I will trade you my Crippling .44 for your Rapid one and even throw some fusion cores on top of that

two shots adds the base unmoded damage from the second shot to the first so it might not work so well for the laser musket double damage aganst unhurt enemies might work better.

Note that 2 shot might be very good moded as an automatic assault or combat rifle as the second base shot will not get the auto nerf.

Benefit of gaus over musket is faster rate of fire and the silencer.

604 is what I get, so not fully 2 times one shot. Its quite much faster without the cranking though.

http://s25.postimg.org/6zyk9879r/2016_01_04_00001.jpg

EDIT, I checked a normal Gauss and I get 403 i damage there, so 1,5 seem to be accurate.

I also did som calculation om the 2 shot plasma. I get 4 "shots" in VATS for both the Gauss and the Plasma rifle, since the latter is automatic one "VATS shot" is actually 3 bullets and with 120+120 in damage that adds upp to 720 in damage per "VATS shot". So actually more then the Gauss.

I am not sure if the sneak and critical bonus is added to all 3 bullets though so in the end the Gauss might win in sneak+crit mode.

@ Zaria: I'm not sure. A normal laser musket for me shows a damage of 55 and my two-shot shows a damage of 111 in the tooltip. As you cannot increase the damage of a laser musket with mods (or can you?) what you get is ok, double the damage of the not legendary weapon. With six cranks it's 330 for the regular and 666 for the legendary (I suppose).

My two-shot combat rifle shows 172 as damage. That's twice the damage from a normal combat rifle modded to .308 afaik. When it was still .45 as far as I remember it was not the modded damge plus the unmodded base damage but twice the modded damage with a mighty receiver.

What baffles me a bit is that the Big Boy still shows 468 damage like an ordinary fatman.

@ zorp: by far the biggest advantage of the Gauss is that it makes no annoying buzz sounds like a cranked laser musket. I really hate to run around with a cranked musket.

the never ending laser musket is actually the most powerful weapon in the game, with "limitless" damage potential.

It uses all of your fusion cells at once, and fires a shot with proportionate damage, meaning it can kill anything in one shot, but you only get one shot until you find more fusion cells.

The laser musket main upgrade is the cranking who can boost it to 6x but i'm not sure if the 2 shot benefit as 6*111 or 6*55+55, you find an 6 crank version after old guns and it was my main sniper an long time.

I refer to the wiki page, it might be wrong however.

the big boy shoots multiple warheads so it hit an larger area, probably does more damage if you are inside both the area effects.

I have come across many legendary weapons, but unfortunately the vast majority of them are low level weapons like 10mm pistols and pipe weapons. I suppose on the plus side is that I still use those low level weapons on my level 60+ character to make Survival a bit more challenging. I use normal modded weapons for myself while I craft modded legendaries for my companions.

Probably the most powerful legendary weapon I have found is a Two Shot assault rifle that is sitting in "legendary collection box". The most powerful legendary weapon I bought was Spray N Pray which is also sitting in the box.

Explosive minigun with the Demo and Heavy Gunner perks. Pretty much impossible to beat that damage output, considering the heavy gunner perk will increase the explosive damage too. Probably a bug since no other weapon type does this.

Instigating Gauss rifle. Pretty self explanatory. When I use my Gauss I'm sniping, and this had been able to crit one shot everything I've run into. I'm using this without the MisterSandman and Ninja perks, so the damage will only get better after that.

I haven't found anything stronger than these two. I used to think two-shot was the best until I read what it actually does (It adds the unmodified base damage of the weapon to the current modified damage, splits that total between both bullets fired) and I don't think its worth the extra recoil and slight loss of accuracy.

Powerful/Mighty is good but pretty straightforward and boring. Penetrating can be incredible for certain legendary enemies with crazy high resistances but its usually not as strong overall. All the other effects are inferior damage wise but can be a lot of fun to use.

If I just want to have some fun I've got two favorites. Ghoul slaying double-barrel shotgun and tearing through college square is always a blast. Rename your gun BoomStick for maximum effect. Irradiated Flamer with a standard nozzle for maximum range. With the nuclear physicist perk this thing will will stack rads on your target incredibly fast. Legendary raiders are the best, watching their health drop a little from the damage then just go down in massive chunks once the rads add up never gets old.

1. TwoShot/Junkies -Insert High damage Weapon-

2. Exploding/Furious/Wounding -Insert High fire rate Weapon-

I prefer option1 because you can kill stuff from much farther. My personal favorite are a TwoShot Boosted Plasma Pistol and a TwoShot Electrified Lorenzo's Artifact Gamma Gun.

