On July 30 2012 02:56 Nikon wrote: How hard is it to play Akuma? Shikyo's post is making me think of picking him up kekeke
P.S. Hakan is surprisingly high on the list, given what I know about him.
A lot of top players have tried akuma at some point and just gave up. He is definitely one of the harder characters to learn because of so many different character specific set-ups, and set-ups are very important for Akuma.
You will fail. Especially since you are just picking up the game, presumably. You will fail hard.
Kind of... But not really.
His BnB is incredibly easy, c.HP -> LK Tatsu -> Shoryuken already deals a ton of damage(way above average for punish BnB). His fireball zoning is great. As a beginning player, you can completely ignore getting pressured on wakeup better than anyone in the entire cast.
Also the mixups really aren't that difficult to begin with, you don't need to do crazy stuff at all. Footsies -> score a sweep -> demon flip -> opponent already has to play a rough guessing game. You don't really need to learn much more than the demon flip throw and the demon flip kick at the start, though it's nice to be able to do empty demon flip palm -> grab as well, still for a beginner player you can do a basic vortex very easily. Optionselecting sweep is pretty simple and an easy way to make those more dangerous as well.
He has the potential to be super dificult and advanced but as a beginner you can still make very good use of him. Fast walkspeed, superb pokes and the best fireballs in the game help with footsies and the demon flip okizeme works on the entire cast just fine. Also, again, he has the best get-out-of-jail freecard in the game and the shared best reversal in the game. I'd even say it's the very best Shoryuken because you can actually hitconfirm the FADC.
His fireball game is actually not that great, and he will probably just jump-back fireball until he dies like most players who try to pick up Akuma. Best fireball in the game? What are you smoking?
Good luck getting your BnB going as a beginner player, especially with Akuma's beefy 850 HP.
"...you don't need to do crazy stuff at all. Footsies -> score a sweep.." lol this is your advice to a beginner? Tell him to do "footsies" in passing, like it's pressing a button.
On top of jump back fireball bad habit, teleporting on wakeup as a get out of jail card will be a very bad habit to pick up and most decent players know how to bait it out and punish it anyway.
On top of that, all of his set ups require that he has knockdown set ups, and playing against online warriors who mash reversal on wakeup, overall Akuma is a terrible idea.
Id say there are at least 5 people in the game with significantly better fireballs than Akuma. Also yeah, just doing random demon flips in once you score a knockdown will have you running into thousands of dps every game you play online unless you actually learn the safejump setups, which is the difficult bit of Akuma and takes alot of work. If you dont have Akumas vortex you may as well play Ryu because itll just be a better version of the same character.
On July 30 2012 02:56 Nikon wrote: How hard is it to play Akuma? Shikyo's post is making me think of picking him up kekeke
P.S. Hakan is surprisingly high on the list, given what I know about him.
A lot of top players have tried akuma at some point and just gave up. He is definitely one of the harder characters to learn because of so many different character specific set-ups, and set-ups are very important for Akuma.
You will fail. Especially since you are just picking up the game, presumably. You will fail hard.
Kind of... But not really.
His BnB is incredibly easy, c.HP -> LK Tatsu -> Shoryuken already deals a ton of damage(way above average for punish BnB). His fireball zoning is great. As a beginning player, you can completely ignore getting pressured on wakeup better than anyone in the entire cast.
Also the mixups really aren't that difficult to begin with, you don't need to do crazy stuff at all. Footsies -> score a sweep -> demon flip -> opponent already has to play a rough guessing game. You don't really need to learn much more than the demon flip throw and the demon flip kick at the start, though it's nice to be able to do empty demon flip palm -> grab as well, still for a beginner player you can do a basic vortex very easily. Optionselecting sweep is pretty simple and an easy way to make those more dangerous as well.
He has the potential to be super dificult and advanced but as a beginner you can still make very good use of him. Fast walkspeed, superb pokes and the best fireballs in the game help with footsies and the demon flip okizeme works on the entire cast just fine. Also, again, he has the best get-out-of-jail freecard in the game and the shared best reversal in the game. I'd even say it's the very best Shoryuken because you can actually hitconfirm the FADC.
His fireball game is actually not that great, and he will probably just jump-back fireball until he dies like most players who try to pick up Akuma. Best fireball in the game? What are you smoking?
Good luck getting your BnB going as a beginner player, especially with Akuma's beefy 850 HP.
