And? Not like money is hard to get if you don't mind stealing from babies in gambling/caravan.

Reload speed increase about ~0.27 sec as http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1131013-agilitys-hidden-stat/page__p__16572520__hl__agi%20reload__fromsearch__1&#entry16572520, 25% would be less as less useful as AGI goes up. Seeing you have Silent running, I will assume you have AG 6 or greater, extra point of agility would net you solid better overall benefit...not to mention bugs hovering around .357 weapons.

Then you have quick switch reload, which is by far superior then wasting a perk......

I honestly love the flavour perks that are in there. Sure, there are plently of them that are bad for your 'everyday build', meaning you use guns, a couple companions, and use armor/guns based on how far you've progressed and not really sought out specific/flavour ones.

The key, is that these perks can allow you to play the game an entirely different way if you want to. I recall players in FO3 who played as drug addicted scavengers, living in a crappy shack near the irradiated water, only crawling out of their dark spot to fill their craving for the next big high.

Other players have gone as all out cowboy characters, reproducing a style of gunslinging thats been uncommon for ages in 'Fallout time'.

It's cool for those reasons But even cooler that you're not forced to take them if they dont suit your playstyle, allowing you to 'min/max' a character build if you want, or, to completely throw caution to the wind and build a helluva mess that can still beat the game

A lot of other games have tried VERY HARD to mimic this level of 'playstyle freedom', but very very few have done it so well

In the amounts that you need to repair the really good equipment it is.

That's a massive bug exploit. You can cheat if you want. No one is stopping you. I'd hope most people are not cheaters, however. With my sniper character, rapid reload increases my DPS by like 10%, and it reduces the only time I am in danger of dying by 25%. Not bad for a level 2 perk.

.....right, quick re-draw is consider cheating, why don't you say Vegas rush or S/L jackpot is cheating as well?

And for you SNIPER character, who need 10% of DPS increase......you are just doing it wrong.....

Either way, it's not relevant to best perk at all.

Best perks are something you want on every character, regardless of what he does - and are things that boost this character throughout the whole game rather than having small application. Must-haves basically.

- Educated
- Comprehension
- Finesse
- Travel Light
- Jury Rigging

None of those are really "must have". Popular yes, but the game is hardly impossible without them.

Closest thing might be both ranks of toughness. +6 DT stacked on top of any reasonable armor is nothing to sneeze at. Even then a strong case can be made against it when wearing the high end power armors that have 31-36 DT. So really the "must have", or "best", perk(s) is something that can't be defined.

- Educated
- Comprehension
- Finesse
- Jury Rigging
- Better Criticals

If Finesse is in, Better Criticals is in too. If you want more criticals, you want more better criticals.

Travel Light is solid, but it doesn't get you past difficult to surmount problems (such skill challenges, combats you realistically might lose, or Jury Rigging allowing you to use unique/expensive weapons without breaking the bank) in the way the others do. It's more of a convenience issue most of the time, closer to Explorer than the power 5 above; it doesn't save you that much time, as much of the game is conversations, combats, and load screens, and quick travel will almost always be faster for the player. Not sure if it makes your quick travel take less time in game, in which case it may save you food/water/sleep in hardcoe, but that's a small benefit. It is fun for the Boomers, though.

The nice thing about the above list is that if you have all of these perks + Hand Loader for a gunner type character, you have a very solid character who has acquired all the "must-haves" by level 16. You then have a bit of room to play with perks that do make life easier without needing to optimize within an inch of your life... making room for perks like Toughness, Travel Light, Explorer, Adamantium Skeleton (for hardcoe), and the like.

+1

This perk is wicked awesome. All the other perks give you minimum benefits.

For someone using a .308, Hand Loader gives you +50% damage. That's not minimal. The .357 JFPs are pretty good general purpose rounds, and a 10mm SMG loaded with JHPs makes a ridiculous mess out of high health low DT enemies. All pretty useful stuff.

Finesse with a high crit multiplier weapon gives +25% to crit. Better criticals give +50% crit damage. Boone's hat + Finesse + 10 Luck / 7 Luck with Built to Destroy = 100% crit. None of which is minimal.

Educated gives skill points equivalent to 4 points of Int/level. Not minimal.

