Has anyone done a playthrough of a character which uses energy weapons ?
how did it fare against all enemies ?
how do the current energy weapon perks fare against no conductive armor if taken ?
on the inxile forums people have stated that they are the lowest damage weapon class, is this true ?, and to what extent ?

The strategy now is very different. Due that not all the creatures with high armor will be conductive (the best example are the animals), yet when you found one conductive creature, probably your energy-wielders will be your best bet for damage.

About the perks, I was ignoring them until reaching Arizona, because is as simple as switching to another type of weapon if the enemy is non-conductive, though maybe with creatures with a red shield with a thunder symbol could be a decent amount of damage.

Anyway, your character with energy-weapons should have a secondary weapon, by example a user with fist/energy-weapons is a good option. A pistol/energy is good, but the perks are not cumulative.


P.d. This don't apply to VAX, the number one for killing your party in two rounds (and melting anyone with a heavy armor).

I never really played as far as to start using energy weapons in the original version, but I didn't find much use for them playing DC.

On my first playthrough I had a few characters focus on energy weapons, but they didn't fare better than my characters with strong projectile-based weapons. On my second playthrough I focused only on assault rifles and snipers, and even though I switched to ranger difficulty they did much more damage than my original team, thanks to headshots.

I'm beginning to explore the second part, and I'm founding that a normal energy weapon user has lost many of its benefits.

Now we have a lot of enemies with armor of 6-8 (and I found one with 10) with non conductive property, so probably if you are forced to invert in the perks for the energy weapon. Yet, against Durgan's robots is nice. There is a point in the game where will be a big ambush with robots and synths, that is going to be the final test for my tactics.

I have one character that is master with energy weapons. She only uses the smg type ones not the heavies.

They don`t really seem to be that powerful. they do cut through some creatures really hard, but others, almost nothing. I guess this is because some have armour and some don`t. those with armour suffer more because it conducts the laser energy\heat better, but I still don`t really like them. Maybe it`s my prejudice as I far prefer the normal guns which are much more satisfying to end an argument with.

The exception was Vas, who had some kind of uber killing energy weapon that was wiping out anything and anyone in a couple of shots. When he arrived on the scene, any battle we had ended in about 5 seconds. I don`t what he had, because the game won`t let you see, but it was pretty devastating to anyone on the receiving end.

Concerning the armor mechanic, hasn't it been reworked to EW weapons dealing damage only to targets with conductive armor as opposed to targets with high armor ?. I believe this was done as players went fully naked against robots to break the game mechanics into thinking they had low armor . I could be wrong

Yes, in the original taking away the armor would protect you from the lasers BUT I don't remember a single encounter where the enemies were using only lasers, so was equally dangerous to do it. I used a mix of light and heavy users, and when was facing laser-users, the heavy-armor PC were playing to hide-and-seek (or looking good place with a lot of cover for long reach attacks with secondary weapons).

I already fight the farm ambush and the skorpion in the new DC, this is with the supreme jerk, where the best launcher rocket do 250 of damage instead of 500. So, here is my conclusion: Weapon energy are worth, but more selective.

Those are the best energy weapons:

Death Ray (Tier 6-1; AP 6; Energy Cells; Cap 10; Con 2.5x; NCon 0.7x; Dmg 50-70; Range 30m; 13.0 lbs; $1850)
Gamma Ray Blaster (Unique; AP 5 / 6; Energy Cells; Cap 20; Con 2.3x; NCon 0.5x; Dmg 40-65 or 40-65 x3; Range 20m; 9.0 lbs; $130)

Gamma Ray Blaster is available from Arizona and is the one I'm using right now.
The x3 is able to generate +200 of damage to a single conductive armor user, my current character has 11 AP per turn, so is able to fire a a x3 and x1 and with luck two rounds of x3, that translate, that this weapon is able to produce the most infamous amount of damage against enemies in supreme jerk, even only with the x3 is still as near efficient as the rocket launcher, I had only be able to reach similar amount of damage with critical attacks of the blunt weapons and sniper riffle.

However, the amount of conductive armor users is LOW, except in the final battles, after reaching Arizona, you should be fighting with 3 groups: normal human, evolves (synth), robots. Strangely, only the robots are conductive, the synths will have heavy-armor ranges (Armor of 7 - 10) but will be non-conductive (And they are full of metallic parts), so not sure if this a bug or what, but in my opinion is broken. The humans, seem to be more correct, you can find multiples humans with Armor of 7 non-conductive, however your own rangers can reach that value using light armor and perks, so is acceptable (I still need to fight more of the priest and monks) .

When the targets are non-conductive the amount of damage is low. For the gamma ray blaster with the best perks will be between:
((40*1.3*setting)*0.5)x3 to ((65*1.3*setting)*0.5)x3
Remember, in supreme jerk, you do only near to the half damage.

This indeed is low but has a benefit, is a safe attack, not amount of armor will reduce it (EXCEPT a perk from the repair skill). If your current secondary/main weapon has less than the half of the armor of your target, the energy weapon will be a best option, but probably this will happens by a minor time, for the ending of the game you should have all your weapons able to bypass armor of at least 7.

So, for the final battles, the best weapons in supreme jerk probably will be blunts, snipers and energy weapons (in that order). I still need to reach that point to confirm it.