A Power Armor is a special type of armor in Fallout 76. A Power Armor consists of a Power Armor Chassis with 6 Power Armor pieces (legs, arms, torso, and helmet) attached to it. Every piece of Power Armor can roll legendary effects and increase your Damage Reduction, which makes Power Armor very powerful.
Learn everything about the existing types of Power Armor, stats, locations, and what the best Power Armor is, in our Fallout 76 Power Armor Guide.
Table of Contents
- Best Power Armor in Fallout 76
- Fallout 76 Power Armor Tier List
- Power Armor Locations in Fo76
- Power Armor Stats Comparison in Fallout 76
- Best Legendary Effects for Power Armors
- How to Get In and Out of a PA in Fallout 76
- Useful Perks in Power Armor Builds
Best Power Armor in Fallout 76
The best Power Armor in Fallout 76 is the Union Power Armor. By wearing 6 pieces of the Union Power Armor you activate the set bonus and you’ll get increased carry capacity by 75 lbs and poison resistance of 150. The bonus to poison resistance frees up one legendary perk card slot since you don’t need to use Funky Duds anymore. These two set boni together with relatively high defensive stats make the Union Power Armor so good.
The Union Power Armor was introduced to Fo76 during the Expeditions: The Pitt update. Before this update, the Excavator Power Armor had the best utility. A full set of Excavators provides you with an extra 100 lbs of carry weight. Pieces of the Excavator PA are tradeable and cheap to repair, too. Excavators remains a great Power Armor if you are new to Fallout 76 and you haven’t unlocked all pieces of the Union Power Armor.
There are Power Armors with higher damage resistances but less utility in the game. If you’re looking for a Power Armor to maximize your damage mitigation, you should pick a more defensive PA.
Best Defensive Power Armor
The best Fo76 Power Armor in terms of defensive power, is a close match-up between the T-65 Power Armor and the Hellcat Power Armor.
The T-65 Power Armor is generally considered the best and most prestigious Power Armor. It provides the highest protection against Energy Damage. The downside of this PA is, that you’ll need quite a lot of Gold Bullion to buy the plans and the mods.
The Hellcat Power Armor is very strong too and provides the highest damage reduction against ballistic damage. You get the plans for free by playing through the main story quest of Steel Reign, but you need to buy the plans for modifications with Gold Bullion.
Note that the increased damage resistances over the Union Power Armor have only a minor impact on the incoming damage in combat. You can read more about this below in our stat comparison.
Fallout 76 Power Armor Tier List
The following Fo76 Power Armor Tier List ranks the existing Power Armors by their power and usefulness:
S
Union Power Armor
Hellcat Power Armor
A
T-65 Power Armor
Strangler Heart Power Armor
B
Excavator Power Armor
X-01
Ultracite Power Armor
T-51b Power Armor
C
T-60 Power Armor
T-45 Power Armor
Raider Power Armor
Please note, that all Power Armors are good. The Raider Power Armor has a special place as the PA with the lowest level requirement in Fallout 76. The Excavator Power Armor and Strangler Heart Power Armor have their places in certain builds and use cases. But as a general guideline, you can use the ranking in our PA Tier List to see what you should aim for.
Power Armor Locations in Fo76
In the following table, you can see in what locations you can get each type of Power Armor and their modifications in Fallout 76.
