I'd even make a case for not using any unique weapons at all. After all, uniques are really only available to the Courier, so the average Power Ganger wouldn't have access to it. Just a thought.

I'm looking forward to your Legion character. Will you just be focusing on Melee and Unarmed weapons, or use other Legion weapons such as the Sniper Rifle, Brush Gun and Marksman Carbine? I hope its mainly Melee/Unarmed, and I'd like to see how you deal with Lonesome Road using only those weapons. Using the Legion ranged weapons, as above, would overlap with NCR and Boomers characters, so would not distinguish the legionary as unique.

Well it's not supposed to be like a perfect representation of the faction characters. If I wanted that, I'd just spawn the NPCs from the game and have them duke it out. It's more of less supposed to be as if each faction gets a Courier to represent them. The weapons limitation is in place because if it weren't, then every guns faction (Khans, Boomers, Powder Gangers, NCR, Legion, BoS) would have access to guns like the GRA AMR and ALSID, which just seems incredibly out of place. I simply argue that just because you can use a repeater rifle doesn't mean you can use a sniper rifle, so I use the weapons used by the factions in-game to represent what they're capable of using. The Holorifle and LAER were the complicated ones to decide when it came to the Powder Gangers, because they show themselves to be competent with similar weapons but those two are unique. Eventually I settled on saying yes to the Holorifle and no to the LAER. Yes to the Holorifle because it's as complicated to use as Pew-Pew (50 energy weapons skill required) and they CAN use Pew-Pew, no to the LAER because it needs 75 and they never prove they can use 75-skill weaponry.


The factions use any weapons available to them. This gives the NCR, the Legion and the BoS quite the upperhand over the others, because those are the only three with an end-game sniper. The Legion and NCR can use an AMR, the BoS can use the YCS/186. The Great Khans and the Boomers follow close behind because both at least have access to an all-around rifle (Trail Carbine and All-American/Assault Carbine), with the Boomers even having access to weapons none of the other factions do (Annabelle, Thump-Thump, Red Glare, Mercy).

The Legionaire is strong (very strong, probably stonger than the NCR if I were to decide now), dunno if I'll be braving the Divide with ONLY melee weapons when I've got a GRA AMR though. After I'm done with him, I'll probably move on to.....tough call. Between the BoS, the Khans and the Boomers. All three of those seem extremely interesting to me. I did the NCR, Powder Gangers and Legion first because those are the first three factions you meet. The BoS would be interesting because they're like the NCR version of NCR weapons (full-access and full energy weapons dedication), whereas the Boomers are like the NCR version of explosives. Both of those two factions would be referred to by the game as being "neutral" and therefore both would have access to the very powerful neutral karma perk; think the Boomers would also have access to Better Criticals with the build I have in mind, so their damage output would be insane, both with explosives AND with guns. The Khans would also be strong just because that's a faction that both encourages drug use and has nice durability. I think the Khans would be the only faction that can unlock Implant GRX besides the Legion (who would never accept any drug use or tech implants). The Khans would have a nice combination of endurance, decent weaponry (Trail carbines, the Dinner Bell, Hunting Revolvers, 12.7mm pistol and variants) and drug usage. Hell the Khans even have decent intelligence; they've been taught a thing or two by the Followers and know enough about science to produce chems.

The White Gloves I expect to do horribad (melee weapons, high charisma and luck, and flamethrowers), the Kings will be hard, but with reliable guns like Lucky and Sleepytyme, I think I could pull it off with some thought put into my playstyle.
The Followers, I still haven't decided what I should do with them, or if I should bother. I think the Followers would end up being a gimped Brotherhood of Steel, with little difference between them except the Followers would be weaker. Also not sure if the Followers should be subject to Logan's Loophole or not.

This is the thing, I appreciate that a legionary would technically have access to the Brush Gun or AMR, but then so does the NCR. In places like The Divide (and pretty much everywhere else), it makes sense to just use those guns wherever possible, since ranged weapons beat melee or unarmed in an open space. Even more so when they are as hard hitting as these two. So I see the NCR and Legion playing out in much the same way in that respect.

When I get out of Skyrim, I will be taking on a pure melee/unarmed build, most likely relying on stealth and critical hits. No ranged weapons at all, so I would love to see how your legionary experiment would fare in this respect. Is it even possible to survive The Divide doing just this?

As for the Boomers, I think they are immensely powerful. I took on The Divide recently with little more than a Hunting Shotgun and Thump-Thump, and loved every minute. The advantage of AoE weapons against clustered enemies is a great advantage to have, and could set the Boomers apart from, well, pretty much everyone. When your explosives skill is high, you can thin a group of enemies quite easily. Not sure about Better Criticals, since explosives do not focus on that. But Splash Damage, Hit the Deck and a couple of ranks of Demolition Expert, yes definitely.

