Why don't you try a zoning character, spam fireballs and see how your opponent beats it?
I'm entirely serious. Seeing how people do it with your own eyes might help a bit.
Done that in numerous fighters. Tried doing the counters (roll/focus/jump) and while in training mode you can get a timing down, in actual player matches you can't. There-in the issue. In a player match they're going to constantly spam them at you with various timings and getting past that timing is damn near impossible to me to where I just put the controller down and go outside because there's no point sitting there blocking for 20 seconds to get in close, get burst, and then have to block for another 20 seconds.