>4) The "top end" (23+) of the DEX scale got adjusted upwards
>for Dodge perhaps a week ago. (Nep?) Previously,
>DEX's impact on Dodge was more 'flat' than how we like
>attributes to work, so the difference between, say, 23 and 24
>was not all that large.

The change was made a week or so ago, but it probably wasn't live until Thursday or Friday.

The difference here still isn't all that enormous -- I'd still say the difference between 23 and 24 or 23 and 25 is bigger in strength, constitution, wisdom, etc. -- but it is a bit of a difference. When Cador and I last really monkeyed with dodge probably 10 years ago, arial warrior was an iconic build and dex meant less than it might have as a result. Ten years pass, most classes has a skill to deal direct damage better than kick, and things look a little different.

>5) Nep reformulated encumbrance somewhat. Previously, if your
>Strength was dropped a good bit, odds are even with very light
>armor you Dodged like a house because you were terribly
>encumbered. (Ironically, the most efficient strategy for
>stopping someone from dodging generally wasn't to hit their
>Dexterity.) The new math still lets you derive some benefit
>from having a high Dexterity even if your Strength has
>dropped. (Very low DEX or letting both STR and DEX drop
>somewhat is still very bad for Dodge.)

Yeah, and really... if you're an arial warrior with a reasonable load and your strength is 3 and your dexterity is 25... you're still probably not dodging anything. The problem previously was more that if you were an arial warrior with a reasonable load and were dropped to, let's say, 14 strength (i.e... you had racial max strength and no +str gear, and someone poisoned or plagued or mid-level-weakened or whirled you or whatever) you would damn near stop dodging entirely. +str gear was much, much more important to preserve your dodging as a dodgy character than +dex.

Now? Well, lowering strength still does hurt dodging a significant amount, but it's probably not more important than lowering dexterity. Obviously, this has some ramifications in that kind of matchup for classes that are built on all -str maledictions and no -dex maledictions and we're aware of that and will be keeping an eye on them and adjusting them accordingly.

I think that's it. Commentary on this post also should go to Gameplay!