While figuring out a build may seem daunting at first, it is very simple. Ultimately, builds in Fallout 76 boil down to one simple statement

"How do I maximize my damage and what am I willing to sacrifice to achieve that damage?"

Most often what you're sacrificing is your survivability.

There are a few ways that you can increase your damage. And some of these will require a sacrifice of some kind. Some of them are chained together. But ultimately it comes down to the following list.

• Legendary Affixes on Gear
  
• Gear stats and modifications
  
• Perk Cards (including Legendary)
  
• VATs
  
• Consumables/Chems
  
• Mutations
  
• Stealth

When designing a build, you have to ask yourself what combination of these do you want to employ. Either out of personal preference or because what they ask you to sacrifice is not something you're willing to.

The other thing to keep in mind is that maximizing damage is not always regulated to just straight damage increases. You have to also consider damage per second. For example, things that increase your clip size or fire rates can increase your overall DPS. On that same vein, reduced reload rates can do the same. Less time spent reloading = more time spent doing damage. So that's also something to keep in mind when looking at damage maxing. But lets go over the list a bit.

With builds you also need to figure out what gear you want to use. Now if you're looking to min/max your build, there are weapons that are considered "meta" and better than others. At the same time, you can also just as well choose a weapon purely because you like a skin or the way it feels. Like I have a build that uses a pitchfork for when I want to be silly and play a "farmer" themed build.


Generally speaking, you will want to make sure your chosen gear synergizes with the rest of your build foundational choices (such as weapon type perks, conditional effects like low hp, etc). Some weapon types, such as armor, can also have niche uses. The Arctic Marine armor generally isn't worth taking over the other choices for endgame armor. However, if you're fighting enemies that apply the frozen effect (such as in daily op mutations), Arctic Marine can be quite good. Or if you decide to roll Power Armor, make sure you go for the perks that would benefit Power Armor users.

Now of course you can do a build that uses multiple weapon types, but this may require a sacrifice or some sort. Either damage or something else. But I'd advise sticking to one weapon type until you're comfortable enough with the build system to experiment.

Along with gear choices, you also want to make sure you're employing the right modifications to benefit your build or build preferences. Taking things like VATs usage, consumable usage, stealth, etc; to determine what to pick.

Legendary Affixes can have an impact on your overall damage and performance. Either from straight damage increases, accuracy bonuses, fire rate, reload speed, VATs bonuses, AP costs, clip sizes, etc. Some more give you more survivability instead of damage if you want to be tankier. I'll go over the 1 star legendaries for weapons in order of what is most effective for adding to damage. If it isn't included in this list, its usually because its not used enough or "good" enough to warrant me explaining. But you're more than welcome to using them.

1. Bloodied - This weapon type adds straight % damage based upon how low your health is. With a maximum of +95% damage at its lowest!

2. Instigating - Double damage if target is full health

3. Next you have the +50% damage legendary affixes
3a. Aristocrats - Adds up to 50% damage based on how many caps you have. To reach +50% you need 29000 or more caps.
3b. Junkies - Adds up to 50% damage based on how many addictions you have. These addictions need to be active. So if you are addicted to say buffout, and you take buffout during combat. You will lose damage because the addiction debuff will disappear. You need 5 addiction debuffs active at once to max out the damage add.
3c. Enemy Type - There are finally a variety of legendary affixes that add 50% damage to specific enemy types. Assassin, Zealots, Mutant Slayers, etc. These are often situational and best used if you know what you're going to be fighting beforehand.
3d. Berserker - the lower Damage Resist (DR) you have (armor from gear), the higher damage. Up to a maximum of 50% more damage at 0 DR
3e. Executioners - 50% damage increase if your target is at 40% HP or less.
3f. Nocturnal - 50% more damage at night

4. Furious - Each consecutive hit adds 5% damage up to 45% damage when hitting the same target. This includes weapons that fire multiple hits at once. So for example a shotgun. Each pellet is considered in this calculation. So if a shotgun fires 8 pellets at once, then that means it will add 40% damage immediately.

5. The 25% damage ones now.
5a.Two Shot - Adds 25% damage and splits the damage across BOTH projectiles
5b. Juggernaut - Adds up to 25% damage the higher your health is (95% - 100% HP for max).
5.c Mutant's - Adds up to 25% damage the more mutations you have (5% per mutation)

6. Gourmands - Damage increases up to 24% the higher your thirst and hunger meters are. 81-100% filled are required for both Thirst and Hunger as each adds 12%.

***Complicated Mentions***

Anti Armor - Anti armor is a very effective legendary affix. I didn't included it in the above list because its a bit nuanced. I'll use the following explanation to show how it works. To determine if Anti-Armor will add more damage than one of the above, you need to do the following calculation.
AdditionalAdditiveBonuses >= (LegendaryBonus / 0.203636088 - 1)*100. If you're running Two Shot or Juggernaut, it comes out as the following. (.25 / 0.203636088 - 1)*100. Which means you additional damage bonuses need to equal at minimum 23% more damage if Anti-Armor is better. Now pretty much every build should run the +% damage perk cards to specific weapon types (Rifleman, Commando, Etc) for your chosen weapon. You only need to run one depending on what you prefer. So if you at minimum run those at max, which adds a total of +60% damage), Anti-Armor is better than Two Shot, Juggernaut, mutants, and Gourmands by quite a lot.

