Ninja breaks down why he’s radically changed his strategy for Fortnite Season 9

Fortnite Battle Royale‘s Season 9 has forced him to change his strategy, explaining some of his new techniques during a Week 7 Fortnite World Cup qualifying match. 

The popular Twitch streamer, who has a huge following of over 14 million on the platform, was accused of hiding from opponents by some members of his chat during the May 26 broadcast. 

Regular viewers of his will know that he has always enjoyed the buzz of constant offense, going toe-to-toe with others in gunfights, and pushing other teams, but it looks as if Ninja has started to adapt his gameplay in order to give him a better chance of handling the current meta. 

“It’s not that I run from everybody,” Ninja explained, camped out in a building, editing windows to spy on enemies either side of him. “It’s that, if you don’t die in a fight, you make it to the late game where you get nine placement points and potential points if you win the game, which you don’t get if somebody kills you or if you get third partied.”

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Good builders have been provided with some counterplay in the form of the Drum Gun, which – despite efforts from Epic Games to nerf the weapon with the v9.01 update – still has a particularly useful high rate of fire to tear down structures. 

Perhaps that could be one reason why a more careful approach has been adopted by the streamer. 

The game has undoubtedly thrown more obstacles in the way of players looking to consistently make it to the latter stages of matches, and the streamer has been using this approach – specifically – to rack up more points in the Fortnite World Cup Online Open.

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He has been unable to qualify for the Fortnite World Cup though, even with a switch to a more measured approach. Fans of his will be hoping that he can qualify in Week 8’s Online Open, which will run between June 1-2. 

Whether or not he will continue to be a more measured player as he tries to qualify next time around remains to be seen, but the meta at the time will probably have a huge influence on that.