I’d say Johnathan is your best bet for getting started. Pretty much the Ryu of this game, he has a fireball, DP, and a pretty basic gimmick which is just charging his meter/using EX moves.

Pt. 3 DIO might be good if you want to learn a stand user first, he has a lot of good moves that are easy to perform, but he does have a lot of moves in general.

That’s just my opinion though, I’m sure somebody else has a better reason for it being somebody else.

Jonathan, Josuke 8, Okuyasu, and jotaro 3. Jotaro 4 and Josuke 4 are intermediate in my eye and girono’s combos are pretty straightforward. Not all of the jojos are automatically beginner friendly or good at all. In fact, Johnny is one one the worst characters in the game, but don’t let that stop you from playing who you wanna play

The Jojos are the most straightforward characters, and they have staple moves like hazards (Jolyne), projectiles (part 4 Jotaro, Gappy), and barrage attacks (all of them)

any jojo really

Jotaro 3 and DIO are the quintessential beginner characters. Punch demons. Jonathan feels a lot like a classic fighter character, if you've played any MK or SF he's a good introduction.

Not very beginner friendly when it comes to the movement option and her very tricky nature, but I’d suggest Master Raven. the bare minimum in beginner and intermediate know the matchup so you’ll be good lol. Raven is who I started with and it’s been a long journey. If you wanna use a ninja, I’d find the nearest dump for Kuni and pick up raven

Play whoever you want to play, give every character a try and see if they click with you, and soon you'll realize that you were meant to be a Panda player all along.

If you want to learn various mechanics like neutral dash motions, chain grabs, with good tools like a solid b1, good combos and approach try Armor King

The ones that look the coolest.

I personally found Miguel the most fun to start with.

He has a lot of straightforward stuff meaning you can play the spacing and basic pressure game. He has a stance to play around with. His combos aren't too tricky and have a nice rhythm to them. On top of all that he just has a nice swagger to him and once he gets going he is a real pain train while also not being too cheap or relying on too many gimmicks.

To me he represents a nice balance of simple to pick up and difficult to master and from there you can go to other characters once you get a better sense of what you want to focus on.

Pick who you find cool, an easy character isn't going to do you a lot of good if you get bored of them after a week and then stop playing entirely.

Take your time to find your main, I sure did.

Yoshimitsu is great for teaching very conventional fundamental Tekken and his gameplan is simple and easy to understand.

The easiest characters in the game are probably claudio, katarina and josie. Negan too if getting dlc isnt an issue

Best for learning basic fundamentals would be shaheen, law, kazumi, paul.

Though tbh, the best way to go is pick a character who you like the look of, play with them a bit to see if you like them, then go to another one you like if not.

Akuma for sure man 👍🏻

Her and Lili have been the characters I've felt more comfortable with so far! Thank you!

In my defense, I dont really play law at all so i was mostly basing that on what other people say about him

WHOEVER LOOKS COOLER Tekken is hard either way. Just please pick a guy you think looks dope or has cool animations. That's what will make you stick with the game and learn it.

Shaheen, Katarina, Claudio, these 3 are the easiest to learn the game with IMO. But really you could start with anyone you like.

Paul Noc Saheen Asuka Kat Gigas

Shaheen. But I got bored with him and checked out Master Raven down the road.

Claudio, Katarina, Shaheen

Just find a character you like and start from there. You’ll improve on your own instead of playing someone you don’t enjoy just because he or she is easy.

For a rushdown stance character, try Miguel.

For a balanced all round option with good generic tools, try Shaheen.

For a poke heavy fundamentals based character, try Kazumi

What characters interest you the most? It’s better to pick a character you genuinely like as it encourages you to get better with them

Negan

When you start playing Tekken and instead of picking your favourite, you go with something easy you are about to make mistake.

You can learn an easy character in like 1-2s weaks. The generic movelist, basic combos and how to get a combo at all, some good moves and how to use these. Fine.

But it will take at least a year to get used to all the stuff which is going on. Movement, punishment, poking, specific MU details. YOu might get stuck with a character you dont like but considered rather good, instead of playing the one you liked and considered bad just to save a few weaks of learning basic stuff.

