Minigun-
Wonderful against hordes of ghouls but horrible against anything else. Too unstable. Shakes up your screen from recoil. Makes aiming unclear. I expected the miniguns to be the most devastating weapon. As the real miniguns in real life, per bullet is devastating damage.
I use magnums now as they are effective on almost everything.

I have to give some love to weird weapons. The gamma gun upgraded does some damage and ignores a lot of resistances. It doesn't show in the preview because it hurts their soul. The broadsider makes a satisfying sound. By the time it reloads its 3 shots vats is back up. Missile launchers are a lot of fun. Nothing like getting double kills or more.

Only ones I dislike is the shotgun or the rolling pin. But they're fine weapons. Even a 10 mm upgraded does the business.

Worst weapon worth using: Gamma gun. Might as well throw dirt. I know they're only "good" against humans, but damn, these people in the Commonwealth have some serious rad defense.

Best weapon worth using: Combat shotgun. I know it's not the most powerful weapon in the game, but hot damn, does it take out the trash. Lone Wanderer perk + Rifleman x4 and there's simply nothing else I need.

I just took out some ungodly radscorpion, some Legendary thing with a title longer than the screen can fit. Did some serious damage to me (stupid poison and rads), but I eventually took it out.

Oh, my reward? Some stupid rolling pin.

I agree with the mini gun comment. These were the weapons I looked forward to the most in the previous fallout games but it eats way too much ammo for the pathetic damage it dishes out. The gatling laser is at least a bit more efficient when you mod the barrel and have the nuclear physicist perks, a single fusion core actually lasts a decent way through a heavy firefight.

Junk Jet is also pretty worthless since well..in this game just about every piece of junk comes in handy for something.

Missile launchers and Fatman launchers are on this list too. They are devastating but the ammo is so scarce that it seems a crime investing into big guns just to use these to the fullest. Sheesh come to think of it, mostly all the big guns kinda svck cept arguably the gatling laser under certain conditions. Non automatic pistols and rifles got all the love in this game. Melee too if you're a sneak build rather than a stand and fight bruiser.

Automatic weapons big and light are bad weapons. Most rifles have good rate of fire and do way more damage.

Minigun is bad, yes, but I feel that the junkjet is the worst weapon in the game by far after you take into account ammo weight (blah blah money as ammo blah) and damage.

I'm glad you agree. Minigun was something I looked forward to also. It takes like 100 bullets to take out a ghoul. Btw that last like 2 seconds. But takes a full round of 500 if you want to kill something like a mirelurk hunter. Really Bethesda? You should of think this over. I could kill a freaking mirelurk hunter with 3 shots in the head with a combat shotgun. Like cmon I expect the minigun damage to be 20+ not 8-10....
And laser gatling? Please... The rounds for that are so costly. A laser pistol does more than that. Stock I'm talking about. A laser gatling should've had 30+ damage.

I gave a whole settlement miniguns. 1 may not be too effective for you, but 20 at once....

If RNJesus is kind to you you will find a Legendary Minigun. I have a couple. It makes a big difference when you're DMG is double by Leg. ffects.

I found that semi Automatic rifles to crazy amounts of damage. And fairly easy to use. And saves alot more ammo then automatics.
One of the most favorable for me is the.44 revolver. I upgraded it to do 60+ damage. That thing can really hit. Don't use V.A.T.S for it though. Range is poor. So I use it to sneak up on Raiders up close and use V.A.T.S for clean headshots. Second favorite would be the deliverer from the missions. That thing let's you use less AP. with V.A.T.S and hits hard for the use of it. Upgraded can do 34+ damage. Might not sound alot. But once you have an extended barrel and use V.A.T.S. It's over. On 10mm lol that's crazy

The laser is actually pretty good but again, it's under certain conditions. You have to change the barrel immediately to the one that allows the weapon to fire at a much slower pace. You also conserve shots by having the nuclear physicist perk so it's a very niche build, but it can be made to work amazingly. I mowed down the brotherhood of steel on survival mode with this thing, a full on assault on their airport base and didn't even use one fusion core fully. Overall though, yeah big guns and automatic weapons simply svck for the most part, am waiting on a mod that tweaks the damage of these weapons a bit to bring them on par with their non automatic equivalents. It's silly how I can do more damage with a modded 10 mm pistol pound for pound than an upgraded gatling gun

syringer.

Have fun getting that to work....and it's a freaking quest reward.

Fatman is top of the line fallout trademark weapon. The range of it is too much though.

