Free Step Dodge

that said im still down with the idea of making grabs on block techable but keeping grabs as a punish untechable. Nitroplus Blasterz does a very similar thing with it's throw game where if you grab an opponent who's simply blocking, they can tech, but if you grab someone as a punish, i.e their recovery frames or throwable start up frames, the grab becomes untechable

that mecahnic is what keeps Nintroplus Blasterz grab game very honest (a grab game that most characters can kill you off one if they have full resources mind you), and i don't think DOA would suffer from having a more honest grab game, yeah it would make people with certain play styles reeeeeeeeee~ but that'd be a small price to pay

Couldn't agree more, imagine getting the right read or having enough reaction time that you throw a hold for that juicy Hi-Counter damage only for them to tech the throw and thus make your read or reaction obsolete. Then strikes would be a lot better and people would be playing the stun game more as well as playing the poke game as well, that for me would actually kill DOA.

It's like, why should I play DOA when there's a game that does pressure almost as well and poking even better than DOA, which is Tekken. Either have Counter Throws have smaller break window and Hi-Counter throws have an even smaller break window, or, just as you said, make throws untechable if they're used in order to punish something unsafe.

Actually, the combination of two would be the perfect way of making all throws techable (if we must), for me at the very least.

yeah, pretty much this, if you nerf throws you inadvertently overbuff counters and strikes, which would be annoying af. you'd have to nerf strikes and counters to rebalance the triangle, which i don't even know how you would do that, maybe nerf counters by limiting how many times you can hold during stun, but what about strikes then?

give me the vf triangle system.

An option could be to make throws on an opponent's recovery frames un-techable, along with making counter & hi-counter throws unbreakable. Basically throws done at neutral could be breakable. KOF14 also implemented the "throws are guaranteed as punishment" mechanic.

didn't know that was thing in KOF14 lol, but SNK games all have weird throwing mechanics which i actually appreciate, in Samsho 2019 you're actually immune to throws for several frames when coming out of blockstun and waking up from knockdowns, and yet throws are still scary af in that game