Piper is my current companion for the moment and I want to give her a modded legendary weapon (replace modded standard weapon) so that she can be more effective. I have weapons with the following legendary effects that I can give her.

1. Mighty - Does 25% more damage

2. Penetrator - Ignores 30% of defense

3. Wounding - 25 bleed damage

I am thinking #1 or #2 because they should be effective against all opponents where as #3 would not have any effect on robots, but the extra 25 damage against everything is nice. I haven't come across many robots yet.

I believe the bleed damage stacks- I used an auto assault rifle with that effect for quite a while, and it really chews enemies up with a full auto weapon... if you can stomach how much ammo it's going to eat.

Companions always seem to get into close-range distance no matter what in a firefight, so I usually end up giving them a really hard-hitting combat shotgun.

I prefer the elemental effects. Radiation, Fire, whatever else their may be. My fire assault rifle along with the rifleman perks does considerable damage. I can pretty much double tap the trigger for most enemies and they're gone. Took down a mirelurk queen in less than a clip.

*double post*

In my game it is a bit different... Preston and Piper generally keep their distance rifles seem to be best weapons for them. I have not found other companions yet since I kinda abandoned the main quest for the moment. I'll probably pay Nick Valentine a visit in a few days though. Just wanna get to a good stopping point with a couple of settlements.

Unfortunately, all my legendary weapons are "low level" weapons; primarily 10mm pistols and pipe pistol/rifles.

Bleed damage effects synths and robots. And it stacks.

Pickman's blade is awesome in my melee specced character's hands!


So go with bleed damage whenever possible on a weapon!

Because of the way damage is calculated, Bleed all the way. And I agree with Lord Bhaal that it DOES work on robots, strangely enough.

Isn't radiation damage only effective against humans?

I would like bleeding on a weapon with low damage, high RoF because 25 damage might be more than doubble damage like on a minigun and it works on everything but robots.

Mostly. Animals and supermutants are naturally resistant, and radiation heals feral ghouls! I avoid it.

Interesting... I guess they bleed oil and take damage because of it...

Only thing there being, that the bleed is in points, not percentage. If the bleed effect is on a weapon that otherwise does only 10 or 20 damage, sure +25 damage is great (and assuming you are correct that it works on critters that do not have blood, which I find odd). But if the thing does 500 damage, 10% bonus is twice as good at +25 . . .

I would lean toward the Mighty, but that is just in general. Ultimately it depends on what the weapon is.

Not positive on the Penetrator effect, but if it only applies to "armor" and not to latent damage resistance it might be largely useless against some critters.

My favorite legendaries:

1. Incendiary Shotgun (have yet to find the explosive one)

2. Freezing Gauss rifle

3. Crippling pipe wrench (not a melee build so this little weapon, which only weighs about 3 is a nice backup).

4. VATS + (various types) seem to work well when you stack various armor pieces, chems, etc. and turns VATS into a serious shooting gallery.

Those are the only ones I've consistently used. There are so many that are just plain useless outside of some highly specialized context or character build; and then a lot of them which are difficult to discern any effect for.

Just for fun I killed some ghouls with an Irradiate 10mm Pistol. I took them down with 2 or 3 rounds.

I must be doing something wrong. I can give her (or any companion) a gun, and equip it, but they never use it.

What I have done is give a ton of different weapons to a companion because I was carrying too much weight. Then they seem to randomly choose one.

For example, I gave Cait a ton of pipe pistol's and other miscellaneous stuff along with a gamma gun and she started using the gamma gun. She didn't even have any ammo for it.

Piper seems to like the Flame Thrower when she's carrying one. As with Cait, I found out that Piper liked the Flame Thrower by accident. I gave her it and a bunch of other stuff to carry and she started using it.

So, in my experience, certain companions prefer certain weapons but they won't necessarily use it if you equip it.

Yeah, I just did a search on Penetrator... it works only against armor and not natural resistance. Oh well...that means it's only effective against humans, super mutants wearing armor and robots... Looks like it's down to Mighty and Wounding.

All those legendary effects are on pipe rifles. I find it strange that even at level 60 the only legendary weapon drops that I have been getting are 10mm pistols, pipe pistols, double barrel shotguns and revolvers. Maybe I should just give Piper a modded combat rifle

I have an Explosive double barrel shotgun. Works decently well as long as you do not use it at very short / pointblank range since you can hurt yourself. I prefer the Never Ending double barrel shotgun. I carry it around with me just in case I come across a deathclaw.

I've got an "Irradiated Plasma Thrower" that I modded into a flamethrower. I think the damages are like 100 each for Ballistic, Energy and Rads. It drops Super Mutants all the way up to Overlords like they were cardboard targets.

