Update 3 : Double pump returns to fortnite! As of fortnite patch 3.5 all weapons now have an equip time and the pump animation has been removed. Relevant lines from 3.5 patch notes that relate to double pump:
Essentially this means that the pump animation has been removed (which was played when switching back to pump) and the weapon swap time is replacing it. However the weapon swap time is faster than the previous pump animation, buffing double pump. Not to the level it was before but better than after the double pump nerf
Update 2 : The new heavy shotgun (Epic and Legendary) has been added in patch V3.3.1. This is a slowish firing shotgun with longer range and higher damage than the Tactical. However as of late March players can now “double pump” with this new weapon for faster fire rate and improved DPS.
Update 1 : Double Pump has been officially nerfed. As of V.3.0.0 players must now repump the shotgun when switching back to it. Thoughts on double pump nerf
Large streamers finally discovered double pump in Fortnite Battle royale, three months after the games release. This has irreversibly changed the meta of the game. Now everyone wants pump shotguns and everyone wants to +forward into opponents faces. The change on voice in squads with randoms is amazing – players getting two pumps then making comments that would lead one to believe the game is in the bag. Here is one of the first mentions of the phenomenon on reddit – posts about two shotguns were quite frequent after this. Shotguns are not affected by bloom in the same way as Assault Rifles so were perfect for this trick.
Daequan is credited with being the “first” to mainstream this, however players have been commenting on reddit since the games launch about it in one way or another. As a player who used this before it mainstreamed the difference is night and day. If you think it is good now, imagine what it was like when literally noone was using it. In around ~7 days /played I encountered two players doing it.
The premise is simple and I have been using it, for more than just shotguns, since the games release. Some background is required to undersand how the double pump shotgun “trick"” works in FNBR. Fortnite weaponswitch time is quite fast, faster than the refire rate of the non-automatic weapons. This means that you are not at the mercy of the refire speed when using a slow firing weapon, which is typically how these weapons are balanced. Low rate of fire to punish missing and balance out high damage. At the very least with fast switch players can pull out another gun in place of nothing (reload time). The opportunity this offers seems lost on streamers and youtubers who are now pumping (pun intended) out tutorials for “How to double pump shotgun in fortnite” while overlooking that this applies to a large selection of Fortnites weapons. Or that they have been doing the same forever with sniper plus any other weapon.
Because the Fortnite weapon switch speed is fast the refire time can become the weapon switch speed when the refire time is slower than switch. This means that the low rate of fire weapons become much faster. The pump shotguns are likely the most popular because they hit for “the most” and are also relatively easy to land some damage with. You really only need one pump and another weapon to make use of the weapon switch speed in a meaningful way. Pump shotgun to open a fight into assault rifle, auto pistol or smg (of decent quality) is perfectly acceptable in order to avoid being a sitting duck. To be completely fair swapping to a high rate of fire weapon after hitting a solid pump shotgun hit is probably more reliable play anyway, provided you are in sub machinegun range. Think hittng rail or rockets and finishing with lightning gun in quake.
The slow fire rate weapons benefit from fast switching with higher rof weapons benefiting less. At some point it becomes a waste of time to switch between weapons to use the pump shotgun – switching to an smg (highest rof) for one bullet then back is an overall DPS decrease. Some examples that are good.
Weapon combos that benefit from swapping back and forth: Pump shotgun to pump shotgun. Pump shotgun to tactical shotgun. Pump shotgun to revolver. Pump shotgun to Burst Assault rifle (one burst). Pump shotgun to assault rifle for a few rounds. The revolver can replace the starting pump in any of these and for this combo it may be better to use the revolver for opening shot then sticking to the other weapon.
Some weapon combos benefit from starting on the pump and switching after landing significant damage. The low firerate could be negated by peeking corners until landing damage then swapping. Pump shotgun to Sub machinegun/assault sub machinegun/ Silenced sub machinegun. The assault rifle could also fall into this category once good opening damage has been landed. The higher rate of fire is potentially better for finishing. This means if you open a fight, land a high (70+) pump or tactical shotgun hit you only need to deal the remaining 30. Using and smg or assault rifle gives players have much higher rate of fire, meaning a single miss is less impactful. This was a common idea in older arena shooters.
