Talk:Poe Dameron (HOR)/@comment-27613051-20180202155502/@comment-454133-20180202191911

Autothrusters are extremely powerful, particularly with Poe. Between that and his pilot ability, he tends to take little or no damage at range 3 or against turrets out of arc, and Artoo then heals it back up. It's a tough sell to trade it for Integrated Astromech.

Also worth noting that the Force Awakens damage deck lacks, which is the only way to lose your pilot ability. So whether that worries you depends on which deck you have, and how often you expect to take crits on a shield-regen, high-defense Poe.

Determination affects, , , (FA), and  (Original). The Determination page lists the odds of drawing a pilot card... they're not great (24% per crit, though it varies and not all damage is crits). For a 3-hull ship that relies on shield regen and defense abilities to avoid boring into its hull, it's often not worthwhile compared to other elites that help you kill foes faster or avoid arcs entirely. Determination doesn't see much playtime.

However, there's an interesting edge case: if you suspect your foe could field Kylo in any of his forms, then Determination completely negates I'll Show You The Dark Side and potentially even reduces the damage you take during that match (since it's better than turning the card facedown -- any time Kylo's ability tries to push its crit on you, you simply don't take that damage). It's a bit of a tough choice since you don't generally know your opponent's fleet, but it's sometimes an arguably solid meta counter in some metas, especially for a PS 9 ship that will fire first on your team (thus always stealing the condition).

As someone who's frequently used Breach Specialist to neuter a Kylo fleet's core mechanic (which was applying blinded pilot to shut its foe down for a round or two while killing ships in their fleet), I can tell you this is traumatic for Kylo players. ;)