Any advice?

Use the training arena to learn combos and such. Or run the mission over and over with different weapons to figure out which suits the playstyle you want. Experiment, have fun, and learn on the way. I like Dual Blades because.... 2 swords. My friend likes Insect Glaive because of aerials. Try them all out. They are all easy to obtain a low rank version

As I don't play lance, I don't really have any info to give there. But I can give some conventional guidance that applies to all weapons. Don't use the Defender/Black Belt sets if you're new to Monster Hunter. Run at least one level of evade extender no matter what. If you don't know how to play a weapon, watch guides. If you still don't get it, try something else.

Lance may just not be for you. I'd recommend trying other weapons. If you like the defense, try Gunlance. If you like counters, try Longsword. Play what feels good to you. There's 14 weapon options, that's more than a lot of games give you. I play most weapons, some better than others, and plan to learn the rest. But there are a few I just don't enjoy, so don't be upset if your first weapon doesn't work for you.

For playing lance one would be inclined to play defensively, but i find that aggressive approach most enjoyable.

General tip: Be very deliberate with your move selection. Dont go pokey-pokey without a plan. It takes some practice but it improves your ability to be aggressive. Almost all of your moves as a lance are low commitment moves with some exceptions that i wont go into. Knowing your effective range per move goes a long way.

Specific skill training: Try 10 to 15 min of training grounds with ff moves:

Dash attack , step back loop

Dash attack, wide sweep, poke step back loop

Improving your speed: Take note that lance is basically a rules of 3, each lance combo caps up to 3 moved per combo, this will help your pacing when you are really up close and personal with the monster. When on 3rd move or if you cant seem to hit or complete a 3 move combo, back step so you wont have movement penalty.

For Damage: As early as now focus on weaving in the fully wide sweep (triangle + circle) in your combo. The dash attack should be your main attack (r2+triangle then circle) since it saves alot of sharpness and damage wise better than single poke. *Do only triple poke when none of your options are viable.

Naturally you will progress to have anchor rage or instablock for counter damage, and will be easier to learn how to use these if you master the basics. These two moves are game changers because it exponentially increases aggressiveness and safety when mastered, or even just be comfortable with them improves your gameplay astronomically

I enjoyed the lance and has the potential to finish the game single player mode. I hope you enjoy it as much as i did. (Im a bow player btw, so i took these steps closely to learn lance pretty solid methods IMO)

In the base Rise game, the lance is slow and underwhelming.
When you transition to Sunbreak, the fun with lance begins.

Try the insect glaive, it's super fun. You just have to get used to the insects and extract gathering.
Always use the assist kinsects - when you gather all 3 extracts, they assist you with your attacks - fly off your hand as you're swinging the weapon and hit along side with you.
They have 2 types - blunt and severing - blunt can stun enemies if you're hitting them in the head, severing helps you cut tails faster, i used Blunt throughout base rise, now I use severing.

Now, If i remember correctly - i think Assist insects in the base Rise game gather 2 extracts/essences at the same time, since you got 2 versions of assist (blunt and severing), one of them grabs the Red and Orange essence, the other one grabs the Red and White.

Then you're left off with just aiming for the missing essence.
In the sunbreak expansion, they changed that, so the sunbreak insects grab only 1 essence, but they got another trick up their sleeve.
Every 18 attacks or so, with the insect (while it's asssisting you), they leave a powdered cloud in the area, so when you step through the cloud, you get all 3 essences immediately.
If you got 3 essences already, and you step through the cloud, the duration of your current essences is increased by 20-30 seconds.
But if your essences expired, and step through the clouds, you get the full 90 second duration.

Their duration varies, red extract lasts 60 seconds, white lasts 90 seconds etc... But having all three, i think, lasts for 90 seconds.

Extracts - each spot on the enemy gives. you a certain extract.
Red - attack boost - monsters head gives you that extract.

Orange - defense - monster's belly or the back.
White - movement - legs or wings.

Basically, you aim your bug-stick (i play on the switch, so it's ZL for me), and shoot the insect with the (again, switch) X button. It goes flying towards the reticle and if it hits the monster part, it extracts the essence. Then you have to recall the kinsect (ZR + A) and it comes back to you, giving you that extract.
Once you have the red extract, your attacks change, and they become stronger. You get access to certain attacks you dont have without the red extract.
You can also "mark" the target spot, aim the stick, shoot a marker with ZR and if you hit the enemy you'll see a small colored cloud on it (red, white, orange), so whenever you let the kinsect fly, it always goes to the marked location. Thats good to acquire those hard-to-randomly-aim extracts against some monsters.

