Wow, the metal blaster does insane damage

[Question]

Been using it and it badly outdamages...well...pretty much any other energy weapon since NV has a lot of stuff that increases crit chance.

10% from luck

5% from finesse

4% from set lasers for fun

3% from built to destroy

5% from light touch

5% from NCR first recon beret

10% from laser commander

= 42% crit chance. You can get a further 3-5% from using NVDLC armors like Ulysses's duster.

1.5x crit multiplier then gets you on average 5-6 shots critting. With better criticals, that's 202 crit damage with better criticals that ignore DT/DR (assuming 5 crit) before you take into account any other perks, the base weapon damage, 2x headshot modifier or modifiers from using ammo (up to another 50% from max charge MF cells).

Meanwhile the gauss rifle does 210 total damage on a crit with better criticals. Yes, the metal blaster on average outdamages a weapon with 3x the skill requirement and using 5x the ammo per shot.

This thing is pretty crazy...

 

[RoyBatty]

Math is good.

[Risewild]

And now imagine without the need to have all that equipment or take most of those perks but replacing one of them for the Pyromaniac perk and getting the Xenotech Expert special perk from MZ DLC and using the Firelance.

And before someone points out that there is not enough ammo for the Firelance, here it is an excerpt from the wiki:

A maximum of 1152 alien power cells can be found in all expansions, without glitches. In addition to the static locations, in the Mothership Zeta add-on, a character may find even more power cells on dead aliens, guardian drones, and support drones.

And if one has the Wild Wasteland trait and goes to vegas:

The alien captain will drop up to around 222 alien power cells along with the alien blaster.

Also one might be able to get more in future TTW versions .

[Gribbleshnibit8]

Yeah, crits are totally broken in FNV, maybe it's one reason they changed them for FO4. Just gonna leave this here, watch the part where he talks about the Damage he gets off Paciencia.

https://youtu.be/1iQJk2HpYCM?list=PLwH1xJhcXG0dR5myFpRtaOkOFP67j4et6&t=213

[Decker]

If your character has a high critical chance, any shotgun(like) weapon that fires multiple rounds at once is very powerful when used outside of VATS combat mode - Basically every beam or pellet in a blast has a separate chance to cause a separate critical hit, and a whole bunch of critical hits at once can translate to a whole lot of damage.. Metal Blaster is basically a unique laser shotgun, the Protectrons Gaze does the same thing in less powerful laser pistol form. Energy Weapons ammunition has a built-in DT penalty (Max Charge ammo kicks some serious butt), so these weapons are potentially more powerful than ordinary shotguns.. But for conventional shotguns there is the Shotgun Surgeon perk, which gives all shotguns an AP effect. With Shotgun Surgeon perk, it can be quite hilarious to gun down super mutant overlords with a Riot Shotgun loaded with 12g magnum shells (probably still not gonna one-shot em, but just keep on firing and they will fall).

This is not necessarily just an FNV feature, I do recall Metal Blaster being very powerful in vanilla Fallout 3 as well - One of the very best weapons to disintegrate the dreaded Albino Radscorpions with.

Firelance and Alien Blaster are also quite powerful, but achieve similar end result via different means - Less projectiles fired, but crit chance is very high (just about guaranteed to crit on every hit) as is their base damage. As I understand it, Alien Blaster weapons work best in VATS mode, as compared to the shotguns which work best outside of VATS.

Whether this all is a problem or not depends on whom one asks. I would just consider them different aspects of F3/FNV gameplay mechanics.

 

[JaxFirehart]

Alien Blaster (and probably Firelance, but I'm not certain off the top of my head) has a guaranteed crit chance, literally 100%.

[krell55]

Dont forget the terrible shotgun which has the ability to kill a super mutant behemoth with one sneak attack head shot outside of vats in the vanilla game.

[Question]

Part of the problem is that NV allows you to stack crit chance much higher than in FO 3. Most shotguns arent overpowered even with the high crit chance though...like the hunting shotgun, 10 damage per pellet isnt impressive at all. Metal blaster does 27 IIRC, which can stack to ridiculous levels.