I don't know whats the deal with energy weapons, but from my experience they're not as powerful as they should be. From Fallout- 3, energy weapons were made to do high damage single shot weapons for the most part. They got the single shot damage part right, but against very tough enemies, they fall short in terms of damage. I think this is the first fallout where, I shot a plasma rifle at an enemy and it didn't do much damage. I think energy weapons need better armor penetration, especially plasma against higher end enemies. For the amount of ammo they consume, they're not doing much damage.

Yeah you're right, I'm using this special plasma rifle that fires 4 shots at once and even this thing on fully repaired doesn't do much considering it would've done alot more damage in FO:3. Maybe a patch fix perhaps?

The secret to energy weapons is the criticals, they have a much higher chance then guns, and when you crit you ignore DT. With maxed energy weapon, a fully repaired plasma caster, and the meltdown perk you can take down a group of death claws in like 5-6 shots. Energy weapons are surprisingly beastly if you give them a chance.

Even before Fallout 3, in 1 and 2 plasma weapons were practically made to take down the hardest enemies in the game. It almost feels like they forgot to add in armor pen to energy weapons.

I found exactly the opposite. I started my first character with the Guns skill, and found it lacking. I rolled an Energy Weapons character, and by level 9 or 10, most long range targets are down in one or two shots using a laser rifle with all 3 of it's mods.

Use Max Charge (MC) rounds. There was a thread about this earlier where people were complaining about Guns getting AP rounds, but Energy getting nothing to reduce the enemies DT, but after looking at some numbers I've found Energy weapons with MC rounds are actually more powerful than a regular gun with AP rounds at the same base DAM (At 25 for both, the AP round does 5 less damage than the MC round, and at 30 it does 9 less no matter what the enemies DT is, so it scales much better as well.)

Edit for my previous anolysis of the weapons:

Ok, going over some numbers, let's have a Rifle and a Laser do 25 damage each. Against an enemy with 10 DT, they do 15 damage base, correct?

With the AP rounds, it goes like this
10DT: 25 - (25x.05) - (10-15) = 28.75
15:DT 25 - (25x.05) - (15-15) = 23.75
20:Dt: 25 - (25x.05) - (20-15) = 18.75

With Max Charge (MC) rounds, the Laser looks like this.
10: 25 + (25x.75) - 10 = 33.75
15: 25 + (25x.75) - 15 = 28.75
20: 25 + (25x.75) - 20= 23.75

The Laser gun actually does MORE damage than a regular gun with AP rounds does. If people are complaining about the Laser guns being weak, I can't help but wonder if they are even using the MC rounds.

Looking over a full list of weapons, I can see what some people are complaining about in a way. There are many more high damage guns for Guns than Energy, but the fact is that the guns still do roughly the same damage as their counterparts in each category, and Energy weapons with MC rounds scale much better than regular guns do (i.e., as they go up in damage, a Laser with MC rounds will keep doing more and more and more damage than a gun with AP rounds. In the example I used there is a 5 damage gap, but with 30 DAM weapons the gap becomes 9, etc.)

every wepon in this game will not work the best with your character just depends on what skills you invest your time in. me iv was never a big fan of energy weapons from the start. and its the hardest ammo to find to me and coast the most im just saying?

The worst part of energy weapons IMO is the weight of Microfusion cells combined with the multiple ammo usage. I've considered pushing up my Barter skill so that I may take the packrat perk to halve my ammo's weight.

This only really matters in hardcoe mode of course. As for general effectiveness I've found that early on I tend to use the Cowboy repeater primarily with Plasma pistol/rifle for backup. I'm not sure if it's the increased AP cost or what, but despite not touching my guns skill (which takes -5 for Goodnatured) traditional firearms seem to outperform my energy weapons a lot early on. It also seems like EWs are dealing far less damage than they show in VATS while Guns deal roughly what they predict... could just be my imagination & the effects of DT though.

I won't tell you where I was but about 6 enemies were shooting me with Energy Weapons. I have Reinforced Armor, nothing too fancy. Anyway, all I had was my fists and I put down 4 of the enemies and I only needed a few stimpacks. I could have probably prevailed, but quite frankly the quest was not going the way I wanted it to, so I reloaded.

However, I would have expected that many enemies shooting at me at once to kill me pretty quickly.