Go with the one you like the most, no matter what. Play a bear if you like these, go with a Mishima when this what you enjoy, pick a tricky poking character or even a waifu.

Dont go the easy way in this one, pick the one you like.

Katarina, Josie, Asuka, Claudio, shaheen

The best character is also the easiest one : Gigas. You should play Gigas he is the best. He was so good he was banned from tournaments that's why no one is using him

At this stage it seems like half the cast has already been suggested but I'm going to add Claudio.

I would go for Dragunov

You’re so new I wouldn’t even worry about that kind of stuff. Pick a character that aesthetically pleases you or a character you’ve seen that looks fun. No character is impossible to learn by a beginner and you wouldn’t need to learn the difficult stuff until you get past the first couple hurdles of learning anyway so you might as well play with a character that interests you.

Don't worry about playing easy characters until you get good enough to play the harder characters. Play who you vibe with the most. An easy character may be easier for you to pick up and win games with, but if you enjoy someone who may end up being harder, just play them

I recommend Jotaro to learn best.  Vanilla Ice if you want free wins assuming your opponent is of equal skill level roughly.

DIO and Jotaro are good for beginners who want to learn stand characters

Johnathan is also a very good pick, having a balanced moveset with a projectile, armored attack, and most enhanced specials pop the opponent into the air for easy combos

Jojo is always a good pick to start with, but if that’s not your cup of tea, there’s always Jojo

any jojo

The boring answer is to pick the character that you like the most. If you're indifferent to the whole roster, then objectively speaking law is the best pick. He can be played defensively or offensively. He has amazing whiff punishment, oppressive pokes, great lows, evasive panic moves, (noob killing) gimmicky strings, plenty of mixups, and great standard tools like d/f+1, and magic 4. Also, he's top tier if you care about that.
Otherwise, check out that blasted salami's character guide for more info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbewxse8DlI

Yoshimitsu

Pick the whoever you enjoy the most. That’s the only answer to your question.

Try lili

Lei

Base roster, Marisa is high damage, and Ken is good buttons. Both of these characters have longer combos than Ryu does if you really want to get optimal, though. Zangief, for sure, has the shortest combos, has some good buttons, and does very high damage, but idk if you want to play a grappler.

I know this particular piece of advice is unsolicited, but seeing as you're a beginner, I wouldn't place too much value on character archetypes and just play who you find cool. I think that if you play any character for long enough, you will find something enjoyable about their gameplay as long as you think they are cool.

If you want to learn fundamentals, Cammy is a good pick, and Id recommend Mai as well.

If recommend learning a Zoner, a Grappler, Rushdown, and seeing which you enjoy more.

Shotos are boring in general.

Charged characters can be tricky to pick up, but theyre very good to learn as well.

But most importantly, find a character you like (looks or gameplay) and try them out.

Funny enough minus the no fireballs rule I would have 100% recommended Ryu based on your other criteria. "No long combos" is kind of a weird criteria because everyone has complicated combos at a certain level of play. You don't need to know crazy combo strings to do good damage with Ryu.

But, to get pretty good damage from just a few button presses, a character who's very good and generally considered pretty easy to play is M.Bison. Dunno if you'd find her boring but Mai's combos do a lot of work for only a little effort. I think a lot of people would agree she's the easiest character to pilot and she's successful in tournaments.

I dunno try Zangief or Marissa? Not the best buttons but lots of damage.

Bison seems perfect lol, his combos are rly short

Well, it really depends on the situation. Ryu has longer light confirms it you cash out, but Marisa definitely has a longer cash out DP punish. If Ryu gets a punish counter HK mid screen, he pretty much does button into special. If Marisa gets a punish counter HK mid screen, she drive rushes into that knee target combo and can spend as much as she wants to extend it. Their drive rush combos are pretty much the same until the end, when Ryu will do DP or donkey kick into DP wheras Marisa will wall splat and then juggle. It all depends on resources, too, so it's hard to quantify.

Who has the longer combo really isn't actually important at all, I was just kind of pointing out that picking characters based on combo length is inadvisable.