You try countering with dragunov in tekken and you get maybe a 6 frame active window, massive recovery, and it does around 15% lifebar. And you can CHICKEN that shit to get out of it.
This ain't Tekken though, or Virtua Fighter, or Soul Calibur, or anything else.
This is DoA and defensive holds are a trademark of the series.
Going back to a 3 point system (like console version of DoA2 or DoA3) would make no sense and would kill a lot of depth that the game gained in DoAU when they first introduced 4 point defensive holds.
I think defensive holds are really fine in DoA5, if people keep complaining this much now I'm gonna start to think that they'll never stop complaining no matter what Team Ninja decides to do.
We already have several situations where you cannot use defensive holds.
The damage has been greatly reduced and is one now of the lowest in the whole series.
There are moves that if defensiveheld will just make you evade it instead of counter it (there could be more of these).
Now I agree a couple more frames of recovery wouldn't hurt, just like a couple less frames of active window, but overall the system is fine like it is and doesn't really need any rehaul.
Goin back to 3 points would be a killer, and goin to a 6 point would be too much, altough I agree there have been times where I wished the system was a 6 point...
Back in DoAU more than half of the game's moves were middle attacks, so it's only right that they decided to split in two only the middle defensive holds.
I think that since then a lot of moves have been added though, and probably that 50% thing isn't valid anymore.
I'm seriously wondering myself if goin to a 6 points system would be better but I Can't really find the answer, I'm afraid things would just get worse.