Value of Toughness

[dwaynegand]

In Fallout 3, this perk increased your damage resistance by 10%. In New Vegas, there are two perks and each one increases your Damage Threshold by 3 each. With both ranks, that's a total of 6.

For a long time, both ranks of this perk have been on my build lists. But I've been reading about how damage resistance helps reduce damage even more than threshold could and that harder hitting enemies can just punch through our damage threshold no matter how high we raise it through any means necessary.

With that in mind, is Toughness even worth it, or not? If it isn't worth it, it could free up more perk slots. What do you think?

[Slithers]

Absolutely useless. Not tryin to be condescending this time. Most perks are useless, when your only given 1 perk, every 2 levels.

[bunies]

i mean its good if you are fighting low to medium damage oponents, and depending on which armor you use, if you are getting hit by like 5 enemies who do about 30 damage per hit and you have light or medium armor that has lets say 15 DT and you add 6 to that you go from taking 15 damage to 9 which is a big difference in damage taken when dealing with lots of small hits

obviously it will do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for the deathclaws that hit for kille 300 damage a pop but then again nothing helps against those other then killing them before they hit you

generaly speaking outside of those mean old deathclaws the main thing that will still hurt you if you have enough DT is bush guns in my experience those still hit hard, those and explosives, outside of that i could face tank stuff fairly easily with the riot gear from lonesome road

[momopovich]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

With that in mind, is Toughness even worth it, or not? If it isn't worth it, it could free up more perk slots. What do you think?

You answered your question yourself.

Useless against heavy hitters, kinda useful against weaklings, but absolutely not necessary.

Pick it If you take a lot of small hits (IE if you like running in the open with a melee weapon) or if the other perk options are worse.

[Vassago Rain]

It's mostly a filler perk, but if you play with meme power armor, having both levels turns what used to be actual damage into scratches. You really shouldn't be using power armor, though, and like everybody says, it's mostly useless against actually dangerous enemies.

[dwaynegand]

Power Armor is more useful if you're not built around criticals. Every one of my builds not using criticals uses Power Armor, the T-51b variant.

[i_m_bored2death]

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

Power Armor is more useful if you're not built around criticals. Every one of my builds not using criticals uses Power Armor, the T-51b variant.

Power armour is pretty useless at highest difficultly. The game has a serious problem and it's called the Bethesda difficulty slider meets DT.
Case A you have a gun that does 50 dmg per shot and an enemy with 15 DT and one with no DT. Normal difficulty you do 50 dmg per shot to the one with no armor and 35 to the one with armor. On the highest difficulty your damage gets halved and DT applies after so you do 25 damage to the non armored enemy per shot but only do 10 damage to the 15 DT enemy going from a 70% dmg on 15 DT target compared to the unarmored one to 40% dmg on the 15 DT target compared to the unarmored one on higher difficulty
Case B you have a gun that shoots for 100 dmg per shot and shoots once per second and one that shoots twice as fast but does 60 damage per shot and you have one target with 20 DT. On normal difficulty you do 80 damage per shot on the target with the first gun and 40x2 = 80 with the second so the same dps. On highest difficulty it's 100 halved that's 50 meets DT that is 30 dps on first gun. On second gun it's 60 halved so 30 meets DT it's 10 x2 it's 20 dps. So the slower shooting gun does 50% more damage than the faster shooting gun
Case C (this is the power armor is less useful on highest difficultly) you have a player with no armor and one with a 20 DT and an enemy that does 50 damage per attack. On normal the no armor player takes 50 dmg per attack and the armored one takes 30 dmg per attack. On highest difficulty enemies do double the damage. On the unarmored one is 100 dmg per attack (just as the difficulty slider promised). On the 20 DT player it's 100 - 20 so that's 80 damage, which is closer to 3 times the damage compared to normal difficulty.
The game is balanced around normal but the slider throws that balance out the window making faster shooting weapons worse (for you atleast enemies with fast weaposn get a boots) and making DT scale better for enemies while becoming more useless for player as difficulty increases, among other balances like APR and HP ammo

[Facetable]