| Power Armor | PA Location | How to get Mods |
|---|---|---|
| Excavator | Miner’s Miracle (Quest) | Events & Responders Vendors & Rare Spawns |
| Raider | Events & Treasure Maps | Events & Raider Vendors & Rare Spawns |
| T-45 | Events & Treasure Maps | Events & BOS Vendors & Rare Spawns |
| T-60 | Events & Treasure Maps | Events & BOS Vendors & Rare Spawns |
| X-01 | Enclave (Officer on Deck Quest) | Enclave Vendors |
| Ultracite | Belly of the Beast Quest, SBQ | SBQ |
| Strangler Heart | Gold Bullion in Vault 79 | Uses Ultracite PA mods |
| T-51b | Events & Treasure Maps | Events & BOS Vendors & Rare Spawns |
| T-65 | Gold Bullion in Vault 79 | Bought for Gold Bullion in Vault 79 |
| Hellcat | Reward from Steel Reign quest in Fort Atlas | Bought for Gold Bullion in Foundation |
| Union | Guiseppa Della Ripa (Whitespring Resort) | Bought for Stamps from Guiseppa Della Ripa |
Power Armor Stats Comparison in Fallout 76
There are 11 different types of Power Armor available in Fallout 76. Each type of Power Armor has strengths and weaknesses. These are all the available Power Armors and their stats:
| Power Armor | Damage | Energy | Radiation | Tradeable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excavator | 240 | 240 | 360 | Yes |
| Raider | 340 | 340 | 340 | Yes |
| T-45 | 360 | 360 | 360 | Yes |
| T-60 | 400 | 370 | 410 | Yes |
| X-01 | 400 | 450 | 450 | Yes |
| Ultracite | 455 | 400 | 400 | Yes |
| Strangler Heart * | 455 | 400 | 500 | No |
| T-51b | 455 | 455 | 310 | Yes |
| T-65 | 565 | 470 | 470 | No |
| Hellcat ** | 436 | 320 | 320 | No |
| Union | 485 | 295 | 265 | No |
* Strangler Heart has the unique effect “Adds acid damage to all armed attacks and makes nearby enemies take acid damage.”. This effect was heavily nerfed and is now barely noticeable. Since the Strangler Heart Power Armor is not tradeable, it has become one of the least sought-after Power Armors in Fo76.
** Hellcat provides an additional 12% ballistic damage reduction. This makes the Hellcat stronger against ballistic damage than the T-65.
How Damage Mitigation Works in Fallout 76
To find the best Power Armor for your character it is helpful to know, how damage mitigation works in Fo76. There are three key components:
- Damage reduction is something different than damage resistance. Damage reduction is based on percentages and is not affected by armor penetration. Damage Resistance on the other side, is the value you see as stats in your PiP Boy when wearing a Power Armor. Enemies with anti-armor effects will ignore a part of these Damage Resistance numbers.
- There are diminishing returns for damage resistance values. Higher resistance values will affect the damage mitigation less and less.
- Every Power Armor has a damage reduction of 42% (7% per piece) and a radiation damage reduction of 90%. This means a very big part of the defenses a Power Armor provides isn’t tied to the type of Power Armor you use.
This is the reason why simply comparing damage resistance values between Power Armors can be very misleading. The higher the resistance numbers become, the less difference it will make in-game.
Thehaunted318 did a test and published the following results on Reddit a few years back:
| Damage | Excavator | Raider | T-45 | X-01 | T-60 | Ultracite | T-51 | T-65 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 0,8 | 0,7 | 0,6 | 0,6 | 0,6 | 0,6 | 0,6 | 0,6 |
| 50 | 6,7 | 5,9 | 5,8 | 5,6 | 5,6 | 5,3 | 5,3 | 4,9 |
| 100 | 17,3 | 15,2 | 15 | 14,4 | 14,3 | 13,7 | 13,7 | 12,6 |
| 200 | 44,5 | 39,2 | 38,4 | 37 | 36,9 | 35,3 | 35,3 | 32,5 |
| 300 | 77,4 | 68,1 | 66,8 | 64,4 | 64,2 | 61,4 | 61,3 | 56,7 |
Note: the Hellcat Power Armor and Union Power Armor weren’t released at the time he conducted his tests and it was tested without legendary effects on the armor pieces.
If your enemy is doing 100 damage and you’re wearing the Excavator Power Armor, you’ll lose 17.3 health points according to this test. In a T-65 you’ll lose 12.6 health points. This is the range between the highest (560) and lowest (240) damage reduction in-game. If you add legendary effects and effects from Perk Cards, the difference in incoming damage gets even smaller.
Best Legendary Effects for Power Armors
Every piece of a Power Armor can have up to 3 legendary stars. Each legendary star provides one legendary effect.
Best First Star Legendary Effect
“Overeaters” is the best first-star legendary effect in Fallout 76. It reduces all incoming damage as long as stay well-fed and well-hydrated in the game.
