Fallout 4 Perk Tier List 

Rooted is actually amazing for melee VATS builds, because when you are in VATS you are standing still. Rooted + Blitz is hella OP.

Verry important interaction between 2 perks here to note. Attack dog and Lone Wanderer actually stack amazingly well, as Dogmeat doesn't count as a companion for lone wanderer meaning he's incredibly usefull in survival mode!

"Unarmed isn't very good" *Shows footage of your character being unable to kill a single supermutant with even a death claw gauntlet* "It's B tier"

27:00 local leader lets you do SO much in your settlements; build trader stalls which keep people happy as well as what you've said. If you plan on building settlements you MUST get level 1 and I would recommend both.

If you play Survival, disregard this entire video.

19:38 Aquaboy/aquagirl is quite useful in survival mode, it's basically a safe route for early levels and other than that it feels good to swim without radiation but for some reason no one seems to like it... Imo it's a point well spent.

39:00 if you're doing a sneaky melee build, Blitz is absolutely S tier.

Rooted could be good in a VATS build. Penetrator lets you hit body parts that are normally obscured, good against power armor, robots and mirelurks.

Explosives Expert also effects legendary weapons with thee Explosive prefix. Which is absolutely insane with certain weapon types (Mingun, Spray n Pray, etc) and good with any explosive weapon (and can make even mediocre options viable for a while - like pipe weapons). Its S+ tier in those situations and will destroy anything the game can throw at you - though honestly, you probably still will regardless with certain weapons (which is why Spray n Pray is such a popular early-mid game option).

When I play f4, i basically always get ghoulish and solar powered right away, so that i can start treating radiation as healing standing on a pile of radioactive barrels is such a fun way to recover health mid fight

My funnest play through was all the Chem perks. It was like I was playing max pain or dead eye from red dead non stop. One of my favorites from all the fallouts

Charisma is such an insane skill tree in this game. You basically need it for survival for building shops with Local leader so you have more doctors in the world, Lone Wanderer is one of the best perks in the game, Attack Dog is a bit gimmicky but the last rank is fantastic, and the command enemies perks can help make an otherwise obnoxious amount of ghoul spam more manageable. Luck is still the best of course but that's always gonna be the case lmao.

I gotta call shenanigans on Locksmith rank 4. By the time you can get it, you have so many lockpicks. Hacker rank 4 is pretty pointless too, but at least it saves you ten seconds every time you use it.

the scrounger perk is working triple duty here. as you mentioned it finds a lot more ammo, but higher ranks find rare ammo a lot more often, it finds fusion cores, and its also a great money maker in the game, even when factoring that ammo is valued poorly.

A weird interaction, and one of my favorites, is that Penetrator works with melee blitz builds. Meaning you can sneak attack and teleport into a building to violently boop a raider, teleport back out to boop friend number 2, etc. You just get to go ghost with a knife.

This is the type of tier list I like! It actually has videos of the items in question and actually has editing instead of just a dude droning on about a random topic for a few minutes. Good video!

Loving the Fallout content. Some quick notes: - Refractor / Rad Resist / Toughness are not %s. Those numbers are based on some diminished returning values based on damage taken. For example, some power armor pieces have 300 damage DR or more. So 10 DR for a perk point is really not great. - Rooted is insane with a melee or unarmed build. I run almost exclusively unarmed and melee build variants and the game breaking combo is Chemist, Rooted, Iron Fist / Big Leagues, and Armorer. Psychobuff + Bufftats + Overdrive (crits outside of vats). Run up to some sucker, plant yourself for a split second, and power attack = kill cams constantly. No power armor required even in survival. So satisfying.

You didn’t mention that the second level in Blitz multiplies the damage done in melee. This helps stack to some crazy damage.

Super late but love that your fallout content made its way into my algorithm, im hooked on your channel!

Melee in FO4 and NV are insane. Unarmed is insane in NV and very mediocre in FO4. Extremely disappointing and I’m guessing it’s the same in starfield if melee/unarmed is even a thing

Penetrator also works when your firing at the enemy behind the one closest to you, effectively allowing you to "Quigley" opponents.

I like Blitz because even if your enemy is hiding behind cover, you get teleported next to them. Even if they have the high ground.

Cryolator is considered a heavy weapon by the game, so Dogmeating it early can give you a decent, relatively light heavy weapon early, only problem is ammo.

