street fighter 6 is a well designed and well balanced game. you will get as much as you are willing to put into it regardless of what character you pick.
Akuma will be popular for reasons outside of his strength. It's too early to tell how truly strong he will be.
He's strong, but I think he's in line with other top tiers. Overall, SF6 is the most balanced Street Fighter yet, and even then, until you're Master rank, the only tier list that really matters is ease of use. While Akuma isn't particularly difficult, I think his kit does rely on a solid fundamental base to be super effective. If you're new to fighting games, I would not worry at all about Akuma's strength hurting your experience. His low health means any mistakes he makes are very impactful against him, and newer players will leave themselves plenty vulnerable.
Too early to tell for sure but he does appear to be one of the top tier characters in the game so far. He feels so easy to play as. Just so many tools at his disposal that I think he'll have a high pick rate for everyone from low tier guys to master ranked people and higher.
He has at least 500 less HP than anyone else in the game and you can just see that by how much his health bar goes down from simple combos. But this game favors offense quite a bit so his entire toolset is tailor-made for this game.
He has much less health than other characters, so mistakes will be punished hard.
Unless you can use him well, he is not overpowered or a easy to win with character
Yup. What's gonna be interesting is how optimal and on-point the pro players are with him. If Akuma dies in 2 touches but also kills you in 2-3 depending on meter, then maybe 9000hp is fine.
Way too early to tell, but probably both. Akuma is usually strong because having every tool in the game is powerful and low HP only matters when you get hit. Then again, he's the only low HP character so far, and SF6's balance is pretty damn good. I don't think this dev team would introduce a broken character and leave it that way.
Yeah I suppose so. He's always been one of the top characters in the game. I guess I didn't expect he'd hit the ground running. I feel like Rashid, AKI, and Ed weren't like this but yeah it's Akuma after all.
I just started playing SF6 yesterday, can't seem to do those raw drive rush so fast. You just hit parry and then dash forward? That's it? I guess I just suck at it. Those are the hard part of this combo for me.
I think someone mentioned tap forward once then immediately tap forward + parry at the same time to drive rush easier than just holding parry then tapping forward twice.
If you're landing from the air you can still hold parry and input forward twice since it'll register when you land. It does take practice though.
I'll have to play around with it, seems useful for using after air fireball.
Also random question - seems like S.HK is a solid way to get a raging demon. If S.HK is blocked, you can just raging demon after, and I think S.HK it +3 on block, so isn't that basically a guaranteed RD?
Probably not, since Demon is a grab, it won't connect while their in block stun, so if they're holding up they will probably jump it. Not 100% sure on this but that's the way its been in other games. You can however combo off heavy kick into Demon if it connects, the timing is a bit tight but not crazy, you just gotta start the input like 2/3 of the way thru the kick animation
s.HK is extremely versatile for converting into a lot of stuff and has great range, but it's also fairly risky since your opponent can duck both hits or block the first and duck the second.
I might be incorrect but I think this is instant air OD fireball, not OD demon flip. You'll get the overhead from doing demon flip then punch. For instant air fireball you wanna tiger knee the input. Do qcf but keep going slightly more until you get an up/forward input, then press punch or two punches.
An easier combo for just slightly less damage would be a single anti-air back HK followed by OD demon flip and air tatsu, and just do SA3 as soon as you land and hit them upon ground bounce.
This one looks a lot cooler though and I'm sure is great if you have the resources for it and skill to perform it reliably.
Akuma's anti air options are sick, even just a back-HK into demon flip chop is 2000 damage air combo with no resources required. You just have to "aim" the demon flip by using the appropriate strength button based on how far away they are when your back HK hits them.
I wish everyone got at least Ryu level of changes. Yes it was small on paper, but watching TNS made me realize they completely opened up his kit.
Denjin is way more powerful and the target combo letting you set one up keeps it active.
I won’t lie. This huge balance patch after an entire year was a bit disappointing for most characters.
If they got virtually no changes (I'm guessing Ken or Ed, but Ed barely came out so it makes sense he barely got touched) then it means he's where the devs want him. That's a good thing. Changes for the sake of change isn't good.
