Let's Talk About Shotguns in Fortnite
How the Combat is still kind of in the game by remaking the Tac
If you were forwarded this email and want to get Fortnite Fundamentals in your inbox 3x per week, subscribe here for free:
I’d love to hear from you, email me at zack@fortnitefundamentals.co. Feel free to send requests for things to cover, feedback, or questions.
The Inner Game of Fortnite – Combats, Pumps, and Tacs, Oh My
Epic is always learning. When they release things that rile up the community, it’s always a test to gather data. I try not to get too upset when they release something weird and new because they’re just testing hypotheses about how to change the game. That doesn’t mean we’ll agree with the eventual changes the tests inform. This is just their process.
Starting in Season 9, Fortnite experimented with shotguns beyond making things slower and more powerful, as they’d done previously with the Heavy. With the launch of Season 9, we got the Combat, a far-and-fast-shooting shotgun from the future that was powerful and incredibly fun to use. They also did the unthinkable and vaulted the Pump, the backbone of the previous eight seasons of Fortnite in an attempt to even the game out in some way. It was part of their ongoing experimentation to keep new and bad players sticking around longer because, as they said, 27% of elims were because of the shotgun. That didn’t seem that outrageous to me, to be honest.
In patch 9.3 we got the Drum Shotgun, a weak-but-fast shotgun that was littered everywhere and almost always guaranteed my death (especially in Zone Wars, woof) and we got the Pump back. Then in 9.4 they gave us Epic and Legendary Tac shotguns.
We lost the Combat and the Drum shotgun soon thereafter in 10.2, cleaning up the shotgun meta back to just the Pump and the Tac, but here’s what I think happened: Epic took everything they learned from the Combat behaved and how players used them and put it into the new-and-improved Tac.
Look at the timeline here:
9.0 - Epic vaults the Pump, introduces the Combat which can shoot fast and pretty far for a shotgun, talks about how too many elims in Fortnite happen due to shotguns and makes the Combat semi-rare on the map.
9.1 and 9.2 - The Combat becomes more available on the map but gets powered down over a few updates, reducing its shot range and its power at different distances.
9.3 - The Pump is unvaulted.
9.4 - Epic and Legendary Tacs are introduced.
10.14 - Tac headshot multiplier increases.
10.2 - The Combat and Drum shotguns get vaulted.
Fortnite is fundamentally a close range game. Distance plays happen but the bread and butter of this game is a shotgun or shotgun/SMG battle between players. So you have to get the shotguns right. That means finding a balance that works.
In Chapter 2/Season 11, with the greatly cleaned up meta, the grey Pump came back, the green and blue Pumps got weakened, green became purple, blue became gold and Fortnite became about upgrading to strong weapons rather than finding them randomly on the map. I think that the Tac became the primary shotgun this season and I think that was entirely informed by what they learned from the Combat and the Drum.
Epic wants balance in the game, so a far-shooting shotgun reduces AR-use for many players, so that had to go. A shotgun that was automatic, rapid fire and meant to be used at extremely close range was also a good learning opportunity for Epic to improve the game as you had to be so obnoxiously close to an opponent to use it effectively that it was utterly worthless. I bet they figured out they had right the first time around, they just needed some tweaking.
So the Combat became the Tac. Increased headshot multiplier, fast rate of fire, works well at short-to-moderate distance. It was in the game all along, it just needed some tweaking. The Drum shotgun showed them that anything worse that the Tac couldn’t really be viable for players as a close-to-mid range weapon.
This is all speculation but by zooming out, it kind of looks like one big Tac and Pump test over the course of about a season. The good news is that I think they got it right with the launch of Chapter 2/Season 11. The lowest three Pumps could use a little more umph but the Tac is really fun. The sound of the purple and gold ones are great too.
Last note here, as you think about what to pick up, at the lower levels I’ll always take a green Tac over a blue Pump. The only time I’ll pick up a Pump is when it’s purple or gold or when I don’t have a shotgun and need something in my loadout. Other than that, it’s Tacs all the way down.
Sub-skill Drills – Corner Edits, Nice and Simple
Trevor is a great follow and he tweeted this last night, which caught my attention.
In this section, as we talk about drills to do, the most important thing is that you’re trying to do the drill in-game after you practice. We’re not trying to get better at drills, like obnoxious-but-useless Creative high ground retakes. We’re training on sub-skills of Fortnite that we can apply right after we practice them.
Today’s drill is simple: Corner Edits
Go into Creative and build a 1x1 around you so that your edits don’t remove your wall, but you only need to practice on one side of the 1x1.
Practice 10 edits on each corner, going in both directions, starting at the bottom of the wall and going up and starting at the middle of the wall and going down to edit the corners.
Remember: Do them slowly and controlled as you make sure you’re landing each and every rep. As you get better, speed up. The goal is not world-changing-scroll-wheel-reset fast. The goal is to be able to do a quick edit on an opponent in a game that’s not a simple window.
Then: Try to do at least one corner edit elim in-game to get better at the skill, not the drill.
—
Let me know how it goes! If you have a friend or a squadmate who you think would enjoy Fortnite Fundamentals, consider forwarding this email to them!
Happy playing. Talk to you Friday.