You're right, a player who dips into Devil May Cries or Beat 'Em Ups every now and then will find it hard to getting used to Dante as he forces you to focus more on the game a lot more than Nero. These guys will probably use only one Devil Arm, Firearm, they will stick to only one style that they really like and take very easily avoidable damage often, but its not entirely their fault. As much as I love DMC4, it has a pretty awful tutorial. They have no right to know that jump cancelling is even possible because the game doesn't say anything about it. The tutorial itself literally only tells you the basic controlls and Dante doesn't even have his own tutorial.
To a person who plays Beat 'Em Ups frequently though, getting used to Dante won't take long and they will experiment with weapon and style switching and probably create pretty stylish combos. Sure, if they haven't played DMC before, they will not start jump cancelling instantly but they will try and probably learn it quickly.