Honestly, if you have five characters already, there really is no need to learn someone else. Unless all of those five are at the same level. Even so, more than two is pushing it in my opinion.
Yeah, all the characters I use are at the same general level. Kasumi and Phase I imo consider one and the same, and ein and Marie I use alongside them since their strings are similar. Naotora is kinda different, but overall they're at the same level of difficulty that I can tolerate.
I may also use Mai, but it's not set in stone, I have to see what her CB and PB will be and her ease of use before I make a decision, it's the small things like that that determine whether I use someone or not, plus DOA is one of those games where you can get away with using more characters since strings are pretty much shared among certain characters.
I didn't mean difficulty, I meant level of play. For instance, my old main and Naotora are probably on the same level. I'd be confident with both in a tournament.
You can get away with using multiple characters in any fighting game. That doesn't mean you're going to be as good with x character as you are with y character. You could be though, who knows?
Yeah that's really true, Like Kasumi is still my overall strongest character with Phase being a a few notches below, but Naotora is about at the same level as Phase. Marie is just behind them with Ein being my weakest which is why I hardly bring him out, plus he stinks online. It just depends on the game for me, like Tekken I only use 2 characters atm since there's four buttons