Big Leagues is significantly better than Iron Fist. Part of that is better weapons - Throatslicer especially is fantastic - but part of it is also that rank 4 of Big Leagues makes every melee attack create an area of effect arc that hits everybody in front of you. I've intentionally used bugs to make hundreds of enemies spawn, and killing six per swing with a knife was a lot of fun.

Fun fact about basher its the only way to crit outside of vats that's not a sneak attack

Demo expert is busted. It applies 2 explosive weapon legendaries And stacks amazingly well with other damage increases. Nuclear physics plus commando plus demo expert with the Kiloton rifle is raunchy damage😊

The knockdown portion of the second rank of Sniper can cause some pretty busted things to happen. Give your companion a automatic Gamma Gun and the gamma round animation will lock the enemy in the laying down/standing up animation and push them along the ground or into the air if there's a rise. Watching t posing Super Mutants cartwheel or helicopter across the screen is hilarious.😂

Penetrator is really good actually, should be S-Tier. You could shoot fusion cores on Sentinels and Power armor enemies, or on deathclaw's belly, even though they're hidden, granting a one-shot on the most powerful enemies

Great video! The only video needed for info on perks! Thanks👍

So melee is actually extremely broken in fallout 4 because it's so easy to boost it's damage. Just maxing out ninja gives melee weapons a massive x10 sneak attack bonus. That bonus is actually multiplicative with deacon's cloak and dagger perk so it becomes X12 if you have both. Then Blitz both adds extra damage and gives you insane vats range. Rooted stacks with blitz because while you're in vats the game counts you as being stationary. Strength is also really easy to boost as you can stack multiple different chems, booze, and food to give yourself massive amounts of strength.

Aquaboy/girl is useful in standard survival. You can use the water ways as a safe way to travel and not have to worry about traps or ambushes. Penetrator comes in handy if you want to force your enemy out of power armor. Shoot the fusion core and the fight becomes easier.

The sniper perk is being slept on, specifically the second rank as you can put a scope on any single shot rifle (Righteous Authority is a good one, fast firing large mag) and most (all?) enemies in the game will get knocked down outside of vats constantly. It trivializes the game and can be acquired at level 18.

Penetrator stocks are up right now with how bad Bethesda broke VATS in the next gen update, as right now it's letting you see through multiple walls or underground, basically letting you detect and kill the jumpscare enemies while they're inert.

Demolition expert can be S tier if you find any rapid fire weapon with the explosive legendary modifier.. Or something like the Kiloton Radium Rifle or Pray and spray. Also, toughness is kinda trash in fallout 4. Life giver is better for defensive purposes. To put it simple damage resistance scales is all funky, the moment you get power armor or Bullistic weave you won't notice the toughness rank.

16:20 Penatrator has a very good use no matter the build. You can shoot out fusion cores from enemies in power armor while being in the front. Also good if a random setteler takes a suit of your armor, hit vats, shoot core, put new core in, and you have your armor back

Science needed for Water Purifiers and Laser Turrets and Missile Turrets and loads more things. At least A tier.

Doesn't Demolitions Expert link with the Spray and Pray? I've assumed this whole time that since it does it's S tier.

Rooted if I remember correctly is very often used in VATS builds for the damage reduction and if you are a melee character that is icing on the cake. I know it takes a while but the Nuka Bat or Citos are incredibly busted. I have yet to find any good unarmed weapons however.

Speaking as kind of a loner, a lot of non-social people and introverts are fond of animals/pets so Lone Wanderer working with Dogmeat makes sense to me

"Melee has that weird feeling that everything can block." Melee V.A.T.S.: I dont have such weaknesses.

You earned my subscription I like you. Good content and your voice isn't annoying.

One thing to note with Robotics Expert is that some of the best parts for automatrons are locked behind it. If you want a Robobrain companion with two gatling lasers and five hundred pounds of carry weight, you'll want two points in Robotics expert.

1:25 ooo. you've never played as Home Run Boy have you? SO much fun!

