I took this with my last human bard, and was thinking of rolling another human bard but am put off by how rubbish it was last time. My use an arial to get those defenses instead.
But I tested it (with my human bard), by fighting a mob which took around 20 rounds to kill. Then took the edge, and repeated, and I didn't notice anything at all, still got hit pretty much the same.
My dex was at 20, and my charisma was at 23 (with equipment, think it was 19 without).
Was wondering if maybe now all it did was help with evade rather than defenses like it used to.