Due to how VATS works in FNV, the Built to Destroy perk is totally useless. I checked some pages on the net and got the info that VATS now works like this: you get a flat bonus to crit chance in VATS of 5 per cent and this bonus is not multiplied by the weapon crit multiplier, hence flat bonus. So now you got to compensate for missing 95 per cent to get the crit chance percentage to 100%. I don't know, maybe you are satisfied with a lower crit chance, but I ALWAYS scored criticals with the gauss rifle in F3 and I want to score 100% crits with the Ratslayer in FNV. To get the additional necessary crit chance of 95 %, you need a base crit chance of 19 (19x5 crit multiplier=95+5 per cent in vats=100%). So assume you've got luck 10, plus Built to Destroy, that 13 per cent crit chance. Now you take the Light Touch perk and...you are stuck at 18 per cent! What the?! Just one percent base crit chance is missing! SICK! So now you gotta equip some item that gives you a bonus crit chance, thus wasting an equip slot or waste an additional perk point to take Finesse.

Pointless, I say! Instead, take Trigger Discipline, very nice perk, I was finally able to sneak up on a ghoul reaver for a 95% sneak shot to its stupid head. So let's assume you do NOT have the Built to Destroy perk. You got luck 9, plus Light Touch perk, that's 9% base crit chance+5% crit chance modifier if you are wearing light armor, plus pickpocket Manny's beret at Novac, that's another 5 % crit chance, you get EXACTLY 19% crit chance overall, which gives you 100% crit chance with 5x crit weapons like Ratslayer. NICE!

In order to pickpocket Manny's beret, you need to reverse pickpocket some crap helmet on him, exit the area, clear the cell cache, re-enter and he will equip the new helmet, unequipping his beret, now pickpocket it and you've got 19% crit chance:

http://i467.photobucket.com/albums/rr40/WRFan/ScreenShot118-1.jpg

haha, Manny wearing a Legion helmet! Got it from some poor Legion guy who was killed by night stalkers near the brok flower cave.

No, you see, what you're trying to say is that it's not a good choice for your specific character build.

Also, why do you want Manny's beret? Boone gives you one for free if you complete One for my Baby.

all characters builds will benefit from a high crit chance

Lol, pickpopcketing instead of doing quests. Find a new game.

There aren't many traits better than Built to Destroy imo. With Jury Rigging and the weapon repair kits from the sierra madre vending machine the extra 15% decay isn't a hindrance at all.

I have the max crit currently with 9 Luck, Lucky shades, Light Armor with Light Touch, 1st Recon Beret, Finesse, Ninja and Built to Destroy.

10+5+5+5+3=28, 28*1.15= 32.2%, this doesn't matter much at all when it comes to the Ratslayer but it's fantastic for a weapon like shishkebab that makes great use of all the crit% you can give it.

Shishkebab has a X2 crit Multipler, critical hits can receive a boost from better criticals and a massive boost from Elijah's Ramblings, add pyromaniac on top of that and you have one of the most devastating weapons in the game.

Built to Destroy can be an annoyance under certain circumstances. Sniper Rifles and many Energy weapons are kind of fragile and degrade quickly, even a Brush gun with SWC rounds will require more repairs than I care to make. But its main virtue is that it permanently raises an important character stats without costing you anything in terms of character stats. The downside is easily mitigated by the Jury Rigging perk, by plentiful and renewable game resources, by having Full Maintenance Raul as a companion and/or by relying on Cowboy guns, with their impressive durability.

If I understand correctly, +15% extra condition penalty just mean your weapon degraded like 8 shots after 7 shots?

I've got Built to Destroy on my current character, and I love it. She never uses VATS anyway except as an absolute last chance panic button - she prefers to use the scopes and iron sights. The need for weapon repair is kind of a hassle, but so far she hasn't run out of crappy weapons or weapon repair kits to do those repairs, has plenty of caps to pay someone for those repairs if she ever does, and once she finishes up at the Sierra Madre she'll have access to infinite weapon repair kits for the rest of her life. :shrug:

I took Trigger Discipline on my first character. It was nice early on, when he was learning his way around and used VATS quite a bit, but in the later game the slower firing rate really started to become a liability.

Built to Destroy is good. Only really hurts with full auto weapons or using Max Charge. BUT, I always have a huge stockpile of Weapon Repair Kits, so the penality is pretty minor.