Hey ReapeeRon, big fan, love your tier lists on a lot of Fallout related videos (mostly biased on New Vegas considering it's lore and behind the scenes quality of life it has) just wanted to share with you my time playing Fallout 4 that I thought it might peak your interest somewhat with a build I like to call "The Red Ranger", a hybrid focus using VATS and Luck. I did use a couple mods where I can wear NCR/Elite Riot Gear armor and get a Ranger Sequoia down at certain levels thanks to NexusMod so there's that, but I've mainly use only 3 ballistic pistols (Deliverer, Western Revolver, and the Ranger Sequoia) and 1 Lever-Action Rifle (Old Reliable) with the reload animation fix mod because... let's be honest in a Fallout 4 weapons tier list you'll put it down really low due to that bug that's never been fixed like the Big Brained perk in Old World Blues. Maxed out Rifleman, Penetrator, & Concentrated Fire in Perception, Lone Wanderer in Charisma, Gun Nut in Intelligence. A friend during my stream told me "I'm chicken" for not putting any in Gunslinger, and I took that personally and maxed it out since I had 6 spare points at the time along with maxing out Action Boy, Quick Hands, and especially Gun-Fu in Agility. The danger right here is the amount of perks I focused on Luck as I only got Bloody Mess up to Rank 3 for 15% more damage, but as I build up I completely maxed out all the perks from the Luck Rank 6-10 (18 perk points and going up to Level 50 was somewhat a grind) I'd recommend using a build like this if you ever get a chance (mod or not) to try out how broken it is especially if you ever decide to be one man versus an entire army of Synths/Ghouls/Super Mutants/etc. A Good example is targeting each enemy and only click 1-hit on each of their heads with a revolver or rifle and only activate Critical Banker to the first three as every 4th and later targets you click on will ALWAYS be crit regardless how far they went away or if they're around cover, and with the maxed out Luck you can keep firing multitude of enemies and building up AP and Crit Bank. Sorry for the long post, I just thought I share a build I focus on and hope to hear yours and other reader's opinion on it, thanks for taking the time and hope to see more of your future vids.

I was waiting for this!

Don’t know if anyone mentioned it yet, but last I checked the Gunslinger perk will increase damage with a plasma flamer so long as you give it a pistol grip. Don’t know if you can do it with any other perks besides Bloody Mess.

Unfortunately, both Refractor and Toughness only give you an extra 10 points of ER/DR per rank, not 10 percent. Also, Refractor is pretty demanding on the PER tree with rank 7 so you gotta invest quite a few points into it. Basher can be fun if you use mods, btw: I created a super short-ranged twin-barreled shotgun with a very pokey business end on it which deals more damage than your usual bayonet. It's so satisfying to blow two 12-gauge shells into a target's face when you're up close and persoinal and then finish the job by poking one last extra hole into them (or two in this case, as it's one pokes steel shard per barrel ^^).Also: Science is your bread&butter perk for settlement building, just like Local Leader 02. Always getting them asap whenever I start anew, although I just created a mod which removes LL02 as a requirement for most of the shops and workbenches and replaces them with getting a long list of tools you need to refurbish first instead. Puts a great twist into your shootin and looting routine. ^^

chemist perk should have been at the top of s tier it is overpower since u can craft alot of good chems like overdrive and is a must in survival mod also u can get 60 buffout 60 jet 60 psycho and 60 mentats by doing diamonds city blues quest

Big leagues is rather good if you pick up the ninja perk because your sneak attack damage goes up to 10x with enough investment. Combine with blitz and sneak and you are become the cloaker from payday 2.

Strong back level 4 is brilliant and is S tier. You'll thank me later..............

Chem resistant should be in b tier. The side effect in chems not really bad and in battle you can just use same chems to remove addiction in battle. Meanwhile chemist should be in s tier, double effect in chems is op as f

Hey man, Stumbled upon your channel and really enjoying your content.

If you don’t like the way melee feels in this game you may not have played the teleporting knife VATS build. Insane damage, heads popping off full room clears. Quite fun.

Just started a new playthrough with the next gen update (haven’t played since 2017) and this is very helpful, I wish I saw it before I started making my awful build

Melee builds are the most overpowered builds in the game. With Ninja x10 stealth crits, you can deliver INSANE damage

Nice video and IMHO, pretty accurate. How long did that script take? Thanks for all your hard work.

Penetrator makes it so that you can shoot through other enemies and body parts increasing the chance of actually hitting them in things like fusion cores even while they're still pointing at you

I tend to run kellogg’s pistol on vats/crit builds, so i like VANS’ extra perception since i usually have max perception in the late game.

the second level of robotics perk gives you 40% MORE DAMAGE against robots, its a secret modifier of the perk ... However you lose this secret modifier at the third level>!

currently playing my millionth playthrough of this hugely entertaining game. let's get your take on the perks. here we go..........

One thing about the explosive perk, it worked amazing alongside rifleman and the Kiloton radium rifle (exploding bullets). Topped off with the explosives bobblehead it was doing about 35 area of affect damage every shot on top of regular gun performance

Speaking of a heavy weapons build, once I got the explosive minigun (which has only a 1/432 chance to spawn on a legendary enemy level 15 or higher without console commands) I never used any other weapon in the entire game. They all became boring.

