Dear friends,

This topic is basically to discuss what is the best legendary weapon (weapon + extra characteristic) possible. And also what we have found in the wastes.

For a long time, I've used a Mighty Gatling Laser (+25% of dmg), but yesterday a Legendary Deathskull Radscorpion gave me a Explosive Combat Shotgun. With Rifleman and Explosive Expert, this weapon (also fully modified to maximum performance) showed me some impressive results!

It is capable to take down a lvl. 160 Super Mutant Warlord with 4 shots, a Bloated Glowing One with 2, and a Mythic Deathclaw in 5. Is also kills enemies at a long distance. Just point and shoot from the hip, the explosions caused by each ball-projectile probably will kill it. With Deathclaws, it can blow its legs in a distance, leaving it immobile, and easy to kill. I just have to take a little care with close combats.

Basically, I am impressed with what the Explosive + Combat Shotgun can do!

What is the best legendary weapon that you guys get? And what would be the ideal in your opinion?

Explosive minigun.

With heavy gunner and explosive expert it deals 74 damage with the high speed barrel (best dps), 76 normal barrels, and 80 with the high power barrels (but lowest dps because fire rate).

I think the only sustained dps option close is a bleeding gatling laser.

The only other competitor is the double shot mininuke with the mirv attachment, which does burst damage better than anything else, but has fire rate limitations.

Best sniper weapon is the mighty gauss with full upgrades.

Hands down it is the Kneecapper. A little .45 pipe gun you can pick up quite early on and has a 20% chance, per shot, to cripple. It is way OP.

I made it into a .38 automatic, a simple mod, and it's ruined my game. Any time anything annoying, like a Behemoth, a Deathclaw, Mirelurks and a host of other fast melee beasts, shows up I just hose it down with the Kneecapper. Instant comedy from a frightening situation. On Specatacle Island Mirelurks spawn all over and I left a trail of crippled ones all over the island, then went back and finished them all off. Gotta have my Mirelurk Omelets.

I sell all kinds of Legendary crap. I keep a few, but there is nothing as OP as that stupid pipe gun.

I would love to have an explosive combat shotgun...

most will probably say a 2-shot legendary tag is possibly the best...I've only found one in 2 playthroughs, and over 100 hours game time...it was a 2-shot laser rifle...pretty good fully modded with the sniper barrel...I use it for stealth sniping occasionally..

as for me though, Spray n Pray (I thinks it's legendary..explosive round sub-machine gun) has been exceptional for me...currently lvl 45+ with appropriate perks..it's still quite devastating..

I'd been using a regular combat rifle as my go-to, and then I finally found a 2-shot legendary version. With the .308 upgrade, I'm doing so much damage it feels like a cheat.

I think this is very much a matter of opinion. The three main guns that I always carry are what I think are the best guns in the game. For long range I carry an Instigating Recon .50 Sniper Rifle, which does double damage against enemies that are at full health. This is the perfect legendary perk for a sniper rifle. For close to mid-range situations I use the Overseer's Guardian, which is a two-shot combat rifle. The two-shot perk doesn't provide quite as much damage as the instigating perk. Two-shot is more like 1.5x damage. However, it does extra damage all the time, while instigating is only double damage while the enemy is at full health. For a close to mid-range weapon, I think the two-shot is a slightly better perk. I also carry an explosive shotgun, which is probably the most insanely overpowered gun in the game. You don't even have to aim that thing. You just point it in the general direction and it decimates everything in the path. You can one shot kill half of the stuff in the game, and two shot kill one of the remaining quarters of the stuff in the game. The last quarter of the stuff in the game might take 3-4 shots. It's fantastic for leveling an entire pack of feral ghouls when they're rushing toward you.

I haven't found any legendary weapons worth keeping, but Overseer's Guardian (equivalent of a two-shot combat rifle) is crazy good and easy to get.

Anything with Explosive type. lol.

Explosive type staggers enemy, high damage, comes with splash damage, awesome sound, awesome effect, and awesome water splash if there's any around your target.

I had an explosive combat shotgun, but, it took me a few deaths to figger out NOT to use it close range...... I was killing myself.

I think a 2 shot assault rifle would have to be the best, for me at least. Next to no recoil, good range, would be over 100 damage with strongest auto receiver/commando maxed out.

Really, really wanna find one.

Yeah. Watch out. My oldest gun now is the Explosive Hunting Rifle (just turned it into Sniper recently); doing close combat with it broke my arm many times. lol

I just found an Explosive 10mm Pistol too. Not much of a killer, but it does a good job as a quick close combatant when I'm out of shotgun shells.

2-Shot and Bleeding are my secondary choice.

Overseer's Guardian pretty much does 2-shot and it has become my .45 assault rifle.

Bleeding type is great when you're troubled by many enemies at once.

I got a legendary explosive shotgun my first trip into the glowing sea, but got killed straight afterwards, before I could save...when I went back, I got a cruddy piece of leather armour that made me more charismatic, to go with the five or six other bits sitting in the trunk. Not impressed.

However, I got hold of a combat shotgun that has increased stagger with decent accuracy (76, I think)...basically, bring it out to play and nothing survives, I've stagger-locked behemoths and deathclaws of different shades.

Still haven't found an enemy type that survives a sneak attack (5.9) from a mighty gauss rifle headshot. Level 58.


4-5 level from being able to ninja - blitz raiders with my irradiated board; looking forward to that.

