Doing "objective" comparisons, I think the three strongest perks are medic, local leader, and critical banker. Maxing out medic apparently makes stimpacks and radaway FIVE times more effective, which is nuts. I have heard reports that local leader enables settlements to generate large amounts of passive income. With eleven possible settlement locations, you can get unlimited money without any type of cheating. Maxing critical banker allows you to crit something three times in a row, even a legendary deathclaw probably won't last long taking that kind of damage.

That'd, take a lot of time to get 11 settlements...

The perks this time around all seem to be fairly well crafted.

I guess if I had to pick my three favorite of the NEW perks (not counting the unceremoniously murdered skills repurposed as perks), I would pick Inspirational, Ricochet, and Aquaboy. As for returning perks (again, exempting things like Sneak), Adamantium Skeleton, Ninja, and Solar Powered are probably among my soon to be go to perks.

Oh, goody. So not only has one of my favorite perks from previous games been altered in a completely unsatisfying way, but it and its bastard derivatives are going to have the PC ramble on and on and on. Hopefully a retro Animal Friend perk gets moded in soon after the game's released. Otherwise, I suppose I'll have to learn how the whole modding thing works.

Since they apparently like their Vault-Boy animations so much, couldn't they have just had him do the finger gun thing if you successfully charmed the enemy a la the Charisma video? Apparently we need to see that baseball one show up every time its effect kicks in, so why not a little consistency?

Hacker, Locksmith and Better Criticals. I can't stand leaving locked Safes and Terminals around, and crits are the bees knees.

From the min/max perspective, I would say these three perks are the most useful for any character (mild spoilers with regards to perks, assumed to be acceptable in the thread called "Top 3 perks"):

1. Weapon skill (+100% weapon dmg + some nice side effects)

2. Medic (5x times the efficiency of healing and with faster effect)

3. Better criticals (+250% critical damage)

Honorable mention: Ninja (+150% sneak attack damage for ranged and +800% sneak attack damage for melee) for us sneaky types

Bottom 3 perks (for me anyway):

1. Animal Friend / Wasteland Whisperer/ Intimidation - If I am already pointing a gun at somebody, I do not want to wait 3 seconds to see, whether he switches sides. Mechanically, those perks seem awkward.

2. Attack Dog - perk that does very little for you outside of V.A.T.S. and is closely tied to a specific companion

3. Lead belly - radiation from food and water is usually marginal. Also f you are trying to optimize, this perk might actually make you weaker since with Ghoulish perk, radiation heals you.

Almost there guys!

I'm hoping that it isn't stored radiation and is instead you heal by being in radioactive areas. So you aren't healing based on the rads you have, but how many rads you're currently receiving.