Vampire - Vampire is another popular legendary effect for the survivability it adds. It heals on hit. Which is especially effective on weapons that have a very high rate of fire, including melee weapons. For example, the chainsaw.

Quad - Quad is another effective legendary affix that takes the clip size of a weapon and times it by 4. It flows heavily into the concept of less time spent reloading, more time spent dealing damage. Perfect for long engagements (such as against bosses). Some weapons this is much more effective than others. Especially those with small clip sizes or long reload rates (like heavy weapons). An example of how much of an impact this can has is the double barrel shotgun. The Cold Shoulder weapon comes with Quad and is considered one of the best shotguns in the game as a result.

Unique Legendary Items - There's also a selection of unique legendary weapons in the game that have effects that can only be found on them. These can also add in more damage. Kabloom, Cold Shoulder, Holy Fire, Cryptid Jawbone, etc.


Finally you have the remaining 2 star and 3 star legendary effects. Again the way to determine if its good is to ask yourself how does it impact my damage or survivability. For example, more agility SPECIAL means more AP. Which could benefit VATs focused builds. Other ones increase VATs hit chance which means you land shots more often, which means more damage. Things like that. Think past just a straight damage increase. Some will be better than others. You can look up "God Rolls" to see the most desirable weapons in the game if you're interested.

Consumables are basically items that you can only take once and you need to acquire more to keep the "buffs" up. There's quite a lot of consumable buffs in the game. Some are easier to farm than others. Chems, magazines, bobbleheads, nuka colas, alcohol, food items, etc. All of them give some kind of benefit. Things that add straight damage, healing, SPECIAL, etc.


There's also quite a bit of things in the game that interact with these consumables. Take for example, Chems. My personal favorite is just psycho. Its easy to farm/mass produce and adds 15% damage for a limited time. There's two END perk cards that increase the time chems last and make it so you can't get addicted. There's a chest armor modification that can also be installed to increase the duration of chems. Right now a single psycho for me lasts about 7 minutes with my current build. Meaning that most events, daily ops, and expeditions; I only need 1 psycho to last the entire engagement.

Figure out what consumables you want to leverage with your build. Then choose perk cards and equipment that synergizes with it.

Mutations are buffs that typically come with a pro and a con. There is the legendary perks that increase damage per mutation for weapons or DR for armor. There's also some perk cards like "Class Freak" in the LCK SPECIAL that decrease the negative effects of mutations by 75%. Mutations can be acquired randomly by getting radiation OR you can craft them by buying plans from a vendor unlocked in the Whitesprings by going through the main story. They're quite expensive so be ready! And do keep in mind that if you don't get a LCK perk card that prevents losing mutations from radaway, when you use radaway to remove rads, you may lose the mutation. Even if you crafted it.


Just like everything else in creating a foundation for your build, you're going to want to choose perk cards that compliment using mutations. Likewise you will want to make sure your mutations compliment your chosen build. If you're going Low HP build, then Adrenal Reaction would be a good choice because it gives you + damage at low HP. However if you're not playing this build, getting adrenal is probably not worth it. Likewise if you're not using VATs for yoru build, getting Eagle Eyes is probably not worth it.

Overall with the right builds, Mutations can be a great area to increase your damage or survivability.

Perk cards work in a similar manner to what I've been saying. You want to pick pick cards that are tailored to your build. An example of this are bloodied/low HP builds. These builds revolve around keeping your HP low and leveraging effects that benefit off of that. As for perk cards, you want to go along those same lines. What benefits in anyway from low HP and is it worth having? Good examples of this for low HP builds are Serendipity in the Luck SPECIAL (gives you a chance to avoid damage while below 30%, which with bloodied builds you are always below that). Another is the Nerd Rage perk card in the INT tree that increases damage, increases AP regen, and decreases damage taken.

Essentially you want to figure out what the core foundations of your build is (Weapon type, armor type, consumables, VATs or not, etc) and choose perk cards that compliment those foundations. Generally, you will want to always get the +% damage to specific weapon types (Bow, Shotgun, Rifleman, Commando, etc) for the weapon you're choosing to main.

To summarize, when creating your own build you want to use the following to establish a foundation for your build.

• Legendary Affixes on Gear
  
• Gear stats and modifications
  
• Perk Cards (including Legendary)
  
• VATs
  
• Consumables/Chems
  
• Mutations
  
• Stealth

And you want to make sure that your choices synergize with one another. Such as choosing perk cards that compliment low HP builds. Or choosing mutations that compliment VATs usage.

Generally I find that there are two kinds of players when it comes to builds. Those who want to deal as much damage as possible and use the best possible build. Or those who choose to create a build around a theme or weapon type, regardless of its performance. Both routes are perfectly fine and acceptable. For example, I have a Pump Action shotgun build themed around the Responders faction. This shotgun is arguably the worse shotgun in the game, however its the only one that has a good responder skin. But despite this performance, I am able to complete all the content with ease and not have much issues.

Another thing to keep in mind is also you don't have to go all in on damage. IF you wanted to create a tank and be unkillable + face tank world bosses; you can do that! If you wanted to be a healer/support build and focus on support your party members, you can do that! Its for sure a different way to play, but still a valid one. Content doesn't "require" these roles in the same way that a mmorpg like WoW may require tanks/healers, but it is still helpful on a battlefield.