"...you don't need to do crazy stuff at all. Footsies -> score a sweep.." lol this is your advice to a beginner? Tell him to do "footsies" in passing, like it's pressing a button.
On top of jump back fireball bad habit, teleporting on wakeup as a get out of jail card will be a very bad habit to pick up and most decent players know how to bait it out and punish it anyway.
On top of that, all of his set ups require that he has knockdown set ups, and playing against online warriors who mash reversal on wakeup, overall Akuma is a terrible idea.
I question your knowledge of this game.
Aerial Fireball is the best fireball in the game.
I don't see how the health has anything to do with anything... When I started playing online I could do his BnB just fine, much easier than other characters' that I've tried to pick up.
I'm not going to type how to play footsies, however Akuma with his fast walkspeed is one of the best characters for learning footsies with and his sweep is probably the best in the game as well, I wouldn't be surprised if you could land it by just timing it as the opponent was walking up to you. That, waiting for opponent to jump -> sweeping his landing, or moving back when opponent gets into range -> sweeping. Those are all pretty simple ánd effective things to do in the beginning. His footsies are far easier than someone like Makoto's.
Jump back fireball isn't that bad actually in the correct situation but the fact that his Shakunetsu wins every fireball war really helps. Teleporting on wakeup is something almost all top players do regularly so if that's a bad habit... Either way, it's a far better habit than mashing SRK.
Speaking of mashing SRK if you play vs people like that you just need to bait it out(akuma can do so easily although this requires a bit more thought) and then go with a full punish.
I really don't get your points. Yes jumping back all game while shooting air fireballs is terrible, but as a beginner you don't need to play stupid. He has many very effective tools even for a beginner.
Safejump setups are too advanced for this, if they really mash DP you can just empty jump into block, really easy. You can even just walk next to them and block. DP mashing is one of the easiest things to deal with for every character, not just akuma.
Also you can't even safejump DPs at all so I don't understand why you bring that up.
You're telling someone how to cheese in bronze league. While your advice has a basis in training mode / online matches, in decent level offline matches being able to react to things makes everything change since it is much harder to deal damage and avoid it.
Health matters when learning because with Akuma's HP, he can make around 2 mistakes in a game before he should be dead (whiffed uppercut, incorrect block on a jumpin etc.) This also amplifies any downside to akuma's options because giving your opponent an opportunity to punish matters that much more. This is made even worse by the fact that akuma's playstyle requires you to take risks
Punish BNBs is not reliable source of damage because you are waiting for your opponent to mess up. Akuma's regular hit-confirm/blockstring combos are pretty much standard shoto ones or only work on non-crouching characters (tatsu)
Akuma's sweep while fast and ok range, has 24 recovery frames (allows free dash in on whiff) and -9 on block allowing most players a free counter sweep or punish depending on range. While its great because he gets amazing options off it, its not the best sweep in the game.
Air Fireball and Red Fireball are not the best fireballs. Air Fireball does very little damage compared to how vulnerable it leaves you which is why it is usually only used as EX or in setups. Red Fireball has massive startup/recovery so while it may beat other fireballs it doesn't win the war because at full screen a neutral jump over it puts you behind on the next fireball and at any other range you can probably be punished with a jump in
Teleport on wakeup for top players isn't a habit its a very high risk gamble. They expect 90% of the time to get hit with an option select, god forbid the teleport is read.
Safejump setups is like the first level of Akuma oki. There are setups for all dps even 3f reversals can be made to whiff
hi i m the biggest noob to ever try a fighting game with 6 hours time/week i tried akuma and it sucked (mainly because in a real game i couldnt land his bnb / died sooooo fast..)
now i play t hawk and condor dive a lot ^_^
edit : its nearly as much fun as hugo in sfxt =D everything is just way...slower ..which is good i think to learn stuff.
Here I was thinking we were talking about beginners and how difficult he is to play for them and how they're going to lose 50 games in a row. I still think that Air Fireball is the best fireball in the game by the way. I never said Red Fireball is the best fireball in the game, it just makes you win all the ground fireball wars, which is very useful because with it you can force opponents to come to you, also with a good fireball game vs beginners you might be able to get into a jumpin -> antiair situation which is a freewin
Punish BnBs are pretty reliable to a beginner but that doesn't even matter. His punish BnB is still extremely easy, I don't see your point? You only need 2 comboes early: Hit confirm/blockstring(likely cr.LP cr.LP cr.MP Fireball or some variation) and punish combo(c.HP LK Tatsu HP SRK). Both are very easy for Akuma so you can concentrate on other things pretty soon.