Even though I disagree with some of your opinions I always like to hear what people think about different perks I always makes me think of a new build. Good video

Melee is OP if you use Yoa Guai steaks. You can easy make 50+ with rag stag cages and Yoa Guai cages.

Also you forgot to mention you can use Dogmeat with Lone Wanderer and still get the bonues

Hey, having played a build where the point was to get dummy high perception so I could get max VATS accuracy on headshots, the utility of VANS is that after you've maxed PER you can get two more points from another perk. It's very build dependent, and kind of overkill, obviously, but that's the goal.

the thing about stealth in fallout 4 is, its busted but nothing is more busted than a melee stealth build, between blitz, rooted, ninja, big league's and the nuka world perk from the pack and the knife skill book. there is no enemy in the game that can survive you for more than 2 atacks aslong as you get the sneak atack. not even legendary enraged fog crawlers. and fun fact about ninja, unarmed weapons don't get the massive multiplier like melee, they get the same as guns.

I thought toughness was just a static +10 and so on to Dr not a percentage, which even +50 is really bad after ballistic weave but +50% is hue

penetrator is a lot more useful than people give it credit for. 1. cover doesnt exist so when an enemy runs behind cover you dont end up wasting ammo on whiffed shots 2. penetrates enemies of they're lined up 3. probably the best part of the perk. you can target fusion cores in power armor and on sentey bots. sentry bots and raider leaders may as well be naked

Awareness frustrates me. It was a part of the meta in NV that you would learn the different DT values of different outfits, using your knowledge of different ammo types and effects to both deal and avoid damage. Living anatomy is a brilliant perk that provides a ton of utility in NV because it fits into the carefully balanced nature of that game, awareness however just exists to highlight how lazy the balancing is in Bethesda games. I usually still take awareness as a sort of cope though regardless of this flaw.

I will mention max rank Iron fist plus Rank 2 Pickpocket (plus anything to improve your crit rate) can be fun. Obviously you're spending a lot of perk points. But it's fun as hell to paralyze an enemy and then reverse-pickpocket them with a mine as they're getting back up for an insta-kill. It's also good for preserving resource consumption vs. HP sponges.

Scrounger can be especially powerful for power armor: if you have power armor or a gatling laser, fusion cores are given more priority in spawn chance, so Scrounger increases the chance of finding them because fusion cores count as ammunition.

Party boy rank 3 gives you plus 3 luck per type of alcohol for example if you drink wine, beer, and whiskey you get plus 9 luck which is pretty stupid. Basher is amazing with the mini gun as it turns it into a big chainsaw that crits. It also does pretty impressive damage on crit as it is boosted by better critical and all critical boost on the weapon it makes righteous authority hit like a truck it's pretty funny.

Here's my problem with melee: there's really only one good choice if you're running vats: the Rockville Slugger. You can get that thing up to 500+ damage per hit without power armor, and you can hit upwards of 10 times with the proper armor legendaries. No other melee comes close to that, not even the super sledge, which is really disappointing

I hate that it takes 8 strength to improve bashing damage, if im running 8, why would i be using a non melee weapon?

Locksmith is pretty overrated. Safes and locked rooms just don't have enough loot to always justify the perk points. Night Person has a ton of synergy for a stealth build, since it is harder to notice you at night. Awareness and Sniper are great for a pure VATS build. Pair that with Macready's perk and you'll frequently get situations where you'll have a 95% headshot chance while torso shots have like 60. Penetrator isn't just for wallbanging, it also makes it easier to target enemy's heads when they're positioned awkwardly. It also trivializes Mirelurks and Sentry Bots. Lead Belly isn't worth it, even on Survival Mode. Even if you don't have the Sunshine Tidings perk magazine, you should never run out of rad-free meat. Aquaboy/Aquagirl is one of the safest ways to travel in Survival Mode. Bloody Mess really isn't worth it all the time. One perk point for 5% damage isn't that great and the chain reaction effect is stupidly rare. Grim Reaper's Sprint is insane, it pretty much makes Action Boy redundant.

The most top-tier tier list for fallout 4. Thank you!

Something that you forgot to mention with chemist is you also get access to a few other chems you can make like overdrive and ultra jet

Sometimes the Mysterious Stranger can be a lifesaver to finish off enemy, it’s the extra push that come into clutch.

Health regeneration perk is sooo good. Saved up to like 500 stimpacks, and stimpacks sell for a LOT of caps.

