I have a plasma gun and I'm wonder whether I should go with Sniper Barrel, Splitter or automatic barrel. I've already tried Sniper and while it does pretty good damage, I've never really noticed how slow plasma guns were like until now. I mean I've seen even ghouls dodge my plasma sniper. Would changing it to automatic be a vast improvement? I already have an automatic laser rifle and I dunno if I should have that be sniper/long barrel instead given that it shoots significantly faster than the plasma does.

Also how does a fully upgraded Deliverer compare to a fully upgraded Two-Shot 10mm non-automatic pistol? My two shot does like 6 more damage than the Deliverer and has a recon scope but the Deliverer appears to be better in attack rate, range and accuracy and of course comes with the perk of greater accuracy and less AP when used with VATS.

I am not a gun expert, but I do have some options on your question:

So far, energy weapons in general seem inferior to ballistic weapons.

Fully upgraded Deliverer gives lots of shots in VATS, but seldom yields one-shot kills. This is a problem when you are swarmed by multiple attackers. Deliverer is good, and is one of my regular carry guns.


Overseers Gaurdian is a must have. Fully upgraded, one shot kills are the norm. Takes a little effort and some caps, but you will be glad you got it.

Good hunting!

I read somewhere what energy weapons lack in raw damage they make up for with bigger crit hit multipliers. Not sure if that is true or not as never tested it but if it is the best option would be the one that works best with a crit build which again I don't have enough experience with to recommend.

EDIT: I'd be wary getting the overseers guardian too early tbh. Used it in one play through and It is just so cheesy and OP, it just made the game stupidly easy and boring I had to start over.

I'm probably the one who you saw state that, as I have a mod called 'Better Weapon Mod Descriptions' that showed that Energy weapons have higher Crit Damage multipliers. I therefore created a thread a while back musing about this. However, most Crit builds will end up using Kellogg's Pistol, which is based on a .44, and while the .44 doesn't have any Crit Damage bonuses whatsoever, it's sheer massive damage pulls it ahead of everything except a Plasma Pistol. And honestly, the Plasma Pistol only wins because it's doing two different types of damage; each single type does significantly less damage than the Plasma Pistol. Plus, you have to deal with the Plasma weaons' slower projectile speed, which can turn a lot of people off of it. Overall, while the Energy weapons have higher Crit Damage multipliers, the .44 Pistol is still the king just because it's damage is literally twice as high as that of the Laser Pistol, and of the Plasma Pistol if you only look at one damage type at a time.

I'm aware that energy weapons are inferior to conventional ballistic weapons. However somehow I have over 10k plasma cartridges and fusion cells with only a few thousand .308, 50, 44, 45 rounds which is why I gotta put both the plasma and laser weapons to good use.

How are they inferior ? They fire fast and they are lighter and they have massive range as well... I'm not sure about comparing them full auto though, but using them as rifles they kickass. Even as rifles they fire fast, so their DPS makes them even better than the pesky .50 cal

Well, here's my input: Laser weapons are your lower damage, higher fire-rate weapons. They aren't really about putting a foe down instantly as much as they are about putting multiple shots into them. Plasma weapons, on the other hand, are higher damage, lower fire-rate weapons. It's also worth noting that Plasma Snipers are an option, but they're a poor option. The combination of long distance and slow projectile speed means that the target has plenty of time and distance to move out of the way. Lasers will serve much better as Sniper weapons. Of course, if you're using a Laser weapon to snipe, the single best choice is probably the Laser Musket; when I tested it, 5 cranks did 8.5x the damage of a single crank (I would have tested 6 cranks, but the character didn't have the Science to actually make the 6 Crank Receiver).

My general advice would be to restrict your longer-range weapon to the Laser Rifle or the Laser Musket, and use the Plasma weapon for close- and mid-range work, where the shorter distance helps to negate the slower projectile speed.

Maxed out lasers do more damage than assault / combat rifles. plasma is up at the shotgun level.

Main downside is no silencer.

And yes the plasma ball is fairly slow. it might be an good automatic high dps weapon depending on the recoil you get. Downside is that plasma ammo is fairly rare, ammo capasity is an issue too.

Tried with an shattering auto laser but it was not controllable.

Note that giving follower an laser is nice as you see where they are shooting.

Exactly...and not to mention, the overpowering Gauss compared to it's general equivalent (.50), by almost wice, that there's no reason to even use anything else...especially the extremely underpowered ,50 with it's gimped DAM score and RoF. FO4 was built for energy weapons and power armor. Ballistic weapons as a whole, with few exceptions, don't stack up but for a few limited critical paths.