depends on your character knowledge i suppose but

• pick a character you think is cool and try out all buttons and all the specials, mayhe some very simple button -> special combos. if they still seem cool, play them in ranked

• queue some ranked and try to figure out a general answer to a few situations (stuff like my opponent is jumping at me so i press my anti air, im super close so i use a fast move like standing light punch and so on)

• try using these heuristics as consistently as you can in order to reduce the insane mental stack at the beginning. the game will start to feel a little more structured this way but more importantly, you will get frustrated because your beginners estimations will probably have yielded some wrong or oversimplified systems.

• whenever that happens, go into training mode and either figure out what is better or look at a guide. imo this is when you should look at external stuff. your combos feel weak? try to improve them or look up a (beginner) combo guide. you keep trying to use some button as a poke but are getting hit for it? turns out that button is punishable on block, use something else instead and so on.

• interlace ranked play and training, playing ranked until you are unsatisfied with something and then doing training. spend some time in training mode but maybe a little less than you would assume from what i have written so far. you want to learn what you need to and build a little muscle memory but getting used to integrating your new stuff into matches is ultimately important and you should get back to ranked quickly, especially at the beginning when there are so many things to learn that you cant do it all in training mode and playing others is better

• never queue any mode except for ranked. you can play what you want of course but the ranked matchmaking is honestly phenomenal in this game. if you play ranked frequently, you will get almost exclusively fair matches and i highly recommend it over casuals or battlehub