I would like to add something to this.
I am new to DOA I played a bit of DOA3 and 4 but not as hard as I have played 5.
But I feel that putting your health on smallest or smaller is a good practice. As it has been stated before, these setting will really force you to play smartly, forcing you to work on your defensive game. There are a lot of players out there who have no idea how to block in DOA, and playing on smallest where a whiffed hold will get you blown up, blocking becomes a necessity and that is a good thing. I know that they are two different games, but I can compare these settings to something along the lines of Marvel. We all know the crazy things that can happen in Marvel of the merits of a single hit confirm, and you also know (if you watch any marvel streams) how the top players in Marvel have amazing movement and blocking game as well as good spacing, because they know how bad getting hit is.
Playing with smallest health forces this kind of play, you know that if you get hit, that it is going to hurt like hell, so you work on your defense, you stop spamming holds foolishly because now whiffing them once or twice can damn near get you killed if not put you in the grave, and you work on you blocking because if you can't hold you need other ways to defend your self.
This setting can upgrade your movement and spacing, I use to ignore sidesteps because I could always throw out a random hold and deal with it nonchalantly, but now I feel the need to stay more evasive, to avoid hard hitting attacks, and my spacing game has improved in ways that make me happy inside lol. Even when I played on normal I used to find myself getting whooped on by wake up kicks and fall of ledges or smashing into walls on hit. But they never did enough damage to really make me work on it. But now on this smallest setting where a wall combo can literally be the death of you. I am more self conscious of where I am standing. I play Ayane (for now going through a character crisis.) And I feel that she highly benefits from the improvements of my spacing, I no longer get her pounded by stunning wake up kicks, and I utilize her decent ranged attacks and methods of getting in more effectively.
I think that everything that you learn while playing on smallest can further your game even when you take all these tactics back to a setting with normal health, and I think we can all benefit from becoming smarter players right?
I don't want to go on forever so I will just make one last comment
I have read some comments about it not being far that newer players don't stand a chance against veterans in this new setting. But isn't that the way it is suppose to be? I am lucky enough to have some decent players on my I.E Codemaster and Crazysteady and I have even had the chance to play against Punishere, Renairism and even Rikuto in peacefuljay's stream lobby. Believe me I say that I'm lucky to have play against these players, but they blow me up over and over again. But I don't mind it, because I am learning new things each and every time Codemaster stomps me with his Helena, or each time that Punishere makes me look foolish with sabaki's. I am learning what works and what doesn't and that in it's self makes up for however "unfair" it may be for them to destroy me (I think it's fair personally, I mean they know the game a lot better then I do and have been playing for a lot longer, but to each his own right?)
That all I wanted to say,
P.S who knew that Rikuto could have an evil side, it's a pure contrast to how he looks on streams. At first I thought he was just plain corny, but boy was I wrong.