Fortnite community begs Epic to vault or nerf “overpowered” Heavy Sniper

The high-damage Heavy Sniper rifle has drawn the ire of the competitive Fortnite community, as players make a case to Epic that a weapon with that much power shouldn’t be so readily abundant as it currently is.

The Heavy Sniper has dominated the meta of Arena matches in Fortnite since its permanent unvaulting at the beginning of Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 2.

With the introduction of the new facilities guarded by henchmen NPC bosses, it joins an arsenal of unique Mythic quality weapons that can inflict insane amounts of damage.

But Fortnite players are upset that the Heavy Sniper rifle can be just as damaging as the previously mentioned Mythic weapons, but are far more available during the game.

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Each of the henchmen boss’s weapons only appear once in a game to whoever kills the boss, but the Epic and Legendary Heavy Sniper rifles can appear in chests, on the ground, and in Supply Drops. According to the Fortnite wiki, the Legendary version is guaranteed to appear in the drops.

While many players share the sentiment that the damage number itself isn’t that OP, several agree that it appears way too frequently given what its damage output is. Several posts have appeared on the competitive Fortnite subreddit since the 12.10 update, which increased the amount of Heavy Sniper drops.

The Heavy Sniper delivers 150 or 157 base damage to players, depending on whether its Epic or Legendary quality. This means players are required to have full health and at least 50 shields just to survive a body shot. It also destroys most building structures in one shot.

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Popular Twitch streamer Turner ‘Tfue’ Tenney has already experienced first-hand how frustrating the abundance of Heavy Snipers is, and took to Twitter with the #VaultHeavySniper tag.

The Heavy Sniper currently deals the most damage per shot than any weapon, including the Mythic quality weapons from Henchmen NPCs.

While not every player and pro is calling for changes to the Heavy Sniper spawn rates, plenty are making enough noise that Epic might consider changes in the next update.

For those that aren’t fans of the new Heavy meta, you might just want to steer clear of open fields for a while.