I got the numbers wrong in my posts before, mixed damage with Rifleman 4 and 5. The two-shot is seemingly really not as good as it's name, except for the only two-shot I found, the laser musket.

With Rifleman 5 the damage of a combat rifle modded to .308 would be 114 (I have no other damage perks). My two-shot Overseer's Guardian deals 180 damage. Using complicated mathematical methods you can come to the conclusion that this is really not double damage. Too bad.

The laser musket however is different, the normal version deals 64 damage with the longest barrel. My two-shot legendary laser musket deals 124 damage (Rifleman 5, 0 points in Nuclear Physicist), at least that's what the tooltip tells me. If there is no hidden fault that would mean 744 damage with six cranks (or does a crank use not add the whole base damage??). Not bad. If it only would be more quiet.

Context really matters. Generally, there are some effects that are top of the line, but the "best" will depend on the weapon and situation. Irradiated, Burning, Explosive, Two shot, Crippling, and Bleeding are usually fairly powerful, but they perform better on some weapons than others. "Mighty" I feel is out paced by the effects I just listed, but it's not a bad effect either.

For example, I have a irradiated gatling laser. It does 150 energy damage plus 100 radiation damage. It's a beast against any human I face, but for ghouls, mutants, creatures, and so on, it's fairly "meh". Bleeding, burning, and explosive are all awesome on automatic weapons and even melee weapons. On slow hitters though, they aren't as good. Two shot is generally a good effect, but really shines on high damage sneak attacks when paired with Ninja and Mister Sandman.

i still luv Deliverer

Explosive, kneecapping, wounding and freezing have all been capable of taking a lowly pipe gun and turning it into something you can fight enemies 30 levels higher with, its hard to top that in terms of raw power.

You know that sneak attack in F04 can happen in rapid succession, making fully automatic sniper weapons viable right?

Its still going to have a shorter range, but you can attack from a very long way away.

My .38 automatic pipe sniper was eating legendary glowing deathclaws when I used the console to test explosive on it!

And I don't even know if explosive benefits from sneak attack bonuses properly... will test plasma next as a control.

I really don't think incendiary stacks making it pretty pathetic by all accounts.

The best weapon overall in my opinion? For all types of enemies?

Explosive Combat shotgun (modded out at lvl 70) does 256 normal damage and ?? explosive damage (with 236 Armor Rating, standing directly in front of a wall and shooting it took ~ 400/420 HP away from my charatcter) Accuracy doesnt matter anymore, I tend to just casually point in the direction of the enemy and everything is obliterated. Low Ammo use and good abundance of shells are other advantages.

Since the explosion damage is 30 per pellet (8pellets/shell), overall explosion damage only should be around 240 in the abovementioned test. And I really don't know what contributes to the high damage output (236 normal damage + minimum 400 explosion damage?)

Has someone else tested it?

The demolition perk will increase the explosion damage and radius.

My values are for maxed out explosives perk with 2x15 explosive damage per pellet.

Could it be player received damage doubling from playing on v.hard or survival?

IMO it's Overseer's Guardian rechambered to .308. With 11 AGL, MacReady's Killshot, maxed Action Boy, Rifleman and Lone Wanderer perks I'm able to constantly run VATS and create huge piles of headless corpses with that thing. I also put a suppressor on it and with Mr. Sandman thrown in the sneak attack damage is obscene. It's now the only gun I carry... anything it can't handle I reach for a Fat Man.

You're likely right; I've never played around with that effect.

I like Spray n’ Pray bought from the wandering merchant Cricket (sometimes he sells at Bunker Hill), and you could like it too considering that you have Demolition expert.

I think the 'additional bullet' version does more damage, or 'instigating' if you're playing stealth and killing everyone in only 1 shot from hidden.

By the way, do you guys know witch is the best legendary modification for a melee weapon ? I'm only lvl 20 on my newly started melee char and at the moment I'm using a modded Rockville Slugger cause I'm playing vats. I haven't found the Supersledge selling at the Assaultron vendor, guess I'm too low level at the moment. I'm now off to take the pickman's blade.

I play on hard. *edit: funny, on hard, i deal 75% damage but receive 150% due to the wiki, don't know if both applies while shooting yourself.

I bought a Stunning Super Sledge from Arturo in Diamond City, quite early on. I can't remember the exact level but it was surprisingly cheap as well.

I have found a VATS enhanced officer's sword (-40%AP cost). With plasma blade upgrade it deals a lot of damage(~130), and its possible to hit up to 10 times in 1 VATS sequence. Of course this is only made possible with upgraded armor, and outside of VATS the weapon is not very good due to loow swing time.