Combat Shotgun was the name of a semi-automatic shotgun in the Battle Royale mode of Fortnite added in Season 9. This one replaced the Pump Shotgun in the 9.00 patch. The gun was available in Rare, Epic, and Legendary variants. Shells are used as ammunition.
Combat Shotgun is able to hold 10 bullets at one time, fire 10 pellets in a spread, and has a headshot multiplier of 1.5x. It had a really tight bullet spread, that makes it much harder to hit shots at close range. However, this one and its very low damage dropoff used to allow it to deal damage at more than 100 meters until it was nerfed to 60 meters. The special thing about Combat Shotgun is that you could reload two Shells at the same time.
On September 4th, 2019, the Combat Shotgun was vaulted with the 10.20.2 hotfix. Aside from the Combat Shotgun, some other vaulted ones were Drum Shotgun and Proximity Launcher, which was a main surprise to players. With these vaults, the shotguns in Fortnite are back to just the pump ad tactical, like it was at launch. The developer of Fortnite called Epic Games wanted to introduce weapons that would cut down on the dominance of the pump shotgun but it looks like those efforts have failed. To go along with these weapon vaults, they brought two weapons out and back into the game. The thing named the Automatic Sniper Rifle is the big one and it got a buff to its damage since it was considered to be underperforming if you compare to the other snipers. Another one is the Suppressed Assault Rifle, but no changes were made to the weapon.
Another main change with this hotfix is even more Brute nerfs as Epic Games work on getting them into a good spot. Almost immediately at the beginning of Season 10, players of Fortnite complained about the mechs and after some attempts at retooling them, they never really felt at home in the game. All the changes focus on spawn rates and are designed to lower the impact the mechs have on the late game scenarios. Despite having spawns changed in the previous one, a lot of games still came down to what player had a mech which was not always an enjoyable experience.
Complete Fortnite v10.20.2 patch notes
Weapons and items
- Vaulted: Combat Shotgun, Drum Shotgun, and Proximity Launcher
- Unvaulted: Suppressed Assault Rifle (Epic/Legendary) and Automatic Sniper (This one was underperforming relative to some of the other Sniper Rifles. The adjustment to damage should make the sniper more desirable as an alternative long-range weapon).
Starting with storm phase three, Brute currently has a 33.3% chance to spawn and will get significantly slower when the storm closes, eventually blocking a spawn altogether. It will not necessarily make the any less powerful but it does promise that you will be seeing fewer games being decided by them which is a step in the right path.
