My favorite weapon is the shiskebab but it's woefully underpowered, trumped by just about any other melee weapon i can find.

So i'm wondering what you think are the best prefixes to have on melee and unarmed weapons. One that interests me is furious, because i don't know how high the max potential damage can go. 'Increases damage after each consecutive hit' could be great for a combat knife or potentially a ripper which 'hits' with high speed.

I finally got a flaming shiskebab, with 15 points of fire damage however the weapon attack sound is different on it and is less satisfying. Also found a powerful shiskebab with +25% dmg and an Irradiated shiskebab.

I really can't work out what's the most effective combination to look for. So if anyone knows more about the specific stats on some of these legendary prefixes please let me know.

I played around with a furious sledgehammer and from a perkless view it goes from meh to average to dayum in about 5 hits but sadly it loses the boost as soon as you VATS it so you have to really make sure you land your hits. Freezing and the +50% damage to [insert enemy type here] may be better for utility.

It's funny you should mention the Shishkebab, I found a Powerful one the other day. It does 25% more damage.

Edit: I also found an Irradiated Machete, +50 radiation damage. Not so good against ghouls. If you coupled this with 2 ranks of the Nuclear Physicist perk that'd be +100 radiation damage.

Edit2: So I guess Furious, Powerful or Irradiated would be good.

Furious - Increased damage after each consecutive hit on the same target.

Irradiated - Adds 50 points of radiation damage to a weapon

Powerful - Increases damage by 25%.

From the Wiki site http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Legendary_weapon_effects.

For a slower, high-damage weapon, Instigating (double damage against a target at full health) could easily turn it into a one-hit-kill against many standard foes.

Unfortunately for me that is not the case on survival difficulty. It takes atleast 20 hits with the powerful shiskebab to kill your average enemy with 13 strength and max perks. The deathclaw gauntlet or any fist weapon does roughly twice the damage with max perks.

Furious and Bererker are the main 2 prefixes where it is not known what the damage % goes up to. Presumably it would be 200%, which would make them fairly useful as an all rounder weapon, trumping the powerful's 25% dmg and racial 50% ones. However if it is just 150% it is probably not worth it.

I think the Shishkebab is bugged, not getting bonuses from Big League talent.

For Furious, I think it goes much higher than 200%.

I have a Furious Power Fist that my pip-boy lists as 45 dmg.

After bludgeoning a rad scorpion to death, I checked it in my pip-boy, and it reported that the damage was 145. I don't recall exactly, but it seems to me it was about 5 or 6 strikes.