The New Akuma Match-up Thread *Recent Update*

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
81

yeah… the forward dash stuff seems REALLY useful as far as mixing up wiff palm distances after heartstopper.

at this point for me its still theory though… i know it works… i just dont know how ambiguous it is…

i dont get to practice akuma versus good players much.

yeah it definitely works :tup: but the timing isnt EASY, you have to practice it in training mode…

as far as the d+mk shitty stun frames… yeah i know… but as i said in another post the d+mk generally hits VERY low to the ground making the block and hitsun much better, with this setup…

the only other thing i use d+mk for is as a wiffed crossup into ultra against folks that like to spam tech or crouching shorts after walking under your crossup attempt… if they are always trying to walk under crossups, that noob setup hits mofos like 100% of the time.

if they arent twitchy though, it will not work…

best used against people that fear you.

i definitely think its worth it to fadc into sweep after something like cr.mk xx fireball > fadc > sweep or the other one against characters that it hits: cr.mk xx fb > fadc > st.fp xx lk tatsu > sweep…

i use the first one alot as i dont know what characters the second one hits yet :stuck_out_tongue:

keep it in mind though that i’m NOT at ALL the person to be asking for akuma advice… i suck balls with him as i have little practice with him and i’ve only been using him for 1 or 2 days a week for like 3 weeks now… plus i’m just in general not a GREAT player in any way shape or form… i’m ok.

so take anything i say with a few grains of salt…

but the kara dash works and so does the safe jump. be wary about using the safe jump against characters that have ex command grabs though… they will beat out the d+mk.

yeah, i found it myself… still cant believe this isnt widely known… man, yall been slackin on the esoteric shit i guess…

general strategy threads are GREAT, they let you know more about your character in general than just bnb’s and such… i feel that akuma is one of those characters that just has SHITLOADS of tricks and untapped shenanigans left to discover… matchup strategy thread isnt very useful for those kinds of things… imho.

if you’re playing online, i’d say forget about it… its like 2-3 frame link timing imo…

i tried to show it to a fellow chun user that also seconds akuma and i couldnt get it out even once… and we have a 4 bar connect and only live 20 minutes away from each other…

but offline i’d say go for it, its free once you’ve got the timing down.

-dime

82

Yea… a gief that ISN’T in the know of how to deal with demon flips AT ALL is pretty much a 7-3 or so match-up for akuma… 8-2 offline. A gief in the know though the match-up actually becomes interesting because you can’t just bust it out 2/3 of a screen away and expect to get a free block string or a free combo. Try doing demon palm more often if he starts to counter your dive kicks. But its best do keep the demon flipping in to when you are at a disadvantage in hp, you can waste ex on a ex demon flip, or you have wake-up on them for some reason (because his mid-air headbutt can be a pain at certain ranges and he has more time to know if he should backdash etc etc.

As for rufus… just let go of the block once the first hit of the fatty flip hits you and just mash out your HP SRK. Or wait till the end to super (you can do better with only using 2 EX on a mp srk fadc though. Hell… you can wait till the end and combo him as well, but you have to make sure you block the last hit correctly (go low and if you see the overhead just stand up)…simple enough.

edit: forgot to mention… but you don’t have a reason to teleport out unless he jumps at you. Until then you just kinda have to play in the corner. But honestly gief has nothing in the corner without you doing something first. Blocked ANYTHING leads to a combo and his lp spd has good range and can grab a poking foot but a bad guess on his part leads to a hk combo/loop. one of the best ways on a GOOD geif/geif waiting on a tele to get out of the corner is to actually pressure him… not to teleport or tiger tatsu. They work, because the geif can’t be going towards and away from you at the same time, but trying to back them out with an EX red fireball or an EX hado nets you a little chip and a little more breathing room. Just low block on wake-up until you see his jump in. And if he is RIGHT on top of you then you can usually teleport too (just don’t mash it and rather learn to time your teleports on wake-up…which you should do ANYWAY… but helps you to learn to not teleport into shit)

  1. d mk also works well in a seth like manner where you use it to change the trajectory of your jump to being a little shorter than it would be otherwise. Obviously it works better for seth because of his long range wall jumps but it can still work for akuma to a lesser extent for baiting AA and then sweeping as well as just a nice safe way to get into footsie range. The horrible hitstun is why I’ve never really used it as an attacking tool online or offline. It only is a viable weapon on counter hit to some extent but a safe jump works… but its still a bait more than anything.

