HA! Yeah... kind of the same here.
Was playing against a ken online with viper. He kicked my ass a couple of times. I switched over to ken, for ultimate fighting playboy duel, and kicked his ass hard. He promptly withdrew.
I still kinda have trouble handling fireball spam with viper. Tried to practice offline with vs cpu very hard. Cpu ken and ryu are not so bad, but they don't spam fireballs enough to be adequate sparring partners. I switched over to sagat, and... well... he certainly does do it enough. And i... certainly dont know how to handle it too well.
I can FA-block it, but if i dash forward out of it, i eat the next one. I can back dash but it's not helping much, can't take the hurt to him. I dont have the time to pull an earthquake punch. Rather, i do have the time, but then i'm getting hit before the animation is over. Tit for tat, and i'm sure there's a better solution than that.
Jumping over it sorta works, takes longer for him to be able to throw another one. In fact, that's the only thing i've had any success with. Jump over, then thunder knuckles when close enough.
Anyone got any tips?