I think for the White Gloves and Followers of the Apocalypse, the game changes entirely. These two must surely be a non combat style, even though they may defeat what you are trying to achieve. High Speech, Barter, Medicine, that kind of thing. But in terms of actual combat ability, I doubt either are particularly worth trying out.

Yes, objectively when you look at the Divide, they ARE similar.

But that's the Divide. If anything, that's only an example of one of the reasons I view the Legion character as being superior to the NCR character: The Legion character strengthens his body and unarmed ability, but also learns to be competent with various forms of other weaponry for when a situation truly calls for it. The NCR character on the other hand relies almost entirely on it's guns, and thus falls apart the moment they're taken away. NCR struggles with Dead Money, Legion does not. I mentioned this point in my NCR review; that the NCR perks feel like they've been wasted on a luxury rather than making the character truly more powerful. The Legion perks however? The moment something's within 10 feet of my Legionnaire, it's dead.
One place the Legion DOES sorta struggle is Old World Blues. The enemies are simply....too numerous and too powerful. Dead Money is simple because the enemies can be one-shot, Honest Hearts is nothing special because I can snipe the enemies from afar and then beat the crap out of the ones that spawn behind me. Old World Blues, as you said, I can still use a Brush Gun or AMR for the Deathclaws while enjoying a Ballistic fist for the Tunnelers and some situations with the Marked Men. Old World Blues though, it's VERY difficult to one shot those enemies, and the enemies generally tear into you if you use Light Armor. My first time trying to fight the Giant Robo-Scorpion in particular, I felt like this was -THE- boss for the Legion. You CANNOT melee that thing, cause it can't be knocked down or stunned, and it will turn around and one-shot you.
The playstyle is still different though. You don't just rely on guns because in all honesty, Unarmed DOES turn out to be superior. Unarmed lets you control the battlefield and keep your opponents stunned and on the ground. I mean, if I get jumped by a Ranger hitsquad, I don't attempt headshots and just take damage; I look for cover and a chance to jump, then I try to stun one, kill a second and knock down a third. Far more effective defensively. The ability to fall back on guns when it's neccesary? That simply effects how the Legion is able to adapt itself to the situation. Their preference is melee and unarmed, but they're not above using a dirty bomb to destroy Searchlight, they're not above using bombs to blow up the monorail and they're not above setting up traps for the enemy to find. Total war: that's why the Legion is so effective.

And they DO have gun limitations, it's just that the Medicine Stick and GRA AMR are definitely two of the more devistating guns one could use, and the Legion has access to both. ALSID, Hunting Revolvers, LMGs, Miniguns, .45 auto SMGs and Riot Shotguns though? No, none of that.

If you could survive the Divide with melee? Perhaps with Stealthboys, which you can get in steady supply from the Legion supply house. The chances of stunning and/or getting a knock down on the first punch are actually fairly good, but that first punch HAS to count, since the Legion doesn't use chems it means that Deathclaw is a guarenteed OHKO. A Stealthboy would at least buy you time so that you'd get two or three free punches, which SHOULD be enough to kill it. I've fought plenty of Deathclaws though that have charged me, done their leap attack, then I entered VATS, and the result was my character side-stepping and stunning them, never taking a hit.

As for the Boomers with Better Criticals and Lucky to Be Alive, that was more to show how the character could, just like that, be just as effective with guns as it is with explosives. Again, this goes back to my review of the NCR, where if feels like the Boomers or the Legion would be equally as effective as the NCR with guns without wasting 25 perks on gun abilities (or rather, VATS accuracy buffs). A Boomer comes by and picks Better Criticals, Grunt, Finesse and Lucky to Be Alive and performs practically just as well as the NCR with guns. A Boomer would be limited to just an Assault Carbine and Marksman Carbines, but with the All-American, a decent crit rate and 100% extra crit damage, a Boomer could regularly dish out 89 damage hits with a gun that fires as fast as the All-American; VERY impressive. I dunno if it'd be neccesary though. Something tells me that if you opened an attack with Annabelle or Thump-Thump, then switched to the Red Glare, that'd get the job done.

As I said though, we'll see. Pondering on the character and playing the character are two different things. With the Powder Ganger for example, I never realized how much of an issue carry weight would be, or how impractical it was to carry more than one gun. The result is, yeah, the class is CAPABLE of 320 DPS, but you're usually not gonna bother carrying that 320 DPS gun. Weight could likely be an issue for the Boomer aswell, or ammo consumption, since one rocket is a big friggin deal and the types of guns the Boomers use require 100's of rounds rather than just a couple.