  2. Sweep and sweep set-ups are awesome against ANY character… even blanka. 2 bars to add a pretty decent amount of damage is great. Technically you get more damage off adding the sweep from the FADC than for adding a Red FB off a SRK FADC. And you get a mix-up… so why wouldn’t you? Akuma play revolves around quickly switching on the nitros and then pulling it back. If you get a chance to put the opponent on his butt for an unteachable knockdown then you should as long as you can DO the FADC into a sweep.

As for the tatsu into sweep, thats more of a give or take. First it doesn’t work on about half the cast (its in the character thread). But on the characters it DOES work on it generally is a pretty decent choice if you are good with your mix-ups (i.e - aren’t getting SRK every cross tatsu because you time it wrong, don’t just walk in and throw, don’t just jump in and they block, etc). Its NOT the same as a reset… its an actual knockdown… so don’t try and switch using it for using c.mp or cl.HP because thats not the point. But know your opponent then decide on which is better. Usually I’ll take straight damage over mix-up chances if I’ve never played someone before because if you know how to space with akuma it can be hard to get in on him but its well work the mix-up risk if you have even a slight read on your opponent.

  1. In all fairness I don’t think akuma is a huge safe jump user type character because of his low health and hearty mix-up options OTHER than safe jump. But its still no excuse for not having known sooner.

  2. I don’t have an issue with actual links online but yea… i probably won’t be risking using it for safe jumps online… I have a bad connection as of recent and don’t have enough time with basketball season and college curriculum to do a lot of playing anyway. Kinda have to pick on or offline.

i’ve gotta stop procrastinating writing up my labs…

83

@Dime

i can add a general strategy guide for akuma on the top of my post no problem, im actually still sifting through the old thread its taking wayyyy longer than i expected i have so much data this thread is gonna get a huge overhaul once i concise this info.

84

Thx for the tips GATOR.
My friend plays with Gief since WW so he is a master in SPD’ing. So sometimes on wake up on corner he just feels when you’re going to start blocking the shit out of his pokes and suddenly spd’s.
But i never fought about the ‘no jump-no teleport’ thing, i’m gonna practice that.
To be honest the score was 14x9 to him, it may sound like he raped me from my description but i was only commenting on my mistakes.

Another thing that happened is that he jumped a lot of my fireballs/air fireballs from 3/4 and full screen which was kinda frustrating. Changing the angle of the air fireballs was helpful tough.

85

great post :tup: thanks for confirming some of my thoughts.

about the safe jump:

i totally agree with what you said… i’d rather be vortexing a mofo than using a weak safe jump that once it is known is just going to net a blocked with frame adavntage for akuma d+mk.

however i think in 2 cases it will probably be very good:

a new user of akuma that doesnt know vortex well that NEEDS desperately to win some matches by being able to apply some safe pressure. (me… lol!)

against a person/character that deals with vortex pressure well/guesses right alot…

and against people that dont yet know that its a true safe jump setup and probably the easiest one in the game if i’m not mistaken.

but yeah, with ost, getting blocked jumpins is damn near worthless nowadays.

i agree that d+mk is an ok wiff to get closer… it was the first use i imagined for it… but insofar as yet i havent been able to put into my game.

also d+mk actually gets grounded slower sometimes than a regular jumpin… its easily verifiable by doing a sweep and holding up forward and doing a regular jumping attack which will wiff on the not yet standing opponent, yet if you time the d+mk any kind of slowly it will always make contact. if you perfectly time it it will still miss though…

i’m still trying to find a mind game to exploit that knowledge… but havent yet been able to come up with anything… this is how i found the safe jump.

lol well, i think general strategy sections are good. but dont do it on my behalf… needs to be a community decision imho… its only as good as the people that contribute to it :tup:

-dime

86

i think the community would appreciate it i might as well get on it any suggestions just PM them to me so i dont derail this thread too much thanks.

87

About you guys talking about safejump, I wouldn’t diss it so readily, there are so many characters that don’t fall to crossup tatsu so easily that fall PREY to safejumps, forcing them to block no matter what so that you can then throw in crossup tatsu as a mixup later. Examples are Balrog and Gouken.

Balrog’s EX dash punches can get him out of crossup tatsu every time. He doesn’t even have to think. If you safejump with demon flip palm, he will be hit out of any EX dash punch due to armor break into another untechable. This is his safejump against EX headbutt or ultra mind you. Even TAP can be punished once you land. Once you’ve proven to him that he has to block, then your entire mixup arsenal has opened up to you.

Also, Gouken’s counter can make crossup tatsu a guessing game. Not after you destroy it with demon flip palm, which safejumps his ultra, and all of his other reversals. His only way out of this is EX demon flip, which you can punish when he lands. After he realizes he has no escape, you can have your way with him the rest of the match.

Idk why you guys would throw away perhaps the best safejump in the game… unless I’m wrong?

