Eliot

Eliot is another quick-striking character. He doesn't deal an insane amount of damage with his combos, but he has a good number of feint animations with many of his moves, which a skilled player will be able to incorporate in order to show one attack before delivering something entirely different. Also worth noting is the fact that both of Eliot's mid-level counters, in addition to doing a small amount of damage, will also position Eliot behind his foe, allowing him to quickly start a new unblockable combo, or perform a behind-the-back throw for extra damage.

Bass

Like his daughter Tina (with whom he has a particularly...odd relationship), Bass is an old-school wrestler. While Tina possesses most of the moves that you might recognize from your misspent youth watching WWF, Bass' size and strength allows him to bust out with a number of particularly brutal attacks and throws, possessing such elaborate names as Grizzly Rancher, Wild Bull Head Butt, and the Atomic Hammer Crash. Needless to say, if you like throws, then you're going to want to give Bass a whirl; some of his combo throws can do over 150 points of damage when properly executed.

Like a few of the other wrestler characters, Bass isn't particularly fast, and although his attacks are powerful, they're likely to get countered if you play against an opponent that's seen them before. That doesn't mean that he can't be successful when used online, but you'll definitely have to try and mix up the heights of your attacks if you don't want to get rebuffed, especially against countermove masters.

Zack

What does Zack's antenna do? It glows. This is incredibly important.

Zack is an interesting character, to say the least, even apart from his distinctive fighting style. This DJ/explorer/urban climber/entrepreneur is a flamboyant part of the DOA roster, and can bring an interesting bag of Muay Thai tricks to bear in combat.

The most obvious members of Zack's movelist are the rapid-fire kick combos, such as Mad Beast and Mad Hound, which typically open with one or two punches before shifting over to a sequence of four kicks, either mid or low. Although these moves can do a decent amount of damage in a small amount of time, the final kick often has a delay in front of it, allowing your opponent to easily counter you. To avoid this, either shift from medium to low kicks, if possible, or just stop entering kicks after you've loaded in two or three of them. Almost everyone reflexively tries to counter the fourth kick here, so you can often catch them in the act and deliver a throw.

Nextly, Zack also has stance attacks that extend from his Duck move. You can duck by either hitting (d, P+K) or entering into it from a Sway (b, P, d). You can enter from this into some impressive punch combos, but again, the danger here is that virtually all of your punches will be at the same height. Although you can enter some hesitations into the middle of the stream, good players will still manage to counter you.

As a note, Fake Strike Knuckle turns the glowing antenna on Zack's third uniform on and off, as do all of his taunts.

Jann Lee

Jann Lee is one of the best characters to use if you're just starting out with DOA4; this steroidal Bruce Lee clone has moves are quick, fairly powerful, and amenable to a button-mashing style of gameplay. His main drawback is that, since he's relatively well-used online, his moves will be fairly predictable to your opponents, especially the old hands who've been playing Dead or Alive for a while, since many of his common combos are more or less the same as they've been since the earlier iterations of Dead or Alive.

That said, if you do choose to get down with Jann Lee, you should take the time to learn combos and attacks that avoid massive numbers of high punches, which can be guarded or countered. Attacks like Combo Low Spin Kick (P, hold d, P, K) and Hammer High Combo (d/b, P, K) both have a mixture of high and low attacks, allowing you to penetrate guards and frustrate an opponent's attempt to counter your strikes.