Cheesing in bronze league... I'm saying you don't need million billion setups and tricks and all kinds of crazy stuffs to begin learning Akuma. SF isn't like SC2, you don't just use one BO and then need to learn a completely different one. Oh he SRKs sometimes? Let me incorporate empty jumps to punish those so he can't do that so much. Oh he teches all my tick-throws after 2 jabs? Let me sweep after 2 jabs next time. Just because you choose to learn a few specific things early on to help you win against beginning players doesn't mean that you can't expand upon that as the need arises.
Teleporting as a beginner vs Ibuki can be far better than playing 10 games in a row where you just get vortexed with no way out, it helps with frustration and helps you win early on, of course you can't just spam it later on. If your teleport gets punished you need to make a mental note about that and consider not doing it if the enemy has an ultra that can punish it, for example. Still Akuma does have the option while, say, Ryu does not.
One more thing for Vortex, just mixing jumpin HKs and crossup Tatsus is going to be very effective, and if the enemy has shown that he loves DPing then you can use the empty jumps etc. You always want to adapt of course, Akuma has the tools to though, and doesn't require you to spend half a year in the training room to do so either.
Oh yeah and beginning footsies are really easy with Akuma, I know that his sweep can be punished on whiff(Though vs beginners that's going to usually be a throw that you can tech or a short string or maybe a sweep. Unless they have ultra of course.), however he can still win almost all the games against beginners with just some basic footsies, mainly because of his walkspeed.
Basically:
Opponent walks in -> sweep. Pretty simple. Another is you walk in -> instantly block low when you are in his range. Now you will see what he does, if he attacks right away you walk in -> walk back -> sweep to punish. Fireballs -> opponent jumps -> SRK. And so on. He can play as a basic shoto and it's not a bad way to learn to play, contraty to popular belief you don't need to play Akuma 100% differently from other Shotos.
I guess there's some confusion about what I'm talking about, the dude said that when you're starting to play as Akuma you'll lose nonstop and it's going to be incredibly difficult. I disagree with this. As a starter you can do fine as a beginner with some very basic footsies utilizing the movespeed and very basic Shoto Fireballs -> SRK jumpin strategies and fishing for sweeps. Later on after you get some experience you can learn all the different setups and FADC comboes but you seriously don't need to know them to keep yourself from losing nonstop as a beginner. Akuma is very good at letting his opponents beat themselves anyway.
Also finally I could point at Infiltration, he doesn't use many fancy setups at all, in fact it's mostly just very simple demon flip okizeme with some sweep option selects mixed in. You don't need to memorize 50854903584 different setups against every single character to play Akuma effectively.
On July 30 2012 15:43 pachi wrote: You're telling someone how to cheese in bronze league. While your advice has a basis in training mode / online matches, in decent level offline matches being able to react to things makes everything change since it is much harder to deal damage and avoid it.
Health matters when learning because with Akuma's HP, he can make around 2 mistakes in a game before he should be dead (whiffed uppercut, incorrect block on a jumpin etc.) This also amplifies any downside to akuma's options because giving your opponent an opportunity to punish matters that much more. This is made even worse by the fact that akuma's playstyle requires you to take risks
Punish BNBs is not reliable source of damage because you are waiting for your opponent to mess up. Akuma's regular hit-confirm/blockstring combos are pretty much standard shoto ones or only work on non-crouching characters (tatsu)
Akuma's sweep while fast and ok range, has 24 recovery frames (allows free dash in on whiff) and -9 on block allowing most players a free counter sweep or punish depending on range. While its great because he gets amazing options off it, its not the best sweep in the game.
Air Fireball and Red Fireball are not the best fireballs. Air Fireball does very little damage compared to how vulnerable it leaves you which is why it is usually only used as EX or in setups. Red Fireball has massive startup/recovery so while it may beat other fireballs it doesn't win the war because at full screen a neutral jump over it puts you behind on the next fireball and at any other range you can probably be punished with a jump in
Teleport on wakeup for top players isn't a habit its a very high risk gamble. They expect 90% of the time to get hit with an option select, god forbid the teleport is read.
