THTB
Arez | Booya | Riu48 - Rest Easy, Friends
There's no recovery difference, just startup and possibly travel speed. And literally the ranges where Akuma's fireball stops are the main spots you'd even really use and get mileage off the fireballs anyway.Akumas fireballs are generally worse they've either got more recover, less range, or more startup than ryus(yes I think 2 extra recovery frames and a startup frame make a difference, even if it is slight) his ex dp also has an unfortunate tendency to hit once and whiff the rest, that on top of him having just straight up worse risk/reward with fireballs does lead me to say Akumas fireball game is worse. I think it's slightly cheap to specify the only specific range where ryus fireball and his are somewhat comparable and ignore that they're worse everywhere else.
Also I said his dp was only worse in this game because, again he has way worse risk reward on it and he can literally die from half hp for trying to use it.
Tl;dr worse ranges, speeds, startups, and recovery frames makes it worse. As does him not having ryus trigger which actually makes his fireball game infinitely scarier.
Also I didn't say you shouldn't respect akuma, I said you don't respect him the same way you would other characters like ryu/cammy. They have similar tool sets with different strengths and weaknesses and they're both better than each other when used for their specific purposes.
You still have to respect them a decent amount, about as much as Ryu. For how risky they are in comparison for him, he has really good options to follow up with oki after his non-DP AAs, which is something he really enjoys.