Epic Games has confirmed that the strongest sniper rifle in Fortnite: Battle Royale will stay as it is for some time.
Developer Eric Williamson said today on a Reddit thread that “although balance is always subject to change, we don’t currently have any plans to make changes to the Heavy Sniper Rifle.” He was replying to a thread where the person who started it was trying to explain why they thought it made no sense to nerf the weapon.
Some players on the Fortnite subreddit have been asking Epic to make the Heavy Sniper Rifle weaker. In the current v8.10 update, the gun comes in Epic and Legendary variants dealing 150 and 157 damage to characters and 1,050 and 1,100 damage to structures in a single shot, respectively. It has by far the strongest damage across all weapons in the game, beating even explosive weapons like Rocket Launchers and Grenade Launchers.
Because of its high damage, it can easily kill opponents who aren’t too far from it in a single shot if they have no shield.
The downside to the Heavy Sniper Rifle is its reload time of four seconds, which punishes its user a lot when they miss a shot. That’s more than enough time for opponents to destroy the user’s cover while they’re trying to reload the gun—and especially in Fortnite, it’s enough time for someone to rush the user with a huge build and kill them with a shotgun.
Despite its raw power, Epic seems to understand the Heavy Sniper Rifle is balanced enough to not need changes right now. Players who hate playing against it might have to keep building to block its shots and hope they avoid getting shot from the sides.
