The season nine nerf to the Drum Gun spawn rate in Fortnite: Battle Royale wasn’t enough, several top streamers and pros say. The gun continues to be overpowered and easy to use against overly defensive players.
Star streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins said the gun needs to be vaulted or have its respawn rate reduced even further by changing its rarity to Epic and reaching the spawn rate of the Boom Bow. He shared a video of him jokingly raging after being eliminated in a match and wrote, “Me every time I die to a Drum Gun.“
Other players think reducing the spawn rate of the Drum Gun even further will make balance worse, and they say the first reduction was already bad. “If you only decrease the spawn rate than that leaves bigger disparity of power in game,” a person wrote in the Fortnite competitive subreddit. “Whoever gets the best RNG and finds the OP weapon first now has an even bigger advantage because it’s more likely he is going to run into somebody without an overpowered loadout.” If Ninja’s wishes come true, this lack of balance can become worse.
The theory behind finding bad to nerf spawn rates is that if a gun is too strong but everyone can find and use it, there’s a balance of some kind. If it becomes more and more exclusive, then only a few people will have it to demolish their opponents.
The third group of players also agree that the Drum Gun is still in a suboptimal state for competitive, and that’s why Arena and professional competitions should have a separate loot pool, like the big-team mode Team Rumble has. That way, both competitive players would have an environment where certain weapon spawns are more controlled and casual players could still use the Drum Gun for fun as much as they want.
Any of these alternatives seem to be far from what Epic Games might want for the Drum Gun today, based on Fortnite’s latest update. If any changes are coming, players should see them as soon as the next patch drops this week.