Safejump setups is like the first level of Akuma oki. There are setups for all dps even 3f reversals can be made to whiff
Agree 100% with everything.
On July 30 2012 16:08 Shikyo wrote: Here I was thinking we were talking about beginners and how difficult he is to play for them and how they're going to lose 50 games in a row. I still think that Air Fireball is the best fireball in the game by the way. I never said Red Fireball is the best fireball in the game, it just makes you win all the ground fireball wars, which is very useful because with it you can force opponents to come to you, also with a good fireball game vs beginners you might be able to get into a jumpin -> antiair situation which is a freewin
Punish BnBs are pretty reliable to a beginner but that doesn't even matter. His punish BnB is still extremely easy, I don't see your point? You only need 2 comboes early: Hit confirm/blockstring(likely cr.LP cr.LP cr.MP Fireball or some variation) and punish combo(c.HP LK Tatsu HP SRK). Both are very easy for Akuma so you can concentrate on other things pretty soon.
Cheesing in bronze league... I'm saying you don't need million billion setups and tricks and all kinds of crazy stuffs to begin learning Akuma. SF isn't like SC2, you don't just use one BO and then need to learn a completely different one. Oh he SRKs sometimes? Let me incorporate empty jumps to punish those so he can't do that so much. Oh he teches all my tick-throws after 2 jabs? Let me sweep after 2 jabs next time. Just because you choose to learn a few specific things early on to help you win against beginning players doesn't mean that you can't expand upon that as the need arises.
Teleporting as a beginner vs Ibuki can be far better than playing 10 games in a row where you just get vortexed with no way out, it helps with frustration and helps you win early on, of course you can't just spam it later on. If your teleport gets punished you need to make a mental note about that and consider not doing it if the enemy has an ultra that can punish it, for example. Still Akuma does have the option while, say, Ryu does not.
One more thing for Vortex, just mixing jumpin HKs and crossup Tatsus is going to be very effective, and if the enemy has shown that he loves DPing then you can use the empty jumps etc. You always want to adapt of course, Akuma has the tools to though, and doesn't require you to spend half a year in the training room to do so either.
Oh yeah and beginning footsies are really easy with Akuma, I know that his sweep can be punished on whiff(Though vs beginners that's going to usually be a throw that you can tech or a short string or maybe a sweep. Unless they have ultra of course.), however he can still win almost all the games against beginners with just some basic footsies, mainly because of his walkspeed.
Basically:
Opponent walks in -> sweep. Pretty simple. Another is you walk in -> instantly block low when you are in his range. Now you will see what he does, if he attacks right away you walk in -> walk back -> sweep to punish. Fireballs -> opponent jumps -> SRK. And so on. He can play as a basic shoto and it's not a bad way to learn to play, contraty to popular belief you don't need to play Akuma 100% differently from other Shotos.
I guess there's some confusion about what I'm talking about, the dude said that when you're starting to play as Akuma you'll lose nonstop and it's going to be incredibly difficult. I disagree with this. As a starter you can do fine as a beginner with some very basic footsies utilizing the movespeed and very basic Shoto Fireballs -> SRK jumpin strategies and fishing for sweeps. Later on after you get some experience you can learn all the different setups and FADC comboes but you seriously don't need to know them to keep yourself from losing nonstop as a beginner. Akuma is very good at letting his opponents beat themselves anyway.
Also finally I could point at Infiltration, he doesn't use many fancy setups at all, in fact it's mostly just very simple demon flip okizeme with some sweep option selects mixed in. You don't need to memorize 50854903584 different setups against every single character to play Akuma effectively.
Red fireball definitely does not make you win all ground fireball wars, it should barely be used in that situation because its very, very weak due to the total number of frames youre punishable for. You do one of those at a bad time midscreen and Akumas losing half his health. You can throw one out occasionally in unpredictable spots for some small gains, but you absolutely cannot use it enough to 'win fireball wars'.
Teleporting out vs Ibuki vortex is a nice option, but I don't see why the Ibuki has learnt to correctly vortex but has never learnt how to OS/reaction neckbreaker against an Akuma teleport. Teleporting is nice but it also stops you from learning how to just block and not die, something youre going to have to learn at some point for every character in the game.
