Thought I might shake off the rust a little bit. I haven’t played in nearly a month.
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Richard’s match against Gamerbee is up - [media=youtube]qPzScv2557Q[/media]
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Watch, rate, comment. Slowly working my way up, recently got down the tatsu-sweep to near-perfection, along with general bits of Akuma gameplay. I now no longer do fireball chip-damage on wake-up 
(Thanks, Richard!). Be kind when commenting!
MAJOR THANKS TO VENOM2099 FOR UPLOADING THIS FOR ME, HE’S A G!
Okay, there are some mistakes here and some signs of playing on auto-pilot that I put down to inexperience. 
Some other things I’ll put down to lag.
So first with the Dudley match:
If you watch back on your close cr.MP pressure, you’re focused on getting the frame trapped cr.MP into sweep, but you keep doing the sweep even on block and it’s blowing your pressure. I understand that the sweep can hit them if they try a counter poke or a step forward or something, but he’s not moving and you’re doing it each time; the sweep pushes him out of your offence on block. It’s also something he can notice and focus or ultra next time as he did in round two.
One instance I saw you get a counter hit cr.MP and then follow up with a second cr.MP, realise you missed your sweep and then swept on a false link from the second cr.MP. It can be quite a common habit even for people that know better, though it has the same problems listed above.
Most of your frame traps were not catching his tech timing, so you need to try different timings and traps to search for where he’s got his tech hidden; or to try a walk-up throw to see if he is even using a tech at this point. Even if it’s teched, you ‘represent’ (as S-Kill would say) the throw in his mind; so you may then get more success out of your sweep thing after the failed frame trap. (But I think you should low forward fireball instead of the sweep due to focuses. It can also be FADC’d to combo on hit or get back in on block)
Keep in mind aswell that cr.MP x2, while an interesting frame trap, has hella pushback on block and kills your pressure if it doesn’t pay off.
I saw one or two seemingly random demon flips in during this match too. Try to ensure you’re not doing anything where you’re just throwing it in and hoping. Attack for a reason and with a clear vision of what you’re trying to land on and what the other characters capabilities of stopping it are.
Another thing I saw is that this Dudley player was trying to counter poke with something every time he blocked your sweep. Experienced players look for these little patterns in the opponent throughout every match. When the opponent sticks something out like this, they lose their ability to AA with a normal like cr.HP when they see you jump. Outside of SRKs, not many specials are good enough to counter jumps at this point either. If you noticed this, you could have made an adjustment to catch him out by doing a jump roundhouse to get in and go back into tick and trap pressure or demon flip throw or try a cross tatsu depending on the range at the time.
There’s also very heavy use of jump back air fireball, flip palm in during this game. While it’s a good way to close the gap and get back in close when they block the air fireball, there are other ways to do this and you’re over-using this trick. It’s limiting your zoning and making it predictable since you’re doing all your air fireballs at the top of your jump.
Like Ibuki does with her slide, I think Dudley could also have used EX MGB to go underneath and get you almost every time there.
When using defensive air fireballs to control space, throw them more like ShadyK is doing in this vid:
[media=youtube]IdaCTdE4rBU[/media]
Now with the second round; he got you with the random ultra, but there were mistakes of yours that allowed a random ultra to work. First you stayed true to form with your normal after the blocked cr.MP, which he had the timing scouted for. Second, you were playing your game in a neutral context.
In reality you had about 65% life to his 6%. In that situation I usually just park on d/b when close and it’s like “come on dude, what you gonna do?”. I don’t poke or counter poke (unless it’s there on a plate) and if they jump I’ll use cr.HP to kill them. You can also just tap a jab or some other blocked poke then do nothing and watch the reversals fly. When not close, just zone conservatively and take the chance to see what their tendancies are.
With a big life lead like that, most match-ups become like 8-2 in your favour. They need something big to kill you (like a random ultra ) and it’s an opportunity to scout out the ideas they have for initiating damage on you. Even if you lose an extra 20-40% before they go down, it doesn’t make any difference.
