Is the plasma caster underestimated ?

Hello,

I'm currently doing a jsawyer plasma caster run. For those who don't know jsawyer mod is a mod made by a lead designer of New Vegas rebalancing some aspect of the games. It would be long to describe all the changes made by the mod but globally even if it changes a lot of things (starting health divided by two, max level at 35), the game stays similar to the new vegas you know.

I wanted to play with the plasma caster because on the paper it has excellent stats. High damage, efficient ammo/damage ratio, high rate of fire and average ammo capacity. It has better damage and dps that the survivalist rifle but with worse spread and a much higher weight.

The main difference I had with vanilla is that plasma spaz also grant 20 % increased attack speed.

My character got decent stats all around, 10 luck with implants for max Crit chance. I had also fast shot and build to destroy.

The plasma caster proved to be a powerful, reliable weapon. Repairing it wasn't that much a challenge thanks to Raul and the fact I managed to craft a lot of weapon repair kit. I used it with YCS/186 for long range engagement. The main difficulty of this weapon was with its ammo capacity and reload time. Because it has a very high fire rate and a relative long reload speed, you wilk spend a huge time of your fight just reloading. I rarely shot at full speed simply to land more of my shots. One advantage of this weapon is that I could shoot often with bulk ammo while staying efficient against ennemies with medium dt.

It's globally a solid A tier weapon. It lacks a larger ammo capacity to compete with S tier weapons like the tri beam laser rifle (gra). Too bad the unique version the smitty special is globally a downgrade.

If you're searching a new weapon to make a run around it, the plasma caster might be worth your time even without the 20 % increased speed from jsawyer plasma spaz.