Why this is interesting for shotguns, specifically pump action
It is very easy to use two shotguns. First you need to find two – a pump and tactical shotgun is a viable option until you find a second pump. Put both the weapons in slots that have easy to use binds, for example weapon slots 2 and 3. When you engage open with the higher hitting weapon for maximum front load. After the first shot swap to the second weapon and shoot, as you shoot swap back to the first weapon straight away and shoot again.. swapping back to the second weapon as you do so. Your character will diligently swap between weapons without playing the pump animation.
If the default weapon binds are not good then you could try binding individual weapons to mousewheel. Bind slot 2 to up and slot 3 to down. You can now scroll up/down to pick weapons 2 and 3 while shooting. It is a good idea to get used to individual weapon binds anyway so removing next/previous weapon from the mousewheel is good anyway.
The two main offenders for exploits are the pump shotgun and revolver. This is because weapon swap stops the refire animation from playing.
Does it matter if the shotguns are grey (common) or green (uncommon)? The quality of the shotgun barely matters. The grey pump shotgun deals 90 damage and the green deals 95. With 2.5* headshot modifier this gives 225 and 237 for full headshots. Less than 5% difference. Don’t sweat a grey pump.
Why fast switch is interesting for other weapons – RPG – sniper, etc
Fast weapon switch is interesting for other weapons, although not because it circumvents the refire animation.
Drawbacks to double pump – mechanical skill requirement – losing an inventory slot
Other mixtures that allow for interesting play – high hitting -> high rof low damage (rl/rail -> lg)
Firstly, in order to
Using a macro to double pump is not required. The action is gated by weapon switch speed which is (human speed wise) quite slow so macros do not make this more viable. Having said that it is easy enough to create a macro for double pump shotguns with most modern mouse or keyboard software. Logitech, Razer, Zowie, ASUS, Corsair, etc. There are two ways to go about this. Either create a macro that uses specific weapon slots or use next and previous weapon.
Is this balanced – can the weapons work without it, currently gives interesting mix, without much more limiting on weapons so maybe good
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Epic added first shot accuracy in patch 3.4 First shot accuracy details. This does not change how bloom/cone of fire explained below works but it does mean that you can now achieve accurate shots.
What is bloom in Fortnite? Fortnite weapon mechanics (overall) consist of two aspects. Weapons have a cone of fire “area” which grows and shrinks. The changing of the cone of fire area is incorrectly referred to as bloom. The fortnitebr reddit tends to use bloom to apply to all aspects of the crosshair cone of fire as well as boom, which can be confusing at times.
To make it simple :
First shot is not more accurate than what is messaged via the crosshair arms. First shot does not hit center point with any more frequency than any other time. The effective range of weapons in Fornite BR is controlled by cone of fire and bloom as they do not suffer from damage falloff. Bloom is the primary mechanic for the majority of the bullet weapons. Sniper rifles are 100% accurate but are projectiles. Shotguns seem to have their own rules – for them use the center point.
How to lower bloom in Fortnite is a good question. Moving, jumping and shooting will raise bloom. To lower bloom a player needs to stand still or crouch. Tap firing automatic weapons allows the size of the cone of fire time to reset between bullets.
Bloom applies to the following weapons : Sub machine gun (SMG), Assault SMG, Silenced SMG, Automatic Pistol, Silences Pistol, Revolver, Assault Rifle (AR), Burst Assault Rifle, Scoped Assault Rifle. The scoped AR is a stand out because its bloom is not messaged with the crosshair while zoomed, however it does seem to offer less bloom than the other weapons while not being 100% accurate.
In Fortnite BR the inside of the crosshair arms denote “bloom” – the circle where bullets can land. This changes with movement, crouching, shooting. The usual suspects that lower weapon inaccuracy in FPS. In order to hit 100% this circle needs to cover the target 100%. The centerpoint of the crosshair is meaningless for the AR/bloom weapons. Bullets do not appear to favor the center more than outside parts of the bloom circle. A better way to describe this might be the cone of fire – however the fortnite BR community seem to have attached the term bloom to everything related to weapon inaccuracy.
