Ok, seriously. WTF do i do against Akumas. I used to have no problems against most Akumas online. Facing some high end Akumas show me they know more than just zoning, and they can punish really hard. Also, they know how to teleport leaving me with very little to get back at them.
Dr. Chaos and anyone else helping with this thread: What do you do to punish Akumas, how do you put pressure? What normals are good to use without getting pwnd by his excellent sweep, and what do you do about his teleport, zoning fb ?
I feel like i’m always not far from winning an Akuma fight, but they just rely on a few things and win. Perhaps it’s also due to my inexperience with Akumas, but i’ve fought a few REALLY good ones who didn’t give me much openings and i felt stuck the entire time.
Should i be more defensive? More aggressive (if so, when? )
we can still have that though. it’s just we need to work as a group to write up match-up info and then when chaos deems it worthy he just puts a link to info in the main page, and i would think that’s a task that he would be more willing to undertake because of the much smaller amount of time needed. correct me if i’m wrong here chaos.
anyways i could try to do a write-up or 2 on matches that i know from both sides…
edit: as far as akuma goes, if the guy your fighting only has a zoning game then he is far from a high level akuma. akuma is high-tier because of his incredible offensive game (coupled with his teleport and air tatsu to escape and re-establish his offense). his ability to pressure safely and mix-up his offense is second to none. luckily though for ken he can’t be hit by lk tatsu > sweep. so ken doesn’t fall into the vortex as badly, but if you get knocked down your in for pain. as for beating his sweep out your gonna have to get a feel for it’s range, there is no magic bullet for it because it can be timed/spaced to punish any whiffed poke (this is what footsies actually is, spacing and timing your pokes to punish someone elses). what your looking for is to either start a cr.mk/mp before he starts sweep or to start it at the end of his sweeps active frames so you can catch him on sweeps recovery frames. although in close cr.lk/lp and cr.mk will all beat sweep since he has 5 frames of start-up on it compared to 3/4 on kens crouching normals, but like i said it’s not so cut and dry against good akuma’s.
Pay attention when the player teleports. Bait accordingly.
Also, if you can position yourself in such a way that the second kick of his roundhouse will whiff, you get a free combo. (Chaos is really good at this!)
unless akuma has ultra then he can cancel rh (far standing or sweep) into demon, if you try to punish s.rh with a cr.mk he can land ultra there. in terms of the sweep cancel if you try to focus his sweep he can demon to punish.
On Akuma you just want to be patient. You can’t really attack him after you knock him down so just stay on him, in a passive rushdown style. Just keep close by him. And poke him with low forward and S.Strong. Match his fireballs from time to time, focus, jump and whatever else to avoid them.
this is what i wrote up in the general discussion thread. if your actually having trouble with cannon SPIKE and not strike then you just need to work on your db skills, and realize you can punish with ultra, your own dp etc after she whiffs. to punish with ultra you don’t even have to move. to punish with dp you need to close distance and then dp.
first and formost in dealing with that mixup: DON’T PANIC!!! the objective of that mixup is to make you panic, you forget your options that way.
so now for your options and why the mixup is so tough to deal with. first of all the cannon strike (air to ground: aka her dive kick) used that way is a strong deterrent of 2 things; throws and low attacks, it beats both for free, if you want to throw anything out in hopes of catching her i recommend c. jab/strong or srk, but all of those options will lose to her cannon spike (dp) and the first 2 will lose if she puts her own throw in there. a option to avoid it is to backdash away from her, but if she delays her strike a bit she can punish that. so your gonna have to guess a bit about where she is going with it and act accordingly.
um… i can’t think of any other options when your in that mixup, neutral jump really fails hard because she could time a strike to hit you before you leave the ground… or if she misses that timing she still has plenty of time to beat you with a spike.
just stay patient, realize she doesn’t have a quick overhead, only her jumpins will hit you while your blocking low and be ready to tech her throw attempts (USE LATE TECHS, DO NOT SPAM OST she really wants you to do that). if you tech a throw attempt then you at least create a little space where you can keep her out, ideally you want her to be out of range except when your on offense.
ok, so got back into the lab a bit with my cammy after writing this up and i have a bit of new information on her cannon strike games… so jab and strong are not as safe as i was assuming, because while they beat the true TKCS (on the ground instant strike) they lose to a delayed tkcs (where she jumps to just above waist height and then strikes down) the delayed strike is actually designed to punish jab/strong etc. but it’s not all bad news, because none of her strikes can beat out a focus, so if you use level 1 focus > backdash it’s a effective way of getting out when you see her going for strike pressure.
edit: cammy allways has recovery frames from cannon strike so if you do a quick focus she can never avoid that shit.
hmmm i didn’t know that, that really cuts down her wake-up options.
oh, trading with a good cammy will not be fun for you as ken though, she can tack a fair amount of stuff on including her ultra so make sure you come correct on the jump-ins for oki pressure.
magman do you know if the short will lose to a deep like if she waits for you to cross over or does it just beat it period?
I notice a lot of Ken’s do something like… Jump-in, short, jab, fp.srk. From what I can understand the short is to try and break through their block if they did so, the jab is to leave you at a surplus of +frame advantage in which you can either link or cancel the fp.srk…
Are there any? I don’t know if Ken goes better than 5-5 with any of the cast. Maybe Guile and Vega? Dan? Sakura?
It really depends more on you and your opponent. You need to know the matchup, once you do then the character the other person uses matters less.
As for me, I quite enjoy playing against Sagat (just to bully him), Ryu (because he’s Ken’s rival IMO), Zangief (because you need to zone really well to keep him out) and Dhalsim/Seth (because you need to break down some heavy zoning to do big/any damage).
Probably should have posted this in the General Discussions thread. Anyways, the answer is yes, your jump-in (cross-up) hits high and then the cr.lk hits low so they have to block high then low and if they don’t you get your combo. Usually if you can catch the with the cr.lk it’s because they’re standing most people would try to follow up with a tatsu combo. Although some people prefer the knockdown.
My hugest match up problem is against Blanka, I can’t tell whether to block for blanka ball or focus for his ground slide.
I’m afraid to rush him down because if I try and get a cross up, just get electrified, if I rush to grab he can up blanka ball or punish me horribly with ultra, but if I do nothing, then he’s back to having the advantage. I really just have no clue on what to do against him.
blanka is a match-up where you really have to figure out what he is doing and work to deny him that tool. if he’s using a lot of horizontal blanka balls then you need to stuff those with cr. mp or lp once that tool is gone you should expect slides (bait them with a fireball every once in a while but don’t get predictable), rainbow balls (focus them) or hops which he can follow up with throws. also be mindfull that if he balls at you and he is moving very slow it’s very likely that he spaced it to stop before hitting you so he can throw or electricity mix-up. as for dealing with electricity spam it’s possible to jump in and stuff that shit with lk, your aiming to hit him either on the forhead for a jump-in and on the back of his neck for a cross-up, either way he will have to upball if he wants to AA you.
don’t get too aggressive against him and realize that he has almost no save methods of approach so just get yourself a lead and make him move so he losses his charge, once he doesn’t have that then your free to press the offense, but if he has a charge do NOT give in to his game unless you have to.
