I'll tell you right now the trial mode combos are mostly worthless. There's way better combos you could be doing for the same or less meter cost but with better damage. Go to the Dream Cancel Wiki if you want actually useful combos.

That said, it just comes down to practice. There's nothing really special to it, you just activate Quick Max and then press your attack button when you automatically get close. Just keep practicing and you'll get it eventually.

Thanks, and yeah - I know 9 times outta 10 combo trials are in reality - garbage & useless. I just generally like to go through a bunch of the singleplayer stuff in fighting games to get me used to the systems etc.

It's just a bit irritating with the max mode, as you'd think if any execution was gonna be an issue it'd be any of the more elaborate commands etc, like - i'm not the greatest player, but I can play charge characters & none of the motions give me any grief, it's not my first rodeo - that QuickMax timing just seemed to to consistently fail & drop lol.

I'll go back to it in a bit with a clearer head, I got salty and convinced myself there must be some trick to it but nah, I clearly just wasn't understanding the timing it wanted :/

You want to quick max and let yourself run a bit. When you use quick max your character enters an auto run. This auto run is cancel-able into your normals so you can press early or late depending on how long you need to run to get close enough for the next move.

Looking at this Shun'Ei combo I would advise you practice it in 3 parts
6A (BC) cl.C (Forward Light Punch, Activate, Close Heavy Punch)
cl.C 6A 214C (Close Heavy Punch, Forward Light Punch, Quarter Circle Back Heavy Punch)
214C 236236K 21441236BD (Quarter Back Heavy Punch, Lv1 Kick Super, Lv3 Super)

Just in case you don't know numpad notation I wrote it all out, but also let you see it for exposure :)

Once you feel confident in doing each of those 3 pieces individually put it all together and you're gucci.

Since combo trials being impractical was brought up I will say this isn't a bad combo all in all. It might not be the optimal Shun'Ei combo off this starter (Not saying I know what that is) but this combo is meant to show you a few things. Mainly they are showing you how to combo from an overhead, use quick max to extend, and then doing a bread and butter into meter dump by chaining supers.

Came back to it after a few days (got distracted), was able to then nail shun'ei trial 4 & 5 in the next 10 minutes lol.

Thanks for the input, the inputs and execution weren't the issue - it was just that period after inputting quickmax (rawmax in trial#5) then the hp (or hk in trial#5) still feels awkward to the point i'm acutely aware of it and by taking notice - have missed my input window lol. That or, during the canned run animation, my inputs for the normals into command normals seeming get eaten during the run and don't come up.

Regardless, clear head and just playing with timing seemed to do the trick. I've no intention of playing shun'ei - so he doesn't really matter, I just wanted to try and get a feel for the max system as i'd not bothered in previous games. I only play casually, but it'll obviously be to my benefit to be able to activate max and then short string into meter dump, i'm not aiming for optimised stuff, just to be able to push buttons enough to have fun lol.

Thanks again, i'm sure with more time i'll get the feel & timing of it better, i'm over the frustration of being incapable of figuring out the execution at all of a simple button into activation into command normal, whilst having no issues with the lvl1>2>3 rofl.