuma on-paper. Nothing needed nerfing and the only thing that needed buffing was his v-skill.
I’m going into things expecting an overall nerf just to avoid disappointment, but that aside, I really, really don’t know what the point of VT2 is. Losing SGS to gain… flashy not-that-damaging combos? Not to mention the entirety of VTII is based around combo extension after an update which… well… nerfs the damage of combo followups post-V trigger.
I could maybe see myself screwing around with it if it weren’t for that last bit. But since that’s the case, I’m just not seeing why I’d want to use it. Even as a more defensive/reactive player as far as Gouki players go, the appeal of perhaps making a few more things “safe” just doesn’t seem strong enough in my head to give up SGS.
In my head…
6HP got nerfed.
Pillar super got nerfed (can’t follow up with shoryu anymore as far as my research indicates)
M Tatsu situationally buffed
His V-skill 1-hit-of-armor-on-a-character-with-no-HP got nerfed (Seriously… they could have at least made it an actual parry if they were going to do this crap)
His 3-bar-v-skill-on-a-character-with-no-HP Shoryu got nerfed, in addition to the fact that using it as a Vtrig combo extender would have already been nerfed by system changes
Jumping MP… gonna have to do some serious testing to see what the hell this really does
But hey… that fireball you throw once every 3 matches actually got buffed at least.
Sarcasm aside, my friend initially drew my attention to the patch notes since I’ve all but quit SFV outside of money matches at this point and told me Akuma got buffed. I’ve read other people saying similar things, but nobody seems to explicitly say what got buffed.
Am I reading the wrong damn set of patch notes? What, useful, thing got buffed? But I’m fully off on a tangent here now. Going to keep an eye on this thread for reasons to bother with VT2, because I sure as hell can’t come up with any reason right now. Desk should get a kick out of it at least I reckon haha.
He pretty much only got hit with system changes. No more corner throw loop which nobody has anymore. But they did buff the damage and stun of his throw to compensate. His F+HP being -2 now is basically just to make it like every other move that avoids throw. But to compensate they did make it 1f faster and now it’s +5 on hit so he can link into st. MK. His MK tatsu is buffed as you say. Now two lights into MK tatsu actually nets you decent damage. The j. MP change is also a buff and if you choose VT2 then that VT will actually give you even more damage potential from this change.
The only real nerf that he got outside of system changes is that they seemingly swapped the meter drain between his fireball and air fireball in VT1 mode and the inability to juggle from his CA in the corner. Doesn’t surprise me though because they realized how much stronger the air fireballs were in neutral and they wanted to tone down damage. Overall I think he’s still definitely top tier. No reason for any Akuma player to drop him unless you just want to play someone else.
Yeah, having played Akuma over two decades I wouldn’t drop him regardless. But it still feels like an overall nerf (for no reason) and like they gave him a new vtrigger that would be “blah” even if it weren’t for the fact that vtrig combo extenders got nerfed, and they did. Making it a double head-scratcher of a vtrigger. He’s a solid teener on the tiers in my book and I didn’t see anything to change that one way or another.
But eh… Reckon we’ll see what’s what tomorrow. Side note though, so you’re saying they actually nerfed the meter drain of his air VT1 fireballs? Patch notes seem to indicate meter drain being reduced for both.
I see that, I’m going off old info that came from Capcom Cup. An Akuma player was there and said that Akuma can only throw a max of 4 double air fireballs instead of 5. I guess that was changed and actually buffed. I guess Capcom wants to give us an actual chance at using another VT special if we use 3 in a combo right away.
On another note, I don’t think Akuma players should use 2 specials anymore during a VT cancel combo. With the extra scaling I don’t think it’s worth ending with fireball > DP anymore. I’m just going to start ending with MK tatsu into DP instead. I think we should be saving the meter post knockdown instead of blowing it early for only a bit of extra stun and damage.
So, just played him a bit in training mode and things I’ve noticed:
throws lead to nothing mid screen, you can walk a bit or do a meaty fireball and if opponent jumps you can SRK in time (be careful of the moves that go through fireball ofc)
in the corner after forward throw, you get meaty cr.MK/MP (after slight walk), but opponent does not have to press anything
f.FP is negative BUT you can link MK after it (if you have one bar you can do MK Tatsu > EX SRK) or sweep if CH
j.MP can be comboed into Tatsu or if you are near corner and have 2 bars you can do EX Fireball into EX SRK
I really like VT2, although I still think VT1 is better. VT2 adds a bunch of different utilities. Here are some ideas
Combo extender: OK, this one everybody already knows. You can end with 2 VT specials even mid screen depending on the move. Plenty of creative ways to use this and I won’t dare try to list them all. But for example you can do something as simple as blowing up a throw tech with F+HP and then do st. MK, LK tatsu, HP DP, EX tatsu, EX fireball for 361 damage. Which is a pretty big step up from 238.
