(This is a repost from Ignitice’s excellent breakdown of skulll reduction vs dodge traits)
Dodge exemplifies the worst aspect of GoW: toxic RNG randomly granting a huge advantage to one side and punishing the other for no reason. Removing it from the game would be a major improvement.
My proposed substitute for the Dodge-type traits: allowing the current dodge troops to “avoid” (i.e. take no damage from) a certain number of skull hits per turn.
This would mean:
Troops with dodge, heroes with cunning tree = 100% chance to avoid the first skull match of each turn;
Artema with Dexterous = 100% chance to avoid the first 2 skull matches of each turn.
Strikes me as a more fun and more reliable alternative than the RNG-fest that is the current dodge traits, while creating a new class of front-slot-viable troops.
Thinking ahead, I think it would take some very specific strategies by attacking players to play around this; rather than shooting for one massive explosion on cast by a skull converter, they will need to plan their attacks so the second hit does major damage. Unlike barrier, they won’t be able to rely on on spells/talents/status effects to stop the trait either, creating some unique interplay that we don’t currently have in the game.
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So while I hate dodge for being very unreliable at 20%, how does one counterplay against this naturally? Hope for a skull cascade? What if I’m using a pure faction delve team that has no reliable spell damage? Not every game mode has access to enrage or skull converters.
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I would say a mode’s design is problematic if you are forced to rely on stray skull damage to win without skull-based troops. Designers have absolute control over what troops can be used where, and could design such that edge cases like the faction delve case you mentioned could be avoided.
If the point is that the balancing for all modes may be too much work, I’d settle for just removing the dodging altogether and calling it a day 
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I’d reduce the effectiveness of the replacement traits by half, but otherwise I like the idea.
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I had a Dementicore dodge 4 straight skull attacks before I finally hit it with 2 Faunessa attacks.
Yesterday, I foolishly attacked Drowned Grotto after giving them Agile, and missed 5 times in a row before clearing the room.
I would have to check the Archives, but I don’t recall ever losing because an enemy dodged a skull attack.
Now, @Mana_Surgeon, if you are saying the Barbarian’s trait should be changed to “35% chance to Summon an Orc Mythic when I take damage”, then that might be something I could support. After all, Orc Mythics are alleged to be among the worst in the game. It’s not like the Barbarian is stealthy either, like the Orbweaver. And while Shade might summon 2 Fists, Gargantaur summons nothing. It all balances out, in my opinion.