Energy Weapons are utterly useless in DC

[PizzaSHARK]

I too find EWs terrible. Other than roleplaying, why bother investing in a weapon skill that becomes semi-good in LA, when I can invest in nearly any other skill and be useful throughout the game? I fought the Dugan robots using all ballistic weapons and didn't really have an issue, no one went down, and the same weapon skills took me through AZ.

I almost feel like the addition of Precision Strikes was a bad idea. I enjoy them and I love how much more tactical they make combat on SJ (it actually becomes pretty important to cripple legs and especially arms since there are many times where you're going to have to let them shoot back), but at the same time, it precludes things like, for example, instead of "conductive vs non-conductive", all energy weapons have a chance of simply shredding enemy armor with every successful hit, or anything like that.

I love the concept behind energy weapons, I just think it's awfully hard to find a way to implement it where it won't be either underpowered or overpowered. If EWs ever do get fixed, Gamma Ray Blaster is going to need some massive nerfs, though. That thing should not be nearly as good as it is.

[AyeBraine]

Some late game enemies that are conductive:

...Certain Leather Jerks with heavy armor.

I'll whine a little more about difficulty: why did you remove the whole fight against Leather Jerks in Rodia? Player is led to believe he/she's going to overthrow and kick Leather Jerks out of this nice town, enlists the help of locals & weakens minibosses (for no less than 5-10 hours of game time!) and in the end gets a 5 minute fight with 4 guys in a living room. All the scary Jerks (that you can even "lock up" to delay their vengeance!) instantly disappear without a single shot, or even a strongly worded retort.

C'mon. Again, you can even lock some of them up, and they... disappear through the chimney? Fade away into thin air? MELT? Surprising that the villain's castle doesn't crumble into dust =)

[Da_BoS]

Nearly agree altho my energy weapons are nearly holding their own in combat, having two different energy weapons in the rangers hands gets two shots off, one higher costing AP and a lower AP for a second shot in a turn (high Dam + low Damage as opposed to one high Dam shot or two low Dam shots per turn), im at California so plenty of bots and cyborgs with conductive armour. My beef is the unique energy weapons, the one from Silo 7 and Tinkers weapons are completely and utterly RUBBISH! crap damage, the standard energy weapons are better than the unique weapons which shudnt be the case at all.

[Madara]

I feel like there need to be a LOT more conductive enemies across the board. Energy weapons are incredibly weak in Arizona because even the toughest guys you run across aren't wearing conductive armor, even on SJ... with the obvious exception of the robots, but aside from Damonta, they're pretty much entirely optional. If I'm fighting a dude in Highpool and he's got 5 armor and we're talking like lvl 3-6 characters... man, that dude's clearly wearing Goat Hide Armor (and probably has Hardened or some other passive giving him free armor), and that shit's conductive. Are we supposed to believe a bunch of pissant raiders can afford tier 5 light armor that isn't even available until you get to California? Not even the random roaming vendor sells better than, what, +3 light armor?

My thoughts exactly. Even at the start of California, you'll meet enemies with armor values of 8-9 that aren't conductive. How is that possible? Unless of course everyone is wearing Spectrum Assault Vests and have Hardened perk, which would still only come out to 8. Maybe they all have the Thick-Skinned quirk?

[neophyte]

Sorry for resurrecting this old topic, but I'm currently finishing my first play-through of WL2:DC and Dugan and his robots are definitely not conductive. Their armor does display a blue shield with a lightning bolt across it, however there is no damage multiplier added when I take the shot. Another issue is that I cannot use Computer Science on the two Worker Robots that fight with Dugan, and neither on the synths in the final battle, too. Is this intended behavior?

[Lix]

They were talking about another patch back in April or May 2016. Hopefully that one will fix the endgame for energy weapons.

[peddroelm]

my 2 cents. (thread title is utterly exaggerated)

WL2 DC playtrough ~party level 32 cleared most of Rodia & Angel gate.

My energy user is Pizepi (recruited "early" ~party level 8-10). Other NPCs Vulture's Cry -SR & Ralphie AR. Custom rangers are close range disparnumerophobs (handguns, bladed, blunt and brawling specialists).

