I can't kill [censored] with them. Seriously. I do more damage with my Guns skill at 9 and a 9mm than I do with any of the half-dozen Energy weapons I have with 65 into my Energy Weapons Skill...
The only real reason i'm still USING this character is because I found



but it's not even seeming worth it now because, i'm getting my ass kicked by EVERYTHING except bloatflies...

Do the Energy Weapons EVER get better? Or am I going to be forced to re-make my character into Guns//Explosives rather than Energy Weapons//Explosives?

Energy weps are probably on par with guns and no wonder you're getting mauled the recharger rifle does like 9 dmg but you have to invest heavily into EW to get the best out it or it's rather idiotic to use them imo.

Get the patch installed and get a better gun than the recharger rifle, its probably one of the worst guns in the game. Energy weapons are pretty much on par with guns tbh.

I never use energy guns, maybe in my next playthrough.

Stop using the Recharger Rifle, it svcks, and its not unique, there a couple place you can buy them from.

1. Make sure you're playing a patched game. Josh put in some decent DT bypass in the energy weapon ammo with the patch.
2. Pump Science. Go to a workbench and make overcharge/maxcharge. Not only to they do more damage, they also have higher DT bypass.
3. Dump the Recharger, as others have said. Unless you've made a 1 ST hardcoe character you can afford the weight of a few energy cells.
4. Find the vendors that sell energy weapon mods.
5. Find the uniques. Depending on whether ot not you took Wild Wasteland you can either get as well as unique laser rifle & pistol, and plasma rifle.
6. Go shopping at the Van Grafs. Some of the best weapons are there to buy, no mess, no fuss.

Hope this helps. The biggest impact will be making that max charge ammo. 2.5xDAM, -10DT. That'll help alot. It'll be a bit expensive, but you won't have a problem killing stuff anymore.

-gunny out.

Pew Pew?

Thats just my suggestion, though.

Energy Weapons are amazing, Recharger weapons are meant for dealing with Freeside Thugs or anybody not worth the bullet.

The tri-laser rifle is really good, but it use ammo up really fast as well. I do agree though my other play through with a gun character had it a lot easier.

Regarding the Tri-Beam Laser... In general, plasma weapons offer more efficient use of the ammunition (damage per cell), while lasers are substantially faster and more accurate.

                  Tribeam     MultiplasDamage            22*3=66     35*3=105Rate of fire      2.7         1Spread            0.5         1.5

So, if you're running out of ammo at an excessive rate, there's your option. Plus consider hanging onto your plasma pistol. Post patch 1.2, the plasma pistol never really goes out of style. Good damage, good ammo efficiency, fairly durable. Use it as a sidearm to your more powerful energy weapons to dispatch the peasants.

You must not have downloaded the latest patch. Tri-Beam Laser Rifle (with all related perks) > Brush Gun (with all related perks) after patch 1.02.

LASER RCW!That is the most epic energy weapon i ever seen.

You mean Plasma Defender? But it uses three time the cell of Laser RCW!

Holorifle. Get Dead Money.

Eh? Actually I meant the straight-up plasma pistol since you get it earlier and it's dirt cheap to repair, as befits a peasant-dispatching weapon. I never noticed but you are correct that the laser RCW is a bit of an oddball that breaks the mold and does considerably more damage per cell than anything else. The RCW really ought to consume two ECPs per shot, at its damage level.

However in general....

Weapon               Dmg/ECPtesla cannon         3.00AER14                5.83laser pistol         6.00laser rifle          7.33tri-beam laser       7.33gauss rifle          8.00plasma rifle         8.00plasma pistol        8.25plasma defender      9.50multiplas            11.67Q35MM                13.33laser RCW            15.00 (!?)

... plasma is a bit more efficient than lasers. (And you realize why you hate the Tesla cannon)

Was the unique gauss rifle... YCS/Something.. left out on pourpose? Interesting chart, though.

I miss the old EW design.
Now it's too nerfed.
I don't give a damn about selected weapons or OC/MC, EW are not suppose to be inferior to regular guns. :swear:
A laser pistol should be vastly superior to a 9mm pistol.

I shot a powder ganger in the back with a 60% 9mm pistol, not a critical, no +damage perks, no nothing, and the PG died.
From a 9mm pistol... In the back...
Well, the fun thing is that I need to shoot 4 laser shots at a freaking coyote for it to die.