You mention empty jumps alot, but empty jumps are not just this generic thing where you just jump in with any timing on wakeup, dont stick out a normal, and youre suddenly DP proof. If you time it blatantly early, people likely won't fall for it (some people still will, but even they will likely learn if you do it a few times), if you time it late youre still eating a DP. To make it convincing/threatening but not eat a DP you need timing. This timing against 3f reversals is to perform a safejump, but empty jump. That is something you need to go learn if you want to consistently use it in matches and not just 'empty jump' but get DPed anyway half the time and feel confused/annoyed.
And yeah, like pachi said, Akuma has a crapload of options in his vortex that specifically beat 3f DPs, or at least make it very difficult to 3f DP the right way (auto correct timing). If you do not show the opponent that you can get aggro on his wakeup and still beat his uppercut/make it whiff, anytime you jump in/do anything in the air on his wakeup, youre probably DPable. This therefore means that basically you cant get aggressive in the air on the opponents wakeup because everything is just capable of being mashed out on. To be able to do anything in the air, you need to show that just mashing DP as you jumpin won't always work/often will not work, leaving them to actually have to just attempt to defend against the vortex, and likely get hit alot, as Akuma wants. If you have not established this, you cannot vortex from the air, in which case what is the point in playing Akuma over somebody like Ryu or Ken.
Which is the crux of at least my point of view on this. If youre going to play Akuma as your first character, without seriously attempting to learn the things that really make Akuma tick (vortex, setups), youre just going to end up playing a character that is Ryu, with slightly worse ground fireballs, a difficult Ultra so no DP fadc Ultra comebacks, a more difficult combo/linking game than Ryu and with significantly less health and stun. Im not saying learning Akuma will make you lose every game as your first character, just that its making your life difficult for no reason if youre not going to be using the things that make Akuma, Akuma.
Also, Infiltration uses an incredibly large number of setups/vortex options. I literally saw Infiltration do probably 5-6 setups this EVO ive never seen before from any other Akuma, mostly using weird air fireball whiff into throw jumpins and other assorted stuff that may not be new to long time Akuma players, but definitely new stuff in terms of actually being performed in big tournament matches regularly. Just because Infiltration has such solid fundamentals (like, really really godlike fundamentals) doesn't mean that he isn't performing alot of fancy Akuma stuff pretty much every game he plays - he really is, all over the place.
Edit: One particularly amusing setup I saw him do was something like forward throw, pause, fireball fadc dash twice to throw Wolfkrone in salty suite MMs to finish a game. The fireball literally went just past Wolfkrones back when hed finished waking up, so didn't get the expected blockstun->instathrown.
But either way you can disagree with me if you'd like. I still think that Akuma has the tools to be fine for a beginner.
Also how the hell am I supposed to sweep El Fuerte after LK Tatsu? It's supposed to be possible but I plink every sweep and have missed like 50 times in a row, even if it's a 1-framer I can't be just missing them all with plinking?
Beginners can use Akuma. But it shouldn't be because he looked at a tier list and sees Akuma is high tier and expect to win. Because at lower level of play, hes not that high and he will die a lot because of the hp.
Akuma has useful tools that can help beginners, but they can easily become crutches instead of just learning how to block well. Eventually as he learns and plays against better opponents, there will be a wall and its harder for akuma to deal with it.
You can mix up basic stuff to do basic oki, but so can everyone else in the cast. But you can't afford to be wrong as Akuma because you will die faster.
Infiltration setups look simple but they're crazy advanced, backed with a lot of player specific research and game knowledge.
Akuma -> Elf is spacing dependant. You can't get it off cr.HP tatsu. you can do it off c.mp c.mp tatsu or c.lp c.lp c.mk tatsu. Hitbox thing
edit: In my view, for a "beginner player" posting here, their goal is to be able to win rounds at a local tournament against an average/lower player. At that point you will have to learn safe jumps, frame traps, etc If its just casuals / online you can play any character you like and block dps and win.
oh I definitely agree that at a lower level akuma isn't top tier and you might be correct about learning the hard way instead of taking shortcuts, but for some people losing 50 games in a row makes them quit the character before they can reap the benefits.
I'm not that sure about Infiltration setups being so advanced, maybe there's mindgames but there's no super specific frame-tight timings that make everything whiff and option selects covering every option, they just are very basic overall. He's not a setup player at all.
