Fortnite is about to see a rebalance for shotguns in a patch this week, and a new shotgun to test it out is coming as well.
Surprisingly, this weapon wasn’t leaked, but has shown up in Fortnite’s login screen itself as a preview of what’s to come this week. It’s an epic/legendary variant of the pump shotgun, which currently only goes up to a blue rare version, and gun/Call of Duty enthusiasts will see that it resembles the famous real-life SPAS-12 shotgun. The official description confirms that’s what it is rather than a new gun altogether:
“Epic and Legendary variants of the Pump Shotgun!”
Well, there you go.
It is likely no coincidence that this legendary pump shotgun will appear at the same time as a long-coming pump shotgun “rebalance” that Epic has already been talking about. Here’s what Epic has had to say about what exactly is changing:
“The upcoming 6.31 update will include a Pump Shotgun rebalance to improve effectiveness: damage will increase in close quarters and range will be reduced slightly. Additionally, ALL shotguns will have a minimum damage of 3 pellets (even if only 1 or 2 hit).”
Later, it was revealed that the blue pump shotgun will do 10 damage a pellet. We don’t have any damage/stat info for the new epic and legendary versions, but it stands to reason they’ll be even more than that, and these are going to be formidable weapons when in the right hands.
Shotguns have been buffed and nerfed, buffed and nerf countless times in Fortnite’s history. At various points in time, the blue pump shotgun has had reigns of being one of the best guns in the game, despite it only being a rare weapon, but it’s also a model plagued with inconsistencies to the point where its often low damage, close quarter “misses” have been turned into a meme by the community. Part of this rebalance is to address that. There’s a partial nerf here too to range, but we’ll have to see what exactly that means in practice.
It seems likely that the SPAS-12 legendary pump may have the potentially to arrive pretty overpowered, given that’s how most new weapons have appeared in the game as of late, as we saw with the compact SMG before it was nerfed. These changes do seem like they will probably result in an overall buff if damage can be dished out more consistently, but we’ll have to see it in action when the patch arrives tomorrow or the next day.
Check back here later when hopefully someone will be able to dig up some early information about damage and other stats with these new guns. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the SPAS soon, and we will not have to wait much longer, it seems.
