Pushing EW to late game and separate them was a stupid idea anyways (I mean how bug is the difference between firing a laser rifle and a regular rifle?).
At least now EW is more like "Magic" and Guns is more like "bow".

Actually, you will be getting Vigilant Recycler thanks to how much MF cells Multiplas and Gauss eatsm as well as improving your Over/Max charge rate.

I prefer energy weapons (I just do, it's a thing I've always had for them, Fallout 1/2 just amplified my feelings for them). However, they've been so nerfed that when I thought my first character at 22 was rocking Quarry Junction with his plasma caster...and then I play my most recent character...Who makes my 22 look like he was using a bb gun on deathclaws.

I literally basically one-shotted everything in the Junction with the AMR. If I didn't and they got too close, Baliistic Fist them to death. EW are nerfed...Uber-nerfed...If they were this bad in FO3, then the Enclave and BoS would've been butchered by raiders.

I always thought that lasers should set enemies on fire when they crit or something - they are incredibly hot beams of light, afterall.
That may make flamers redundant, but who actually uses flamers/flame weapons anyway?

Another possibility would be for them to negate DR (not DT), so when they *do* manage to get through armor they're not impeded atall by the damage resistance that armor affords.

One final idea would be to give them an effect whereby repeated shots on the same limb incrementally increases damage/DT penetration (similar to concentrated fire, only damage instead of accuracy) as the laser/plasma weapon should be heating up the armor as it hits it, slowly cooking your target from the inside out.

I use flamer, quite often at times when I expect combat. The strength of Flamer is in high ROF and some sort of AOE. It is worth noting FO3 and NV flamers' range is way too short (about a third of actual range).

I say bonus limb damage is reasonable, minor DT effect should also be default, put something between plasma rifle and plasma caster/gauss (or just make multiplas more available, or even mod to tighten tri beams' spread) and energy would have a much better chance against Guns.

It's actually quite annoying that I now find a conventional weapon better than a Laser weapon. What the heck happened?

"Balance" happened. >_<

I once had a character who only used flame and explosive weapons.

They are seriously nerfed. But I remember having the same discussion about FO3. They were nerfed in that game too. Energy Weapons are AWESOME, but they svck. It just seems we have to deal with it as much as it is BS.

I always fear that dreaded word in video games these days. When a developer says "we're balancing this weapon", it almost always translates to "we are making this weapon useless". They didn't need to alter the damage they did, they were fine. They were just too common in F3, that's it.

All those advantages don't amount to a hill o' beans of difference if they can't overcome DT.

And no it's not easy to convert. Energy ammo is freakin' expensive.

I've also learned that DT is applied before any ammo damage mults. So those damage mults on the OC and MC ammo go up in smoke against heavily armored targets.

And then we have that half the weapons require more than one MFC, EC or ECP to shoot once.

No wonder the Brotherhood of Steel had to go into hiding...

If you really have everything in place to support them, Energy weapons can be a useful secondary weapon skill to have.

The problems with energy weapons is they A.) Eat up tons of ammo, especially if you are using max charged rounds; B.) Lose CND really quickly with max charged rounds.

If you get in good with the BoS, they leave some ammo for you in a footlocker every time you visit (not sure on the exact time for it to refill, but it seems like every new visit there is 100-ish rounds in there). This helps huge with the ammo supply problem.

If you have high repair, you can craft weapon repair kits (AMAZINGLY helpful). You get also get Jury Rigging, which helps with one weapon in particular.

Keep in mind that energy weapon ammo is convertable, so you really only need to find 1-2 good weapon options to make it work.

PLASMA CASTER: Amazingly efficient on ammo, amazing fire rate, high enough damage to beat high DT targets. Downside is how fast it breaks, and it is pricy to repair. If nothing else, you use this in tough fights only and stick to something cheaper to repair/use for everything else. Save Weapon Repair Kits for this.

TRI-LASER RIFLE: This thing svcks your ammo dry FAST. It does decent damage against low/no armor though, and it can be repaired if you have Jury Rigging with the dirt cheap regular Laser Rifles.

