IMPORTANT Additions: Demolitions DOES work on hornet's nest shotguns making them even more lethal than they already are, thanks to everyone who mentioned this. Of course use with caution as it's incredibly easy to blow yourself up (you can't even be within 5m of your target on very hard without instakilling yourself). This also applies to explosive rounds but thankfully they're not as lethal to your own character. With that considered I'd for sure upgrade demolitions to a A tier as this is an extremely cheap way to consistently run high damage explosive weapons while also gaining some legitmate defensive bonuses along the way.

I forgot to include that YES your particle beam weapons can benefit from the Lasers 4 Perk and the Ranks 1-3 damage bonuses too! PB weps are weird in that they don't benefit from ballistic type perks despite having a physical component but they are happy to take all the benefits of the laser skill alongside their main PB skill. They are already great weapons without skill point investment but this makes them even better. Cop an Eternity's Gate or equivalent PB rifle for optimal pew pew experience 🔫

A Note on the cutter - I've seen a few astute observers in the comments ask this so adding the answer to it here: "Wouldn't heavy weapons make the cutter more OP since it's a heavy weapon?" Excellent question! I failed to include this in the video but I tested the cutter with and without heavy weapons maxed and it has no impact on the burn damage portion of the cutter damage (my thought is because it's tied to lasers not the cutter). It does, however, improve the peanut damage that the cutter does but since that's a negligible amount of the cutter DPS I would still keep heavy weapons ranked as low as I have it in the video. Always great to see people coming up with awesome questions and points for why they'd rank skills differently!

You can also just charge up a Novablast disruptor for a few seconds to dish out way more EM damage and it's usually enough to stun someone quickly (oversight to not include this). The point remains that incapacitation is a completely pointless skill.

Also the variance on the weapon damages as some helpful people have pointed out is actually the "Handloading" weapon perk cycling a new value for the weapon every time a legendary is equipped. Weird programming but I understand why it's doing that at least. Interestingly there are many weapons that do this that also don't have handloading so I think it's a general issue with the game waiting for you to equip items before it runs a check on what the base values should get calculated to based on 1. Weapon perks 2. Weapon mods 3. Potentially skills (not sure on this one)

How many skillpoints have you put into the combat tree so far? Personally I only put 2 points as I got a really lucky legendary roll and put strong mods on that weapon and now I steamroll just about anything I fight.

I'm expecting a positive correlation between points invested in combat and higher difficulty levels, let's see how things play out...

Let me know if I'm missing any hidden use cases for these skills!

The most useful series on Starfield

These are so well done. Every other skill "guide" is just somebody reading the perk trees aloud for 10 minutes so the research based approach is really appreciated!

Looking forward to the science tree. A lot of those seem really situational and it's difficult to assess the value of mods without a lot of investment.

max damage hornet nest coachmen with maxed demolition and isolation user: i am the doombringer of every organic thing and robot i see in my path

This video was amazing.

I wish they added more quest related reasons to use an EM weapon like bringing in bounties alive for a better reward etc. The UC faction was cool but very short lived. Ryujin's ones often get you spotted. It would have been perfect for Freestar Collective and bringing in the big bads but nope.

Virtually all of skill points have been put into science, then a good chunk in piloting, and the rest in social with a tiny bit in physical and with none in combat. So I'm excited for the next one.

2:53 that's the handloading effect doing that. Handloading gives you a random damage increase but also has a chance to do less than the base damage.  It's not a bug.

i think shotguns synergize very well with sharp shooting since starfield seems to count shotgun hits by the pellet which means you'll be doing crits every hit.

Don't forget, demolitions also works with any weapon with explosive damage. Most rifles have an explosive damage mod, so you can stack the bonuses from balistics, rifles, and demolition.

3:10 so THAT is why I swear my legendary Hard Target keeps getting randomly nerfed. I thought I was going crazy.

The real beauty was seeing Starfield's rare gunfish in their native environment for the intro.  It brought a tear to my eye, and fuels my longing to return to that planet paradise.

Demolition is a pretty good if you mod your weapon to do explosive damage or have a weapon with the legendary effect.

For the Incapacitation skill I believe charging up the nova blaster shot would make a big difference. With a fully charged shot you can knock out a human target in like 2-3 shots so I assume with the skill you can get closer to a 1-2 shot knockout, not including the sneak attack multiplier.

For some reason equiping a throwable can sometimes disable the reload buff perks!

Cutter counts as a heavy weapon. You can stack these bonuses.

I've been looking forward to this video. I've been holding back using my skill points over the last week until I see all five of your guides - currently I'm sitting on about ten unused ones. 🤣

I have no idea what your other videos are but the amount of effort you put into this deserves my sub

The EM damage bonuses are useful specifically for non-lethal stealth characters who are charging the disruptor and getting a sneak attack bonus. Great way to one shot take down an enemy without killing them (which is relevant to… one specific quest line, unless that’s your RP style)

I was recommended your channel and you are one of the best Starfield ressource out there.

Thanks for everything, and im slowly binge watching all of your previous videos. Thanks!

Heavy Weapons also effects the Cutter making the beam even stronger. Idk about the fire effect, but anything that helps DPS is a good thing, also I'm pretty sure the '+25 damage resistance while aiming down sights' also works for it as well.