Action Boy/Girl¶

With the Action Boy/Girl perk, you gain an additional 15 Action Points to use in V.A.T.S.

Action Boy/Girl has been split into two ranks, radically diminishing the effectiveness of this perk. On top of that, you have LESS perks with which to choose from, further exacerbating the situation. If that wasn’t enough, having a high Action Point total isn’t as useful in New Vegas. All of these conditions add up to one conclusion: you can look elsewhere for your V.A.T.S. perks.

Better Criticals¶

With the Better Criticals perk, you gain a 50% damage bonus every time a critical hit is scored on an opponent.

Your critical chance is determined by your Luck-1 point of Luck equals a 1% chance of landing a critical hit. This doesn’t increase your chance of landing a critical hit, instead Better Criticals improves the damage you deal when you do land a critical hit. Therefore the usefulness of this perk is directly related to how high your luck is. With sneak attack criticals, the Sniper perk, or the Finesse perk, Better Criticals becomes greatly useful, but it really depends on your build. No character is hurt by having high luck however, so it stands to suggest that most characters could benefit greatly from this perk… And since you need a Luck score of 6 for this perk, if you can get it, you might as well. This perk is especially useful for players who have the Laser Commander perk, for obvious reasons.

Chem Resistant¶

Having the Chem Resistant perk means you’re 50% less likely to develop an addiction to chems, like Psycho or Jet.

First, why you would ever need to use Psycho or Jet is beyond me. Secondly, addiction isn’t a big deal. You can always get your addiction cured at a hospital, or you could just reload. If doubling the duration of chems didn’t appeal to you, this shouldn’t either.

Meltdown¶

Meltdown causes foes killed by your Energy Weapons to give off a corona of harmful energy. Note: this can cause a chain reaction.

Another Energy Weapons perk, this one is more of a general perk, as it applies to all Energy Weapons, rather than either lasers or plasma weapons. While it’s hard to question the power of Energy Weapons, you still can - and should - question the usefulness of this perk. Seeing enemies explode into a corona of energy when they die is awfully fun, but the explosion has a fairly short radius, although it can do good damage. The bad part is that you can catch yourself in this blast, making it a hassle any time an enemy gets close to you in combat. Sure “Don’t let them get close”, yeah, whatever. In any event, blowing yourself up is not fun, and this perk doesn’t make energy weapons exceptionally more powerful. On top of that, there’s not all that many situations in which you’ll find enough enemies close enough together to cause a useful explosion, much less a chain reaction. It’s slight usefulness is offset by the hassle of having to keep away from enemies to avoid catching yourself in the blast.

Tag!¶

The Tag! perk allows you to select a fourth Skill to be a Tag skill, which instantly raises it by 15 points.

Skill points are good; everybody can can agree with that. But there is a limit. A 15 point skill perk is arguably less useful than Comprehension… even if you don’t find 15 skill books, and it is certainly less useful than Educated, which can give up to 92 skill points. Sure, everybody likes skill points, but it’s not worth sacrificing a perk for such a small return.

Weapon Handling¶

Weapon Strength Requirements are now 2 points lower than normal for you.

Strength isn’t a great attribute… in fact, the only reason you need to bother with it at all is because you need to have Strength to use weapons effectively. This perk gives you, essentially, two points of Strength. Or at least the better benefits of having two Strength. In the “Old World Blues” DLC you can increase your Strength by one or two points, and since you can hit a natural Strength score of eight anyways, what would you ever need this perk for?