Epic Games secretly buffed Tac Shotgun in Fortnite v11.11 update
It appears that Epic Games have continued their trend of making unannounced changes to weapons in Fortnite Chapter 2, this time improving the Tactical Shotgun via the v11.11 update.
With patch notes now a thing of the past in Fortnite Chapter 2, players are no longer told about the majority of what each weekly update adds, changes, or removes.
It seems as though every week Epic make some sort of adjustment to one or more weapons, whether it be a buff or a nerf, but players are left to figure out what these changes are for themselves.
In this week’s v11.11 update, which was released on November 13 due to a one-day delay, the developers chose the Tactical Shotgun as the weapon they wanted to adjust, more specifically the gold Legendary and purple Epic variants.
In-game tests conducted by Reddit user ‘ZarteckNotbanned” discovered that Epic had considerably lowered that Legendary Tac’s pullout time, which is how long it takes for the weapon to be chosen, equipped from the inventory, and fired.
According to the video, the gun’s pullout time has been decreased all the way down to 0.484 seconds, 0.016 faster than the blue Rare Tac, which takes 0.500 seconds to use.
While the old exact pullout time of the gold Tac was never determined, this is a tell-tale sign that it has been reduced, since it would previously take longer than the blue version.
In fact, that is one of the reasons why some players, including star controller player Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff, preferred the Rare variant over the Epic and Legendary.
They complained that the two highest versions actually felt clunkier and slower to use than the blue one, which didn’t make sense since the purple and gold Tacs should really be better in every way.
Some players preferred the blue Tac over the purple and gold due to it having a lower pullout time.The exact pullout time of the purple Epic Tac Shotgun wasn’t included in the video, but it’s assumed that too was reduced to be lower than the Rare Tac. It’s not currently known whether it’s the same as the Legendary or slightly higher.
This change could be enough to sway the opinion of NICKMERCS and other players who preferred the blue Tac, so we could see the superstar streamer start using the purple and gold versions a lot more.
That said, however, it’s unlikely that these two weapons will be ranked higher than the Rare and Legendary Pump Shotguns anytime soon, since those still appear to have the faster pullout times and do a whole lot more damage to boot.
In most players’ eyes, the Legendary and Epic Pump Shotguns are still the best to use.As mentioned above, this is hardly the first time that Epic have made secret changes to weapons and items in Fortnite without alerting the player-base.
Recently, they secretly nerfed shields, much to the chagrin of Mixer star Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, and also reduced the maximum number of Grenades players could carry in each inventory slot down from 10 to six.
Previously, Epic made several waves of unannounced weapon adjustments, such as adjusting the reload times of several guns, implementing a buff for the Legendary Burst Assault Rifle, and, of course, adding the Harpoon Gun, the first new weapon in Chapter 2.