Comprehension gives roughly the same overall boost as Educated, albeit spread across all skills, and also lets people complete skill challenges via magazines with 10 points lower skill. Not minimal.

How about Stonewall. I have it on my energy character (no idea why, don't ask, I have 20 characters by now, 19 of them broken beyond repair:-p), it means no knockdown (which doesn't happen that often tbh unless you hunt Bighorners or Deathclaws with a knife) and extra 5 DT against melee attacks which we've established already are quite common in combat. With implant, 2x Toughness and this perk you can fight against a Deathclaw butt-naked and still have the same DT he has - and best of all he can't knock you down. Not even mentioning all other losers who try luck in melee like Fiends with Spears, they will fail even worse than they do now.

This kind of "natural" DT is really cool because you don't need to repair it every once in a while and it doesn't slow you down. 15 DT is like wearing an extra Combat Armor on top of your normal clothes.

Maybe it's a problem if you get the really good equipment early, but playing hardcoe- which meant Pack Rat, which meant high Barter- I planned on taking Jury Rigging only to find that by the time I had awesome and expensive gear I had tons of money to spend on repairing it. By then I had also discovered that since you shouldn't need to repair that often, if you use the repair service in Mojave to ratchet your gear up to 100%, you can win much or all of your repair funds off the bartender playing Caravan. And if you pair DIY weapon repair kits with a decent repair skill, you should never need to pay for a weapon repair. Armor alone just doesn't degrade fast enough to break the bank. So I took a different perk.

JR's an excellent perk, don't get me wrong. Flexibility is wonderful. But there are some easy and legitimate workarounds for it.

As for the topic, since I tend to define "best" in terms of "most generally useful/useful to the widest variety of characters", I would pick Better Criticals.

Or just dump all the point from Barter and get Strong Back instead?

Unless you somehow trying to carry 200 various grenade, I can't see Pack Rat being good.

It's better on hardcoe, where all ammo has weight and you'll want to carry food and water. It still requires you to carry 100 lbs of stuff under 2 lbs each before it's better than Strong Back, which makes it a dubious choice for me unless you're really determined to play solo (in which case he's not running with Raul to offset lower Repair skills). But he wasn't bringing it up as a best perk, just mentioning he had it.

I suspect that if he had dumped the 40 extra points to take Repair from Weapon Repair Kits to Jury Rigging instead of however many points he needed to take Barter from its baseline to 70 he'd have gotten overall better $$$ (from armor repairs + selling SMGs repaired with pistols alone) & better flexibility, but to each their own.

Pack Rat is out of the picture as far as "best perk" goes. Usefulness of it is doubtful even if you are a grenade-carrying person - there's an easy replacement perk, there are companions to fill the role and finally it requires Barter which is a completely unnecessary skill in the era of casinos and fiends carrying guns worth 1k a piece.

It's like Living Anatomy, going up to 70 in Medicine is a waste of points for the most part. Especially in hardcoe where you heal with food via Survival too.

Easy... Piercing Strike

For range character

even still, when you get rushed and have to switch to fists or melee this makes those attacks worthwhile.

Against Human enemy with ~6DT? sure.....

well, obviously you haven't taken it or played the game very far in...so it's a moot point for you.

Since their armour would be below buffer:
Recruit legionary DT 6
Veteran legionary DT 10
Prime legionary DT 8
Scout legionary DT 4
Explorer legionary DT 4

Raiders DT 4~6

NCR wouldn't get close to you.

Fighting Wild Creature while not specializing in melee/unarmed would be counter productive to do so.

Every time I look at those in the guide I realize Shotgun Surgeon strips almost all enemies in the game naked as far as damage goes - so for example Dinner Bell always gets +10 damage or so. Add to that trigger discipline and center of mass for accuracy at mid-range... would be fun to try it sometime.

Cram Opener and Mantis Gauntlet already ignore DT. Cram Opener's damage is sub-par compared to Ballistic Fist, but Mantis Gauntlet's DPS is likely slightly better than Ballistic Fist due to the high crit chance (x3 instead of x1) and faster attack rate.

Shotgun isn't too bad....until you see a Deathclaw; in fact, most of the weapons do fine until you see a DeathClaw. I am avoiding all DeathClaws in my next playthought just to see have much more choose of weapons would I have.....