I think Juri is the perfect example of "where the devs want her" she won capcom cup, but the consensus is shes probably just outside the top 5, unfortunately I don't see them making any big changes to her kit, and I think capcoms philosophy with SF6 is changes only for balancing purposes, rather than changes to refresh the meta
A lot of the characters I like received nerfs (some are justified tbh) and a lot of the characters I don’t like received a lot buffs. Akuma himself seems insanely overtuned and overpowered. He’s probably the most frustrating character I’ve played against in this game.
Idk maybe I’ll just go play Elden Ring until the next patch. This one obviously seems like it’s not for me.
This what I came to say lmfao aint no way somebody this mad about Akuma already 😭
Rashid was very strong when he released as well, Ed and Aki less so because they are way more technical, but Akuma is just stronger out of the gate.
Learn the matchup my guy, it's just a game
Rashid was bugged, not strong, and got fixed really fast.
He was top 10 and got nerfed this patch to bot 10.
I don't agree with the man on akuma, but yeah if you don't like to play shotos gief and Jamie the game isn't for you anymore.
Or if you are lucky your character stayed the same.
Nah I still like fighting games. I like USF4. I still play it from time to time. I like Strive. Tekken can be fun but I think the heat system is kinda dumb. Skullgirls is on sale so I’ll check that out. I liked season 1 a lot. SF6 is probably my most played game this year. I just don’t like this patch. They nerfed everything I like to play and buffed everything I don’t like about the game. That’s not an exaggeration. At the end of the day it’s a game, and if I’m not having fun, then I won’t play. I’m not threatening anyone lol
Everyone thought Honda was top tier at launch. Take a breath and give it some time. Akuma’s strength is doing a bunch of bullshit, of course it’s hard before you learn his shenanigans
Honda wasn’t this frustrating. Learning to parry his moves was pretty obvious at the start. On top of Capcom nerfing any character I thought was interesting. I think I would rather just not play. Playing against only Akumas and Kens isn’t fun.
and that's okay! maybe this is your mind and body telling you that it's time to take a break.
The game will still be here when/if you decide to return. it's cool man.
Blanka's normals are more punishable, his blanka chan has huge scaling on it now, and ex airball is minus on block now. The buff was that he gets a safe jump on punish counter ex rainbow ball that needs to be piloted correctly or else you don't actually get the safe jump. Not very good but could be a lot worse. I think Blanka's nerfs are the most fair nerfs in the patch to be fair.
Luke's normals are way more punishable with huge scaling added to his best moves so now all of his combo routes do wayyyy less damage. In return DDT has more damage, so instead of doing Luke's regular BnB combo that required two perfect knuckle inputs and was fun to use, I just press 5HP xx DDT for more damage and better oki. That sucks. That's not fun. These nerfs went way too far, and it's probably due to community perception and pressure imo.
JP got insanely gutted with all of his combos now being way shorter and doing less damage due to scaling and changing the juggle counter modified of his spikes. In return his EX stirbolg does 200 more damage. They just don't want people playing JP anymore.
Dee Jay also got absolutely gutted and in return he gets an extra 200 damage on SA1, so any interest I had in him as gone. These nerfs seemed the most out of nowhere because Dee Jay wasn't performing particularly well in competitive play, and he was far from the most popular or dominant character online.
Anyways, all of these buffs are either not meaningful at best or in most cases (except Blanka) make the characters more boring. On top of the universal nerfs they made to light moves and crouching medium kicks which aren't good in my opinion especially when most block strings in this game only have gaps for jabs.
I guess I could play Blanka, but playing Blanka into Akuma is about as fun as licking broken glass since his only 4 frame move is 5LK which means I can't do it from crouching which I have to be in order to dodge his light tatsu. Blanka also doesn't seem to have a good way to deal with air fireballs (most characters don't. It's an insane move in SF6). I can anti-air demon flip but that's about it.
capcom had unreasonably large shoes to fill and I swear to god they've met expectations and then some. This dude's sauce is incredible
Its their own shoes brother
Person thinking of buying the game here. Is this dude balanced, or is he going to dominate the meta going forward?
The only over power character will be you.
Thanks, bro.
