I just can't agree with pumping up barter while neglecting speech. Good anolysis though!

And how many of those do you actually use? Pack Rat is useful for YOU because YOU carry more than YOU need to. As I said you grossly over value Pack Rat. For a min/max Character its a no go.



Would probably be useful if Chems werent all of the following:
1) Weightless
2) Everywhere
3) Cheap

Chemist is terrible and isnt something to taken on a min/max character, sorry.

And about VATS. If you are using the AMR for Sneak attack crits, which I assume you are if you are a min/max character, then the only time you need to go into VATS is if something gets close to you (Cazadors, Deathclaws, etc) in which case the extra hit chance on the head is completely redundant.

Turbo is certainly not plentiful and its REALLY short. Perk to double duration on bullet time? it makes the list of top 9 perks i've named are a must. Bare in mind you can have 15 perks @ 30.
Although you can craft turbo, the ingredients to mass produce it can be a real pain. And did i mention it lasts like 8-10 seconds or something ridiculously short? Chemist gotta love it.

I do use all my guns.
The ammo weight for 12.7 and .22 is listed as 0.00 which means its really light. So these two guns & ammo take up a bare minimum.
AMR ammo however is the heaviest ammo in the game.
Its not just ammo picking/buying/stealing stuff like scrap metal & all the crafting ingredients carrying consumables such as food,water, and lead for crafting ammo. Weapons such as grenades and mines etc all are effected by pack rat whether you plan on holding on to it or bringing it to your storage stash pack rat allows you to do it at double the time/efficiency/ half the hassle. Or better yet carry double amount of ammo, or mix and match.

Sometimes i sneak shoot w. Ranger Sequoia, sometimes i use sniper rifle instead of AMR, doesn't matter which gun the situation 90% of the time is it's overkill. So yes i can only carry one gun w. 1 ammo or i choose to use multiple guns.

But is Turbo good enough to warrant the investment of a perk? Far from it in my opinion. Its just a wannabe VATS and is pretty much useless past early game.. especially for a character focusing on bulking VATS. The good late game chems like Med-X and Psycho are pretty much everywhere.

As I said, you find Pack Rat useful because you carry around redundant weapons and ammo for them. For anyone who utilizes Fast Travel and storage its just not that good of a perk.

EDIT: Repeating what I said in my first post in this thread. There are no "best and worst" perks because what determines how good XYZ perk is is playstyle. For instance I find VATS redundant outside of close quarters because I can aim better than VATS can with my mouse so I find +VATS accuracy perks pointless. If you think Turbos the best thing since sliced bread and want to use 1 of your 15 perks to double its duration then go for it. I just dont think it belongs on a min/max character.

I think packrat and barter are the most useless skills/perks. I never take packrat and never have had to.

Same goes for any other weight/money ability.

Running 10% faster is hardly a "minor boost" since you can instantly change your armor and you spend 95% of your time running around in the game.

Good anolysis and I agree with most of it.

Comprehension however is a great perk not because of the 4 skill points but because it doubles magazines allowing you to pass rare skill checks with relatively low skills (e.g. the boomer doctor checks, many early speech checks)

For skills Speech is a fantastic skill. #1 skill seen in conversation skill checks.

Although you do not specifically talk about it regarding traits I disagree with Small Frame. I've used it often in previous fallout games but my first attempt in hardcoe with small frame was a disaster. Kept getting crippled and running out of doctor bags/hydra. Maybe if I played more carefully it would work, but it just didnt seem to be worth +1 agi. I re-rolled at level 20 almost exclusively due to having small frame and getting crippled too often.

These are all small issues however (no pun intended). Again I agree with most of your thoughts here.

Maybe if it was 20% speed boost it'd be worth a hassle...

What's the strongest "light" armor in the game?

It's like 16 DT. If you are running around in medium or higher armor already, light armor WOULD be a 20% bonus because medium and heavy decrease your movement by 10%.

A lot of these are VATS perks, and VATS seems to a. no longer offer protection from damage and b. lose accuracy very fast with range.

Pack Rat - it's a sad day when "I can carry lots of stuff" = super godzilla indestructible character. It's not even better than Strong Back unless you're carrying in excess of 100 lbs of ammo and food, in which case you're doing it wrong in my book.
Educated - easily the best choice at 4rth level
Jury Rigging - quite strong. Not remotely required, however, as 50 repair will get you weapon repair kits, and a high luck character can easily win 100k+ in the casinos through slots. Ecnomical options for repair aren't necessary when you break the game economy.
Better Criticals - a solid choice for more damage, and should probably go in most builds unless you're playing a low luck Heavy Hands close combat monster
Finesse - same as Better Criticals.
Sniper - you aim for the head a lot, but most people who actually snipe do so at ranges where VATS is irrelevant. Scorptions lack heads; cazas benefit from wing shots more than head shots. A mid-tier perk.
Action boy - I don't see it. It's fine, but again, mid-tier.
Grim Reaper's Sprint - pretty decent, and makes Math Wrath better because Math Wrath lets you stretch your GRS AP more. Also, if you got Nerves of Steel, Math Wrath again becomes better.
Strong Back - and here, again, min-max = pack mule? Really?
Silent Running - not bad.

