I like Evade. I hate Evade. I guess it depends on my character and who I happen to be fighting.

I wanted to toss a few things out there, though, from a game balance perspective. Take 'em, leave 'em, comment or whatever. I'm just killing time.

Melee skill vs. Spell. If I can duck behind a tree to dodge a pincering fire giant, shouldn't I also be able to duck behind a tree to dodge an incoming lightning bolt? Why does evade only work vs. melee skills? This gets complicated though...can one evade communes? I'd assume so, since a mongoose can dodge them, and symphonic echoes can make you commune where no one is. If it can be mongoose-dodged, shouldn't it be evadable? If not, where is the line drawn?

Evaded skill lag. If my fire giant pincers an arial, and I miss, I'm stuck with X rounds of lag. If I pincer an arial and it evades, I'm stuck with X rounds of lag. If evade works better for dex races, wouldn't it be interesting to have a counter-evade edge for str races? Fire giant pincers arial, arial evades, fire giant uses his strength to a) recover in 1 round of lag, or b) counter the evade and land his pincer anyway, or c) he misses the pincer, but anticipates where arial is going and delivers a powerful counterblow! OK, b) is pretty unlikely, but some kind of counter-evade edge might be interesting.

Evaded skill lag, when skill wouldn't normally land. This one's been covered before: basically if I try to dirt kick a blind opponent and it evades the dirt kick, I would still take two rounds of dirt kick lag. Team Evade already said this wouldn't change, BUT... what if every evaded skill was reduced to 1 round of lag? What if this only held true if strength was greater than some value? Arials would still evade those nasty fire giant pincers, but fire giants would naturally recover faster (1 round) because of their strength. You'd still get the dex benefit of evade (you didn't get pincered!), but the str class would have a chance to recover and try again.

Well...I guess that's it. The dex changes were needed and (I think) overall a good change. They may still need a little balancing.