What is the purpose of dodge roll?

What's the purpose of having a dodge roll that doesn't have i-frames? Am I missing something? Surely it's intended for more than animation cancelling. Compared to the rest of the mechanics and systems, it feels unpolished in both idea and implementation.

My instinct is to dodge roll into an attack. If the enemy is moving towards me during their swing, then I often get snagged on them and dragged the opposite direction just to be hit anyways afterwards. It simply feels awful. Is this actually the intended experience?

I think their intention was that you should be dodge rolling the red flash abilities of bosses, evident by the very first boss that introduces you to it.

However, it feels like they lost that philosophy somewhere along the way, and it's turned into a massive fiesta of just dodge rolling overtuned and frankly way to speedy monsters.

It's not great.

Path of Tumbling. No matter how silly it looks, every character is required to do it, constantly. Gonna be funny to see an old Templar rolling around. =^[.]^=

this game is souls like wanna be but its not, its crap, what boss in dark souls kill you on one hit?

I tend to use the dodge roll to dodge attacks.

I think he encountered the big swinging monkey in act 2...😎