Also everyone else in the cast doesn't have Demon Flip which along with Air Fireball is the main reason Akuma has just about the best oki
Oh Pachi now that you are here (Or anyone else if you left already):
On July 30 2012 17:43 Shikyo wrote: oh I definitely agree that at a lower level akuma isn't top tier and you might be correct about learning the hard way instead of taking shortcuts, but for some people losing 50 games in a row makes them quit the character before they can reap the benefits.
I'm not that sure about Infiltration setups being so advanced, maybe there's mindgames but there's no super specific frame-tight timings that make everything whiff and option selects covering every option, they just are very basic overall. He's not a setup player at all.
Also everyone else in the cast doesn't have Demon Flip which along with Air Fireball is the main reason Akuma has just about the best oki
He uses a very, very large number of setups all over the place. Go and rewatch all his streamed matches from EVO. He isn't some God of street fighter that has setups that force the opponent to never be able to block and take 300 damage into another sweep, but he does have a whole crapload of setups for all kinds of different situations that would be confusing as fuck to play against and that do, indeed require very specific timing/spacing to be able to perform properly. You cannot just jumpin+fireball whiff in order to land and throw. You need it to be convicing, or these top8 EVO players are not going to fall for a fireball being fired 5ft above their head. Stuff needs to barely whiff, barely be safe, barely crossup. That requires specific setups.
Demonflip + Air fireball does not equate to great oki. Demonflip + Air fireball when used to create very specific setups, which are learned and then performed frame for frame whenever you want them, make for great oki. Randomly timed demonflips can just be dped all day, randomly timed air fireballs can be ignored/focussed through/blocked into nothing scary/EX dped through.
Mostly comparing to Tokido etc but yeah they need to be specific but they aren't as advanced -,-
I'll see a random game with input log as an example:
0:14 sweep -> crossup MK. No option selects. However that forward walk before jumping seems elaborate and probably it's frametight but this is still a basic setup in my book.
1:03 is actually better than I usually see, meaty Demon Flip Palm with option selected jab sweep and block.
1:07 however is one of those "random demon flips". Poorly timed and punishable, I'm pretty sure even palm or grab lose to DP here. Hmm actually I'm not completely sure, maybe it blocks in time if he palms.. doesn't look like it, hrmph -,-
The 1:03 setup is pretty good so I'm not sure if this is a good example but again, he's not a setup player and IIRC someone mentioned that he's said so himself but whatevs~
I'm a newb to playing fighting games online as well, have tried for 2 weeks now with Yang (yeah not the easiest choice), but while I only win 40%or so, its still tons of fun and a good way to stay competitive which I need somehow. (Used to play Wolfenstein - ENemy Territory in german national team yeeaaars back and I still miss it)
0:14 sweep -> crossup MK. No option selects. However that forward walk before jumping seems elaborate and probably it's frametight but this is still a basic setup in my book.
1:03 is actually better than I usually see, meaty Demon Flip Palm with option selected jab sweep and block.
1:07 however is one of those "random demon flips". Poorly timed and punishable, I'm pretty sure even palm or grab lose to DP here. Hmm actually I'm not completely sure, maybe it blocks in time if he palms.. doesn't look like it, hrmph -,-
The 1:03 setup is pretty good so I'm not sure if this is a good example but again, he's not a setup player and IIRC someone mentioned that he's said so himself but whatevs~
I think we're possibly going in different directions as to what a 'setup' is. You appear to be suggesting it needs to be insanely complicated+powerful in its own right to be 'good/advanced', ie this demon flip with an os sweep etc. That isnt what makes most setups powerful. Every setup you add to your game that has a nuance about it is yet another situation you put your opponent in that they need to go 'okay, what does this setup do to me? is this really ambiguous and hits crossup but really doesn't look that way until the last few frames (the 0:14 example you gave here)? is this a safejump vs my reversal that is also accounting for backdashes (the 1:03 option)? is it X Y Z?'
If you see Infiltration get a knockdown then whiff a normal, dash, walk for seemingly specific amounts of time before doing something else, its almost certainly a setup that has something special about it. You, as the opponent now need to know Akuma and all the tech that he has in every situation, memorise it, and be able to pull out whether this setup means you cant DP, means you block crossup, means you dont block crossup even though it looks like you should, means you need to be careful about crouch teching, means you NEED to crouch tech at a time youre not expecting, or whatever else. Every new setup you add to that vortex makes all the setups you already have all the more powerful. Setups are 90% not attempting to cover a huge amount of your opponents options in this one setup you can perform, theyre designed to generally do one specific hard to read/react/defend against option that you have, safely preferably, and the fact that all of these setups can often look so similar, make every setup you do almost have to be defended against as if you were performing ALL of them. You don't DP against setups you could just mash dp+win against, because of the setups that look so similar that are not dpable and youll eat 300 damage+ for whiffing. You get hit by setups in the front because its so hard to tell it apart from another setup thats hit in the back, etc etc.
