In an attempt to get better I'm trying to play arcade mode without specials.  I'm a Ryu player, and I haven't really played much SF since Turbo II.  When I picked up my SF4 I realized my whole game was basically spamming Hadokens and DPing people that jump in.   I don't have a good poking game, I seem to only be able to close by jumping, and don't string things well.   I figured by trying to play without specials it will improve my overall game.  I think it is working out for now. 
 
Anyway, the question is who is the best character to play if you are going to try to win without using specials/supers?

Jeez that's gonna be hard to do man. I'd figure the fighters with hard hits would work out the best. Zangief, T. Hawk, maybe even Hakan if you don't count his oil shower as a special.

Guile and Chun have godlike normals and pokes. Most charge characters do pretty well without their specials.

Dhalsim, Ryu, Chun Li, Balrog, Guile, and E. Honda all have a fairly complete footsies game and should be able to get by without specials
 
Akuma, Bison, Fei Long, Sagat, Vega, Zangief, and I think Rose are probably going to want specials a little more, but they all have good ways of controlling space without them.

" @UnsavedHero: It actually hasn't been that bad.  I'm only playing on medium have while I can't win without continuing it goes pretty well.  I'm forced to really pay attention to when people whiff, what moves have priority and how to find spaces to put in a string.    the killer pokes and normals were what I was looking for.  Also the ability to string things well/easily.  I'm not great at Ryu's normal strings.  I feel like they are almost always 1 hit then hadoken. I also find that I am throwing more. "

I'd submit Cody and sim.. Cody maybe has some of the best normals in the game with nice long block strings and plenty of combos that can have knock down sweep endings. 

I'd say Chun, Sim or Guile but their game still centres around their fireball. Maybe Bison? You can just standing HK all day and win with him. 
 
Alternatively you could always try someone with bad normals/pokes and if you can win with them then your set :)

" In an attempt to get better I'm trying to play arcade mode without specials.  I'm a Ryu player, and I haven't really played much SF since Turbo II.  When I picked up my SF4 I realized my whole game was basically spamming Hadokens and DPing people that jump in.   I don't have a good poking game, I seem to only be able to close by jumping, and don't string things well.   I figured by trying to play without specials it will improve my overall game.  I think it is working out for now.  Anyway, the question is who is the best character to play if you are going to try to win without using specials/supers? "

"cr.mk and combo it into an hadoken."  

Chun or Guile

Sagat

Deejay

My playing is pretty bad. I get too tense and forget about specials, when it's like a main part of the game -_- But I use Guile and DeeJay a lot and their moves are really good. Guile's forward+LB punch has so much range, and he has a nice step in kick with forward+RT. Play around with him and get to know his moves and when to use them and he's really good at confusing others because of it.

I was playing for the first time in a while the other night, and a Ryuk player (I think) kept hit confirming into fb, but it wasn't comboing and I caught him with ultra at least 3 times. Not specifically related to what you mentioned, but I wonder if it isn't spaced correctly whether its doable in that senario too. "

So it sounds like Guile/Chun is the best choice.  I guess I will give them a shot next.  I've never been great at charge characters, but it's better than grapplers in my opinion.   
 
As for cr. mk->Hadoken:  I thought that if you were at the edge of the cr.mk range it wasn't an auto-combo.  I've been throwing slow Hadokens at that range to try to catch people moving after the reflex block.  Maybe I've been doing it wrong this whole time.