The aim is to get all 3 extracts as soon as possible (with the red being the most important one) and then start wailing on the monster.
But here's the catch - they expire, so you have to pay attention to the upper left corner when the essences are blinking, so you know that you need to get ready to extract again.
They are labeled with numbers 1 (Red), 2 (orange), 3 (white).
Once all 3 are extracted, you get a good boost to offense, defense, increased move speed, higher pole jumping, and Earplugs 3 (makes you immune to monster roars).
Pole Jumping - hold ZL and press B, and your character plants the glaive in the ground, and bounces off up high, giving you access to the insects glaive aerial attacks. Also, you can avoid a ton of attacks using pole jumps and being aerial.
I, personally, love that!
The insect glaive is both great on the ground, and for aerial shenanigans.

Try slotting in some evade extender and evade window for Lance. Also your back dodge covers more ground than any other dodge.

Your zr and x is a good move to help close distance. (Can't remember the inputs but it's a short dash and you can follow up with x for a hop into a poke which you can cancel the recovery with another one of those moves, it also chains into your normal poke combo)

Good luck bro. Try Gunlance as well for meaty explosions.

If you feel slow, that’s lance alright.

With lance you need to know monster atk and patience.

If you are looking at faster pace, duel blade or light bowgun would be best for beginner.

If you are looking for hardest weapon to play, heavy bowgun without shield.

Long sword: requires timing Hammer: easiest weapon to pick up. InsectG: a little learning curve. Sword and shield: easy to pick up. Same thing as long sword requires timing, but not necessary.

Lance and gunlance are just slow weapon requires patience. Even their dps is at lower tier of the weapons.

Switch Axe and Charge blade: both have a bit learning curve.

In short: lance isn’t bad to start with. But every weapon can do a counter not just weapons with shields, (except light bow gun). Yes even bow and heavy bowgun can do counters.

If this is your first mh, you might need to try all the weapons to see if you like it or not.

If you have purchased sunbreak, then i suggest you play whatever weapon that you want to grab and just keep pushing. As you pickup more switch skills and armor skills later on, the feel of the weapon can really change.

So its best to "try everything" when you have more armor skills to offset the downside/shortcomings of the weapons.

Lance walk slow when unsheathed, but it has better guard ability out the box compared to sns. And as you noted, sns traded that off to pickup more mobility.

There isnt any weapon thats significantly weaker than others in sunbreak so hit up some YouTube channels or some speedruns and try out that weapon if it looks cool to you

Give different playstyles a shot. Longsword and Dual Blades are famously addictive, ranged playstyles like lightbowgun have their unique charm too. There's weapons that add multiple layers of complexity like Charge Blade or Insect Glaive and I wouldn't recommend those until you've got a firmer grasp on game mechanics.

Also, to make trying out weapons a very minor commitment I recommend crafting the defender weapon of the tier before your current to try out the style first.

Edit: Sorry, I completely misread what you were saying. What I said requires Master Rank and obviously you aren't there yet. Lance is indeed harder in the base game. I'll keep what I said below for anyone who wants to read it anyway.

This is just advice for Lance. It seems you aren't using Shield Tackle or Guard Dash effectively if you are having issues with positioning. Shield Tackle is especially easy for positioning. Lance is actually quite fast.

I recommend sticking to Shield Tackle for now, it's basically a mini dodge that can turn you 180° if you want with the perk of blocking attacks and activating offensive guard (if you have the skill). Much better directional positioning but doesn't cover as much distance.

ZR + X in the direction you want to move to and you will go that way. That's it.

Guard Dash is not as good in terms of positioning but it's much better at closing the distance, so I recommend having it equipped on your blue scroll and you just switch if you need to cover distance. You definitely can use it for positioning though, don't misunderstand. Just takes a bit more skill to use. You can't do 180° turns though, although it has a really big backhop to make up for it.

L stick for direction (usually forward or slightly angled left or right. Can also side hop) + ZR + X to Guard Dash, A to attack. Repeat to either 1. Cover distance or 2. Spam attacks, in which case you will Guard Dash backwards then attack to go forward. Repeat.

A lot of your troubles will be remedied with time as you get better at keeping an eye on the monster and blocking at proper times with the various counters you have. Lance is capable of keeping the attacks up constantly but you do have to know when to block between the endless aggression.

If your camera sensitivity feels too slow I believe you can turn it up, but you can also lock onto the monster with R3.

honestly theres not much to say about how to play lance other than to keep at.

U can try slotting in evade extender so u can have better movement or quick sheathe.

charge blade is also another shielded weapon other than SnS that also has better movement and counter.

Then we have switch axe. No block but does have countering in sunbreak.

Another option is Long sword which has countering mechanics, and get another wirebug one in sunbreak, but no blocking.

Any advice?

Don’t eat yellow snow.