The Ryu match:
The flip in at 3:15 again seemed somewhat random. It’s SRK fodder if he hadn’t focused. Obviously after a fireball hit at that distance, or any mid-field fireball trade (except when both characters are full screen) an EX or normal demon flip will punish them if they immediately throw another fireball; but you should be observing his tendancies first and then flipping when you identify a pattern.
Instead of looking for the patterns first and thinking “right, he usually only throws a second after a trade that’s very close to me; after throwing two he usually walks forward and does something different. Flipping in early is a bad idea unless I draw out the fireball war more and find a pattern somewhere there.” most of the time you’d throw one, maybe two fireballs and then just flip in hoping that he happened to throw something at the wrong time.
You can do more off the palm knockdowns you get too. I suggest putting a little time into picking up the cross-up air fireball trick here, as it’s golden when you can time it slightly differently to make it a non cross-up.
Again you had him low and on a narrow life lead in round one, and cut it a little close with a demon flip that could have got you thrown or swept and possibly killed on the oki.
The Ibuki match:
The teleport out of the corner was a bad idea. I consider teleport one of my last options for escaping the corner. Looked to me like you made your mind up when she stepped forward after the throw, or maybe during the throw. Fortunately she lacked the walk speed to trap you. When cornered, I wait it out and look to draw them in to commit to something where I might use air tatsu if they want to start poking me. Alternatively, if they do nothing I step forward and take the ground I can get.
That walk forward, walk back trap is the thing used to christen inexperienced Akumas; don’t take that crap like I did. All you have to do is not teleport unless it’s free or some ambiguous corner jump-in.
6:06 you got a cr.HP since the guy was looking to jump on that late sweep of yours and you didn’t do it. Nice SGS bait.
He peaced you out at the end because you were sticking out normals after getting probed with a block/hit string and lost the chance to AA the follow-up jumps.
Don’t mean to give the vid a grilling, just trying to pin-point as many things to help you notice stuff quicker.
Not at all, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you 
I take these things to heart, so I’ll be practising tonight. A few questions though:
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I also noticed I rely alot on cr. mp and sweep, and I’m not good at cancelling the demon from sweep to anti-FA so I get tagged with them semi-often. In watching other Akuma’s I noticed they rely more on cr.lk/cr.jab to catch holes, and this also protects them from FA’s and jump-ins since the moves recover faster. I think I’ll try doing cr. jab into BnB.
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One thing I’m a bit lost on is getting in when an opponent isn’t doing too much. Know what I mean? Those DF Palms I’m doing are basically to catch a random move, but even then I’m just hoping. When I play Cammy in HDR I literally just walk in to get within cr. mk range, would something like that work here? The stages are so damn big in this game and sometimes I get lost. Eh.
Thanks for everything so far, I may have questions later. Also, FYI - I’m about 50 hours into SSIV. Probably 35 of them have been using Akuma, so I think I’m progressing pretty fine (at least I hope)
Remember that Akuma can take his time and is not under any immediate pressure to get in.
Walking forward does indeed eat up a fair amount of ground in those pauses where the opponent isn’t doing something due to Akuma’s speed. You need to consider options relative to match-ups though. Against a Ryu that throws a high volume of fireballs, walking forward won’t get you very far; neither is it a good idea against a Balrog that loves dashing straight. You can make the neutral jump adjustment on straight to punish it on the way down if they think they can do it whenever you’re inside half screen so you can secure some time to advance. Like-wise in those phases where Ryu doesn’t have so many fireballs on the brain, you can walk forward and eat away at the ground while he’s hesitating.
The most universal solution for dealing with less spammable tools that intercept walking (like Blankas slide) is to do little steps forward then crouch on d/b. Step, d/b, step, d/b, step, d/b.
Also, when you’re dealing with characters that use AA normals at specific ranges to push you back out for jumping towards them; ( from Guiles standing fierce to Dhalsims standing roundhouse) keeping in mind that you have multiple ways to adjust your jump-ins and the timing for AAing them. If the normal is timed to beat an ordinary jump, then the normal will be on an early timing when you instead jump and d+MK command dive kick to come down on top of their limb. A delayed dive kick from a demon flip that stops short of them is excellent for coming down on top of AA normals, and while it’s not always in range for a follow-up, you still win the ground. You also have air fireballs and EX air fireballs, which are great for the mix.
