Metas in Fortnite come and go, but one of the most dominant has revolved around using SMGs. With the “double pump” shotgun method neutered at the start of Season 5, these weapons have taken over the game and in some cases outright replaced Assault Rifles. Because of this, many community members began voicing their concerns about their extreme effectiveness in battle. While it was unclear for some time whether Epic Games would rebalance these guns, many can breathe a sigh of relief after tonight.
Announced on Fortnite’s official Reddit page, SMGs received a large rebalancing to make them less effective at extended ranges. This hotfix will affect both the regular SMG and newly introduced Compact SMG. Here are the patch notes for the SMG nerfs:
- SMG and Compact SMG accuracy bonus reduced from 35% to 15%.
- SMG damage reduced from 19/20/21 to 17/18/19.
- Compact SMG damage reduced from 23/24 to 21/22.
- SMG fire rate reduced from 13 to 12.
- Compact SMG fire rate reduced from 11 to 10.
- SMG, Compact SMG, and Silenced SMG damage falloff.
- Range reduced from 2400/3500/5000 to 2000/3000/4000.
- Percentage reduced from 100/80/65% to 100/70/40%.
- Rare SMG and Compact SMGs drop rates slightly reduced.
This patch is currently live and should alleviate a lot of the headaches these weapons caused. Hopefully, with their accuracy and damage reduction, we will see Assault Rifles begin to make a comeback. Remember, this does not affect the Drum Gun and we suspect this gun will see even more use in the coming weeks.
How the meta will land after this is still unclear, but it’s certainly a right step to keeping Fortnite’s multiplayer balanced and enjoyable.