Technically “bloom” is the aim area shrinking or expanding based on player behavior. Bloom simulates recoil in Fortnite, however beyond controlling the size of the shooting area (minimise bloom) players cannot control the recoil like in CounterStrike and similar games. There is no recoil pattern to speak of. Some weapons like the shotgun and revolver do “kick” like recoil but this is very minimal compared to bloom.
In Fortnite the crosshair messages effective range of the guns. This is best visualised with an example.
The picture below is taken from a frame of thisvideo. The player posted it believing they were on point for the shot.
At that range, with the target taking up 20-30% of the circle you are not going to hit all shots. In fact the target it so small in relation to the bloom area that you are unlikely to hit many.
Its not that you should build. If you want to hit all those shots you need to engage at a closer range. This is the primary difference between the AR weapon rarity. The amount of bloom allowing for engagement at longer ranges.
Somewhat unintuitively aiming for headshots with the center dot will lower your accuracy since there will be a large section of the “bloom area” above the players head.
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This is a stub for an upcoming article
Are you looking for a Fortnite Battle Royale Weapon Guide? Perhaps you want to improve your Fortnite weapon skills with weapon stats and information. Whatever the reason the goal here is to give you as much information relating to FN weapons as well as some use cases for each.
>Note about this being different to PVE/Save the world
Please note that this information does not apply to PVE/Save the world gameplay. Weapon stats there are variable and to my knowledge not in line with what we for Fortnite Battle Royale Weapons. Even the weapon handling is different in PVP so using the PVE game to practice gunplay is not super useful.
Fornite weapons are color coded to denote their quality. This is a throw back to RPG color coding on weapon tiers.
Standard (White), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue), Epic (purple), Legendary (Gold).
> Weapon Stats
In Fortnite Battle Royale weapon stats are fixed. In the PVE game they change based on schematics, survivors and crafting, however in BR they remain the same across rounds and time. They cannot be improved via pickups, attachments or other player buffs.
Weapons have a number of stats that are viewable from the inventory screen. Some of these are carry over from the PVE game and can be ignored as they either do not change between weapons or are simply irrelevant. The most obvious that changes between weapons of the same type but different qualities is the damage. This ranges from 32 for a white Assault rifle to 39 for a yellow SCAR.
What is important
Damage numbers / Damage chart – weapon dmg
Fortnite weapon Accuracy
Fortnite weapon locations
Useful ranges (fortnite weapon ranges)
Best Weaponname
Best weaponname fortnite
fortnite weapons battle royale
fortnite battle royale weapon list
fortnite weapons tier list
fortnite weapons list
fortnite battle royale weapon stats
all weapons in fortnite battle royale
all guns in fortnite battle royale
fortnite battle royale weapon colors
Commonly refered to as
> Weapon mechanics
>Headshots
Headshot Damage
Headshot Percentage
> Weapon Switching
>SMG
>ASMG
>Revolver
>Automatic Pistol
>Pump Shotgun
>Tactical Shotgun
>Assault Rifle (M4)
+SCAR
>Burst Assault Rifle
> Auto Sniper
> Bolt Sniper
> Grenades
> Rocket Launcher / RPG
> Grenade Launcher
>Best weapons/guns
> Weapon Skins
> Drop rates / where can you get weapons
Shotguns not in chests?
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.. or at the very least consider the range at which you are doing it.
Players in many games jump by default during combat, usually with the intention to throw off their opponents aim. A common thread on this sub is the nerfing of jump. I don’t want to go down that discussion path but do want to draw your attention to an important point players miss. This may not apply to console quite as much I have never played an FPS/TPS there.
You don’t have to jump and jumping may be making you easier to hit with the fortnite weapons.
When players jump they take a very predictable and easily traceable path. This path making hitting them easier. The initial launch might throw off player aim but the resulting path is long enough for good players to adjust and hit you. Chaining jumps amplifies this. Now you may personally feel that you cannot hit players who are jumping, but players who can aim will be able to track you. You are lowering the likely hood of bad players kill you and raising the chance of good players killing you.
Do you need more Fortnite help.
