Which is overall a better weapon skill to focus on and why?

Overall is Guns. More of them, easier to get, sturdier, and lots of cheap ammo. With Hand Loader Perk you can make killer ammo for them. Energy weapons can be more fun though.

Take Veronica with you and deck her out with energy weapons for comparison. Easy as pie without changing up I'm guessing your character now that uses guns.

Anyway, With the boost they got in last patch they are pretty much just as good in my experience.

Energy Weapons were manhandled in New Vegas so Guns is best this time around. (Which makes no [censored] sense at all... Seriously Obsidian, next time you do a game don't have the combat skills try to be "equal", they're not, Energy Weapons are suppose to be incredibly powerful, not some damn toy laser that can barely light a cigarette.)

I agree, especially with the sub-text.

Guns, energy weapons got so nerfed in FONV.

Energy Weapons > All

Even Unarmed is better than Energy Weapons...

I really wish the energy tommy gun was more powerful. I was so excited for it but after I got my hands on it I got very sad very quick

Really?
With Max Charge Electron Charge Package, the mod, full repair, Set Lasers For Fun and Laser Commander it's incredibly brutal, I could clear out Deathclaw Promotory(?) with it.

It along with Gauss Rifle and Holorifle are the only weapons I really consider good energy weapons.

I dont have those perks yet, I do have the mod though.

Okay, well, when you get them it's really powerful.
Just remember to have high science for better conversion ratio.

Before the latest patch, energy weapons were sub par. With the latest patch, energy weapons are pretty sweet. Just remember to pump your critchance since energy weapons love critical hits. Energy weapons has the best SMG (Laser RCW blows away everything else in the "automatic weapons" category), and the best sniper weapon (Gauss versus AMR = Gauss by a long shot). Even the bog-standard "Laser rifle" is now a pretty handy weapon.

The biggest remaining problem with energy weapons, at least on hardcoe, is that the ammo is really heavy.