Aristocrat vs. Anti-armor?

[Traveler]

Which do you think is more useful on full auto weapons: Aristocrat (50% damage increase) or Anti-armor legendary?

Aristocrat is clearly better against enemies it no/low armor but what about ones with lots of armor?

[OutsidR]

imo AA

[DocBravo]

IMO, AA is slightly better.
If an enemy has no armor then the extra damage is lost.
Aristocrat's flawed in you need to KEEP close to or max caps to be most effective.
I'm no expert on effects but I know AA tends to be favored for a lot of bosses and various Legendary enemies.
Both of my characters carry several weapons for this reason but to reduce wear on them.

[Mooman]

Aristocrat will be fine and do more damage, generally, for anything up to Super Mutants. Testing similar Gauss Miniguns the Aristocrat vs. AA was only ~5 points better off.

For larger/boss creatures AA will be better as BGS over tuned their resistances this update... SBQ for example went from around 300 DR to over 500 DR, depending on perks and/or legendary effects.

Knocking 50% off those DR numbers will do far more than a 50% increase to your base damage.

[Traveler]

What if the gun already has Perforating or other AA attribute(s)? Will will higher damage or more AA stack better?

[AtmaDarkwolf]

AA is better than most (exception is something like bloodied vs normie mobs with very low user health) cuz that flat 50 dr slicing is epic. and yes it does stack(multiplicity though) with other sources of armor bypass, so it is (by some degree) better than even the race-specific damage dealing and FAR better than astro, noct, etc. (And better than bloodied vs bosses or high dr mobs)

It is why aa is top end for damage dealing.

[Wack-A-Mole MLRS]

I play all my players as Aristocat. All their Main weapons are Aristocat and I never worry because I never go below 39,000 caps. They beat any of my other weapons, Except Cremator now, I slow burn all enemies and myself up all the time now. Cremator in Skyline is like a joke now. Good for long distance small Artillery but up close I'm living in a burning Hell.

[Mooman]

Further info: AA for sure... If you plan on playing high level caravans the mobs DR is quite high.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3333087461

This is Lost on a high level caravan... over 600 and that is with the 36% reduction of Tank Killer...

[insert food here]

Depends on the targets resistances. Aristocrats deals more damage but will struggle compared to AA against much tougher enemies like bosses. AA is best one size fits all prefix really.

It is only really a worse choice against easy enemies with very low resistances. Still works just fine but other prefixes with more damage will kill faster.

If it was me i would use AA everyday of the week if i had to choose between those two prefixes. With more and more enemies having higher resistances it is the better choice imo.

[Celtacross]

I think anti-armor is better in overall. aristrocrat is tied to your caps numbers saved, so you'll want to keep them. While anti-armor is flat out ignores enemies defenses by percentage and can stack with weapons mod that had prefix perforator. I don't know if related perks later on will affect, since I can't imagine when all stack up, the enemies defenses went to negative...

[hawkeye]

AA if you want to tackle higher enemies

[Booglies]

If it had access to perks that negate armor and/or weapon mods that do so then I'd personally go for damage. AA is a good effect but it has diminishing returns.

That said I'd probably take Junkies over Aristocrats.

[Pharis Gough]

So from testing, if a weapon has a perf mag and a armor piercing perk, aristocrat is better for most weapons with some specific exceptions such as raid bosses due to the fact aa has diminishing returns past a total of 70%.

For shotguns, AA is significantly better than other rolls due to the fact shotgunners get no anti armor perks nor do most shotguns do not have perf mags.

For bows, surprisingly I get more impressive stealth damage numbers with aristocrat than I did with AA against most enemies.

For energy weapons, AA against most, if not all creatures except for low resistance enemies such as scorched and flying bugs.

For explosives, it would be neither since you would want two shot.

As for heavy weapons, ari out damages aa if in power armor for certain weapons.

Gauss weapons, for the pistol, minigun, and shotgun, AA is better but for the rifle ari, or two shot is better.

For most pistols, AA is better and will put out more consistent damage with the exception of the crusader pistol in which two shot and Ari push the crusader.

Finally as for melee, aristocrat is better since melee weapons can easily hit the AA hard soft cap due to armor and perks.

Finally for caps, the max bonus for ari stops at 29,000 which will be easy to get later on. By time you are around level 100 and by the time you are into the 100's most end game stuff are strictly trade only.

[Bastian]

Even on the auto axe, AA outperforms aristocrat on bosses even with Incisor equipped. The difference between the two is irrelevant on anything else, there is no human-perceptible difference in kill speed. I set up two identical ones with power attack damage and +3 strength as the other lines, and those were my findings after a day of testing. So at least in this case, AA is the clear winner.

This seems to be the general trend I've been noticing for most weapon types. AA being better on bosses, and Aristocrat being either worse or not better enough on everything else to matter especially given the restriction.

Generally speaking you may as well stick with AA unless you care about some extremely min/maxy nearly irrelevant fringe cases.

[Traveler]

So the solution is to carry one aristocrat with "cheap" bullets for fleshies and a second with AA for bosses/backup.

[dbond1]

I use both and think AA is better, simply because the enemies it works better against will be more difficult foes. The ones Aristocrat work better on you don't really need the help with. AA weapons will kill these low-armored enemies just fine. Both work well, but on balance I'd say AA is the better choice. Or use both.