Can anyone give me advice here? What are his best buttons and what’s the general approach? Whenever I play Akuma I just hope to land an overhead or a low - I don’t know what to do with him. His buttons seem bad on paper, but I want to hear what the Akuma mains think about him.
I think his Cr.L doesnt have very good reach but it is pretty safe to poke with. Sometimes i like to do Cr.L, Cr.M, Cr.H and if they are blocking that, go for the overhead demonflip and if they block that, maybe start going high since they might think your gonna go low like you have been. High starting combo would be St.L, St.M, St.H, Forward H and demonflip L after. Id head over to the Akuma video thread and just look up how most people approach oppenings.
Who’s really worth watching, though? All the notable Akumas just use him as an Anchor/Assist.
ChrisG sometimes rocks Akuma on point and i feel that he does some really good work of keeping the pressure on with him. I dont necesarily think you should watch people who only keep him on point. Justin Wong has a great Akuma. Knives might be someone you should look for. Ricky Ortiz uses Akuma. Theres quite a bit. Just check out the video thread, theres some good stuff there. Brian Kasugano plays Akuma as well and hes a great player too.
One thing you gotta abuse is his air fireball, its not as good as magnetic blast(due to akuma’s lack of an air dash) but its really good. It covers his approach and he can combo off it if it hits, knives and chris g both have good akumas, chris g runs him on point occasionally but you could prolly learn more from knives since he plays him on anchor i.e. without any assists. Also justin wongs akuma is on point(not literally of course) and there’s a lot to learn from him as well.
But yea, the only things I advice with akuma is demon flip fireball a lot, its really useful.
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Haven’t watched this yet, but it might help.
Think I’ll try to revive this thread again. I want to talk about this more.
So Anyone else notice that Akuma is falling out of favor a little and Magneto seems to be taking his place? I think it’s because the likes of Vergil, Dante, and Dormammu are rocking the scene right now and they benefit more from the long range mixup than the lockdown. Starting from a 1 hit fullscreen projectile at 90K is winning over the lockdown provided by Akuma, Especially since that lockdown is being provided elsewhere by the likes of Sentinel and Doom.
With Magneto on the rise, it’s probably time to start looking at Akuma on point again, especially since he’s fallen out of Anchor Favor as well(Not bad, but people are finding other anchors to take his place like Vergil and Magneto and whatnot).
Asura Warp is way stronger as an approach tool than people give it credit for. It’s input can’t be crossed up because of it’s nature, the recovery is so fast that it can’t be punished except by mashing and supers, and it’s crossing-up can be tricky because of distancing and that he is in motion rather than ‘popping’. If you add in an assist to cover you, this stops mashing and if they beam or hyper or something, you can DP Hyper through them, adding in extra security, or even Raging Demon if you want to REALLY be safe. On top of this, Tatsu is a safe, safe, safe, safe move to use, but if you start with the Light one and add an assist call before hand, you get a combo starting from Tatsu, so it should b damaging. His ability to link Hyper moves and build a lot of meter from an air grab, capping off at about 750K by himself means his grab game is really strong and any combo he lands nets him at least an easy, free meter. Oh, and while his limbs are short, he may have the safest normals in the game. Heck, his sL is +5 on block, making it not only one of the safest (frame based) normals in the game, but leads to throw setups because of the frame advantage and his fast walkspeed.
My current point Akuma team is Akuma/Doom/Magneto(who I’m learning at the moment but meh). Doom missiles allow for great mixup opportunities, while Magneto allow for comboing off of Warp, Tatsu, pretty much anything else Akuma would want. And all of this is without the added pressure of his fireball game, which both of those assists can help with.
I’m starting to look at Akuma as a point character more too. He’s very underrated on point, especially with Missiles. I’m treating him as a shoto Magneto. Demon Flip/air fireballs like mad while calling Missiles. Almost a lot of Akuma’s stuff is safe. Don’t forgot that Goshoryuken is invincible too and you can always cancel it into beam super to make it safe.
I’m working on Akuma/Doom/Dorm (or maybe Akuma/Dorm/Doom), which you can say are variations of ChrisG’s and FChamp’s teams. Dorm gets a lot out of Tatsu and it gives him a nasty mid-range teleport rushdown game.
I think its just phases people go through, almost everyone played him in vanilla so Im guessing most of them are just trying out other anchors. Pair that with the current anchor vergil/wesker craze and its very understandable why so few people are playing him, plus to top it all off, a lot of people thought the assist was nerfed a lot worse than it actually was, thats why when vanilla popped up you had peeps flocking to shopping cart. Its still one of the top 3 assists in the game and akuma is a top 5 anchor so eventually they will all comeback, Im not even worried.
You raise a good point in regards to his teleport though. I literally forget he has that move, when vanilla launched and I saw it had significant start-up and everyone was talking about not using it, I just followed suit. But it definitely has its uses, I just wish akuma has a better hyper to cancel it into since he can’t combo off any of his current hypers. Apparently it has 4 frames of recovery, thats pretty darn good considering wesker has 20 on his fastest teleport(although one section of the guide says akumas teleport recovers in 20 frames while the other section says for so Im not sure who to believe.)
Im actually thinking about making an akuma guide similar to the one I made for sentinel, I feel it’ll help everyones akuma game if all the data about him is compiled into one easily accessible section.
I’ve been working more on my mixup game with Akuma seeing how I play him point, like doing Meaty Air Fireball, J. H, Call Sentinel, L Tatsu, Teleport, Overhead or low if they block the crossup and just going from there. Hella basic but it works till I get better stuff going.
I have the UMvC3 strategy guide, so if you need frame data, I can provide that info.
I do to. Long story short, sL is excellent tic throw(I think that’s the right term) setup at +5, every normal including Chop and Spin Kick is safe except cH, Fireballs are unsafe, Tatsu L is -1 but the others are positive, and everything else is varied or easy to identify as safe unsafe(All Demon Flip options safe, Goshoryuken not safe…duh)
Thanks for the support guys, ill try to get that started soon, the earlier the better.
Hi
Im a noob, so please excuse me. Right now I have a Wesker/Ryu/Doom team but I was thinking of replacing Ryu with Akuma.
Would that work? You’ve mentioned a lot players that either use him on point or as an anchor. I would like to keep both Doom and Wesker.
Thanks in advance.
Yes, that would work.
Man i need to get some of my matches recorded, apparently my Akuma/Dorm/Sent team is hella fun to watch.
I’ve been playing Akuma/Dormammu/Sentinel as my secondary team and it has worked out well.
I really like how all three characters work in separate pairs and I really like the DHC from both Dorm to Akuma and Akuma to Dorm.
This team just has so much power too. It tears assists apart and a normal Akuma combo into OTG beam into Chaotic Flame does around 1 mil or so.
I like the synergy between Akuma and Dorm, so I definitely would like to see what you have. 
Yea Im tryna improve my akuma game so I won’t mind watching a few of your videos, I play doom/sent/akuma but I could still learn nonetheless.
Good god, with assists, Demon Flip becomes so gooooooood. It’s like Berserker Slash with options in it. Demon Flip L right nxt to thm gives 1, a crossup, 2, a low 3, a high, 4 continued pressure and 5, throw setups. So Good.