I agree. Sure, permanent Precision is busted, but guess what? On top of requiring skill, there's plenty of stuff that counters Critical Hits (or just dealing high damage), including:
Black Dahlia's No Time to Die MA
Both of Painwheel's MAs (Mainly Tainted Blood)
Fighter variant SAs that activate upon suffering a Critical hit
Biofeedback match modifier
Silent Night match modifier
Match modifiers that activate when the opponent takes damage equal to a % of their health
These changes just make dealing with defensive variants countered by Precision even harder to deal with.
Precision was intended to be a counter to Fighters that relied on their SAs to be effective defenders. Of course it's going to be busted when it's permanent. But the Fighters that have access to perma-Precision have to work for it AND they already had conditions for losing it too.
Old Windswept had to evade an attack to gain Precision. Most of the time you're not going to evade a hit with Filia's CA, so she had to intercept a dashing/attacking opponent to gain Evasion. Then she could evade an attack and gain Precision. She lost Precision if she got hit.
Materia Girl has to repeatedly turn Star Power on and off until she gains Precision. It only lasts as long as she has Star Power active.
Star Shine has to wait a long time to gain permanent Precision. While waiting, she can potentially be disrupted by Curse or Hex.
Hex Caliber has to do a combo with at least 10 hits and can potentially trigger defensive SAs before gaining Precision. Her permanent Precision only lasts as long as she has Unflinching.
I genuinely don't see a reason as to why Windswept and Star Shine had to be gutted like this. If they wanted to make Precision less of an issue for certain defenders, then they should've adjusted Precision itself, buffed the defenders countered by it, or made it harder to gain perma-Precision. They shouldn't have made it easier to lose like this.
On another note, Windswept is probably unusable as a Precision attacker now. I've been having problems with using her as a Precision attacker ever since the patch. Yesterday, despite having perma-Precision active I still triggered a Shadow Puppet's SA. What happened? I killed her with Drill Tempered and when she "died", her timestop triggered, she fell out of the Blockbuster, got up (which removed my Precision), and nearly killed my Windswept. So much for Precision, huh?