Notice the air fireball you did at 10:58 in your vid. You’ve been using air fireballs mostly defensively, but this is a useful way Akuma can gain ground because it’s very difficult to stop with ground-to-air AA methods and forced the guy to block where you can step forward to reach sweep range. It’s much better if you’re doing it either before the apex or after though, rather than at the apex. Doing it early provides great cover and is better for closing smaller distances. When you’re further out, you can jump from 4/5 screen away (over a fireball for example) and air fireball coming down to act as a kind of shield from ground-to-air AAs as you land about 1/2 - 1/3 screen distance. Should point out for this that normal air fireball is kinda eh, where the EX one is still very good.
If you jump forward and do an early EX air fireball around 60-80% height of your upward jump from the right distance and they block the fireballs you get to jump HK in for free (as they block) and start your close tick pressure.
On the tick pressure: the cr.LPs and LKs give more chances to catch a tech while they push back less and keep the throw or another trap in the mix. It helps to have the variety of both; rather than simply siding with light attacks over strongs, or strongs over lights.
One thing I forgot to mention: the last match against my friend Engravings’ Vega is quite old, most of the things there have changed (such as landing BnB’s and actually knowing how to tatsu-sweep). I only put it in to show off the Demon I managed to land :lol:
[media=youtube]iam_17D2GdA]YouTube - GamerBee [Akuma] vs ippis [Ibuki[/media]
A few weeks ago, I was extremely fortunate to meet up with Hondatech during an online Endless session and play some matches against him. Yeah, my sucky Akuma got bodied and no, I didn’t get to go against his main (Chun-Li) but he was more than good enough with his alts.
Here’s the first part where he chose Ryu and Cammy. I’ll have part 2 up tomorrow:
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EDIT: Part 2’s up now. Really gotta thank hondatech for those matches. I messed up a whole bunch of times, but I learned a lot.
[media=youtube]MlQxU6h84U4]YouTube - Eita [Akuma] vs nedell [Ryu[/media]
[media=youtube]KpF4qx65j0Q]YouTube - Mago [Akuma] vs mayas2 [Fei[/media]
HAH!! I just saw and saved these two replays on my Xbox! That combo at the end in the Eita match as S-I-C-K, SIIIIIIIIIIIICK!! :nunchuck::china:
And Mago playing Akuma?!!?? :wtf:
Mago looked worse than me in that match, damn. Give him time though, he’ll be beasting eventually.
I know Mago can woop my ass stone drunk, but I think he should stick to Fei. :lol:
[media=youtube]vDEGMWn8LS8]YouTube - Yuu? [Akuma] vs ice0age r [Balrog] densawa [Gief[/media]
[media=youtube]UiRTZ5IM098]YouTube - Mago [Akuma] vs naopi708 [Ryu[/media]
Mago [Akuma] vs yokuboo [Gief] – [media=youtube]XwWm-j1O4pI[/media]
I have a feeling that Mago might be working on making Akuma his alternate to counter Daigo’s Guile, it would be awesome if that’s the case, Mago is a zoning monster, would really like to see him use Akuma to his full potential (hope Akuma won’t get nerfed in the process lol).
Mago may just be using Akuma to help him with the match-up. Quite a few top players do that.
He’s getting his counter pick ready for daigo’s guile.
Which will fail when he runs to ryu
Then he runs to fei
Then he runs to guile
Then he runs to akuma…
By now you realize this game has sadly boiled down to match ups.
[media=youtube]5fSNvxWKVVc]YouTube - GamerBee [Akuma] vs bosco leung [Cammy[/media]
[media=youtube]MWpGfLZe0J4]YouTube - Eita [Akuma] vs Fujino [Akuma[/media]
Haha I like Eita’s unblockable in the second round. And of course his U2 punish in the third round 8). That was godlike.
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