Perhaps I am not doing the math here correctly but according to the wiki the sniper rifle does

62 damage with an additional 62 bonus damage on a crit, so 124 damage. With a crit multiplier x5 so 620 damage on a crit? Thats not even factoring in sneak attack damage. Blows the Anti-Material Rifle out of the water.

The unique sniper rifle Gobi campaign Scout Rifle only does 60 damage, which is why I didn't mention it. I am just trying to determine what weapon can do the most damage in a single shot (On a crit). From what I understand if you make your character correctly a fully repaired sniper rifle can crit 100% of the time.

Crit chance multiplier.

The crit multiplier is the weapons increase in crit chance, rather than crit damage.

I'm not sure on crit damage, the only weapon I've managed to sneak-one-shot the Deathclaw Alpha & Mother was the AMR.
Edit: On HC/Hard.

I agree with you here, but then again, the Snioer Rifle is one of the main weapons I use, as I don't use others often. Is the Anti- Matirial better?

Not quite doing the math correctly. The x5 isn't a crit damage multiplier, but a crit chance multiplier. It has no effect whatsoever on how much damage a crit does, only on your chances of scoring a crit outside of the "guaranteed" sneak-attack crits.

The x5 crit chance multiplier is part of why a sniper rifle can crit 100% of the time with the right build and gear.

Yup...chance multiplier.

The silenced sniper rifle is ideal for ranged work. And I mean looooong ranged work.

Depending on how you fight, there's a point where the type of weapon is immaterial, to a point.

I've been doing most of my combat with the marksman carbine in sneak. Made many of my perks and nearly all those expensive firearms a bit pointless, really.

High agility, high luck, average sneak skill (60) and 100 guns. And I'm in either raider badlands rigout or the bounty hunter duster, with Rex and Veronica as melee backup. If it gets close enough to be nasty, I can virtually empty a clip in it while it gets distracted by them.

This does not include deathclaws...they get sniped with the silenced sniper rifle.

I live by the sniper rifle... I swear by the sniper rifle... I've done Fisto-esque things to my sniper rifle... I mean what? :blink:

another important part of it is that crits bypass DR... which means a high-crit build is absolutely brutal against tough high-DR enemies.

Anti-Material Gun has higher base damage and higher sneak damage bonus than the Sniper Rifle.

But the Anti-Material Gun doesn't have any mods, and shooting will alert enemies to your location. The Sniper Rifle allows you to put the noise suppressor and snipe quietly.
The Anti-Material Gun also has higher strength and gun skill requirements, and the ammo is more expensive.

the sniper rifle rocks i have 9 luck boones baret which is plus 5 crit chance and finesse so with the gobi i crit 95% of the time :disguise:

The Sniper Rifle does do the most damage in the game but not for the reasons you mentioned. As everyone else said, the crit multiplier is a crit CHANCE multiplyer. Still, it's possible to have a 100% chance to crit. If you build your character to take full advantage of the Sniper Rifle, it's probably the most damaging gun in the entire game. Here's what I did:

• Gobi Campaign rifle: 60 base damage, +60 damage on a critical hit.
  
• Hand Loader perk: Make JSP .308 ammo to increase base damage by +50%, bringing the base damage up to 90.
  
• Have a high luck and Finesse perk: To guarantee you critical on every shot you take.
  
• Better Criticals perk: Increase your critical damage by +50%, bringing your critical damage up to 90.
  
• 90 base damage plus 90 critical damage = 180 each shot you take (more consistant damage than an Anti Materiel rifle and a Gauss Rifle)
  
• Get the sniper perk to make headshots more consistant: Double that damage to 360 whenever you hit their head. This will one-shot almost everything in the game before you even take sneak criticals into consideration (I've one-shotted charging Deathclaw Alphas and Mothers at medium difficulty thanks to this).
  
• Have an agility of at least 7 and get the Action Boy perk: 101 action points.
  
• Gobi Campaign rifle takes 33AP for each shot, meaning you can shoot bad guys 3 times in VATS. (This means I killed the Legate before he could even close the distance to hit me with his sword)

Yes, it's the strongest weapon in the game.

Note the Gobi does slighty less damage than a normal SR. Also the normal SR can be silenced. Having said that the GSR degrades twice as slowly than the SR. Personally I just carry the GSR, and Ratslayer for weaker opponents.

sneak criticals deals 4x the damage (2x the critical damage)

This Machine + Bullet Time mod = omg fun

Sniper rifle generally takes people out with one shot (in my experience). Not much use on fast targets though, better Anti-Material on those (or All-American, which is my favourite gun)

The gobi is more for a general purepose assault rifle for someon with a sniper build. It's not a replacement for the regular sniper.

Are we all forgetting the gauss rifle, pew pew laser gun, alien blaster, and most of all the YCS/186. I think by the math the YCS/189 x Max Charge Microfusion is the strongest gun in the game not to mention a little perk called meltdown = badassedness

according to my book, the YCS hits the hardest, and the Multiplas does the most critical (though the damage is split between the beams)

I thought only laser weapons used "beams"...? Multiplas is plasma, isn't it? Multiplas??? :blink:

Can anyone confirm what bullets the Sniper Rifle takes? Im seriosuly low!

.308 rounds. those can be purchased in fairly large numbers.

Edit: Yes, the sniper rifle with both mods installed is currently the most overpowered weapon in the game.

Don't forget .308s can be hand-loaded. And what the result is.

My suppressed sniper rifle is my best friend. Very powerful weapon. Most powerful in the game? Dunno. But it looks cool, sounds cool, and it's popped every single head I've ever aimed it at.




I respectfully disagree with this opinion. I consider nothing 'overpowered' and, in fact, choose to disavow said word. The sniper is extremely powerful, and it should be.

Yeah the Sniper Rifle is the strongest weapon in NV but I did 1 shot sneak kill the Legendary Deathclaw with the Anti-Material Rifle, so I'll go with the Sniper Rifle as you can put a Silencer weapon mod and a lighter weapon mod that lowers the weight by 5 pounds and you can shoot it repeatedly unlike the Anti which requires a 3 second wait which could get you killed if your fighting a deathclaw.