EW design svcks.
Should have gone with the old designs, rarer, far more expensive, far heavier ammo and by FAR greater damage.

In New Vegas overall the EW are adequate.
Some of them stand out as true beasts, RCW+, YCS, Holorifle.
But the rest are horrible when compared to Guns.

I like energy weapons because its something different you know?
I have an energy weapons loadout equilavant to my guns for example
Q35 all round kill moderately toughies
YCS or Holorifle = Sniper Rifle
Laser RCW = Rapid Fire weapon

How is the laser pistol inferior to the 9mm? It does less basic damage, but it also scores 50% more critical hits so it comes out slightly ahead provided you have non-terrible critical chance. It also shoots a little faster, is *much* more accurate, and holds twice as many shots. The only thing it really loses on is the weight and scarcity of energy cells compared to 9mm rounds... :unsure2:

As i said, one 9mm to the back of a PG = dead.
4 shots with a laser to a coyote = dead.
I know other things come into the equation but frankly I don't care, a laser beam being worse than a 9mm bullet?
Bullcrap IMO.

Mountain of text:

Before starting, I tried Very Hard with EN Weapons with an extra boost to crits and Luck (Game corrupted around level 30). I have made at least two to three characters with mixed (100 skill EN/Guns) weapon skills.

I have to say EN Weapons are not that bad. Certainly not as bad as when the game first released. (good one Beth)

My first problem stems from the Alien Blaster being nerfed. (still not weak, but not as useful as it was) Another issue is while Plasma weapons are fairly powerful, they end up being merely crit hitters or just fairly powerful.
The Plasma Caster is horribly inaccurate, and the DPS and velocity for plasma is rather piss low. The Multiplasma has a mind of its own for its spread. You have to learn how to anticipate it's spread because even at close it can miss charging Death Claws. Now, the difference is it will melt a Legendary Death Claw in a few shots. I would love for a DLC or patch to introduce mods to reduce the spread and increase the Velocity/DPS. While these are somewhat irritating, especially because of the last patch making me like both these weapons less, they’re still reliable. (somewhat)

Between 60 hours in FO3, and 500 hours in FONV, I have to say EN was better in FO3. I think this stems to the fact that EN is now abundant in NV, so they felt that they should not overpower their solid ammunition counterparts.

Q-35 feels like an older brother to the A3-21, yet not as good. In fact I found all the unique weapons disappointing. Still, you can rely on the Q-35 and Multi-plasma.

Laser is a different story. Max Charge ammo makes up for any difference, but you shouldn't rely on specialized ammunition to say that a weapon is good. That being said, From level 1 or 5 to level 35, the Laser Rifle is still viable, if anything better than it's unique counterpart.

I've heard many people like the Laser RCW. While I'm not too fond of it, it certainly is a good SMG substitute. The Gatling Laser and Tesla Cannon are some of the worse to suffer from the Nerf.

Don't get me started on the Tri-beam. It's only powerful in moderate amounts and is just only useful as the Brush Gun, used to break Crits.

I felt that snipers did get an awkward nerf. I don't use the Gauss Rifle any more, and I've never held the YCS before to compliment or complain. I do not like the 5 shot ammunition, but it is still powerful. (Standard)

As for Uniques, while FO3 had no real variance in design, they clearly outperformed their lesser cousins. NV Uniques, with the exception of the Pew Pew (hate the ammo cost) and Q-35, are either lacking in total versatility or just not useful. This is a general statement. I'm interpreting this as FO3 having no real difference in Weapon designs, so they had to make the Unique weapons in FONV actually unique in appearance and design.

I will say the Pulse Pistol is a good idea, and the Recharger weapons were actually nice, albeit early weapons that are essentially useless end game.

Holorifle+ is good to decent. Power House people love it, Crit builds will prefer a Tri-beam or some Plasma Weapon. I just keep it around as a Trophy, because it was essentially the only actually good piece of loot from Dead Money.

Would someone like to tell me why Pyro weapons get a boost from explosives, but the Ranged Flame weapons are all energy?

Summary: EN weapons are mixed, a lot of mixed potential with some shining examples. Still, there overall damage is not always better than Solid Guns. Specialized ammunition should not have to be a reason to use a weapon.

