So I’ve gotten a couple characters past level 30 now and experimented with a couple others up to level 15 or so on normal through very hard difficulty. I’m sure plenty of you have had quite a bit more experience so I’m curious about the various damage perks. I also feel that for the most part you usually need to take two complementing weapon damage perks – though I’m sure you could get by with just one really good one. My two main playthroughs were with a Big Guns + Demolition Expert and a Big Leagues + Rifleman spec’d characters. Now to be clear I’m mainly talking about specific weapon damage perks here – not things like Mr. Sandman or Bloody mess. What perks have you seen that work well together… or alone?


1. Demolition Expert. IMO this is probably the best damage perk to take. Explosives are useful for crowd control and especially useful for taking on armored targets. At rank 2 this perk also grants a throwing arc, which can be useful. Lastly, this is the only damage perk that also unlocks crafting options. Only thing about explosives is they aren’t exactly easy to use in VATS, can be a challenge to get them to kill the way you need, and ofc they are expensive.


2. Rifleman. Probably the most OP damage perk I’ve tried. Rifles are plentiful and already do excellent damage at all sorts of ranges but the added bonus of ignoring armor makes it all too easy. Rifles don’t use a ton of ammo either and ammo for most rifles is easy enough to find. Rifles do take more AP to use than handguns but it pretty much evens out with the added damage.


3. Big Leagues. Other than the fact that Rank 5 is bugged this is an excellent perk. The disarm bonus is nice too. The biggest advantage with melee is that you don’t use ammo. The “range” disadvantage is easily offset by Blitz. I would never make a melee character without Blitz personally…


4. Big Guns. I like big guns but they are rare, ammo is rare and expensive. Minigun has an armor penetration issue, and ofc big guns are heavy and take up a lot of inventory space. Still, one-shotting everything that is in sight with a missile launcher is pretty nice. One nice thing to note is that with Fatman/Missle launcher big guns and demo expert stack. Dunno, there could be some interesting synergy between Big Guns and Gunslinger…


5. Gunslinger. Haven’t tried this perk much at all yet. I do understand some of the advantages though. Pistols are lighter and use less AP than rifles. They also do less damage/armor pen than rifles so less AP may be a mute point for some cases. And ofc they have less range. As far as I can tell there are more disadvantages than advantages to pistols.


6. Commando. Haven’t tried it. I’m trying to work it into my next build but there are some disadvantages with it – namely lower armor pen potentially and obviously more bullets. It can be offset by things like scrounger/cap collector. Then again other damage perks are so good they don’t need anything to offset… The main advantage I see with it is that you can hit moving targets/do lots of DPS outside of VATS, which could work well with a character that has all the pacify perks. Miss a pacify check, just hose it down with bullets.


7. Iron Fist. Only limited experience with this perk. I found the lack of unarmed weapons and weapon mods to be very disappointing. There’s still some good unarmed weapons out there but I am still struggling to see what, if any, advantage Unarmed has over Melee. Also, unarmed misses out from some other perks – most notable is ninja, which only applies to Melee for some reason. I would say it’s the worst damage perk to take – could be wrong.

advantages of unarmed over melee

-higher damage thanks to brawling arm mods

-no chance of friendly fire

-paralyze on crit


same stats, super sledge does 270+41 in grognaks, freezing dc does 450+51 with brawling arms. sledge is slow and dc is medium speed on top of it.

Pretty sure Ninja affects Unarmed just as well, x3.0 multiplier is the based sneak attack for both melee and Unarmed. This means Deathclaw Gauntlet users would surpass most weapons outright in terms of sneaky damage, not even including the legendary affix that grants double damage if the enemy is at full health.

Melee can get 10.6x sneak crits, unarmed 5.3x. If fury and big leagues wasn't broken melee would be stronger.

Deathclaw Gauntlet makes you feel like a velosiraptor. That is why I like unarmed lol

One my character I put perks into:

Rifleman - 'Cuz I snipe a lot if given the opportunity.

Commando - Gotta love automatic weapons... also gotta shoot in controlled bursts to minimize muzzle climb. I was never too worried about wasting bullets even at the beginning of the game.

Gunslinger - I only put one point into this. The only pistol that I use is the 10mm pistol, but after modding it to automatic the damage is no longer affected by gunslinger.

First character was a Gunslinger. With a weapon like The Deliverer, he could tear through enemies with 16 shots on VATS. It's decent for a character you want to just charge in with quickly and pour out the shots rapidly, especially if you get a strong plasma pistol.


Rifleman is probably the best due to weapons like the Gauss Rifle and Overseer's Gaurdian. Rifles in general are overpowered due to the way DR works in the game.


Explosives-- haven't had much testing with them, but with how they have their own button, this could definitely be very useful. Also stacks with Heavy Gunner for Missioe Launchers and Fat Man, leading to lure devestation.


Heavy Gunner-- not a good choice for early game. Once you get later in the game and get a good legendary like Ashmaker or a Gatling Laser, it becomes better. Mini guns will never really be great due to the low damage factor and scarcity of 5mm ammo (even with Scrounger). Gatling Lasers fare better, especially if you have Nuclear Physicist because Fusion Cores are much more plentiful than 5mm ammo. Also recommended if doing an explosives build, because as stated above, it stacks for missiles and nukes.


Commando-- not bad, but automatic weapons sort of got shafted in this game. Both due to DR calculations making them weaker (which makes no sense because you're still using the same caliber bullet, so they shouldn't be doing less damage than semi-autos) and eating up ammo faster.


So, imo, Rifleman and Gunslinger are the best because of semi autos being the best weapons in the game, Demo Expert and Commando in the middle and Heavy Gunner last.

Note that exploding bullets also get the demolition expert bonus on the explosion part. Exploding minigun get the demolition expert + heavy weapon synergy making the weapon insane, cutting trough stuff like deathclaws, minelurk queens and bos knights so fast you have problem keeping the burst short enough to not doing masive overkill. Only thing I had to keep firing against was groups of high level supermutant including warlords.

I prefer the Power fist, the VATS kill Animation with it is awesome. Also love the look, feel and sound of the weapon. Deathclaw Gauntlet is still sixy ofc, just don't use it that much this time around.

I maxed gunslinger on my first playthrough and it can be devastating, especially with a certain weapon which most people know about. With VATS you have so many action points that you can headshot an entire mob swarming on you. Of course, with no VATS it's much harder. The distance is an issue, but the quickness and number of action points make up for it for close encounters.

Overall I still prefer rifleman, but gunslinger is pretty good.

I agree about demolition expert, very good perk. I think level 2 is enough. And like someone else said, the explosive legendary effect is affected by it. My explosive combat shotgun with rank 3 in demolition expert was just ridiculous. I was a one-man gore soup factory.

Like OP, haven't tested commando much. Can't get myself to have a build based on it.

Gunslinger & Rifleman.


I'm fine with only using the Deliverer & Tinker Toms Special on my stealthy Railroad playthrough


That said, from my experience so far using both, Rifleman is the most necessary perk of the two. For an obvious reason; rifles come in many forms!


If you don't mind semi automatic weapons, I highly recommend RM for any build.