The ranged dodge system definitely needs a lot more consideration, it's quite one-dimensional in this version. Originally the execution was the same as melee defense but you could 'shield' instead of dodge to spend shield meter and negate damage. We tried changing it up so that melee attack/defense and ranged attack/defense had alternate mechancs, but the shield was taken out for the moment.
One possible idea for reintroducing it is that having the 'shield' resource stocked will give you a buffer on the right side of the green-zone on the timing bar, allowing you to wait too long and miss and still giving you a freebie success, but shrinking or eliminating the buffer as it depletes through use. We may test something like that out at some point, but like Cheeseness pointed out we're still working on the balancing of how difficult it should be for the player to negate attacks vs. how much room for error there is.
I'm planning on some tests involving increasing starting health numbers considerably and rebalancing risk vs. reward. As it is currently, it's balanced around having to play pretty perfectly, and I can see how that's super stressful and not fun. Perfect timing on attacks and defense should feel like an extra bonus, and not a necessity, so I'll work on making the target timing more lenient but still rewarding, while leaving perfect timing as a bonus option that's more challenging and considerably riskier.