Buff your AA DP: This one is not as great as I thought it would be though. MP DP is our anti air and the problem is that it’s not consistent with the most damaging option, which is air EX tatsu(which would get you 227 damage). You have to DP really deep for it to connect, otherwise it whiffs. It is very consistent with EX air fireball though, but that only tacks on 81 extra damage for a total of 191. It is very consistent with HP DP though, but even though the damage is good it’s very risky to challenge a jump in with fierce DP.
EDIT: After more investigation, it’s best to combine this with EX DP as a AA or as wake up gamble. If you hit the EX DP deep or grounded then you get 349 damage. I’m going to start activating when my opponents are jumping from now on because everytime I activate any other way they just stop playing the game and want to cower like I have double fireballs ready to go.
Easy hit confirms/Footsies: It’s very easy to confirm his low forward fireball into EX SRK and then EX tatsu for 291-299 damage. Or just do SRK and save the meter if you want. You can do the same with cr. MK > MK tatsu. If you can’t hit confirm that and just buffer it and it hits, you can do EX air tatsu > EX air fireball for 289 damage.
Safe sweeps. With it being 2 bars, you can basically get 6 safe sweep cancels per round if you want. Now his longest range button is readily available without the fear of being punished.
There is probably more stuff but this is what I found after just messing around with it for 20-30 minutes. With it being a 2 bar VT this is something you can get twice per round to deal very good damage and buff up many aspects of your game. It’s not the round stealer that VT1 is, but I think it’s very good still.
EX-fireball cancelled with VT2-demon flip seems to work mid screen and not just during combos. Mid screen I can only get it to work at certain ranges (on block/hit from the fireball).
This post is basically the same as my previous post, but I just wanted to use gifs instead to better get the message across.
Hit confirm/footsies
Anti Air/Wake up DP
Sweep gimmicks/Mix ups
Another interesting one against the guys who react to and jump out in reaction to EX demon flip is if you did “near max distance low forward, HP Shaku, EX Demon flip palm”. They can’t jump out of that. Once they know that, they may sit still and allow to do other stuff. The sweep cancels give you some nice mix ups if they land with both back roll or quick rise. If you know that your opponent always gets up a certain way then it makes it easier to narrow your decisions down. Either way you can go for a cross up slide or dive kick which is trickier when they’re still waking up. If they back roll then the slide is meaty and is actually +8 on block.
I’ve rarely landed the AA option unfortunately. That’s actually the one I want to use it for the most but when I activate, my opponent refuses to do anything anymore. I end up wasting it on sweep cancels because I don’t want the meter to go to waste. On the other hand, I’ve won several rounds by combining it with my wake up DP. This does more damage than a wake up Super so the risk reward is definitely worth it if you feel like rolling the dice.
In the end I know non of this will matter because everybody is going to continue using VT1. It’s too bad because I think VT2 is actually pretty good. It would have been more useful in the hands of someone like Ryu instead since it actually rewards fundamentals. Which Akuma doesn’t necessarily need at lower/mid levels. But Ryu could definitely use it at all levels.
I’m really liking his VT2 so far.
In the corner you can do j hp, cr hp, st mk xx lk tatsu xx EX tatsu, EX shoryu xx EX tatsu and that’s 455 damage and 721 (!!) stun
Or if they don’t have vreversal available you can go for f hp xx vtrigger 2 activation, (b hp xx fireball xx EX red fireball) x 2, b hp xx lp shoryu xx CA. All that is a true blockstring (so no mashing through) and does about 240 chip damage
I didn’t mean for the block string to hit but this is the only way I could think of doing the video so that the dummy wouldn’t block the whole time or do a reversal light attack after blocking the first attack.
Anyways this is the idea. You throw a EX shaku and cancel into EX demon flip, but you have to create enough space or throw it raw from a far enough distance so that EX demon flip won’t hit your opponent. The further you are away(where you can still cancel into EX demon flip), the more frame advantage you have. I guess you are pushed back less when crouching because I tested against standing and crouching and the crouching Ken as you can see had me at +2 on block. When I had him standing I was +4 on block.
If they block the EX shaku then they have to take the following mix up. You can go for a slide and your opponent can’t jump out or beat it with a 3f normal. And since you can control the EX demon flips movement you can choose to stay in front or go behind. Same goes for whiffing a palm, I only did a cross up whiffed as an example for the video. If you condition your opponent with cross ups then you can go for a dive kick. But you have to delay it pretty late because if you do it too early then it will be a true block string from the EX shaku.
It’s nothing too crazy or strong, but it’s a nice little trick that I think will work(on your first try anyways) just because nobody has seen it before.
EDIT: Well damn it, after more testing this isn’t as good as I thought it would be lol. If you do nothing and just slide then it’s a true block string if they block the EX shaku. The only mix up is to whiff the palm either to stay in front or cross up and do a really late dive kick. The problem with the whiff palm is that it doesn’t look ambiguous enough. It’s easy for people to tell where your going to land.
The only block string I found that might be ambiguous enough is cr. MPx2, st. MP and you hold back on the EX demon flip but will still cross up with whiff palm. Besides that their is still the dive kick as well. So it’s a trick, but probably not a good one. I’ll still try it here and there to see how effective it can be with the various options.