I like Pizepi's combat performance more than Scotchmo's (char I used to roll with before). This is mostly because of her superior combat stats but also because energy weapon as a weapon class is much more flexible than shotgun class. (has longish range option, multiple low precision shots per turn with energy pistol option or heavy burst fire vs conductive armor using the gamma ray - only endgame weapon available in Arizona ..).

It is impossible to precisely measure/compare the amount of damage she inflicted so far since the game forces me to dismiss her every time I get a (1 time) chance to recruit new personnel and resets her total damage accumulator stat. Pizepi + energy weapons offers in most fights way more options that the Scotchmo + shotgun combo.

I think even a 7 man full energy party play-trough wouldn't be significantly to tedious even if there is only 1 gamma ray in the game ..

[Jozape]

Energy weapons do seem redundant, unless you are running low on 5.56mm or 7.62mm ammo. The same can be said for the other ranged weapons that don't use rifle calibers. I kept some energy weapons for my my heavy weapons guy though, because he was constantly needing more ammo for a while.

[crimsoncorporation]

Energy weapons do seem redundant, unless you are running low on 5.56mm or 7.62mm ammo. The same can be said for the other ranged weapons that don't use rifle calibers. I kept some energy weapons for my my heavy weapons guy though, because he was constantly needing more ammo for a while.

I think there's some issue on how much damage they do in the endgame on conductive opponents, when/if that gets fixed it might change things. At any rate, Final Assessment with Pizepi is a great debuffer, and debuffers are vital on SJ.

[Jozape]

I think there's some issue on how much damage they do in the endgame on conductive opponents, when/if that gets fixed it might change things. At any rate, Final Assessment with Pizepi is a great debuffer, and debuffers are vital on SJ.

I didn't notice energy weapons being any less or more useful at the end of the game, but I played at the default difficulty which is one step from the easiest setting. At this setting energy weapons are under powered but thankfully not useless.

[ULTMX]

After a play through on Ranger difficulty putting points into Energy Weapons was by far one of the biggest wastes of skill points I made throughout the game.

I even got more value from the points in handguns I gave my snipers.

The whole conductive / non-conductive armor came across as an unrealistic and poorly implemented mechanic that mostly served to prevent me from using heavy armor on my team with zero value vs. enemies.

The only thing that they were good for was when I was struggling with ammo needs in the mid game and it let me use a different ammo type on one party member.

Problems:
1) Not enough conductive enemies
2) Low magazine counts
3) Poor range considering other drawbacks
4) No crits (handguns 60%, ARs 40%, Sniper rifles 40, SMGs 30%)
5) Anemic damage most of the time, lackluster damage against actually conductive enemies
6) Poor damage/AP

The whole conductive thing should have been scrapped, they are energy weapons not electricity rifles.

[Uglymug]

Playing on Ranger - just made it to Hollywood. I'm finding them pretty useful actually. Put Energy Weapons on my skill guy with Two-Pump Chump, and he's very reliably being able to throw 3 or 4 precision strikes out at the start of combat to cripple limbs and strip armor. I like energy weapons much more than handguns for debuffing because they have deeper clips, no deadzone, and the later ones have really decent range.

Fighting Conductive armor is a nice when it happens but he's really there to cripple limbs and finish enemies.

[eolsunder]

If you are any sort of good player you will already have your regular weapons AND energy weapons. That way when you do fight enemies that energy weapons can affect, you can quickly kill them with no sweat. Sure, 99% of the game you won't need them, but you'll level up a few weapon skills anyway so level up energy so when you do reach California you can blast down robots, etc super easy. What are you going to pick instead, pistols? SMGS? Heavy weapons? haha yea right. Get an assault/energy gunner and a sniper/energy gunner, and everyone else with the same, and your set. There isn't any 2ndary weapon that's useful. If your melee sharp/blunt your weapons can pen their armor excellent anyway you won't need energy. unarmed level 10, already know that. So with guns, there aren't many choices in the game. Assault and sniper are the only useful ones, and energy weapons the 3rd most useful. Any smart person leaves SMGS, pistols, heavy weapons left on the doorstep for the trash people.