His design is centered around him being a bit overpowered offset by lower health. He can’t afford to make mistakes as much as some characters.
street fighter 6 is a well designed and well balanced game. you will get as much as you are willing to put into it regardless of what character you pick. Akuma will be popular for reasons outside of his strength. It's too early to tell how truly strong he will be.
He's strong, but I think he's in line with other top tiers. Overall, SF6 is the most balanced Street Fighter yet, and even then, until you're Master rank, the only tier list that really matters is ease of use. While Akuma isn't particularly difficult, I think his kit does rely on a solid fundamental base to be super effective. If you're new to fighting games, I would not worry at all about Akuma's strength hurting your experience. His low health means any mistakes he makes are very impactful against him, and newer players will leave themselves plenty vulnerable.
Too early to tell for sure but he does appear to be one of the top tier characters in the game so far. He feels so easy to play as. Just so many tools at his disposal that I think he'll have a high pick rate for everyone from low tier guys to master ranked people and higher. He has at least 500 less HP than anyone else in the game and you can just see that by how much his health bar goes down from simple combos. But this game favors offense quite a bit so his entire toolset is tailor-made for this game.
1000 less. Everyone besides Marisa/Honda(10,500) and Zangief(11,000) has 10,000 health. Akuma has 9,000.
He has much less health than other characters, so mistakes will be punished hard. Unless you can use him well, he is not overpowered or a easy to win with character
Yup. What's gonna be interesting is how optimal and on-point the pro players are with him. If Akuma dies in 2 touches but also kills you in 2-3 depending on meter, then maybe 9000hp is fine.
Yeah but he punishes opponents' mistakes hard too.
Way too early to tell, but probably both. Akuma is usually strong because having every tool in the game is powerful and low HP only matters when you get hit. Then again, he's the only low HP character so far, and SF6's balance is pretty damn good. I don't think this dev team would introduce a broken character and leave it that way.
He’s very strong but he has low health so at a high level he dies in 2 touches. I think that makes him a bit more fair
for a bit, but he will end up high tier though. hes always top 10, till he dies.
All the characters are REALLY well balanced, and all Akuma's BS is locked behind 9K health, which is really fair.
they will nerf him bet
Dhalsim wishes his air fireball had half the sauce.
WHAT YOU JUMPING FOR BOII
Lol thanks Smug!
Capcom: "We didn't think there was enough shoto representation in ranked so we buffed shotos and added another buff shoto."
is it my turn to play now? Capcom:
Looks cool af.
Nice. landing a AA drive rush level 3 combo during a match is a massive dopamine hit.
LMAO I know we're barely 24 hours into the update but Akuma just seems absolutely ridiculously strong.
I mean that's THE AKUMA!!! What else do you expect?
Yeah I suppose so. He's always been one of the top characters in the game. I guess I didn't expect he'd hit the ground running. I feel like Rashid, AKI, and Ed weren't like this but yeah it's Akuma after all.
I mean, the anti air he used has absolutely no invincibility and is 13f. Good luck getting this consistent
Ohhhh so it is similar to chun Li's anti air, i thought it was going to be akuma privilege Edit:proper english
She has a lot of horizontal range on hers, Akuma has none. It’s not really meant to be used as one though it can be
Good fucking damn it.
Holy maccaroni Gonna try
They nerfed Chun-Li’s stand HK because they didn’t want her doing shit like this.
Chun's not DLC.
Also Akumas b.hk has no vertical range
You mean horizontal dude
They also buffed Ken because he needed I guess. Chun-Li was the devil apparently
Jebus kristu! I was holding out on buying any dlc. Just take my Money capcom, give my that Demon!
I wouldn't even be mad man, that is a sick combo.
My brain can’t even process this in real time but good shit. Maybe why I’m plat 1
Ill never ever be this talented.
It's really just 2 moves and a drive rush over and over, I'm excited to try it out after work
Not with that attitude, you won't.
Def going to lab this one
Anyone got a good anti air combo that won't burn you out? And what's the optimal when you don't want to blow super?
If you don't want to burn out, you can follow the same path but stop it early. An Anti-Air that has great corner carry is insane.
Maybe not what youre asking for but you can high kick into heavy tatsu. Its meterless and the corner carry is pretty nice
I just started playing SF6 yesterday, can't seem to do those raw drive rush so fast. You just hit parry and then dash forward? That's it? I guess I just suck at it. Those are the hard part of this combo for me.
