Getting a good match is almost random with DOA5. You and I have played a few matches and we have a 4/5 bar and as you know it is very laggy. Very few 5 bar connections are smooth in my experience, I have played 1 bars that were better than 4 bars. Sometimes 3 bars are great.
I've never played a match that felt anywhere close to offline sadly. Even with other people in the UK. Strangely NL players usually offer the best connections.
I don't usually get input lag on DOA5 the lag generally just slows the match down. Very occasionally I get input lag, no where near often enough to analyse it though.
Well it has to be input lag when you can't punish unsafe moves, and that's a general property of all except for the very best online connections. Maybe we here in the north have better mutual connections, with fellow Finns and also Swedes we get very good connections sometimes. I don't get particularly good connections with NL players... the backbone international fiber cables sure don't go the straigtest route always, thus more ping and more lag.
I'm very sceptic about the coming patch, probably won't change much.
I've never had a good 1 bar connection, although some 4 bar ones are bad. BTW we usually have 3 bars between us... it shows 4 bars in the lobby, then in drops to 3 at character select.