thethiefofdarkness

Aye, Deathclaws in NV are the strongest in the entire series (FO1 and FO2 lacked armor piercing :D) so its no surprise that people are getting annihilated by them. Even at level 30 and at endurance 10 (Armor don't do jack since they ignore DT) , a single deathclaw can still 3-4 shot the player. The best way to hunt deathclaws is a huge initial damage to 1-shot it before it notices you. That means stealth, headshots, sniper rifles, shotties and all other means of dealing death. Energy weapons are really awesome due to their high damage, huge crit damage and the meltdown perk. I once took out the deathclaw prometary of around 6 deathclaws (2 mothers and 1 alpha) with a single shot from a fully repaired tesla cannon prototype to the head (MC ammo and optimised crits). Glorious! Of course its not impossible to melee them, you'll either need a super high damage weapon like the balistic fist (one shots) or a weapon that can cause a ton of fatigue damage to knock them down. You can also exploit the knockdown + thermic lance/chainsaw combo to kill deathclaw but not when they are in packs.