EDIT: I know dime was referring to his safejump specifically… was more of a reference toward the comment about Akuma and his low-health making safejump strategy less effective plus to get the matchup information out there in case anyone didn’t know.

88

whether the d+mk safe jump becomes an integral part of akumas play remains to be seen…

oh yeah… duh… i found a good mixup for the fact that akuma can make the safe jump wiff or barely hit… lol low shorts once he lands from the early wiffing d+mk… so simple… but it will be awhile before people start to get hit by it… they will probably be mashing out reversals until they realize that it is a real safejump.

also… it seems like you guys are just taking my word for it…:confused:

has no one tested this yet?

i have many times, but its always best for others to try things out for themselves… you know… different people think differently…

anywho i didnt think it would be huge before i figured out cr.lk’s… but now that that is known… man akuma is going to assrape safejumpable characters…

i’m now dedicating myslf to applying this into all of my matchups until i can do both versions on command.

-edit… for whatever reason i couldnt get d+mk to wiff on the dummy i was playing against (chun-li)… maybe its character specific or maybe i was on crack when i thought i got it to wiff…

however it seems like just doing an early wiff jumping normal and then transferring to cr.lk will work almost as well if the opponent was expecting to have to block the d+mk…

-dime

89

Nah I tested it out, only briefly though. Set akuma to record the safejump after sweep against Sagat. It worked but I’m going to test it again with more scrutiny before I use it. The timing does seem strict though.

90

does a DFDK stuff the lariat every time if i hit kick early? is it dependent on being centered correctly, or executed early? whenever i’m in a match i tend to wait until akuma gets close before i do the kick but always get lariat in my face. but in training, i always stuff the lariat without even trying to time it.

91

Does Akuma’s tatsu go through any FB? I have tried to do it but got hit by FB. I usually dont have problems with Ryu or Ken’s anti-FB tatsu. IS the timing different for Akuma?

92

I think Ryu/Ken’s lower body invincibility to projectiles lasts longer.

93

Gotta space it just right to where it’ll hit his head, can’t just dfdk anywere IIRC. Not many people pick Gief when they see me playing Akuma on the cab, so I don’t know the matchup well.

94

VS a good gief you have to hit that exactly right, because if you dont they can do a late lariat trade into ex green hand or OKI options every single time.

I’ve almost just given up attacking geif with the dive kick unless its a good wake up situation because the giefs i play Locally are no slouches, its not worth the risk of getting traded with and then green handed to me.

but every player is different some might not have the reflexes to trade with your dive kick every time.

95

Ok guys, one more question:

When punishing a Running Overhead EX from Balrog you can basically punish with a cr.lk, cr.lp and cr.mp.
From what i could understand from frame datas, cr.lp gives you 2 frames to punish and cr.lk and cr.mp only 1 frame, right ?

Considering the timing difficulties, what should be the best option ?
Cause 1 frame to punish relying on 40dmg seems a little to rough i guess even for jap execution.

THx

96

No, his overheads are all at least -5 on block, if not more. That gives you two frames for c.MP and 3 for c.LP/c.LK into whatever combo.

97

c.lk has 4 startup frames.

Anyways yeah, rog’s overhead is mad punishable…if you’re playing online and the conn isn’t good just go for a fierce shoryu…190 guaranteed damage and it’s really hard to fuck up. Otherwise c.mp xx lk tatsu, hp shoryu has the best difficulty/damage ratio.

98

you can do Demon Flip Grab and itll beat a late lariat every time if the Gief player is good enough to time the lariat for the dive kick

Can someone give like a specific breakdown of stuff to do vs Balrog, i recently lost my groove when i play vs him and i used to know what to do but my mind just went blank

the main explaination for the match up on the first page doesnt rly help much since im looking for specific things to do

99

u can focus most of his special moves. overheard breaks armor, but if blocked i s quite punishable as they’ve mentioned above. full screen ex-anything can be srked on reaction (so far as i can tell) or cr.mk xx Ultra’d almost everytime. when hes jumping in and pressing close spaces is the worst part since his jumpins and jabs are so fast and balrogs love tick throws. Try to stay away from corners, but if you can’t, far.HK can have decent pressure (dont spam).

100

I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but after untechable knockdown use demon flip palm safejump as go to option , totally prevents escape. Also his EX dash punches plow right through your stHK… so be cautious. crMK is too risky to counterhit with, say after you block a special and you’re close… if you’re looking for anything it should be crMP xx get the hell outta there. But basically if you aren’t completely going nuts on him after knockdown you probably won’t win unless they really fucked up or you were able to keep them out after gaining a sizeable life lead early on.

EDIT: How specific do you want? I mean what do you know about the matchup?