Well, aside from maybe pipe, but there hasn't been one institute weapon that is even close to my regulars I carry around with me. Thought these guys were supposed to be advanced??

Being advanced doesn't automatically mean ya the best at everything, they are first and foremost scientists, not a military organization, they dont need there guns to be powerful, because they only expect to have there synths fend of weak wastelanders.

long story short: yeah, they svck.

Not as bad as "hurp a durr" minigun, but just right up there.

But the blue beams are SO cool...too bad they're totally impractical.

Well, that's what you get for using blue light in your lasers

But hey, minigun is even worse

Not if its furious.

Institute guns are worthless. The minigun is worthless. All of the legendary versions of the minigun are worthless.

This has been my experience. Honestly I'm yet to find a single energy weapon in this game that I like. They all svck in my experience.

I've got an Instigating .50 Sniper Rifle, Overseer's Guardian, and Le Fusil Terrible. I'm yet to find a better weapon combo than this.

I don't know about you, but the Gauss Rifle basically kills everything and can have an excessive amount of damage.

I don't really classify the gauss rifle as an energy gun. It's using an electromagnetic field instead of gun powder, but it's still propelling a projectile. I do like the gauss rifle though in either case.

Style over practicality! Kellog's Armor + Institute Rifle + alot of stimpacks is the coolest way to go

Plasma weapons are God, and Laser Weapons are good, you have to modify them though, they aren't good stock, but once upgraded they are beastly, my automatic plasma rifle kills in 1-3 hits and that's with no perk points in commando.

I've tried both, and fully modded both. I have basically all of the relevant perks. I'm still yet to find one that I consider to be in any sense better than the guns I mentioned previously. The gatling laser is probably the one exception to this that I've found, but I'm not really a 'big gun' kind of person.

Well, my plasma shotgun eats deathclaws for breakfast (and the Two Shot version murdered a surprise Behemoth so brutally i want to found People for Ethical Treatment of Helpless Super Mutants ), my laser assault rifle kills any raider or super mutant in less than a clip (unless it's a master or survivalist), and my laser sniper rifle pops heads and turrets like bubble wrap

Basically, http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/File:Guns_and_bullets_lasers_cover.jpg, with the bunny being any enemy unfortunate enough to cross my path

I wish they where better they look really cool and its a nice change from the regular laser rifles we've seen in all the past games, but the old laser rifles are still way better and I'm forced to use that

Really is odd I must say, I've had very positive experiences with both laser and plasma weapons, but that might be because I play on normal and consider any higher difficulty to be fun for bullet sponge enthusiasts. I agree though that Le Fusil is a blast of a shotgun to use, removes the enemies head every single time, Overseer's guardian is just OP.

I don't know. I just know that every energy weapon I've tried has felt like some chintzy toy. A kill that would normally take me 1-2 shots with my regular guns ends up taking like 6 shots with an energy weapon.

For what it's worth, I'm playing on hard. I'll be playing on survival my next time around.

Sniper plasma rifles can pack a nice punch, and sound nice too.

I actually picked up a legendary plasma sniper rifle yesterday that I haven't tried yet. I'm going to give it a go a little later.

I still haven't fired a Plasma Sniper either, but they were pretty awesome in XCom

They just make more sense to me as short range weapon, in other words, shotgun (splitter).

Remember that the armor and enemy you are attacking make a difference. The main reason to carry a laser or plasma weapon in addition to your ballistic ones is for enemies that have high DR and low Energy Resistance.

Problem is that they can not be suppressed. I uses an laser as my main weapon, gaus for sniping and an exploding assault rifle for high dps work.

Plasma does more damage but is slower and my laser does double damage against unhurt enemies.

I'm usually a ballistic guy through and through, altho I do on occasions play with children toys I do find the institute weapons lackluster, but it fits the, well, institute.

As a sidenote, if I am going to play an energy weapon playthrough, it will have to be modded, because those things blocks half the screen

Yes, and I've kept this in mind. I tried using them exclusively for about 20 hours of game play, so I had time to encounter basically every type of enemy in the game. At the point I'm at, I don't even use a gun unless it's fully modded, so that definitely wasn't the issue. I found them to be just ridiculously underpowered regardless of the situation.

I've also found plasma weapons to be quite efficient as well, specifically when modified to be a sniper rifle. Does both ballistic and energy damage, both equaling up to 200 damage. laser weapons however, I've found to have grown weaker and weaker as the game progresses, even when modified to be a sniper rifle.

Despite the performance of the plasma weapons, I still think energy weapons got pushed aside this time around and are rather lacking in variation as well. Allowing more extensive modification for some of the energy weapons to create a heavy plasma weapon similar to the original plasma rifle or bring back the Pulse weaponry of Fallout 2 would help expand what can be offered to energy weapon users.

Yup they do svck & that bloody rifle takes up 3/4 of my screen but there is a silver lining here they are GREAT to rip apart for mats to use on real guns !!!!!