You could argue that the autohit's guaranteed damage was a natural counter to evade stacking, preventing it from becoming the strongest stat of the game, and you would be right to an extent. But at the same time it created an issue where dodge based characters were completely useless half of the time.

Evasion doesn't negate the damage, as a heads-up; it reduces it by a percentage, after all other modifiers, up to a maximum of 50% reduction. And it's not guaranteed, either. It's very similar to as if you were attacking that person, so modifiers to hit, penalties to evade, and so on all come into play. And people invoking spells or flat on their back can't dodge anything, so the skill won't be useful if you're knocked down.

This skill is mostly to help the Arbalest synergize with other classes more and make it harder to keep them out of Blowback Cannon range permanently.

Similar to Crescent Rook, Bright Bishop is a projectile attack in a line. It also drops Light Shafts (sometimes) and causes the person hit to start Glowing for a few rounds. This should make skills like Obscure more attractive, since now Glowing can be inflicted by someone other than monsters, and it gives BKs a decent way to buff their (and allies') Hit.

Now you can have longer installs and avoid potentially fatal problems that occur... as long as it's with Bonded Youkai. This skill also lets you proc the effects of Fight As One if you only have one Bonded Youkai, so it's more for the Install fighter summoners out there.

This is another bomb skill for the Engineer. They're slightly weaker than regular bombs, but they don't require you to have special items crafted and equipped to use. That said, I would like to also add more unique bomb crafting recipes in the future.

In my eternal struggle to make people play Fist Mages, I decided to give Evokers a skill that not only buffs Elemental Augment, but gives Charge Mind and its duration extension skills a secondary function. This turns the damage on max rank EleAug to 25 each hit (which required another change, more on that later) and it doesn't consume Charge Mind in the process. So even if you're a regular mage type, you might want this skill to deal a bit more with your tome attacks while you wait for the perfect opportunity to cast a spell.

Can you guess why this skill would be useful? All it does is increase your maximum HP for every negative status you have. If you guessed 'it makes Rising Game easier to proc without reducing your HP', congratulations! Since your current HP never changes, you can retain higher levels of it while getting Rising Game bang for your buck. But only while you suffer from negative status effects. Note that this can be any status effect that appears in a red box, even ones caused by yourself or aren't that negative at all.

An SL1 classic skill, the Auto-Summon has made its way to SL2. Now that you can rearrange your contracts in the Youkai Manager, there was no better time to add this skill, since the technical issues impeding it are no longer there.

This skill lets you recover FP when you attack someone who is suffering from negative statuses. The FP recovery is a fixed amount based on Rank. This was the patch of giving mages skills that make them want to basic attack enemies, but Hexers are in a good spot already, so I didn't want to give them anything overbearing.

The last of the Absolute series, this skill lets you target an enemy. If that enemy attacks you and misses, you gain Battle Flow, which causes your next Kensei offensive skill to gain damage equal to 100% of your STR. Now maybe people will actually use them!

Lantern Bearers didn't have any Spear skills, so now they do. This one deals damage and puts your enemy into the Airborne status. I'll let you figure out uses for that.

Magic Gunner already has a variety of offensive shells, so this one is more along the lines of utility or uniqueness. It lets you increase your Luck, on hit. It lets you steal your opponent's Luck if you charge it with a lot of juice. Have fun.

No comment.

This probably seems useless, but a change later in the patch notes will make you think twice! Remember me.

The final formation boosts your spell power and protects your Invocations. Not much else to say here.

Lets you skate across ice sheets. If you skate long enough and run into an enemy, they get knocked down. This may seem like a utility skill, but it's actually a defensive one!

Void Assassin Mages will like this one, because it's a spell. Not much else to say about it. I mainly wanted to encourage more WIL based VAs for some reason.