Recently made a character that made this weapon an absolute beast.
Some things are easier to show than they are to explain, so I uploaded a small video demonstrating how beast this weapon can get, with the right build.

Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1ts_TVi-3w

Amazing absolutely awsome!

I thought so too. First time I used it with Maximum charge cells my initial thought was "holy crap, I don't think I've ever cleared Dry Wells in under a minute flat before..."
Took a little longer there, but got the point across all the same.

Holy [censored]! I'm going to load up my old Energy Weapons character and try this out. I'm glad Gatling Lasers have superiority once again, they were always one of my favorite weapons to come out of the Fallout series, and they should never be nerfed imo.

impressive display of laser power! i take it gaius magnus' dt was too high? do you have any graphics mods? i couldn't help but notice how much smoother everything looked compared to ps3 (i will update my video card...eventually lol). i have FNV for pc too, but i can't really play it. was also cool to see the german version. nice video.

My EW specialists use this as their main weapon, and with a +crit build it's an absolute monster when loaded with MC ECPs. Even then, high-DT opponents will be an issue, since they have more armor than the ammo has pierce. One way around this is use of Psycho and/or Slasher, since they raise your damage by large amounts.

I used it as my sole weapon going through OWB, and nothing stood a chance; even the X-42 superscorp and the LBF fell to its power. Have yet to play with Deathclaws while using it, but I don't expect them to be able to withstand it either.

Without a +crit build it's not as effective, since the idea is to leverage the high ROF to spam the opponent with critical hits, but it will still shred unarmored targets fairly easily. Incidentally, I also use the Smitty Special; with a similar build it's pretty brutal, albeit you trade ROF for burst damage. Good for taking down high DT targets, due to the much higher per-shot output, but not so good in large crowds due to lower ROF.

Gaius actually just happens to be one of two NPCs that resist it, the reason being that he has a DT of 27 (base damage on the weapon is like 24) and he regenerates health fairly quickly, which you can see in the video. I could've killed him with it too, but it would've taken pretty long. But yeah if he didn't have the DT or the health regen he'd fall easily, just like the other Marked Men there who regenerate health but lack the same DT.


By crit build, you mean Laser Commander and Light Touch, right? Any other crit is near useless.
That character in the video had ~22% crit rate, which, with the Sprtel-Wood's crit rate, gets reduced to only 2% crit. So yeah, really no need to get anything but Laser Commander and Light Touch, which is kind of nice in it's own way. With the Sprtel-Wood you can spend all your SPECIAL points on STR, Endurance, INT and Agility for carrying capacity, tanking ability and reload speed and you're not actually missing out on anything, really.

I never bothered with the Smitty Special for a couple reasons:

1) It won't crit as much unless you make crit a focus point of your character. Yes it can crit more though, if you do.
2) It uses Microfusion cells, which are far heavier. With the Sprtel-Wood you can convert all cells into Electron Charge Packs for a fairly good ratio (Microfusion give you several) and the Electron Charge Packs are the ONLY type of energy ammo that doesn't weigh a ton, weighing less than .357 Magnum rounds for example. With the Smitty Special, 10 rounds = one pound, and even with Pack Rat, 20 rounds = 1 pound for a rapid fire weapon isn't exactly ideal.
3) The repair costs. Again, another issue with Energy weapons is they fall apart, and the Smitty Special would be REALLY bad about this with max charge cells. You can actually see me use several repair kits on the Sprtel-Wood in that video. I don't actually consider this a weakness though because the Sprtel-Wood is plenty durable without Maximum Charge cells (I just wanted to show the weapon off at full power, obviously) and the alternatives to the Sprtel-Wood (K9000 fully modded being the only one able to decently compete with Sprtel's firepower imo, FIDO, CZ57 Avenger, etc etc) all have similar item HP; some more, some less.