Which of these do u think is better? The gauss has more damage but the LAER fires faster. Any opinions?

LAER is a great gun, but it'd only be useful for someone who can stand to repair it as often as required.

Jury Rigging would help, so would high repair and a lot of repair kits. Traveling with Raul will also help extend it's life.

As it turns out though, the Gauss Rifle (and the YCS/186) has superior damage per hit and superior DPS (though I doubt the superior DPS holds true for a character with low agility). The only downside to the Gauss rifle is that if you're playing on hardcoe mode, you can really only carry around so many shots. 5 Microfusion cells = one shot, and that's .5 pounds per shot (without Pack Rat).

It's a matter of preference really: Would you rather deal with ridiculous repair hassles or ridiculous ammo hassles.

I think ill stick with the LAER. The Guass does hog the ammo. And my repair skill is damn high so I should be cool.

The Gauss's higher DPS isn't accurate as the game doesn't take into account the lengthy reload after every shot. The Ycs's real DPS is something in the region of 60

Yes but while hidden you can snipe with the YCS pretty well.

I finally got around to doing extensive testing with Eljah's LAER - using max-charged cells only, maxed energy weapons skill, Laser Commander perk, and carrying 50 weapon repair kits with me.

The gun for me is meh, I love energy weapons but nothing about this gun screams "I love this rifle ! " The problem with this rifle is that its health is so crappy that in heavy battles with many enemies, I had to pause combat with my pip boy several times in order to repair it with weapon repair kits.

For a "laser" based weapon, it feels a lot more like a shotgun, which is what I hated about the holo-rifle.

Elijah's Advanced LAER is truly a great weapon, but has some crappy HP.
Gauss Rifle is a great weapon too, but it uses 5 MFCs a shot. That's expensive, and I don't want to use that much ammo. I'd rather stick with a fully modded Laser Rifle or the AER 14 Prototype (which I happen to like a lot)

The maxed charged cells aren't really necessary, fully upgraded and with laser commando its damage is already beastly.

forgot to mention that I play very hard and had laser commander.