Besides Overeaters the biggest damage mitigation is provided by enemy-specific prefixes. You can wear a mix or build specific sets for specific occasions:
- Troubleshooter for Daily Ops with robots and the Encryptid event.
- Zealot for Daily Ops with Scorched and Scorchbeast Queen.
- Mutant Slayers if you farm e.g. West Tek or Daily Ops with mutants.
- Assassin for PvP and Daily Ops with humans like cultists.
These legendary effects provide more defensive capabilities than Overeaters, but they only work against specific enemy types. If you don’t want to stay well-fed and well-hydrated, a mix of these enemy-type specific effects is a viable alternative. Try to focus more on Troubleshooter, since Robots are generally more dangerous than other enemy types.
Because of how damage mitigation works in Fo76, and how much mitigation the Power Armor provides already, legendary effects like Bolstering, Aristocrats, and Vanguards are relatively weak in practice. The popular legendary effect Unyielding is not available on Power Armor.
Best Second Star Legendary Effect
The second star depends highly on your build. Here are some general guidelines:
- +25 fire resistance and +25 poison resistance are really strong if you don’t use Funky Duds or Sizzling Style. If you have two pieces of resistance you could already try to remove the legendary perk to free up one slot for something else.
- Powered (increase action point refresh speed) is very good. Most PA users will not use V.A.T.S. but Powered allows you to spring more and to use Dodgy more effectively.
- If you use Overeaters as your legendary prefix, reduced hunger and thirst from Glutton is helpful.
- +1 Strength is great if you run a melee build.
- Hardy provides you with 7% less explosion damage. But note, that the self damage from explosions was reduced with the update Night of the Moth. If you’re using Hardy because of your explosive weapons, you should try if it’s still necessary for you.
Best Third Star Legendary Effect
For the third star, Sentinel is the best defensive option. Sentinel gives a 75% chance to reduce damage by 15% while standing still. Cavalier provides the same damage reduction while sprinting and can be great for Daily Ops, but Sentinel is easier to control and suits the playstyle in Power Armor better. Feel free to mix both legendary effects.
If you carry many guns, the best utility option for your third star is the effect “Weapon Weight Reduction“. If you don’t use a lot of different weapons, you can mix weight reduction effects for these 3 different item groups:
- Reduced weapon weight reduces the weight of all weapon types. For hybrid builds or builds with a lot of weapons in general, this will make a huge difference.
- Reduced food/drink/chem weight is great because it affects both chems and food. The Backpack mods only affect the one or the other.
- Reduced ammo weight affects all ammo types and can save you up to 8 perk cards if you use a lot of different ammo types.
The “weapon weight reduction” effect is generally the most sought-after weight reduction effect. In most cases it’s best to stack “weapon weight reduction” and use Perk Cards for the other item categories.
How to Get In and Out of a PA in Fallout 76
For a first-time player, it will not be intuitive how to enter or exit a Power Amor in Fallout 76. This is how to get in an out of a PA:
- Getting into a Power Armor: you can select a Power Armor Chassis from your inventory. They can be found in the “Armor” tab. After you’ve selected it you can place it in the world and enter it by pressing your default use key (E on PC).
- Getting out of a Power Amor: To exit your Power Armor hold the same key (E on PC) pressed for a few seconds. Your character will exit the Power Armor and you can put it back in your inventory (by pressing SPACE on PC). If you don’t collect it yourself it will be collected automatically.
Useful Perks in Power Armor Builds
There are Perk Cards that will make your character stronger if you’re wearing a Power Armor in Fallout 76. If you run a heavy gun build the perk Stabilized is a must-have. The perks Dodgy, Ricochet, and Blocker aren’t explicitly for Power Armor users but will improve your survivability quite a bit.
The legendary perk card Electric Absorption is very strong. It can become obsolete if you can get optimized legendary effects on your PA pieces. But till then, even rank 1 will do wonders.
You should have Fix It Good and Power Patcher available for repair sessions. Always use Power Smith and a loadout with high intelligence if you craft new pieces.
