He’s still going to main Akuma
Players are still processing the latest balance update that was added to Street Fighter 6 last week. Despite Capcom saying the patch wouldn’t be a large one, everyone on the roster did receive some changes (some big, some small), and there were some clear winners and losers.
While we’ve talked quite a bit about said winners and losers already, another branch of this discussion leads to the players themselves talking about how their main characters were impacted. We now have Daigo “The Beast” Umehara sharing his thoughts on how Akuma’s nerfs have affected the powerful Shoto, and from the sounds of it, The Beast seems fairly unfazed.
Daigo recently took to his live stream to walk viewers through the changes and more deeply explore them for himself. He has since uploaded the segment to YouTube with full English subtitles allowing us to learn more about what he thinks on the matter.
Naturally, the main focus for this video is Akuma and the nerfs he received. We saw such changes as a slower back walk speed for the fighter, a larger hurtbox on his arms when throwing a fireball, and less damage on his Overdrive Gou Shoryuken.
Early on, Daigo tests the change made to Akuma’s regular and Overdrive Gou Hadoken. This change extends the hurtbox forward after the move begins, which is intended to make Akuma’s already strong fireballs easier to punish with projectile invincible moves and jump in attacks.
Daigo runs some quick tests and notices that it’s still fairly hard to space maneuvers like Akuma’s level 2 super and Ken’s Overdrive Shoryuken and successfully punish his fireball — though it definitely does appear slightly more punishable now.
Later in the video, Daigo tests out the nerf to Akuma’s Demon Swoop that increases the landing recovery when the Shoto uses it to switch sides and sails over the opponent. “Demon Raid was [over powered], so that change doesn’t matter,” Daigo explains.
And that there seems to be the sentiment Daigo has about Akuma’s changes overall. He notes that the changes made are “no-brainer” changes (obvious changes) that likely needed to happen as Akuma was too strong. That being said, he still intends to play the character and feels these changes mostly wont impact him — though that could change as we learn more.
You can find Daigo’s full thoughts on Akuma’s changes, as well what he thinks about some of the other top tiers’ nerfs below. Just be sure to hit the closed captions button before watching.