VATS is way nerfed in FNV, that's for sure. It's still great from energy weapons builds though, which struggle with critical rate. I once crippled 3 deathclaws on veery hard with plasma caster, and that allowed me to take on 4 deathclaws at once. Which was insane. (three of them jumped me from behind while I attacked one off in the distance). VATs also helps melee/unarmed with crit rate, and allows you to "run down" enemies matrix style.

It's not that great for run of the mill gun builds who plan to use a lot of sniper rifle, though.

If you're bored to tears playing the game on the highest difficulty settings, maybe you should try to play with a character that isn't optimized? Increase the difficulty further by nerfing your toon.

In general, my perfect build for a gunner/sniper type (which noone would argue is currently strongest in this game) would be something like:

S 5 -> 6
P 5 -> 6
E 6 -> 7
C 5 -> 5
I 7 -> 8
A 5 -> 6
L 7 -> 9

Traits: Fast Shot, Good Natured
Tags: Guns, Lockpick, Speech

Skill priorities: Lockpick (55) -> Speech (60-ish) -> Repair (90) -> Guns (100) -> Science/Sneak (60-ish) -> everything else (50-ish).

Perks:
Lvl 02 -> Intense Training (Luck)
Lvl 04 -> Educated (+2 skill points a level)
Lvl 06 -> Comprehension (more bonus from books and magazines)
Lvl 08 -> Hand Loader (Repair 70) (saves ammo and gives custom recipes)
Lvl 10 -> Finesse (+5% crit chance)
Lvl 12 -> Travel Light (Survival 45) (+20% running speed with light armor, you've convinced me)
Lvl 14 -> Jury Rigging (Repair 90) (repair elite equipment with junk)
Lvl 16 -> Better Criticals (+50% crit dmg)
Lvl 18 -> Weapon Handling (to be able to handle all the huge guns without a penalty)
Lvl 20 -> Toughness 1 (+3 DT)
Lvl 22 -> Toughness 2 (+3 DT)
Lvl 24 -> Math Wrath (10% cheaper VATS attacks)
Lvl 26 -> Action Boy (+15 AP)
Lvl 28 -> Action Boy (+15 AP)
Lvl 30 -> Nerves of Steel (faster AP regen)

Still unsure whether I wouldn't want to swap order on Toughness and all the AP-giving perks. But that's late-game deliberation. Late in the game I always want to schedule a mass murder of a crowd of weak enemies, press E and forget they even were on my way hence I postpone all the AP things till then...

Heh. Ya. Reminds me of times in FO3. No VATS, no explosives, no companions, no stealth suit, no dart gun on the deathclaws.

Well, maybe you have to rush butt-naked charging deathclaw nests with a combat knife in your teeth to feel challenged - but at least you don't have second thoughts on stuff you could have done differently for your character.

There's no respec here, no way of going back and fixing a bad decision which is quite irritating provided there's a level cap so we can't possibly count on getting everything we need eventually even if we mess up early on.

This game is so much more boring when using VATS all the time, thus VATS-related perks = crap!

Realtime aiming is both harder, yields better results and makes for faster paced gunfights, adding to the overall entertainment. VATS takes all risk out of the game.

Cut out all the VATS-related perks and you're not really left with that many "awesome" ones.

I just finished the game on hardcoe/hard.

You don't really need to carry alot of stuff just big ticket items and
a few crafting essentials, 3-4 guns tops. alot of people do less than that.

using companions make more sense, than the pack rat perk. A 70 barter you'll be making so much money re-selling thing, do you really need to carry that much more?

If you are soloing w/ no companions or RPing, then MAYBE.

Robotics Expert / Hunter / Entomologist almost ensure you will never have to worry about an encounter with those enemies again.

Always cool if your making a scientist type.

But I am never worried about encounters with those... There aren't that many of them, really.

For some reason I thought of the doctor from TF2...

Cazadores, night stalkers and sentry bots, oh my!

I'd really like to see a list of what hunter actually affects. I mean, animals = insects, and humans for that matter.

Its much funner to make various interesting characters then it is to make the same exact character over and over...

This. :rofl:

Am i the only one who thinks that the sniper perk is absolutly useless in F NV ?
I usualy fight in real time until something gets close to me and by then i dont need the perk to have a good % to hit any body part.