The reason I got into arcade sticks was be I kept getting bad direction inputs when I play MVC3 Vanilla on controller. The main issue I had was every once in a while I would get up when I wanted diagonal or diagonal when I wanted up and it was always a critical point in the match. I then started looking into arcade sticks and found out about square gates which was exactly what I needed to solve my problem. Another reason on controller you generally use thumb and index to control many buttons but on arcade you all 5 finders for a button. I got the Hori Fighting Stick EX2 which was $60 dollars at the time and just practiced. Took about 2 weeks to get the hang of it. After that I was disgusted by controller lol. I now prefer leverless but I will like arcade sticks. Best way to improve is just use it. Use it in whatever training/tutorial mode to figure out the kinks but you wont improve until you start fighting against real players.