Nearing Level 50, which Power Armor should I go for?

[Buliwyf]

Was wondering if Ultracite is the best choice to craft / get here. I do have some level 50 T60 pieces flying around.

Also: Is it worth it to put my legendary scraps into legendary power armor pieces? If yes, should I go for 1, 2 or 3 stars?

[Mandalorian Deathknight]

use the excavator if you doing mine nods runs you get more then other pa from the nods
but use the t-65 when you get it or any other pa

[william_es]

Get whatever powerarmor you can at first. Any is better then none.

Excavator is good early armor, but it's not really for combat. It's an everday utility armor, with great carrying capacity and the mining bonuses. Good for getting lead from mines (to make ammo), and gathering resources from other places. Use the excavator to get and haul the stuff you will need to make the other suits.


The major differences between the armors are the amounts of damage resist (DR), energy resist (ER), and radiation resist (RR), and different special effects on some. Some are better for certain situations then others (like tromping around nuke zones).


Excavator (for camparison to numbers below)
DR 240, ER 240, RR 366
(if you make the level 45 version of it)

X-01
DR 398, ER 453, RR 453.
(level 50, there's a level 40 version with lower stats)
Geared mainly towards energy and radiation protection. I use this for nuke zones.

Hellcat
DR 436, ER 320, RR 320
has a 12% reduction from ballistic damage. So great against bullets, not so great against lasers. Very low radiation protection. Use this in nuke zones, and you'll be sucking down tons of radaway.

Ultracite
DR 453. ER 393, RR 393.
Better damage reduction, but lower energy and radiation then others, but still good. It's a good all around suit for fighting the scorchbeast queen.

T-65 Secret Service power armor
DR 565, ER 470, RR 470
One of the best overall sets around, but... you can only buy it with gold bullion, so you'll be farming this for a while. And the mods for it are also gold bullion, so more farming. It's a great suit, but personally it looks like a humanoid elephant. Big stumpy tree trunk cankles.

Union armor (new from the pitt update).
DR 485, ER 295, RR 265.
This one is all over the place. Horrible radiation resistence. Great damage resist.
has 150 poison resist, and +75 carry weight though.
Weird combo of traits.

Investing legendary modules to add legendary perks to power armor is worth it, but suggest you stick to one suit at a time. For me, that was the X-01 ( I just like the looks, and it was what I used in nuke zones all the time).

After you have a good suit, use it to farm the scorchbeast and earl, and farm pcs of legendary power armor. It's really easy to get 3 star power armor parts from the scorchbeast queen. it's going to take a while to find the perfect combo of effects though.

The most important ones early on, at least to me, were ANY kind of weight reduction effects. Weapon weight, ammo weight, etc.

[JVonD]

T-65 and Strangler is the reason some skins like "Warhead" exist, lol, it changes the looks but keeps it's stats.

[Buliwyf]

Thanks for all the helpful replies.

With all the info received, I decided to go for the Brotherhood questline because I am a BoS by heart and I want the Hellcat Armor visually the most right now after looking at them, even if its not the best radiaton resistance.

But everything is gonna be better than my level 25 Escavator Power Armor for now anyway.