What Calion said is pretty accurate. In a general sense...

Generally dodge, parry, shield block, spin, distance only work
against "automatic" things like regular hits, etc.

Against "active" skills like impale, kick, hamstring, whatever else,
evade is the skill that you would look for. A few things will change
this - PARRY ANYTHING is a warrior edge that more or less gives an
ability to parry skills you could otherwise evade.

It's also possible that an individual skill is coded such that a
defense COULD help against it. The only one I can think of like this
off the top of my head is flurry, in which you can see echoes where
your standard d/p/sb gives a damage reduction.