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So let's look at the changes first:
Attack dodge is being removed from the game.
Blind as a debuff is being massively nerfed in its effect on evade chance.
Spell dodge is being removed and replaced by "spell suppression", which reduces damage taken from spell damage by 50% with up to 100% chance.
Wind Dancer will actually cause you to take MORE attack damage if you were hit recently.
Evasion calculations are reworked to only need half the evasion for the same amount of %evade chance as before.
Evasion from gear and Grace aura is buffed. Acrobatics has been redesigned to convert spell suppression to spell dodge at 50% of its value, 75% cap.
Now let us look at the consequences these changes have in combination with each other:
Attack dodge is removed, more Evasion is available.
For Dodge based builds getting 75/75 attack and spell dodge was very attainable, even if sometimes temporary buffs like flasks, vaal grace or elusive needed to be used to cap it.
This means that out of 100 spell/attack hits on your character only on average 25 would actually hit your character and go through your other defenses like evasion.
Let's say you had 50% evade chance on top of your dodge. This meant that only 12.5 of 100 attacks would hit your character, reduced to 6.25 of 100 if the enemy was blinded.
Since attack dodge is being removed this means your new evasion values need to make you 4 times less likely to be hit compared to before, up to 6-7 times less likely if you count in blind.
This would mean having an evade chance of 87.5% without blind, or 93.75% chance with blind compared to before. The changes to the evasion calculations and more evasion will provide your characters with more evasion. But you will still be hit a lot more than before, since the changes do not increase it in the same size as what was taken.
The changes to Wind Dancer are even worse in this context, because since you will be hit a lot more than before you will be even more likely to take bonus damage because you were hit recently.
If an enemy has resolute technique you will take 400% more damage compared to before, since it will mean you have no attack mitigation at all anymore against his attacks. You will actually take even more than 400% more damage if you allocate the new Wind Dancer.
Upsides to the changes however are that since life recovery is being buffed you will recover from hits faster, also since Acrobatics no longer decreases your ES/Armor you can combine these with Evasion to have a higher health pool than before.
Spell dodge is removed, replaced by spell suppression.
Before only 25% of spell hits would connect if you had spell dodge cap, now with spell suppression cap 100% of spell hits will connect for 50% damage. So we will take on average 100% more damage from spells compared to before. Upside however is that the damage will be less spiky since before multiple spell hits could connect in a row, and now each hit will be decreased consistently.
However, if you look at abilities that deal "secondary damage", for example damage from corpse explosions, it is very different. Spell dodge and spell block were changed in the past to apply to secondary damage abilities.
These abilities do NOT deal spell damage however. What this means is where before 75% of secondary damage was mitigated by spelldodge, now 0% will be. Or in other words your character will take 400% more secondary damage on average than before.
Thank you Mark for the clarification.
These changes can be mitigated by taking the reworked acrobatics that allows you to hit 75% spell dodge again, but I assume the investment to reach that will be many factors higher than before.
Conclusion:
Some of these changes look promising, but if you look at the whole picture your character will be hit a lot more, compared to the current dodge/evasion playstyle. And the hits will sometimes hit you even harder than before (Wind Dancer).
I would say looking at all the changes at a whole the dodge/evasion playstyle will definitely be weaker than before. Only saving grace might be combining evasion with Armor/Energy Shield. I think some more improvements are necessary.
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