So basically, Energy Weapons become semi-useful if you also have good BoS relations, high Science (max charged rounds), and high Repair (Weapon Repair Kits, Jury Rigging).

If you can get the Alien Blaster you essentially have an "I win" weapon you can pull out a few times although the 0% VATS bug with that weapon drives me mad.

Noticed myself that I typically use guns more than EW even though I'm an EW user. Ammo is principly the reason but I have noticed that EW aren't what they used to be. My only guess is that Obsidian expects us to switch out weapons regularly to use the best weapon for the job, regardless of which combat skill we tagged.

That's the problem, i only put points in one weapons skill per character (except guns and explosives for my tank). I need to have ED-E with me so i can avoid enemies and Veronica to kill the ones i can't avoid Even MC ammo in laser or plasma rifle is pointless. Energy weapons use too much ammo, most of them for too little damage.

And i honestly don't see any of this changed in a patch (unless a bug is involved), have to wait for mods. Too bad for console players

Actually, I think that for Energy Weapons DT shouldn't matter.
Each armor should have it's own plasma, laser, fire and pulse DR.
Same for enemies.
The DT system doesn't work well with Energy Weapons.

Are you keeping the thing repaired?

Ehhhh...

I picked EW as my 4th tag skill...haven't regretted it.

It's fun to watch them explode into a shower of glowing ash..or melt into a puddle.

It's not like your going to lose the game if you pick EWs

That's not the point.
You can still complete the game with the skill, no doubt about that, you could probably complete the game using only the laser pistol.
The point is that in previous games it has always been a weapon skill above the others.
Rare weapons.
Rare ammo.
Expensive to buy and repair.
And more powerful than the rest.
In this game they changed the concept and nerfed them.
So it's not impossible to play an Energy Weapons character, it's that the weapons are no longer what they used to be.
And some of us who loved energy weapons in previous games are irked about that.
Energy weapons IMO should not be a weapon class that's suppose to be on an equal level with Guns.

Even though I love Energy Weapons, lets go over the problems.

- No damage penetration unless it crits
- Energy Weapons uses an extreme amount of ammo per shot upwards of 45 for some guns
- No Unique recipes for rounds
- Energy Weapons are very highly dependent on crits now, though nothing was mentioned on the change to players
- Outclassed by guns most of the time, except for a few weapons
- Laser Weapons outclassing Plasma Weapons, when in every fallout game Lasers were always weaker
- Perks that don't make sense:
*Meltdown hurting yourself
*Meltdown with flamers hurting yourself, therefore making flamers impossible to use
*Pyromaniac perk needing explosive skill, even though flamers are clearly energy weapons now
- Damage and Crit for some guns way too weak example: 0.5 crit for Laser RCW?

Good thing that Energy Weapons still has the strongest weapons in the game then, eh?

YCS and RCW+?
Yeah but YCS is a unique weapon which most people won't find if they choose Wild Wasteland or doesn't look up the info on the wikia.
And RCW+ is crap against high DT enemies.
I heard that Beaton is also really good but it follows the same problem as YCS.
Multiplas could be a truly devastating weapon but it doesn't register the hits for me.
I haven't played a Guns character yet but I did play an Unarmed character, and you know what?
Unarmed is better than Energy Weapons.
Unarmed...
Is better...
Than Energy Weapons...
Punching someone inflicts more damage than shooting a laser through someones head...
Sorry, but I don't see how Energy Weapons have the strongest weapons in the game.

That's their saving grace, but the basic weapons; Laser, Plasma, and multiplas rifle are worthless.

If they choose Wild Wasteland,they get the Alien Blaster, which is possibly even better than the YCS. And even for non-unique guns the Gauss is the highest DAM gun in the entire game before you use special ammo. In which case it only gets better.

They're definitely more a preference this time around. In the past fallouts, they were more powerful than most guns, but they lacked the variety.

Yup, but Alien Blaster runs on limited ammo, once that runs out it's nothing more than a toy.
And Gauss is a very good weapon, no doubt about that, problem is, I don't like being a sniper character.
And going toe to toe with a deathclaw with it isn't a smart move.
I want some weapon that is good at mid-range or close-range too.
But all we get is one (or two) for low-DT enemies and a sniper.