Edit: Had to include an edit to correct spelling and some grammar.

Here, I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j12y86-pj5c.

Also, seeing as the 9mm's maximum potential damage is 16, and powder gangers have 40 hitpoints, the only way you could one-shot him is to do a sneak attack, or, get a critical hit and a head shot at the same time. Sometimes weird stuff happens. If you do either of those things then compare the result to a non-headshot/non-crit, obviously it's going to look a lot more shiny than it really is when you average things out.

Must have glitched or bugged out then, cause a critical it was not, and a headshot it wasn't either.
Still, most Guns have ridiculous power, the DAM might say one thing but from my personal experience with them Guns disposed of enemies far quicker than EW did.
Don't get me wrong, a Varmint Rifle ain't going to beat through a Giant Radscorpions shell, but the other low and mid tier Guns are crazy powerful.
This might have been pre-patch though (Guns), did any Guns except for the snipers change after the patch? (The one that "fixed" EW.)
(I played an EW character pre-patch and post-patch.)

On the video:
I don't use VATS, dunno if that has anything to do with it but whatever.
When using the laser pistol/9mm I'm at low level, I don't think I have 90 in the combat skill then, dunno if that has anything to do with it but whatever.
[edit]
Also, you didn't have any perks right? For that character? (Cause when I'm talking about 9mm pistol and laser pistol I mean low levels, like, level 1 to 5 at most)

Aaaand pause the video at 2:10. :laugh:

Point is that a laser pistol shouldn't be something a player is given at level one, and if it is then it should be very powerful but with very limited and expensive ammo (for a low level player).
I'm not much for realistic damage, I for example does not want headshot to mean instakill, but a laser pistol against a powder ganger with regular clothing should be instakill.
Hell, a plasma caster should be able to kill a super mutant in two shots.
It should be able to kill just about every thing in one or two shots with the exception for deathclaws.
But it's ammo consumption should be higher and the ammo availability should be decreased and raised in price.
Of course what I want would require an entire overhaul of Energy Weapons in New Vegas so this can't work by simply "patching it".
Every weapon in the EW category should get a great DAM but the ammo is rare, hell, only BOS and Van Graffs should be the ones to regularly cell it, but the price should be raised for it, significantly, in order to balance the weapons damage out.
Like, you get really powerful weapons, but you might only run around with 70 MFC, is it wise to spray and pray? Is it wise to waste an MFC on a coyote?
You'll be much more careful with your ammo since it's very precious but the damage is so great that once you do shoot something it'll go down very quickly.
It's a lost cause for me in NV but I'm hoping for a better EW design by FO4. (Ain't holding my breath though.)

[edit]
Of course this brings up two new problems.
Either A. The ammo is so limited that people don't even want to use EW because it'd be a waste of ammo.
Or B. Once we do use them then they kill things so ridiculously easy that nothings really a challenge.

So I dunno how the perfect design should be but one thing that EW should always follow is this: For any tier, no matter the weapons, EW should ALWAYS be better than Guns, and Explosives should ALWAYS be better than EW. So at Tier one you get an EW then it's going to be better than any other T1 Guns and the same for the other tiers. (Explosives come out on top of EW because they're just as limited, has double edged damage and can be hard to time while they at the same time have huge AOE damage.)

Laser RCW is the most kickass SMG in game. Minigun suffers like Gatling Laser as well. As for Tesla Cannon, I would agree it can have charge use cut down in half.


Brush Gun is the most powerful weapon in Guns?


Even the broader line "bad" unique La Longue Carabine have some edge which the normal variant doesn't. There is only few uniques that doesn't out right better than normal version with full upgrade.


I have yet to put down the Laser RCW after I pick it up the first time.


Not true at all, Police pistol, Automatic Rifle, Bear Trap Fist, Cosmic Knife Spear are all very good weapons.


Because there is still incendiary grenade; or more like an oversight as they transfer the perks form FO3.


Not true, 9mm pistol would struggle against anything but Powder Gangers; only the top tier 5.56mm can match a basic Laser Rifle (post patch);Gun have no AoE weapons and only AMR have some sort of DoT et cetera.

Really? How so? DPS is only marginally better, and that's considering all three lasers hit. I could kill an enemy with a Brush Gun (with cowboy perk) before I even get close enough for the Tri-Beam.