I find I only really use toughness on melee or explosive builds (builds where it’s expected to take a ♥♥♥♥ ton of damage) as there are plenty of other ways to raise DT without sacrificing perks. That, and also DT is really just not the most useful thing - DR is far more powerful imo:

DT is usually just a flat reduction on higher difficulties since there’s plenty of stuff that can damage you past even the highest DT attainable (removing its percent reduction effect). Meanwhile DR is pretty much universally accessible with it being tied to chems for the most part (though there’s a few random clothing pieces that have it iirc?) and is a proper percent reduction of all damage, something that is much more impactful as the damage numbers climb higher and higher

Basically: Toughness is pretty mid by itself, but can help make you more tanky towards early to mid level stuff if you’re stacking a bunch of DT

[Razgriz / SkyAce]

It is ok if you have no better perk at level 6 to take. It is better than taking Fortune Finder and Lead Belly at level 6 at least.

The problem is not so much the first rank, but that taking the second at level 8, means you give up on perks at level 8 that are good to have for specific builds.

[Dracul]

Originally posted by i_m_bored2death:

Originally posted by dwaynegand:

Power Armor is more useful if you're not built around criticals. Every one of my builds not using criticals uses Power Armor, the T-51b variant.

Power armour is pretty useless at highest difficultly. The game has a serious problem and it's called the Bethesda difficulty slider meets DT.
Case A you have a gun that does 50 dmg per shot and an enemy with 15 DT and one with no DT. Normal difficulty you do 50 dmg per shot to the one with no armor and 35 to the one with armor. On the highest difficulty your damage gets halved and DT applies after so you do 25 damage to the non armored enemy per shot but only do 10 damage to the 15 DT enemy going from a 70% dmg on 15 DT target compared to the unarmored one to 40% dmg on the 15 DT target compared to the unarmored one on higher difficulty
Case B you have a gun that shoots for 100 dmg per shot and shoots once per second and one that shoots twice as fast but does 60 damage per shot and you have one target with 20 DT. On normal difficulty you do 80 damage per shot on the target with the first gun and 40x2 = 80 with the second so the same dps. On highest difficulty it's 100 halved that's 50 meets DT that is 30 dps on first gun. On second gun it's 60 halved so 30 meets DT it's 10 x2 it's 20 dps. So the slower shooting gun does 50% more damage than the faster shooting gun
Case C (this is the power armor is less useful on highest difficultly) you have a player with no armor and one with a 20 DT and an enemy that does 50 damage per attack. On normal the no armor player takes 50 dmg per attack and the armored one takes 30 dmg per attack. On highest difficulty enemies do double the damage. On the unarmored one is 100 dmg per attack (just as the difficulty slider promised). On the 20 DT player it's 100 - 20 so that's 80 damage, which is closer to 3 times the damage compared to normal difficulty.
The game is balanced around normal but the slider throws that balance out the window making faster shooting weapons worse (for you atleast enemies with fast weaposn get a boots) and making DT scale better for enemies while becoming more useless for player as difficulty increases, among other balances like APR and HP ammo

Damage slider in FO3/NV is traaaash for sure, your better off using a difficulty/damage modifier mod (Such as BLEED) one of the handful of things FO4 did that I enjoyed over 3/NV was the difficulty, I slap that puppy on Survival and everyone is taking a pounding, enemies hit harder and the player hits harder too making stealth far more effective.

Crank it up on 3 and you end up just dumping absurd amounts of ammo into everything, bullet sponges are no ones friend.

[momopovich]

Originally posted by Dracul:

one of the handful of things FO4 did that I enjoyed over 3/NV was the difficulty, I slap that puppy on Survival and everyone is taking a pounding, enemies hit harder and the player hits harder too making stealth far more effective.

Only for the early portion of the game, then your character starts becoming unkillable around lvl 30ish and the game is pretty much over at lvl 50.

Bullet sponges and limited damage mitigation for the player are ways to keep enemies relevant, as clunky as it is

[NecroMaster]

I run perks for immersion mostly.

If I’m running toughness it’s mostly cause I’m running a character who is physically tough.