Mysterious Stranger is a bugged, where he spawns and doesn't shoot. Doesn't happen all the time, but it can happen. That being said, it is still an awesome Perk to have, because he kills his target. Pretty decent when you are fighting some legendary enemy in Vats and Stranger just insta-pops that enemy. Bonus point: Nick Valentine always comments about the Mysterious Stranger when he appears. "There, is saw him again! The Mysterious Stranger!"

Worth noting about Penetrator - it only affects hitscan weapons. Energy weapon damage will not penetrate walls. In addition, if you have a ballistic weapon with the Explosive legendary effect, that will still go off on impact with walls, rending this perk less useful if you have the best legendary prefix in the game. So it's even less useful than the description would imply!

My personal favorite combo is Sniper+Concentrated Fire+Penetrator. Headshots through concrete with a .50 cal are fum. Like Krabby Patties. And Chum. Also, I always throw a point into Aquaboy early so it's easy to swim the Charles and ignore a lot of enemy spawns (and downtown cause frame rate).

Blitz is the best skill in the game. It's the only skill in the game where you can sneak Attack 3 or 4 enemies at the same time and take no damage.

Toughness is S tier, excuse me!? You do realise it's flat DR, not %? 50 DR for five whole perk points is beyond lackluster, considering that regular armor with ballistic weave gives you hundreds of DR and ER and power armor can give over 1000. The actual damage reduction % in late game armor (which is when you unlock the highest rank of the perk) is literally single digit %. Again, for FIVE perk points. Putting those points to Lifegiver or just Endurance gives more survivability The only time I'd consider this perk is if I went for some sort of no-armor or limited armor challenge. It's an F or at the most D tier perk. Refractor is even worse, easy F

pain train is my go to. I am always in power armor. Saved all my fusion cores (I have over 100 cores) and have pickpocketed countless other cores from the BOS. It destroys mobs of ghouls, all bugs, knocks super mutants down and mauls humans

Iron fist is GREAT with the power armor legendary "Tessas fist" Edit: You're able to do 400+ damage with tessas fist Another edit: 400+ damage per hit

Pickpocket actually can be extremely useful to steal fusion cores early on I remember there was a glitch where you could infinitely pickpocket a brotherhood paladin he would get out of his power armor, put a new fusion core and get back in and then you could steal it and he would do it again

Aqua Boy/Girl 1 is great in survival. The main waterways have almost no enemies.

If i remember correctly, someone can correct me if im wrong, but since the Basher perk also affect the damages of the Bayonet mod on rifles, it also increases the damage of the Shredder Mod on the minigun.

basher breaks the game and autowins the game for you if you put the shredder modification on the minigun. but thats the only use i can find for it 4 basher shredder minigun in power armor tho without ammo is one of the most broken weapons in the entire game tho. explosive minigun or wounding shotgun is better but its exceedingly rare and needs specific legendary effect

Stealth builds are too powerful in Fallout 4 in my opinion.

I play Vanilla and loot everything so I'm commonly Overburdened. That means running and fast travel are out as options. Therefore, I place Aquaboy a lot higher as shortcuts thru water are important to me, especially in the early game when so many enemies are stronger than I am. Other than that, I think you called it pretty close to the way I would, although while I am not hooked on it, I likely use VATS a little more than you do, but not much more.

Oh hey, ya forgot to mention the night vision when sneaking in the Night Person perk. That bumps it down to an F. I hate having to adjust my brightness indoors by turning off the Pip-boy. They fixed it with Wolf Ribs by making the effect only outdoors with an item. Can't turn off the perk. It's basically a glitch I accidentally signed up for on an earlier save.

Aquaboy/girl does allow you to wear power armor while doing Libertalia and not worrying about falling and leaving your PA at the bottom of the ocean.

Disagree on local leader. Setting up supply lines is a huge quality of life improvement

Toughness and reflector are not percentage-based. They're much more minimal and pathetic in their impact by adding points of resistance instead. They're really bad investments compared to just making better armor or better offensive perks. In fact, they become even worse the more you level up and enemies scale with you. Making those tiny increases more irrelevant as you play.

13:03 never max out lockpick (or hacker for that matter).

There are a lot of perks that work well together. Ninja and Blitz means i sneak into a room, tag everyone then wham, they are dead, they are all dead. Robotics for building the best killer bots

Oh ok, so I always thought “unarmed” literally meant no weapons. As my understanding, being “armed” is any weapon. Which a power fist and deathclaw gauntlet are weapons.