So, even though "most Wasteland critters" are supposed to be immune to rads, if not buffed by them, I have to question if it is working as intended on that. I think it is possible that, rads from the environment: yes they are immune, and it is possible that a weapon that does "only" rad damage they might shrug off.

But I wouldn't be surprised if a weapon that adds rad damage to other types is being miscalculated and the critters that shouldn't be hurt by the rad quantum are in fact being hurt by that portion.

Re: super Mutants, I am not sure how their damage resistances are treated. My guess is that all Super Mutants have built in damage resistances, and that these increase with the "level" or tier of the mob in question. So an Overlord probably has a lot more than a Butcher, who has more than a standard version. Whether ANY of the Resistance in any of these cases is treated as "armor" I would have to question, and my guess would be "no, unless the critter in question is ALSO wearing a set of lootable armor" (which seems very unusual, and if memory serves, only happens with a few boss mobs . . . in fact, I'm not sure I've found Super Mutant armor in any way except just laying around in their lair or in a container). So, my guess is that "Penetrator" is really only effective against humans (who are wearing armor), coursers, some synths (the ones that have armor in their inventories), and a very small set of super mutants.

If it works like the Ghoul perk there is an oddity. Radiation heals damage, but it also still accumulates radiation, so you can die from your bar turning all red even though the green portion never gets below its allowed maximum. Like if you get shot with a pistol, health goes down but radiation doesn't change. But if you are then exposed to radiation or shot with a gamma gun, health goes back up AND radiation increases (so the net effect may be a lower resulting available health).

I recall a poster stating that he used a Gamma Gun to heal a ghoul so that it can take down a Behemoth.

I was quite puzzled by the fact that I can kill ghouls with an Irradiated 10mm Pistol. It does 40 ballistic damage (based on it's mods and my perks) and 50 radiation damage. If all types of damage is treated equal, then every shot should be healing the ghoul by 10 points.

Bleed is supposed to be god like on a shotgun as it's said to stack with each pellet. Also never throw away a pipe pistol with 20% chance to cripple. If you put an auto mod on it, it becomes one of the best weapons in the game by immobilizing stuff in seconds plus with ammo being very plentiful and cheap for it also.

It's helpful to think of Radiation damage more like a max health de-buff or nerf rather than as doing actual damage. If your max health gets to zero, you die.

Companions need ammo for any weapon that isn't their own.

Hmmm... That doesn't explain how a player was using a gamma gun to heal a ghoul fighting a behemoth though... unless that guy was trolling.

Assuming that he was not trolling... radiation from a weapon can heal ghouls. Maybe it is kinda like using stimpaks in on Survivor difficulty... Radiation heals ghouls over time rather than immediately which would explain why I was able to kill them using an Irradiated 10mm Pistol. So by the time the 3rd bullet hits for a possible total of 120 damage, maybe the radiation only healed 20 points of damage.

I am sure the poster knows that since he pointed out Cait was using the Gamma Gun even though she did not have ammo for it.

Yes, but the point he is making is: some mobs like ferals are supposed to be HEALED by rads. So if he is doing 40 Ballistic and "50 Rad" damage, each hit (modifications as a result of crits, sneaks, etc. aside) should be healing a feral +10 (50 - 40 = 10).

I'll have to look back at that Irradiated plasma thrower to see exactly what the ratio of damage is . . . but assuming my memory is right and it is 100 B 100 E 100R, and assuming Super mutants are "immune" to rads (though I don't think they are supposed to be "healed" by rads the same way ferals are??) it should really only be doing 100 damage, and literally I just have to point it at them and tap the left mouse button and they wilt. It is like it is doing 500 damage per second instead of only 100.

ADDIT: bit of shame really. The fact that targets that have died by immolation get a distinctive "crispy" texture is just pure awesome. It almost makes me want to do a "Pyro build" and have a character that focuses on the flamer, molotovs and/or other weapons that can be modified to shot fire . . . But this "flamer mod" for the plasma thrower is just slightly underwhelming. It produces this green gaslike animation that is pretty well done, but it just sort of 'obscures' the target and it doesn't "stick" to them the same way the normal fire does. Its like my gun shoots out a little green cloud and as soon as I stop pulling the trigger the cloud just disappears. Also it seems to have little to no sounds associated with it. Some kind of disturbingly industrial sounding, whooshing + sizzling noise would've been nice

I got a ghoul slayer gama gun, heals ghouls 50% more, works great if you want to heal Hancock from a distance or heal a glowing ghoul who is tanking a deathclaw for you. I wish they would realize you are healing them and not attacking them because it breaks passifying if you use it on them.