Good points. Improved Center of Being might belong above Sidestep and Defensive Stance on the list. The only thing is, if you're rolling a decent number of yellow dice you'll be critting frequently anyway from Triumphs which CoB can't do anything to stop. (In fact, with a weapon with crit rating above 2, Triumphs are a much more reliable way to get critical hits.)

That's a very good point as well, though at least it makes it so that triumphs aren't automatically the best choice to link. Still very situational though, I agree.

I'm not sure the devs actually realized how much likelier it is to roll a triumph than success with 3 or more advantages with a typical dice pool. I've considered house ruling Center of Being so that it adds advantages to what you need to crit even with a triumph (so eg if you use CoB 1, a weapon with crit rating 3 would require either 4 advantages or a triumph and 1 advantage to crit).

Hey, get yourself a Bodyguard, that has to be the cheapest (for you ) xp talent that to upgrade attacks against you!