How to Get and Use Akuma Armor
The collaboration event with Street Fighter 6 has begun, and with it came the new Akuma armor. While the armor looks good and has decent skills, it also has a special twist. When you equip the Akuma armor, you unlock a new way of fighting monsters that can be used while your weapon is sheathed. It isn't going to beat out a fully optimized meta set, but it is more than effective enough to be a legitimate way of hunting monsters.
How to get the armor
If your game is up to date, a notification that Maki wants to talk to you in Azuz appears when you log in. She tells you that a ton of monsters have been killed recently, to the degree that it is starting to impact the ecosystem. After confirming that it is not your doing, she asks you to investigate the corpses and talk to the villagers. Talking to the villagers gives some dialog, but it isn't necessary and doesn't provide any kind of bonus. Find the corpses on the upper and middle levels, then find the source of the disturbance in the lower level. This leads you to Akuma.
You ask Akuma to stop, and he tells you to prove your strength before he listens to you. This unlocks a new arena quest where you hunt an Ajarakan in the Akuma armor set. Completing this quest awards you with a new "Gou Shoryuken" emote, a ticket that allows you to craft the Akuma armor (you'll need 5 of them), and a new arena quest where you hunt a Tempered Ajarakan, once again in the Akuma set. Talk to Akuma once more to complete the quest, and you're ready to start farming out the armor.
The Set
The Akuma set includes the following pieces: the Demon Prayer Beads α, the Demon Garb α, the Demon Arm Wraps α, the Demon Belt α, and the Demon Pants α. In the end, it has the following skills and slots: Partbreaker 3, Heroics 3, Evade Window 2, 2 level 3 slots, 6 level 2 slots, and 5 level 1 slots. The Akuma set is unique in that it is an all or nothing set: either you are wearing all 5 pieces of armor or none, you cannot use it in a mixed set. You can use Akuma's special attacks when you have the set equipped as layered armor, but they do reduced damage. For the full power, you must have the armor itself equipped.
The Special Moves
Once you equip the Akuma armor, three new options appear on your item bar: Gou Hadouken, Drive Impact: Oni Garoshi, and Assisted Combo: Akuma. You also gain a power bar called a Drive Gauge above your item bar. These make up Akuma's new playstyle. Gou Hadouken is an infinite slinger ammo that can be charged up before firing for increased damage. Drive impact is an attack that functions as both a focus strike and an offset attack. You can use it by selecting it on the item bar. Using Drive Impact as a focus strike gives you an attack buff, but also consumes your Drive Gauge. You cannot use it again until the gauge refills. You also get an attack boost if you land the offset attack.
Selecting Assisted Combo Akuma causes your hunter to enter a fighting stance. This is where you do the majority of your damage as Akuma. Pressing X/Square uses a standing light punch, which starts your combo. From there, there are three options. You can press X/Square to do a pair of quick strikes into a Gou Hadouken that does greatly increased damage. You can use Y/Triangle to go into your medium combo, or B/X to go into your heavy combo. The medium combo can chain into the heavy combo, but the heavy combo is more damaging. Additionally, you can use the Gou Hadouken Gesture at the end of a combo to do a special finisher attack. Because of this, it is essential to equip the Dou Hadouken gesture to one of your radial menus. Lastly, if you use LT+RB/L2+R1 you can mix a Drive Impact into your combos. This is a smoother way of mixing in Drive Impact than selecting it from the item bar. All of Akuma's attacks do blunt damage.
Skills
There are a few skills that synergize well with Akuma. Focus is a very useful skill, since it makes your Drive Gauge recharge faster. Power Prolonger extends the buff from your offset attack. Jump Master gives you hyper armor while using Gou Shoryouken, and Airborne increases its damage, valuable skills given how powerful the move is.
While you do not use your weapon much while wearing the Akuma set, it is not actually an irrelevant choice. Your attacks as Akuma scale off of your equipped weapon and use its base affinity, though sharpness is not a factor. Use either bone weapons or Guardian Doshaguma weapons. Bone weapons have high raw and built in Focus 3and Attack Boost 1. Guardian Doshaguma Weapons have Focus 2 and 2 level 3 decoration slots.
If you are using a bone weapon Focus is one of your inherent skills, so you can use the 3 slot on your weapon to slot in Airborne, and the 2 and 1 slots for Power Prolonger. Alternatively, you can use a Guardian Doshaguma weapon to have a more damage focused approach. Slot in Attack Boost in the 1 and 3 slots, and use the remaining 3 slot for Airborne. You'll lose some utility on the set, but gain enough damage that it is worth the trade off.
For the armor, use 1 of your level 1 armor slots for Jump Master, and 3 more to max out Divine Blessing. Then use your level 2 slots for 3 levels of each of Maximum Might and Resentment. Use your level 3 slots on 2 points of Agitator and then a Challenger Charm II for another 2 points. Use the final level 1 slot on either Flinch Free for multiplayer or Self-Improvement for solo. See the full build here.
Using the Set In Combat
First, make sure that you have your item bar selected onto Assisted Stace: Akuma. Set up your radial menu to heal and use other items so that you can focus on using X/Square as an attack button, rather than a way of using items. Make sure the Gou Shoryuken is in the menu as well. Switching around on your item bar makes combat feel awkward, and is best avoided altogether outside of an emergency.
The bread and butter of your kit with Akuma is the heavy combo. It's your highest damage combo. While it is slightly longer than the medium combo, it also has a bit more mobility to it, easily offsetting the higher commitment. You can also use Drive Impact out of the heavy combo, allowing you to offset attacks mid chain. While the medium combo can be useful during short openings, it is not something you want to focus on. The light combo is negligible, though the boosted Gou Hadouken is stronger than the one you fire from your slinger. That said, Hadouken is not a very effective damage tool and can mostly be ignored.
Though it can be a bit awkward at first, one of the best things you can do as Akuma is learn to mix in the Gou Shoryuken gesture as a combo finisher. It is Akuma's highest damage move outside of his focus strike, though it has limited range. Ideally, you want to end every combo by landing a Gou Shoryuken.
Lastly, do not focus too much on breaking wounds outside of your focus strikes. Akuma gets a damage buff from his focus strike, and you want to keep it active as much as possible. While breaking wounds outside of your strike is fine, ideally you want to be using it as often as possible. Never destroy the final wound on a monster if you can focus strike it instead.
Wrapping Up
Overall, the Akuma set provides a fun change of pace and a playstyle we've never seen before in Monster Hunter. It won't be breaking speedrun records, but it's still a powerful enough set to be able to tackle every piece of content in the game comfortably. Your best way of attacking is heavy combo into Gou Shoryuken. This is not a long combo, and it should usually be your go-to move. You have limited access to Akuma's skills if you only equip the layered armor, but the wider range of skill selection isn't worth the trade off of weakened abilities. Good luck and happy hunting!
Written by: Brogangh
Reviewed by: Tenkiei