You are wrong, about the Gatling. Infact it is one of the most ammo efficient gun in the game. Each core provides 3 reloads ie 1500 shots. A core costs below 500 caps therefore Gatling is the most ammo efficient gun in the game. By the way you need minimum of 2 cores for proper Gatling reloading, but having only 2 cores will give you a total of 6 reloads.

For me, both depends on the build. a pistol wielding assassin would probably not want any heavy weapons, but would be great with the Deliverer. A tank-like character could use anyting, but heavy guns make the most sense.

With perks, and mods, my combat shotgun (semi-auto) does north of 300 damage per shot. At close range, one or two shots kills damn near anything, including deathclaws.....

I think my favorite 'legendary' weapon I have found though, is the .38 pistol with unlimited ammo........ It's the only weapon I use carry that uses .38 ammo...... and having 999 rounds, on full-auto....... It's just fun to play with.

The fully upgraded .44 revolver is friggin' devastating........

.50 caliber sniper rifle is fun to play with too. It's nice being able to sit back, and extreme range, and plink off the bad guys.

I assume you mean that it doesn't need to reload, and not that is has unlimited ammo, because if there is a legendary effort for unlimited ammo that is insane and I want it on all my big guns. I have a laser rifle with that perk and it is fun to just spam laser fire everywhere.

Yeah, it doesn't have a magazine capacity, and if you have more than 1000 rounds of the correct ammo, the counter simply doesn't go down, until you drop below 1000. (I have over 4K .38 rounds.......) It doesn't do a lot of damage per shot, but, what it lacks in quality, it can make up for in quantity.

Yup, just wanted to clarify before I started chasing some mythical infinite ammo gun. Like I said I have a laser rifle that does the same and yes, when you just want sustained and constant dps it is definitely the way to go.

Base Minigun is terrible, but a lot of the Legendary effects turn it into a monster. I think it's got the highest rate-of-fire of all the guns in the game. Things like Bleeding Damage or Explosive Damage really turn it into a killer.

The best weapon I've used so far might be the Gauss Rifle. 10mm Pistols are probably the most dependable gun, though, in terms of ammo and power.

I never use any pipe pistols, even modded they still svck.

My go to gun is a silenced 10MM that does 50% more limp damage (Wastelander's Friend)

And my silenced .50 cal sniper rifle that does burning damage

Oh and yea, my Hunter's Combat Shotgun (50% more damage against animals)

Explosive or bleed give an serious boost to fast firing weapons and shotguns, its generally worth sacrificing base damage for rate of fire here as its an fixed damage effect.

The gaus rifle is the ultimate sniper gun.

For an laser or plasma with simper barrel but used as an combat rifle the infinite is nice as they have small magazines.

Infinite double barrel shotgun is fun as it has high rate of fire but only two shots.

My experience has been,

Very Good:

Plasma (sniper)

Combat Shotgun

Mines

Good:

Combat Rifle (.45, semi-auto)

Hunting Rifle (.50, sniper, wish the damage was more impressive though. 50 cal should do more damage and have rarer ammo)

Assault Rifle (5.56 semi-auto)

Gauss Rifle (ugh, that slow projectile and large hitbox)

Laser Rifle (sniper)

Deliverer

Fat Man (we know it wrecks house, but pure damage isn't everything)

Missile

Grenades

Decent:

10mm Pistol

Laser Gatling

Most 'good' weapons in automatic configuration

Poor:

Pipe Anything

Gamma Gun (maybe workable with rad perks against humans only? why bother)

Gatling Gun

Institute junk (no sniper barrel mods?!)

Magnum (hits hard, but too slow)

Tommy Guns

Flamer

Laser Musket

Syringer

Terrible:

Junk Jet (just for you Odd Donny)

Alien Pistol (this belongs here for being such a disappointment)

Untested (I have high hopes for these, but I'm lame and never got around to trying them yet):

Canon

Railroad Gun

Your mileage may vary and with the right legendary mod even a poor class of weapon can be awesome. I don't have enough experience with melee to really judge the various weapons, but from what I've attempted, the effectiveness of melee drops of pretty quickly... as in the time it takes to swing once, I could have unloaded half a dozen or so rounds for likely more damage per hit. The right selection of perks and playstyle could probably make melee work very well though, but it will never be as quick as chaining VATS headshots at everything in view. I'll probably do a melee focused playthrough eventually though as it just seems like too much fun to pass up.

I love that ytou didn't even bother to put the junk jet on your list. You make me happy