On the flip side if you are a good player and jump in this way you may feel that it is exceptionally beneficial as your opponents have trouble shooting you. Due to the nature of matchmaking (or lack of) in fortnite if you are good you are likely playing against potatoes most games. This means that the “tactic” of jumping to avoid being hit is working, not because it is a good thing to do and throwing off peoples aim, but because the players you are playing against are not good at tracking/aiming.
They are players you would be beating anyway, and if you come up against players who can aim you are helping them. Jumping adds another “level” of RNG as you can never know your opponents skill. Statistically if it throws off aim in a greater portion of the player population it is better to do, but it will cause fights versus more competent players to be stacked against you. What should you do?
Are there times and places to jump in combat? For sure. Throw a jump in now and then. At longer ranges the amount offset jumping gives might make you harder to hit, or at the very least not hurt.
Building over your opponent then jumping off the ramp to shotgun them is another “bad” habit. If you are two floors up and you jump you are simply extending the amount of air time, which is easily tracked and giving them more opportunity to kill you. If you want to build up and then drop it probably better to just walk of the edge.
So what is the point? Consider when you are jumping. Consider that it may be easier for other players to hit you when you jump. Range is an important factor here – at longer ranges the distance up/down traveled to the amount of mouse movement your opponent needs to track will probably make it worthwhile.
This thread (http://bit.ly/2jC0Tic) prompted this post. And a scenario that played out earlier this week in game. A player at mid range running perpendicular to my view jumping continually. The first two jumps I whiffed because I tried to track him, then I adjusted, put the crosshair at the top of the jump arch and pinged him easily for the next three jumps.
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The fact that you can fight against shielded players and win, only to realize you have no shields to pick up off them really hurts the need to be aggressive or engage with shielded players. Full post here
Because you cannot tell if players are shielded that statement makes little sense. You cannot know if your opponent has shields, or in the vast majority of situations you cannot know until you engage. The outliers here are when you are in a house and hear your opponent drinking the potion. Beyond that it cannot even be inferred – to play “safe” you need to assume that every player you engage has 200hp. You cannot engage shielded players thinking you will gain anything from them because you cannot know they are shielded until you hit them.
How do shields work in fortnite? Where do I get armor in Fortnite Battle Royale are totally valid questions for new players as the system is not that straight forward and has been tacked onto since the games release in various ways.
Having said all that you don’t “only to realize you have no shields to pick up” because noone was ever thinking that.. because we know how shields work. They don’t drop.
I don’t think the tell should change because the benefit is not that large.
A player can find a SCAR but be outplayed by an enemy with a basic shotgun for example.
I disagree. If you land opening damage you can negate 50-100 shield before your opponent can react, either negating the shield and having a fight from an even (yet likely still in your favor) or outright killing them.
A basic shotgun is quite strong in relation to the health pool provided you setup correctly. A better comparison would be a grey AR vs SCAR – the AR can still win but toe to toe one is simply worse.
It adds massive gaps in player health
It does not add “massive” gaps. A single 50shield is negated with ~one bullet. Two shields are negated by two or a headshot. You are now fighting on even footing. You need to open the fight in a manner that allows you to give initial damage and remove any health advantage they have. You need to not commit to fights you cannot back out of if you are unsure of their stack.
The “solution” to shield is landing opening damage in a manner that allows you to kill the other player. If you are trading shots you are either 1) wasting shield or 2) dying because they had more stack/better aim.
To me, the entire shield system is flawed and the one in PUBG is much more fair and balanced.
It is different. PUBG is not “fair” as such either. My understanding is that it is a flat damage reduction on incoming damage depending on location hit. The quick google I did has lvl1 30%, lvl2 40%, lvl3 55%. I don’t know how the durability plays in here with how many hits you can take. Also I don’t know how many “fights” a piece can last durability wise.
For BR economy having armor drop makes a degree of sense as the game progresses. Fortnite br weapons accumulate to the end of the game and shields do not. Simple.
However from the perspective of “fair” the current shield make more sense. An equipable item with durability to last a decent number of fights is inherently more powerful than a single use item that is stripped through damage. Even for a single fight PUBG style leads to more uneven fights.
Lets explore this for comparisons sake. We will use 50% as the absorption for the PUBG style item.
