I am currently at 584 or something. I main only Vega. The main reason why I haven't been able to go beyond that is I can't find matches most of the time. Usually I wait and wait and wait until I get another Ryu scrub 20-30 minutes later. Also, I haven't really played much since I got the game. For instance, I was away for the whole last week.
By the way, I hate seeing so goddamn many Ryu scrubs. But it is also immensely fun when I mop the floor with a Super Bronze Ryu, who probably thought he was invincible.
I don't understand why all of these idiots go for the obvious and unoriginal choice. I mean I get thrilled when I see a contender using, let's say, Dhalsim or Bison or any other char than the awful Ryu. Hopefully we will see more variety once the other characters see the daylight.
Well Ryu is the easiest and strong and thus advised for newbies, it's obvious why they go for it. Tbh getting out of 500 is mostly just being better at normals, using anti-air and blocking all the overheads/crossups and other shit. You don't even need to know a single combo.
Don't mindlessly mash, it might help you here but it will hurt you in the long run. Take it slow, so many players in this bracket just straight on rush with all their fancy specials and everything not thinking about the consequences. If you ever check a super high LP game it's actually pretty slow compared to our shit bracket.
People <1000 LP also jump a fuckton, so really just look up which are Vegas anti-air options (cr.HP, st. HK, air throw) and then train your reactions to use those moves when the enemy jumps. Don't let niggaz jump thinking it's a safe thing to do, because it isn't, it needs to be fucking punished. Same goes for you though, don't overkill on the jump - people usually advice newbies to not jump attack as it's a bad habit, and it's true. But you should still try it from time to time and identify if the enemy is capable of anti-airing you reliably. If he is, then don't jump at all and use ground attacks to win the fight.
Same goes for people who spam special moves aka Ryu shoryukens etc. - it is a really common occurence below 1k LP and a sign of a bad player. New player might be overwhelmed by this and think 'wow fucking lame ryu just spamming shoryukens wat do', but thats what Crush Counters are for, and they're excellent at what they do - punishing whiffed/blocked special moves. Imagine a case of you knocking down a Ryu, now walk up to him and make it look like you're about to hit him - this will usually trigger their 'oh shit I need to wake up with Shoryuken!' and then when they do it and you're prepared for it and block it, it's a free crush counter.
As for the combos themselves: drill them out in training. Start slow, it won't combo but you'll learn to cleanly execute the moves in order that you need to. Then proceed to fasten it up to the point that it starts comboing. Most combos are just muscle memory, basically.
But honestly the best advice I can give you is: just play online, you'll get better with time. Spending hours upon hours learning shit in training mode is not worth it anymore in SFV (it was in SFIV since combos were much harder to execute), because you won't be able to use that in practice if you have no real combat experience. Don't look at the points, don't look at if you've won or not, look at how you can learn from the fights you're having. Identify why you lost then go into next match with your mind set on preventing the problem you had in the last fight. For example if you're getting hit by crossups (that was/still is my problem), make sure you put extra focus on trying to block in the right direction in the next fight when the enemy crosses you up.
Btw, as for your online matches, do you have the
SFV ports open on your router? This might cause you to not get matches. Also, there's very few people playing casual really, so just play ranked and don't care about the points.