Im no Akuma player so I can't see Infiltration whiff a normal then demon flip off of a knockdown and go 'ah yes, thats that setup where blah happens but it only works on these 3 characters after a forward throw', but I can say for sure that when he whiffs normals, dashes then instademonflips or any other such blatant practiced things, he isnt doing it for show - its a setup. It may be something as simple as an ambiguous crossup thats dpable, it may be something far more complicated. If you don't know Akuma as well as he does you're going to make lots of mistakes as to your guesses/reads/memory of what these specific setups do and eat alot of damage.
Also, whether he really considers himself a 'setup player' or not (maybe he just means that he doesn't rely on setups to win - his fundamentals are indeed pretty sick, he also plays other chars that are not Akuma), he still does an absolute shitload of setups while playing Akuma.
Infiltration concentrates far more on fundamentals and the neutral game than setups, they really aren't that important to his game and you can play Akuma just fine without stressing over knockdowns the whole time - Is still the point I'm somehow trying to bring accross.
However I guess it's not that important because yeah mindgames are more important than option selecting 3 things at once, even though that's really cool as well.
Blanka was solid but only so much can be seen from his games against the gief. Did some mixups etc. never needed any of the high level/execution blanka moves.
Tokido invented the setup-style akuma thats why they call it tokido-shiki. No one plays akuma with as many setups as him. Infiltration doesn't have crazy unblockables but because of his character knowledge he has a some very well planned options for oki that are well researched enough to cover the options he expects.
You skipped a setup at 0:28 off fadc red fireball in demon flip with a anti-dp option. Backthrow around 1:00 probably would've been a left-right mixup on the fireball in adon was still there
1:07 was a reset. The demonflip would've dodged any reversal uppercuts from adon (need a purposely delayed mk/hk uppercut) because of adon's uppercut arc, technically safe jumps adon's U2 but he doesn't have it. Also I'm guessing the plinked hp at the end is probably a buffered option select demon
It also deals max stun which is important because leading up to it he had j.mk + sweep (300). His punish was HP Hadouken FADC HP for 460 then throw for 200 leaving him around 960 stun which he could get from the divekick, jap or ex tatsu that he did. A fresh stun with only 1 hit in the combo so far. If he only did HP FB FADC HP lk.tatsu sweep he would've only been at 855.
On July 30 2012 15:43 pachi wrote: Air Fireball and Red Fireball are not the best fireballs. Air Fireball does very little damage compared to how vulnerable it leaves you which is why it is usually only used as EX or in setups. Red Fireball has massive startup/recovery so while it may beat other fireballs it doesn't win the war because at full screen a neutral jump over it puts you behind on the next fireball and at any other range you can probably be punished with a jump in
Oh and some characters can ultra on reaction against air fireball (EX Even I think). Sagat's Ultra 2 can beat air fireball pretty easily.
On July 30 2012 20:44 Shikyo wrote: Infiltration concentrates far more on fundamentals and the neutral game than setups, they really aren't that important to his game and you can play Akuma just fine without stressing over knockdowns the whole time - Is still the point I'm somehow trying to bring accross.
However I guess it's not that important because yeah mindgames are more important than option selecting 3 things at once, even though that's really cool as well.
So no opinions on that Blanka?
This is an odd way of thinking :p. Like, he plays Akuma, at a really, really high level. Just because he has really good footsies/reactions/a bunch of other stuff doesn't mean that he doesn't abuse the hell out of the natural strengths of his character. Hed be ridiculous not to. Its almost like saying something like 'Dieminion...nah sonic boom zoning really isnt that big a part of his game, sure he throws dozens of them a match, but hes good at other stuff. He aint one of those 'sonic boom' Guiles.'
Playing Akuma at low level is not a very good idea IMO, jump back FB all day and stand HK herp derp are not gonna do a world of good for your fundamentals. I did it in Vanilla and I was just as scrubby when Super came out.
EPT
