What exactly am I supposed to be doing with Urien?

If you want to adapt a good/solid but safe Urien player’s style, try learning Pierre not RX or Kuroda.

I’ve been watching a lot of matches recently and I’ve found that a lot of Urien’s sit outside their opponents effective footsie range and dash grab to punish whiffed normals. It’s almost like they’re using dashes as a footsie tool. Yeah, I guess it doesn’t seem that he’s built for rushdown, I just have to not get caught up in trying to punish my opponent the whole match and set in a gameplan of my own. Right now my game plan is standing fierce, low forward, standing strong, Aegis lol. Trying to tackle punish whiffed normals I’m finding is really hard…

Are there any set ups for this? Like one I have against shoto is after a blocked or hit stand fierce, I immediately start charging back, dash back and wait for a low forward or something to whiff and tackle punish.

dash is footsies yeah.
urien has a great dash which greatly helps his throw game.

partitioning is just about knowing charge timing very well and knowing the maximum time you have to not be charging to retain a charge. also knowing how early you can do a charge input during a combo.

all that just comes with time and practice. you just feel the charge and know when it’s good to go. a good way to get started is work on being able to do dash xx headbutt/tackle. that’ll help you feel it and make your inputs more charge efficient.