Best overall legendary I found was an irradiated plasma gun. Gave 100 rads per shot, on top of the dual ballistic/energy damage. Basically took away health AND lowered maximum health at the same time.

Ammo was so rare that I rarely used it. But when I did, the thing I shot at usually died in two or three shots (I had it modded as an automatic). Yes Big Boy with the MIRV attachment did more damage, but it's not exactly something that you take with you unless you expect heavy resistance.

Second best is an explosive shotgun. It just mulches things, but I have similar ammo issues with the irradiated plasma gun.

I believe it is any one of the following prefixes (Two-Shot, Instigating, Violent, Mighty) Gauss Rifle. Basically whatever gives the Gauss Rifle even more excessive damage than it already has.

I was lucky enough to find a Violent Gauss Rifle and it is one of my most used weapons in full on conflict. Refuse to put a suppressor on it. There are some things in this world that mankind shouldn't possess, and that's sneak attack criticals + Ninja rank 3 + Sandman rank 3 + Cloak and Dagger + Suppressed Gauss Rifle. Oh, and it looks [censored] hideous with a suppressor.

But, if I were to use that suppressor and end the world, I'd say that qualifies for a best legendary weapon. Still a monster even without the suppressor.

Extra bullet is best for any high damage weapons, bleeding or explosive is best for automatic or shotguns after this its up to you that is the best weapon, minigun has the spin up time, shotguns has pretty limited range,

I has an bleeding minigun, its an beast, but its basicaly two DoT effects so its not best against an charging deathclaw.

On the gripping hand extra bullet might again be best for automatic combat or assault rifles especially if you have commando perks as the bullet damage is so high.

My question is that is the best energy weapon effects, I have double damage against unhurt targets, don't think they have extra bullet, bleeding or explosive?

Depends on the enemies I think. But I prefer two-shots. Since yesterday I was perfectly satisfied with my Overseer's Guardian modded to .308 (172 damage), then I (lvl 47) ran into a crowd of 10 supermutants attacking one tiny settlement and some time after that a bunch of three glowing flies. Maybe the game spawned enemies at a higher level I was used but I got real problems. I needed up to 5 shots to kill a supermutant with the two-shot combat rifle and that was a bit too much fighting guys with miniguns and modded assault rifles. I ended the fight with a six-crank two-shot legendary laser musket and frantically running around pressing R. The two-shot combat rifle was ok for mopping up the charging supermutants.

As you perhaps can imagine the three flies were much more dangerous than the 10 supermutants with their guns. They were hiding in a bush and you did not see from afar, so they were attacking from about 30 metres perhaps. Maybe I'm too bad a shot but all I tried was in vain. Wether I used explosive (Spray and Pray) or two-shot small weapon (Overseers) or crippling (Fuseil Terribles) the bloody flies got me. They were very clever and attacked from different angles, so the explosive was not much of a use. And can you cripple a flying foe? With a slow-firing Gauss or laser musket of any kind you would have had no chance at all. It was possible to run away, let MacCready get gutted and kill them sniper-like but that was not satisfying. In the end I annihilated them with my Big Boy fatman. So two-shot it is for me.

However, the explosive shotgun might be one of the mightiest weapons in the game. I'm not sure wether the performance is intended or caused by a bug that adds the explosive effect to any pellet. Anyone knows the answer? And I don't like to blow me up in close combat, so I will stay with two-shot I think.

The stupid flies are an best handled using vat and an high accuracy gun, or simply spray and pray. the small size and rapid movement makes them hard to hit.

Remember in the army up in north of Norway it was a lot of mosquitoes and it was a lot of jokes about their size and an popular saying was that the M2 machine guns was against the larger versions.

This is true in FO4, run into some bugs in the glowing sea who was the worst enemies, deathclaws was not an hugh issue as they was easy to spot.

I have a Wounding Institute Rifle and I put a Beam Splitter on it. It's too badass for me, so I gave it to X6-88

I like rapid (better ROF and reload speed) or VATS optimized (double vats crit and less vats ap cost) legendary weapons.

I have a Rapid .44 Pistol which somewhat compensates for it's otherwise slow rate of fire. Actually I have two. They're the only Legendary .44s that I've gotten.

I have a silenced 2 shot Gauss rifle for sniping, and I don't thing anything can beat it. In sneak mode (3*) plus critical it one shots more or less anything, incl a behemoth.

I also have a 2 shot plasma rifle for variation, that one is also too OP.

The only other weapon I use is the Deliverer due to the high number of VATS shots you get, good when you face a lot of enemies at one time.

Only problem is that with that set up Survival is not hard enough.

Shotgun add explosive or bleed to any pellet who hits, think its 8 so you either get an 120 damage explosion or 200 bleed over time damage with all pellets hitting target.


Brings up an question regarding explosions. are they more effective than the 150 damage listed? the times I have used the missile launcher it does way more damage than 150 should indicate from sniper rifles or laser musket without sneak bonus. Yes I know its an area effect who can hit multiple enemies.

What is the damage of the Gauss gun? Fully modded for me currently it is 347 damage a shot. Two-shot would be 694 (or 520 if it is true what someone mentioned, that two-shot means more 1,5 the damage). A two-shot laser musket has 111 damage for me, that would be 666 damage with six cranks. Not that big a difference. And I don't have more than one point in Science. I also have the feeling that it is harder to hit with a Gauss rifle. And then I currently have 27 2mm cartridges compared to 500 fusion cells. You can shoot faster with a Gauss for sure, it's useful in more situations.