Trigger Discipline stinks for VATS use. A 20% accuracy increase for a 20% AP Cost. Lets see Gunslinger/Commando give a 25% accuracy boost - with no penality. And there is no real easy way to offset that 20% AP Cost. Math Wrath will only give you 10%. Grim Reapers helps, but that is really late game.

Besides - the biggest reason to NEVER bother with Trigger Discpline - the Drug STEADY. Want a 95% hit chance from max distance in VATS? Only Steady can do it. Trigger Discpline will only raise you a couple of points. Not worth it.

There is a three word solution to your problem:

Sneak Attack Critical.

yeah, try to sneak attack enemies if they get alarmed when they see a corpse of an enemy killed by a player, good luck with that. When enemies get alarmed, they start searching for you and the game AI will always move them in the direction of the player without hesitation, which is just stupid, cause they dont know exactly where you are if you used a silenced weapon. but they always find me. If I can ensure 100% critical, I can continue shooting them even if they are alarmed. Won't work on enemies with high DT, but will work on average enemies, standard non-sneak criticals will still kill them.

Now since you mentioned the Boone quest above, have you noticed that the pickpocket trick I described works on him as well? You can pickpocket his beret as well, same as with Manny, which will not break his quest, but is confusing to the player, because Boone will still give you his beret, even if you pickpocketed it from him before. As with all quests in this game, this quest is extremely buggy, I actually went ahead and re-wrote all 3 scripts that govern this quest and all AI packages from scratch, because everything is so broken and buggy on this quest, it simply cannot be fixed, Obsidian's scripting sux. Now if the player tries the reverse-pickpocket trick on Boone, it won't work any longer, if Boone notices that the player is trying to exploit this glitch, he will immediately re-equip his beret, comment on this and knock down the player, similarly to the Victory Rifle in F3. It's extremely funny, my sniperess nearly fell off the dinasour when Boone knocked her down, hahaha!

Also, after testing the Light Touch perk, it turns out it doesnt work properly, or maybe it does, but then Obsidian needs to clarify on how it works, because the perk description simply says " you gain +5% critical hit chance and enemies suffer 25% crit chance failure." No, this is not true, Obsidian. The way this perk and other similar perks like Laser Commander are implemented is different from the Finesse perk or the 1st Recon beret, because Light Touch doesn't increase your base critical, nor does it decrease the enemy's base critical, it's a flat modifier and it COMPLETELY ignores the weapon critical multiplier. So if a weapon has a 5x crit chance, the 5% bonus critical added by Light Touch is NOT multiplied by 5 and the enemy penalty is NOT multiplied by the enemy's weapon's critical chance. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but don't you think this is information worth mentioning, Obsidian?

Ok, so here's the crit chance formula used by FNV fyi:

base crit chance * weapon crit multiplier + crit chance multiplier + vats crit multiplier

So a player with 10 luck, Finesse and Light Touch will have the following critical chance in Vats using a fully repaired Ratslayer (5x multiplier)

10 luck + 5 real base critical bonus added by Finesse perk = 15
15 * 5 weapon multiplier = 75
75 + crit modifier of 5% added by Light Touch perk = 80
80 + 5% crit modifier added by VATS = 85 %

So this Light Touch perk is TOTAL CRAP! If you use Finesse and Boone's beret instead, you actually get 100% crit chance in VATS:

10 luck+5 Finesse+5 beret=20 crit chance multiplied by 5x weapon critical multiplier=100%+5% vars bonus=105% crit chance overall, but it's obviously capped at 100% per cent, so it's 100% critical. Now I would really like to know if it's a bug or intentional behaviour.

Now regarding the enemy crit chance penalty applied by Light Touch:

Assume an enemy has 15% crit chance and is wielding a weapon with 2x crit multiplier. So they have 30% crit chance minus 25 penalty, means they STILL have 5% chance to hit you. Must update the info on Fallout Wiki, it's wrong there

I wouldn't say Light Touch is "total crap", as 5% crit chance is still 5 times less likely *before* standard distribution against high crit weapon, and zero crit chance when the enemy doesn't have any critical multiplier.

5% addition isn't bad either, as most weapons have only x1 multiplier, and quiet deadly on fullauto weapons if crit chance do divided into per sec per shot.