Energy weapons are very powerful... unique gauss rifle is ridiculous. Plasma Caster is straight up insane aswell

Uh huh.
So, excluding those two weapons and the RCW, what good weapons are left?
I just fully used RCW, it works great against everything except for PA enemies, SM's and Giant Radscorpions.
Tried using Tri-Beam, it was pathetic.
Tesla Canon is worthless with it's reloading time since enemies in this game come in hordes and are really really fast.
Tried using fully upgraded Laser Rifle, it was okay against golden gecko's, but anything above that it was complete crap against. t
Tried using Plasma Defender, works okay against enemies if you specced in VATS usage but otherwise the projectile is too slow and enemies move so quick that it's extremely hard to shoot with (If you are on a console, I'm sure it's better on a PC).
Tried using Plasma Rifle with the mod, it's still crap, do okay damage against golden gecko's and below but anything else it's crap.
Flamer, freaking ridiculous against Fiends, PG's, NCR Troopers etc (all low to medium generic NPC soldiers), but against anything above and it's just crap.
Incinerator, good as hell for early levels, I used it until I hit lvl 16 I think, then it's damage was just not good enough, Heavy Incinerator is just a tad better but not good enough.

The only three weapons that are somewhat decent against the more dangerous enemies are RCW, Gauss and Caster.

/opinion

(Try using the RCW with a lot of ammo + Meltdown perk in the Cazador valley to the south of Jacobstown, it's a beast against Cazadors.)

Excluding the damage/damage threshold debate.
There aren't enough mods for EW...
Check it's list out at the wikia, it has like 9 mods...

Can any of the Devs please explain why flamer weapons are under Energy Weapon skills, but the Pyromaniac is under Explosives and needs 60 skill in explosives to use?

Energy Weapons got Incinerator, Heavy Incinerator and Flamer.
Explosives got Incendiary Grenade and Incendiary 40mm rounds for the grenade launcher/rifle.
So let's count, EW got 3 weapons which would have use for that perk.
And Explosives have 1 and an ammo type for 2.

To me it would make more sense for it to be an Energy Weapon perk or at least have an Explosives OR Energy Weapons requirement.

The Multiplas Rifle is ridiculous power and runs on MF cells. It's almost too much. The plasma Defender is also borderline overkill in late game.

Combine with Meltdown for insane destructive power. I'm talking killing two Deathclaws with one shot here. No bull.

Other than that, good ole fashion metal meets propulsion is the way to go, most of the time. Too bad.

Either you're playing on Easy, lying, found some ultimate supreme build or my game is bugged to hell.
Plasma Defender is barely worth using at lvl 25+.
And Multiplas barely registers my hits.
And Meltdown is useless.
I does no damage on the enemy I actually attack, only surrounding enemies if I kill one while they're standing "right next to it".
Hell, most of the time I break my own limbs because of that perk.
Not worth taking IMO, you'll just hurt yourself more than you'll hurt others.

I'm with Gabe, EW are pretty... terrible. I was RPing with Xarnac and he was more efficient with an 11 in guns skill, using a pistol than he was with a 79 in EW, using the unique plasma. It made no real sense. I wasn't efficient with EWs until I hit up the Van Graffs.

-I am on Easy, sorry forgot to mention that.
- In the
as part of Thorn quest I shot one full hp DC (from Sneak = bonus crit) and it exploded into a ball of plasma, ripping limbs of the one next to it (insta-death) and taking 1/2 of the third one's health. (One thing I *hate* about NEW VEGAS is how clustered the mobs are: it's as though Obsidian thought "Killing one Deathclaw is thirsty work! Killing 12 in a small cave must be 12 times as fun!") I'm NOT saying this will happen every time you fire, or even 1/2 the time but I've seen it often enough and it works wonder with Cazadors (earlier stage of same quest), as they tend to attack en masse. I've hit four and even five enemies with one single shot (one killed, all others caught in chain), clustered at choke points or simply attacking in waves.
- Not recommended for use on mobs currently tussling with followers - pick another target. Lord knows they attack in large enough armies in this game.
- as with all "area of effect" attacks, to be used with caution!

If you're talking about the plasma rifle, it only takes 25 in energy weapons to use so don't expect much from it. Multiplas with max charge rounds however, will probably one hit kill anything in the game if it crits.

Plasma Rifle = Cowboy Repeater as far as strength goes. Just accept that now there actually are low-tier energy weapons.

Right! I forgot to mention that I never use default energy ammo: only OC and MC cells. Good point that!

I got EW up to about 70 for the better critticals perk. I use them a little bit, mostly to conserve gun ammo.

Not really my thing though.