Just wondering how necessary this is for a melee build, as I'd like to use melee but skip unarmed completely, however this perk seems amazing for melee weapons and requires 70 unarmed.

Also wondering if it's possible to have a solid melee + energy weapon character, or if I should stick to one or the other. With my guns character I put a fair amount in melee just to conserve ammo vs. weaker enemies, but I have a hard time seeing how I's be able to take on some of the more difficult creatures(Alpha, Mother, Legendary Deathclaws for example) with just melee.

I would say pretty vital for melee build using Heavy Handed and not critting a lot (crits bypass DT, right?).

Probably depends on the weapons you're looking at using.

Was thinking about going for Knock Knock (Unique Fire Axe) or Liberator (Unique Machete). Will probably use Chance's Knife early on.

If your using Knock Knock you likely wont need it but with the Machete or Knife you will due to the low damage on these weapons even though the DPS of the knife and Knock Knock are the same (High damage slow attack = better vs DT). From the GECK I wouldnt bother with the Machete it the worse of the 3.



Heavy Handed dont need it as much as you think as Heavy Handed is -Crit damage not crit chance higher damage = DT cant soak up all the damage as easy. From the GECK you get 120% normal damage (IE on every hit) but only 40% of the bonus Crit damage. As most melee weapons according to the GECK add the same amount as the base damage on crits it turns out you need ~33% crit chance for HH and non HH chars to do the same damage.

I decided to just mod it, now the skill requires 70 unarmed OR 70 melee weapons.

<3 GECK

Or Heavyhand with Chainsaw would solve most situations.

Just a friendly remainder that EW is bad against high DT as well.....

So guns are pretty much just overpowered then.
>_<

I was thinking I'd go melee + pyro build, using Flamer or Incinerator for more difficult enemies or swarms of enemies, with melee for hacking and slashing through less threatening things. Does DT affect fire damage?

I also modded pyromanic to require 60 explosives OR energy weapons... xD

DT doesn't effect flame,poison, rad nor critical. However it does block 'normal' damage off critical hits.

Basically a flamer against any DT with do minimal damage (something like 10%???), than 2 (with better critical and pyro) critical damage per hit (not sure how many hit does 1 fuel does). Either way you should be doing ~1.8*DPS (as unless you have build to destroy) on pip-boy. That's like killing Legendary DeathClaw in 3 sec in normal (not sure if hard make enemy tougher).

Shishkebab crit more than Knock Knock....but neither possess power of Oh! Babay/Thermic Lance/Chainsaw. If they didn't make Ripper a "noisy" weapon than it is best with Ninja.