AER14 is great EW and sniper, and may be a better overall weapon than something like Gobi, but I think you exaggerate a bit. And you can pick up this weapon whenever you want, it's not a quest reward or a DLC only weapon. To give an example, with AER14 you can reach a 75% critical hit chance outside of VATS. You'll mow everything down, no need for being sneaky, it's even detrimental at this point IMO. Joshua Graham's Armor + 1st Recon Beret + Lucky Shades) and IMO it's the most OP combo late game. Get Finesse + Better Criticals + Light Touch + Laser Commander, stack +crit gear (e.g. However, for close quarters combat and at higher levels (especially in the bullet spongey areas such as Old World Blues and Lonesome Road) you'll want a semi-automatic laser weapon. My Sniper RIfle+ definitely saw a lot of use. 308 ammo, so the Sniper Rifle and its variants are the most versatile weapons IMO. Iriyap: Completing Dead Money gives you effectively infinite. So, Ratslayer and Gobi are my favorite sniping weapons. I was not as impressed as I expected to be.Įdit: It is possible I didn't get any headshots with the YCS, while I was clearly blowing up heads with the Gobi. Maybe it's because I only have 90 in EW vs 100 in Guns. While YCS has incredible base damage, it's crit damage is only 70, that might explain it, but it should still be doing more damage than Gobi on a crit. In the Quarry it didn't one-shot deathclaws like Gobi. YCS-186: A recent recruit and more of a disappointment than I was expecting. For harder targets (where I find you seldom need silenced) I tend to pull out Gobi for the extra damage and versatility. It's like a powered up Ratslayer, But, for softer targets where I want silence I stick with Ratslayer and not waste 308 ammo. Sniper+: The silenced sniper might seem great. Its like a better Sniper rifle and battle rifle all in one. The great thing about Gobi, is that while it dows awesome crit damage, it is also versatile and medium to closer range with higher rate of fire and bigger clip than standard Sniper and decent VATS. Oh and I forgot to even switch to AP rounds, so standard ammo. Took the Alpha health way down with similar headshot crit. So noise is not that huge a factor in long range sniping. At longish sniping range, it didn't even alert the second one. I one-shotted 2 Quarry Deatchclaws with sneak crits to the head, standing next to each other. Wicked crit damage (if Wiki is believable 80).
It's my favorite gun, but falls a bit short on hard targets. Death claws in the Quarry laughed with RS tickled them, but I sneak-critted a baby death claw in one show. Though Ratslayer still took out a couple of Legionary Assasins I caught off guard with AP ammo, one or two headshots and they were down. Now I often pull out bigger guns agains harder targets. Early on sneak crits from Ratslayer one-shoted just about everything. I have a fairly good crit build, so with Ratslayers 5X crit, it crits almost all the time.
I got this one early and have used it all the way so far (21st level now). I like stealthy sniper builds and here some sniper guns and my thoughts. I am in the middle of my first play through and I haven't found an AMR yet and refuse to pay for one.