How to play Noel and/or generally, especially under pressure? [BBCPE]

[CarpeDiempreecha]

Ive been playing since CT but extremely casually mostly against CPUs. CPE is the first game where I've tried to play online more than a couple of vanilla and I'm getting wrecked by many opponents.

I've been trying to learn the basics, so I don't know long combo strings or anything, but I've been trying to include things like high low mixups, barrier blocking, trying to overdrive instead of spamming burst, learning which normals are the fastest, etc.

Yet, I just lost to some guy about 30 games in a row, and I barely made any progress from where I started. He played Terumi, then Jin, then Ragna, and I faced the same issues every time. Even though Noel is supposed to be a rushdown character, I couldn't find any openings due to my range disadvantage.

If I rushed in, I would get countered immediately, or if I attempted a mix up string I would get DP'd after a few blocks. I could try to spam some neutrals but I would get punished since if I whiffed they were still probably in range to retaliate but if they whiffed I wouldn't be able to hit them. No matter what I did, it would inevitably end with my desperately guarding in the corner. I could burst but the same thing could happen again. I could continue blocking but I couldn't find any openings because of the pushback and range disadvantage, and inevitably a hit would get through my guard, after which I would get helplessly juggled for a combo that took out a third of my health at least.

 

What can I do to improve?

[Poultrygeist]

Are you air dashing in every time?  If so you're probably going to get anti aired a lot because air dash is a commitment, you can't barrier while you're air dashing.  If you're just running in you could try and look for an opening or create one by playing footsies.  As for blocking you can make openings by using barrier or IBing.  Remember that you can block low by default and react to (most) overheads, and also be on the look out for throws, people might start going for those instead of high/low if they feel the risk is smaller.  

[CarpeDiempreecha]

Actually I almost never go for air dashes because I have bad experiences with Jin's DP bitch slapping me out of the air every time I played against him...

[Poultrygeist]

If your opponent likes to DP a lot then bait them and you can get a very strong punish from it.  I'm not sure what Noel's optimal counter hit punishes are so I can't help with that but there's no "oh shit" moment quite like whiffing your DP (or having it be blocked without 50 heat).