Some legendaries are balanced but others dont seem to be.

Two shot leads to a decrease in accuracy (probably not enough of a decrease...)

Violent drastically increases recoil.

Mighty should be a moderate recoil increase

Ghoul slayer should deal 25% less against humans

Assasin should deal 25% less against ghouls

Mutant slayer should deal 25% less to beasts

Hunter should deal 25% less to mutants.

explosive should lead to a lot less accuracy

Wounding should lead to a 10% fire rate increase

etc. etc.

I liked how some legendaries absolutely ROFLstomped what they were supposed to, and then were nerfed somehow in another way. But then some legendaries simply got massive buffs with no downsides or tiny downsides that could be ignored for the most part (2 shot is still deadly accuracate with many guns at ranges of 200 yards). I think bethesda should make it so that legendaries take a particular buff, and massively buff it, and then make a moderate nerf to something else.

Also, maybe in the case of things like the assasin or mutant slayer and what-not, maybe they could make it so that there's more specialization.

Instead of 50% bonus, it can be 75% bonus. But it deals 25-35% less against everything else.

I'd be more interesting in seeing changes to the loot pool itself. I'm on my third legendary rolling pin... the first time was worth a good laugh but now I'd like to see something I'll actually use.

Eh, I'm not sure the "bonus to one enemy type" weapons need a counter penalty. At least not the ones where the enemy isn't everywhere (unlike humans). The balance is already that it's a specialized weapon - you could be carrying something with a general bonus, instead. Or have to carry multiple weapons for each type (if that's your thing).

i wonder if the game knows what im spec in.. and gives me somthing else to just mess with me .like on my rifleman i get alot of melee and pistols , and then on my spec melee guy i get all sorts of guns

Legendary system is a joke TBH....Really sad they've chosen to go down the Borderlands route and just do a rip off. Most of the "Magic Abilities/Stats" are pointless. Who the hell is going to be swapping armor in and out every time they see a Mirelurk? I use non of it and do just fine.

I think it's better than the finite and predictable placement of unique items as it has been in previous games. Now you can find cool gear doing anything, not doing the same processes on every character to acquire the same weapons

This is one of the things I find most interesting about it. While overall the list of gear is relatively short in this game, I have still ended up doing a lot of comparison to ensure that I'm maximizing my character's efficiency. This is compounded by the difficulty and frequency of the legendary enemies that I've seen. I am level 14 and play on survival and they almost seem more frequent than normal enemies. I would hate for them to never give me anything worth while and unique weapons are too op to get every other time you kill something.

Having said that I do like the idea of the legendary weapons taking a hit to certain aspects as the original poster mentioned, mostly just because I've found a lot of legendary gear that I just end up selling because the stuff I built up myself is working better.

The Kneecapper is fun. 20% chance to cripple. I gave it a .38 Automatic Receiver, kept the weird Long Recon Scope and pull it out for difficult opponents. Hose em' down for a few secs and we have a cripple. Much better condition for Hunter Mirelurks, Assultrons, Deathclaws etc

The bonus is small enough IMO to warrant no penalties.....not many uber weapons in any game format I know offer perks and penalties...In Dungeons and Dragons does the Frostbrand give a penalty because you use it against an orc? The only instance where magical weapons/items give a penalty is with Artifacts.

These legendary weapons are not artifact quality IMO....

I appreciate your efforts to bring balance but why would a 10mm that is good at damaging/killing ghouls be less effective against a human...or a bug..or a robot....as a matter of fact why would any weapon be less effective against any kind of mob or better at.......save the armored and less armorerd aspects of creatures.

It's really the ones that stack with multiple bullets and do a fixed amount of damage that need to be fixed. What I mean is the damage of most prefixes should depend on the damage of the weapon. For instance, Wounding should be something like 25% of the bullet damage over time rather than 25 damage, stacking with each shot. Automatic weapons might also need buffs to make up for that.

Chance to stagger should depend on weapon damage, so a staggering Missile launcher would stagger 100% of the time if it did 100+ damage. A shotgun with 90 damage would stagger 90% of the time if all pellets hit and there was no damage falloff. An automatic with 20 damage would potentially stagger every 5 shots.

This is really something modders should be doing though. I'd prefer if Bethesda fixed the bugs while we fixed the balance issues.

I have a goul slayer gama gun, it gives gouls 50% more health.

Armor would be a pain to change out all the time, but I hate mirelurks, so I keep an exterminator's laser musket.

I wish there will be a mod that basically removes legendaries from the game and replaces the effects with like exploding ammo, armor piercing ammo etc.

Even though weapon durability has been annoying in the previous games I want it back. A gun with violent prefix could degrade and jam faster. Now that basically every junk item is worth something repair costs could be something like oil+wood+steel instead of needing exact copy of the weapon.

I agree that the Legendary enemies and equipment all seems a bit like it is in the wrong game. Fallout does have a tongue on cheek element with pop references and such but this doesn't really fit this mould...

Randomly generated "named" enemies that are tougher and better equipped than the regular stock enemies would achieve the same result without the impact on immersion... IMHO of course...

And named gear that comes with unique (and non-removable) mods would feel more appropriate than "does X% more damage against enemy type Y" legendary weapons even if it all added up to the same thing in the end...

Focusing on the topic of the thread I am not sure they all need to be equally balanced. It could be that the better ones are rarer drops?

Some of the effects are silly, especially when assessed in real world terms. But then, the whole game is silly when assessed in real world terms. No such thing as a pill you can take to "clean up your system" of radiation for example, or a syringe that you can use to heal "crippled" limbs. All that stuff is no less "magic" than a pipe wrench that has a higher chance to cripple legs, or a gun that is particular damaging to any given type of critter.

Agree though, most of it is pretty useless. I do not like to switch between gear for different missions so I generally prefer only legendaries with generalized benefits. I have two pieces of armor that boost STR, END and two that boost INT, CHA but other than that most legendaries go in the "store until I either decide to sell them or figure out a special situation to use them."

Relating to the OP: I don't think there is any real need to "balance" them by offsetting their strengths with additional weaknesses.

Personally I really like the legendary weapons and enemies, gives me a reason to play survival and breaks up the monotony of getting the same stuff over and over. I like finding a legendary enemy and going out of my way to kill them to see what I get. Most of the time it's not something I want but it's still fun to see. As for the effects it is pretty uncommon to get a perfect combination. I have never gotten a bleed weapon at all and I have over 300 hours played so I don't think it's a big deal that it is very strong if you do happen to get one.

I'm assuming that this is an attempt at realism (why would X do better against Y than Z when it's still X?).

In which case, why does X do better than Y in the first place?

In reality, there are specialized ammunitions and weapons for specialized purposes. Why can't legendaries be the same?

Honestly, why allow two shot to simply destroy anything and everything in the game without some downside?

I want more armor or clothing items that hurt special stats...like a hat that does -2 INT..

And make them really aesthetically pleasing so as to piss people off real good 8)

It really saddens me that fo4 doesn't have a moral choice where the player needs to save a really cute puppie but they are forced to do that by getting loads of radiation which turns their character into a ghoul (like a really ugly one too). If they don't all companions disprove and they get an achievement "didn't save puppies". On top it would be coded in a way that it really hard to mod away.

The tears from people who spent hours for tweaking their character would be glorious.

Well there is the molerat disease.

Though the effect is small (i didn't even notice I had it).