Lord Poe wrote:
Yeah, we saw how powerful they were in Nemesis. They broke like a broomstick when force is applied to them.
In fairness, here, that's changing the subject: firepower, and the fact that a weapon is made of balsa...err, "metals," are two unrelated things
We know phaser rifles can be fairly powerful--1.05 MW in "The Mind's Eye." That's presumably at maximum, which is enough to make a humanoid disappear ("The Vengeance Factor").
That should penetrate the standard Stormtrooper's armor, since its equivalent effects are greater than weapons which we have observed killing Troopers; e.g., Solo's blaster, which "only" fried Greedo.
One could potentially argue that such an analogy is weak, given a phaser's material dependence vs. the raw firepower of Solo's blaster, but a megawatt slamming into them couldn't be healthy.
Moreover, it's pertinent to note that Solo's pistol, which we saw him fire single-handed numerous times, didn't have much in the way of hard kick--
definitely less than a Desert Eagle or Colt .45--which would indicate the thing's firepower is, in fact, not wildly disproportionate with the phaser's so-called "raw output."
What did they do in those movies that phasers haven't done?
Nothing. They shot some rocks in "Insurrection," as I recall.
Also in fairness, most of the times we see phasers barely scorching walls or failing to blow up packing crates (e.g., "What You Leave Behind), they're not set anywhere near maximum; they don't, after all, "vaporize" their human targets when they finally score clean hits, such as when Damar was struck on Cardassia.
As such, if anyone was to take that as an indication of their maximum firepower/lack thereof, that might be a tad hasty...it does represent the standard setting used in combat, though, probably a balance between lethality and preserving battery power.
As far as the Elite Force goes, they might have a chance against well-armed Stormtroopers in equal nos., but I think it could easily go either way. And it's probably worth noting that some on the Elite Force were total fuck-ups, like Crewman Chell...