100/100 is 200 health 100 + 50% absorption is 200 health for a full health bar
Both players have the same “starting” health.
In a fight with the current system when 100 shield damage is dealt we know that this damage (likely) does not need to be given again in this particular engagement. This is because the chance of my opponent having another shield pot in their inventory is relatively low. Particularly in squads where shield tends to be spread around. After shield is gone it is not coming back.
Under the PUBG system my opponent can take 100 damage, be on 50 health (100*/.5) and then heal and then make use of their armor again, extending their health pool further over the course of a single engagement.
From the perspective of “fair” and “balanced” the current setup is “better” because it cannot extend the health pool further after healing. If a player shoots you and removes your armor it is done. It is no longer a concern. With PUBG beyond needing to take the unknown factor of the armor into account (taking fights that you can close after dealing opening damage) as well as taking these fights in a manner where the player does not have time to heal up is making things even less “fair”. It forces close range encounters even more than the current setupid.
I agree that dropping armor/shields of some variety would be great. If absorption is lowered to 40% the whole shield would not be used on 100 health, leaving some in the pool. This would also weaken players health pool when full – 100/100@40% is ~170 health with ~30 shield dropped. This would have other interesting side effects like making shields that are used on lower health not impacting the players health as much. 50/50 would drop around 15 shield. Using shields on low health would not grant +100.
This would still suffer from bandaging in fight (to add more health to use shield) but it would not be as open ended as what PUBG durability seems to offer.
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Lets talk about ranges and what can be used at different ranges. Rather than quantifying what is best used we are going to look at what becomes ineffective.
Beyond this range the scoped weapons are required as well as (potentially) your enemy being unaware you are aiming at them while sitting still.
Ranges are defined by a weapons placing in an effective range hierarchy. This means that if the “close range” weapon is effective to 50m (an exaggeration) and other weapons are balanced around this then the “close range” weapon is a weapon that is viable to 50m. This is a decision the devs can make in relation to the scale of the game. For example in fortnite, if we were to have a weapon whose effective range is 5m but the entire map is open fields the weapon is essentially useless. This is what we see in the SMG – besides its low damage its range is also very close for “high” DPS.
So close range is a mixture of weapon performance as well as the flavor of the rest of the game. The environments, player movement speed and other factors determin.
Comparatively speaking the pump shotgun range is close, compared to the scoped weapons or the better quality assault rifles. We are not interested in what the shotgun meme is here, but more the overall breakdown of ranges in the game and what niches different weapons can fill.
The above break down is rough, but it is to demonstrate weapon grouping. I am aware of the RNG aspects of the different levels of weapons as well as this changing their ranges, however we are looking at this from a “can I use this weapon at a given range” rather than “I am going to reliably kill my opponent at this range”.
At the first post every fortnite weapon is usable, except the snipers. Not every weapon is ideal but they can be used. This is essentially the problem with SMGs, they can be used at this range but are never (?) ideal. As range increases options decrease. While shotguns may be viable at longer than expected ranges if their effectiveness was to be nerfed via range we simply end up with more weapons clumped together at the closer ranges.
One interesting aspect of this and why the projectile sniper is good is that there is also a max range cap unless players are standing dead still. This is important otherwise the effective weapon mix is skewed further towards long range weapons.
I am not going to make an argument for the shotgun continuing to be effective at the range it is, more point out how if its effective range is lowered we simply end up with even more weapons clumped around the shorter ranges.
Most of this is quite cut and dried. Assault rifles out perform shot guns at longer ranges and snipers out perform assault rifles at still longer ranges. There are a few exceptions that add flavor. One example is the automatic pistol – this is a trade off with the auto shotgun at closer ranges. Missing one shot from the auto pistol is not super important, where as missing one from the auto shotgun can be. This would be similar to the auto vs pump shotguns if their effective ranges were the same with different damage amounts.
Coming from arenafps I feel that close range is lacking in flavor but this is mainly due to the lack of variety in the weapons. For example I would like to see a more traditional style rocket launcher, rather than the super low ROF, massive explosion weapon we have.