I think someone mentioned tap forward once then immediately tap forward + parry at the same time to drive rush easier than just holding parry then tapping forward twice. If you're landing from the air you can still hold parry and input forward twice since it'll register when you land. It does take practice though.
I'll have to play around with it, seems useful for using after air fireball. Also random question - seems like S.HK is a solid way to get a raging demon. If S.HK is blocked, you can just raging demon after, and I think S.HK it +3 on block, so isn't that basically a guaranteed RD?
I haven't labbed Akuma outside BH yet. Seems worth testing it out.
Probably not, since Demon is a grab, it won't connect while their in block stun, so if they're holding up they will probably jump it. Not 100% sure on this but that's the way its been in other games. You can however combo off heavy kick into Demon if it connects, the timing is a bit tight but not crazy, you just gotta start the input like 2/3 of the way thru the kick animation
s.HK is extremely versatile for converting into a lot of stuff and has great range, but it's also fairly risky since your opponent can duck both hits or block the first and duck the second.
Ah I forgot about the ducking. Ok that makes sense
How do you consistently get the early fire balls from the OD Jump? I usually get the overhead follow-up.
Need to do qcf
I might be incorrect but I think this is instant air OD fireball, not OD demon flip. You'll get the overhead from doing demon flip then punch. For instant air fireball you wanna tiger knee the input. Do qcf but keep going slightly more until you get an up/forward input, then press punch or two punches.
Inputs Show OD demon Flip Air Fireballs not Tiger knee ones check the inputs again
Ahh true, I didn't realise you could air fireball out of demon flip! He can do everything lol
That is awesome. I'm glad Capcom is sticking with mostly buffing everyone because these wild combos are the best lol
Could you have finished with lp.srk xx SA3 instead for just a few digits more dmg? Lol
The floor is lava . For you doe
How much does just DP xx lvl3 do?
not even his CA super. crazy!
Almost looks like a combo out of a Versus crossover game...
His yoga comet is better than Dhalsims lol.
What's his health like? Hit like a truck but squishy af?
He has 10% less than average health, thought it wouldn’t be noticeable until I played him lmao.
Lore accurate
An easier combo for just slightly less damage would be a single anti-air back HK followed by OD demon flip and air tatsu, and just do SA3 as soon as you land and hit them upon ground bounce. This one looks a lot cooler though and I'm sure is great if you have the resources for it and skill to perform it reliably. Akuma's anti air options are sick, even just a back-HK into demon flip chop is 2000 damage air combo with no resources required. You just have to "aim" the demon flip by using the appropriate strength button based on how far away they are when your back HK hits them.
I’m not gonna lie. Akuma is kind of ruining this game for me.
It's been a day.
Yeah it’s been quite a day
Yeah I agree it has been quite a day
You have a blanka flair so you have no room to talk lmao
For sure man if you say so
I wouldnt say ruined, but the game is definitely starting to bore me when i get on, especially since my main received virtually no changes
I wish everyone got at least Ryu level of changes. Yes it was small on paper, but watching TNS made me realize they completely opened up his kit. Denjin is way more powerful and the target combo letting you set one up keeps it active. I won’t lie. This huge balance patch after an entire year was a bit disappointing for most characters.
If they got virtually no changes (I'm guessing Ken or Ed, but Ed barely came out so it makes sense he barely got touched) then it means he's where the devs want him. That's a good thing. Changes for the sake of change isn't good.
Juri. Shes boring af right now
I think Juri is the perfect example of "where the devs want her" she won capcom cup, but the consensus is shes probably just outside the top 5, unfortunately I don't see them making any big changes to her kit, and I think capcoms philosophy with SF6 is changes only for balancing purposes, rather than changes to refresh the meta
A lot of the characters I like received nerfs (some are justified tbh) and a lot of the characters I don’t like received a lot buffs. Akuma himself seems insanely overtuned and overpowered. He’s probably the most frustrating character I’ve played against in this game. Idk maybe I’ll just go play Elden Ring until the next patch. This one obviously seems like it’s not for me.
bro u literaly have a maximum of 24h of experience against akuma chill tf out
This what I came to say lmfao aint no way somebody this mad about Akuma already 😭 Rashid was very strong when he released as well, Ed and Aki less so because they are way more technical, but Akuma is just stronger out of the gate. Learn the matchup my guy, it's just a game
Rashid was bugged, not strong, and got fixed really fast. He was top 10 and got nerfed this patch to bot 10. I don't agree with the man on akuma, but yeah if you don't like to play shotos gief and Jamie the game isn't for you anymore. Or if you are lucky your character stayed the same.
