PoE 2: Dodge Roll Explained

The Dodge Roll is a defensive action in Path of Exile 2.

What is a Dodge Roll?

A Dodge Roll is an action that causes you to roll in the desired direction. Every character can perform a Dodge Roll by default by pressing Space Bar. The Dodge Roll is not considered to be a Skill, and is therefore not affected by modifiers to Skill Speed. Dodge Roll does not have a cost or a cooldown.

Note: modifiers to Action Speed do affect the Dodge Roll.

Upon Dodge Rolling, you'll initially avoid any incoming dodgeable Hits and cover a greater distance, before coming to the latter half of the Dodge Roll animation where you're vulnerable to Hits and cover a shorter distance. The total distance covered by the entire Dodge Roll animation is equal to your normal Movement Speed by default, and therefore spamming Dodge Roll will not improve distance covered.

Sprinting

Holding down the Dodge Roll button will perform a Dodge Roll before entering a Sprinting action, massively boosting your Movement Speed until the action is cancelled.

Avoided Hits

The initial portion of a Dodge Roll provides a guaranteed avoidance of any Hits that can be dodged. By default, only Projectiles and Strikes can be dodged. Damage over time, ground effects and area Hits cannot be avoided with the Dodge Roll by default. Hits that are avoided with a Dodge Roll do not count as Hits being Evaded, and Evasion does not interact with the Dodge Roll in any way. However, any Hits that are avoided are discarded in the same way as Hits that are Evaded, and therefore those Hits do not make it past the initial stage of the Damage calculation.

Be aware that the avoidance provided by a Dodge Roll is only present in the initial portion during the roll animation. As the roll completes, you'll begin to cover a shorter distance and be vulnerable to Hits as normal. Selective use of the Dodge Roll is therefore the most beneficial practice.

Distance Covered

By default and with no other modifiers, the Dodge Roll will cover a total distance of 3.7 metres. The Dodge Roll will cover the same total distance across its full animation compared to walking normally. Scaling your Movement Speed will equally scale the distance covered by your Dodge Roll.

Pathing and Collision

Upon Dodge Rolling and during the roll animation, a character's unit size is reduced to 0, allowing pathing through gaps between several Monsters that would otherwise be impossible while walking normally. However even though unit size is reduced to 0, it is still possible to get blocked and trapped by several surrounding Monsters.

During a Dodge Roll, you can retarget and change direction to adjust your movement.

Note: while Dodge Rolling, your movement will actively push smaller Monsters out of the way, allowing you to path through.

Use Case: Animation Cancelling

The Dodge Roll can be used to cancel the current animation being performed, except for cancelling another Dodge Roll. In some cases, this is extremely beneficial to improve overall distance covered and prevent situations where an animation is hindering your movement and making you vulnerable.

A great example is any Grenade Skill, for example Gas Grenade. Grenade Skills cause the character to be slowed significantly during the firing animation, but the animation also has a long backswing after the Projectiles have already been deployed. You can therefore utilise the Dodge Roll to cancel the remainder of this animation, essentially allowing you to move faster and cover a greater distance than would otherwise be possible. Shield Charge is another example, where the character enters a brief but slow animation after the charge portion has played out, which can be cancelled with a well timed Dodge Roll.

Another useful animation cancel scenario is when you know that a Skill is going to miss its intended target. You can cancel almost any animation before it's completed, and because Skill costs such as Mana are spent across the full duration of a Skill's animation, you'll also save some of the resource that would have been spent too.

Blink

Blink is a Persistent Buff Skill that reserves Spirit to replace your Dodge Roll with a teleport Spell. Notably the Blink Spell has a cooldown, unlike the default Dodge Roll.

Bulwark

The Bulwark Keystone will replace the period of avoidance in a Dodge Roll entirely, instead making the roll grant a consistent 30% less Damage Taken from Hits. This is useful to enable the Dodge Roll to function as a Damage reduction method against large Boss abilities that would otherwise be unavoidable with the Dodge Roll by default.

Lioneye's Glare & Surefooted Sigil

The Unique Bow Lioneye's Glare and the Unique Amulet Surefooted Sigil have special modifiers that alter the base distance that's travelled across the Dodge Roll animation. These types of modifiers cause a Dodge Roll to cover a greater or shorter distance in the same amount of time, essentially acting as a speed multiplier.

Ab Aeterno

Ab Aeterno are a pair of Unique Boots that are an exclusive drop from The Arbiter of Ash. This item has the special modifier 'Dodge Roll Avoids all Hits', which allows the Dodge Roll to avoid previously undodgeable area Hits, similar to how the Acrobatics Keystone functions for Evasion.

Note: this modifier does not allow you to avoid Damage over time effects.