Akuma strategy

Gameplan

Akuma has short range on most of his pokes, but he is one of (if not) the best zoner in the game. Akuma is mainly about surviving as long as possible throughout the round until you build enough meter to land most of your damage. The threats of Akuma's keep out attacks, air mobility, quick whiff recovery, and armor allows Akuma to build towards his goal.

Basically, you want to be as unpredictable as possible and waste as much time as you can by jumping, jabbing, zoning with your fireballs, scaring them away with focus attack cancels, sweeping them, keeping them at bay with f+3, df+1, and f,f+4.

You have a lot of options and mixups off of your special cancelable moves that it can be hard for people to punish Akuma properly even with intensive lab knowledge. The answer is commonly just to "not interact" because Akuma get's high reward off scramble situations very often.

When Akuma finally gets at least 1 bar of meter, the reward on every. single. special. cancelable. attack gets an insane reward either on normal hit or counter hit. Which means his defense in all regards shoots to the best in the game. Since Akuma's risk/reward on his offense is in reverse because he comes from an entirely different fighting game series, he has the safest highest damage low in the game.

Defense

His 5LP (singular 1 jab) has the fastest recovering jab in the game with an above average hitbox, which makes it amazing for keep out. 1,1 (while is it doesn't jail and can be ducked) is counter-hit confirmable into any of his special cancelable moves and extremely hard to punish unless you are on point.

f+3 is one of your main tools for controlling the mid-range and making sure people do not advance towards you. Despite the move having few on hit properties, f+3 has pretty nice whiff recovery. f+3 on block can also setup pretty annoying whiff setups by doing a backdash immediately after f+3 to look for a 5RP (standing 2) or a d+2 > qcb+3_qcf+1/2 buffer.

Akuma's fireball's are extremely annoying to deal with at range 3-4 and at times will make people want to adjust their spacing to hit Akuma. Try to avoid throwing predictable fireballs within range 2-3 because a preemptive sidestep will easily blow it up.

f,f+4 is a good mid to throw out in the mid-range and sort of puts them in the same situation as f+3 on hit or block. The difference is this move is essential for meter building, and can have better tracking if you hold

Key moves

FunctionDegree to which the move is fit for this purpose.
	Core
	Secondary
	Extra

Move	PokeFast and safe, see Poke	CounterStronger against enemy attacks, e.g. has evasive, crush, parry, or counter hit properties.	MixupUseful against a guarding opponent.	KeepoutUseful against an opponent moving in.	ApproachUseful when moving in.	OkiUseful against a grounded opponent, see okizeme.
1

1

Jab is good okay.

Tracks left

Tracks both

• d+4

Tracks right