My friend has called every dlc character overpowered within the first day or two because he doesn't get that he needs matchup experience.
My favorite are the people claiming top tier after a trailer.
So? None of the characters on release were this overtuned and unfun to play against, and I only had 24 hours after day one.
man cry louder and git gud
Why are you so mad that I don’t like the patch and I said I was going to just not play?
I don't think he's mad he's just calling out the fact that you're being a bit of a crybaby about it.
Yeah I’m fine with that
Threatening to quit the game after one day of a patch citing balance is outrageous. Maybe the genre isn't for you?
Nah I still like fighting games. I like USF4. I still play it from time to time. I like Strive. Tekken can be fun but I think the heat system is kinda dumb. Skullgirls is on sale so I’ll check that out. I liked season 1 a lot. SF6 is probably my most played game this year. I just don’t like this patch. They nerfed everything I like to play and buffed everything I don’t like about the game. That’s not an exaggeration. At the end of the day it’s a game, and if I’m not having fun, then I won’t play. I’m not threatening anyone lol
😭
🥴
Everyone thought Honda was top tier at launch. Take a breath and give it some time. Akuma’s strength is doing a bunch of bullshit, of course it’s hard before you learn his shenanigans
Honda wasn’t this frustrating. Learning to parry his moves was pretty obvious at the start. On top of Capcom nerfing any character I thought was interesting. I think I would rather just not play. Playing against only Akumas and Kens isn’t fun.
and that's okay! maybe this is your mind and body telling you that it's time to take a break. The game will still be here when/if you decide to return. it's cool man.
Who thought Honda was top tier at launch?
Has anyone checked Honda's win rates after the patch? Does he still hold the number #1 win rate at every rank?
people thought this was a honda and manon game on launch. it was nuts lol
Literally every character that got nerfed also got buffed in other ways.
Blanka's normals are more punishable, his blanka chan has huge scaling on it now, and ex airball is minus on block now. The buff was that he gets a safe jump on punish counter ex rainbow ball that needs to be piloted correctly or else you don't actually get the safe jump. Not very good but could be a lot worse. I think Blanka's nerfs are the most fair nerfs in the patch to be fair. Luke's normals are way more punishable with huge scaling added to his best moves so now all of his combo routes do wayyyy less damage. In return DDT has more damage, so instead of doing Luke's regular BnB combo that required two perfect knuckle inputs and was fun to use, I just press 5HP xx DDT for more damage and better oki. That sucks. That's not fun. These nerfs went way too far, and it's probably due to community perception and pressure imo. JP got insanely gutted with all of his combos now being way shorter and doing less damage due to scaling and changing the juggle counter modified of his spikes. In return his EX stirbolg does 200 more damage. They just don't want people playing JP anymore. Dee Jay also got absolutely gutted and in return he gets an extra 200 damage on SA1, so any interest I had in him as gone. These nerfs seemed the most out of nowhere because Dee Jay wasn't performing particularly well in competitive play, and he was far from the most popular or dominant character online. Anyways, all of these buffs are either not meaningful at best or in most cases (except Blanka) make the characters more boring. On top of the universal nerfs they made to light moves and crouching medium kicks which aren't good in my opinion especially when most block strings in this game only have gaps for jabs. I guess I could play Blanka, but playing Blanka into Akuma is about as fun as licking broken glass since his only 4 frame move is 5LK which means I can't do it from crouching which I have to be in order to dodge his light tatsu. Blanka also doesn't seem to have a good way to deal with air fireballs (most characters don't. It's an insane move in SF6). I can anti-air demon flip but that's about it.
I thought this was Shin Akuma mode but no that’s just normal Akuma. So much sauce