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Fortnite BR is a departure from my usual quake/ut content. It is my first taste of the genre because the underlying games are not that interesting to me. Fortnite got my attention because of the art style and more arcadey combat so have been playing it since it was added to the base game. It is now free which has resulted in quite an active playerbase, very good for Australia/oceania as we now have our own servers and active community, which is important to me as playing with lag is not interesting. Have plans for a BR as a gametype article at some point but for now.. A streamer called Rhinocrunch seems decent at the game and has been trying to get a solo squad win – queue as solo in squad without checking fill.
Towards the end he sums up the reason he lost:
“I don’t know what I could have done, Its like RNG. If I would have just had, maybe, more shields and more meds, I think I would have been alright, honestly.”
If you have read my content you probably understand my stance on this, even though I have not written specifically about it. Decision making and playing a +ve game over relying on aim. A huge part of this is knowing when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive, I am talking it. Lets look at this guys video and see if we can work out where he went wrong. Jumping into the action at 12:26 after he cleans up in the spawn town and proceeds towards the circle. Timestamp 12:25.
I have watched a few of his clips on youtube and not seen him mention “My primary goal is to play aggressively”. The below is based on the assumption that his goal is to win.
12:25 – After leaving the landing zone town with a fistfull of excellent weapons (Purple scoped AR, Blue AR, Blue GL) he comes across two players at reasonably long range. They are unaware that he is watching them and decides to fire on their position from long range, in the open with his scoped AR. If the goal is to win this is a questionable decision. Firstly it is a 2v1 encounter in a location where you cannot “cut” one of the players off from the other to kill. At a basic level it is a open shooting gallery where you are hedging your accuracy+weapons vs their accuracy+weapons, but there are two players, so even if their aim is less than yours, the amount lower it needs to be in order for you to roll them is significant.
Continuing a fight, even in a 1v1 encounter after missing the initial shots as you lose the element of surprise and opening damage. The fight changes from you dealing opening damage (ahead on damage) and then a kill (perhaps with damage taken) to trade damage from the same health points.
So the taking of this fight is questionable. If the fight setup was different perhaps it would have been acceptable. At a closer range the initial shots have more chance (easier to aim, less effected by spread vs target size, maybe damage falloff?) to down one of the targets, leaving you in a 1v1 with the remaining player. You could also say that he missed his initial shots but with the moving targets we were looking at the maximum effective range of the weapon he had equipped so were less likely to take them down quickly.
Allowing the enemy players to return fire rather than high tailing it after whiffing his initial shots was a mistake if shields were super important, or at all in my opinion. The 2v1 odds as mentioned before are quite bad in a direct conflict type scenario like this. At this point of the game it is unlikely that you will stumble upon extra shield potions, so conserving what you have is a great idea. Taking that bullet and burning the shield potion was a bad move. Rhino is obviously aware that shields are important as his closing remarks focus on them.
So after reviewing how could we play this with a better outcome? The first is to simply avoid the conflict itself – go west around the hill and closer to Retail Row, before heading towards the circle again. If engaging is the goal, and there are arguments for/against this, then moving to the house on the hill before engaging is probably the best option, which is what Rhino ended up doing. He got two knock downs while taking more damage. This would put you closer (more reliable first kill) to the two enemy players while also taking you away from the open area which was key to them hitting your shield the first time. So if this had been the first choice he would have preserved the shield while also engaging from a less vulnerable position that was closer to the enemy players.
Sure, if you picked up 2-3 shield pots you could take more encounters, but you did not pick them up and playing to what you are dealt is important. Most people, myself included can stand to look at their decision making and polish their game from that perspective rather than writing losses off to RNG, bad team mates and the like. Not to say all situations are winable but approaching them from the best direction for what you want to accomplish is important.
Edit : About a day after posting this it dawned on me that more needed to be added in relation to RNG. This comment could also be phrased as “If I had hit those initial shots then I would have gone much better”. And this is correct, however the goal is to hone ones decision making and positioning in order to lower random or less reliable aspects of a game. Blaming aim or not hitting shots is similar to this. Of course there are bad situations (like the end of the video) where you are in a terrible location and have very little choice in the matter, but this is not what we are talking about. Yet even in those situations one could review a game and go “well maybe if I did X things would have turned out different”. Where X is not “If I had hit 12 headshots in a row”
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