The Tri-beam Laser Rifle could be an excellent Tier 75 energy weapon, if it had recieved a buff like many of the other energy weapons through patches. However, it's... not, to be frank. It certainly out-DPSes the Multiplas Rifle due simply to rate of fire being like the regular Laser Rifle, but its weapon health is abysmal (50 compared to the regular laser rifle's 125), and it has less damage per shot than the Multiplas, and still consumes the same amount of ammo per shot.

I've been playing around with a modded Tri-Beam with a few tweeks to it: Namely, it uses 2 MFCs per shot instead of 3 (mag size remains the same), and also has a weapon health on par with the basic Laser Rifle (125). As-is, It has a tight enough shot grouping to make it a great mid range weapon (and even long range in a pinch if you maximize your steady aim). I've been using it as my bread'n'butter gun in Honest Hearts with these changes at Level 27 (albeit with the spread reducer mod made available by WMX).

Any devs out there want to consider such changes for the next patch?

Theres not that much wrong with it but since they did send out a patch already to handle the other guns they might as well done it for that to.

I use the tri-beam quite a lot along with the multiplas. Love em. They are both pretty over-powered though so I always figured weapon condition issues you sighted are there for balancing and easily remedied w/repair kits.

Is there a unique tri-beam or multiplas variant in the game? Perhaps we might get one if not or some new mods for old world blues?

The Tri-beam is perfectly fine. It shreds Legate Lanius like nothing. I understand why it degrades so fast because it's like 3 laser rifles in one.

With a proper crit build, it can really do some work. Too bad EW just get overshadowed by Guns most of the time, so they hardly get the attention they deserve.

The Tri beam is fine. The fact that it degrades so quickly is a balancing point because of the amount of damage it can do. Think about it, with 100 EW skill, laser commander perk, bloody mess perk, and Max charge ammo, each beam will do around 40 dmg. If all 3 beams hit, thats 120 dmg. On top of that, with a crit build, you can get your crit chance (before multiplier) up to about 45% outside of vats (using items from DLCs). Add the Tri Beam's x1.5 crit multiplier, that pushes it to 67.5%, which means there is a very good chance at least one beam will make a critical hit. The weapon is also quite accurate, much more so than the multiplas rifle (which also lacks a crit multiplier). All of this makes it a very powerful weapon for EW users. With the use of a certain DLC, keeping the Tri Beam repaired becomes a non issue.

The Multiplas is a good weapon too, but like i mentioned earlier, its pretty inaccurate and has no crit multiplier. I find myself using more ammo to kill things with it than the Tri Beam.