At Long Last, Fortnite's BRUTE Mechs Have Been Nerfed

If there's been a running theme to Fortnite season X so far, it's been "everybody hates the BRUTE mechs." While you'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd complain about rideable mechs in general, the way BRUTEs have been implemented has led players to complain that they're oppressively overpowered. Epic has tried to tweak the BRUTE at various points throughout the season, but complaints of the mechs being OP persisted.

Earlier this week, Epic even introduced a new item seemingly designed to destroy BRUTEs in one shot, but now the company has taken things one step further. It's nerfed the BRUTE significantly, reducing the damage done by its rockets, increasing the cooldown on its dash, and removing the ability to collect materials by stomping through the environment.

Specifically, Epic has reduced the maximum number of rockets a BRUTE can fire at once from 10 to 6, while at the same time reducing the BRUTE's rocket rate of fire by 56%. The radius of the BRUTE's rocket explosion has also been decreased by 42%, so while there's no direct reduction in damage done by the BRUTE's rocket launcher, these should all limit the mech's burst capabilities.

The BRUTE's dash has seen its cooldown increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds, and the velocity it gains by dashing in the air has been reduced by 33%, so it'll be less mobile too. From here on out, neither the driver nor the passenger will receive materials from destroying environmental items, but to balance out that change (which is admittedly pretty drastic), the material cost of using the gunner's overshield has been reduced from 200 to 75 and the BRUTE's health has been bumped up from 1,000 to 1,250.

So, it isn't all nerfs for the BRUTE, but the few buffs that are there are significantly outweighed by the changes intended to decrease the mech's power levels. On top of all of this, Epic has once again decreased BRUTE's spawn chance, making it possible that no BRUTEs will spawn in the early rounds of the match.

While the BRUTE remains in the game, these nerfs should hopefully ensure that it's no longer the terror it was in the first part of season X. Along with these changes to the BRUTE, Epic has also disabled the Junk Rift in Arena playlists as it works on fixing an audio issue with the item, though it's still available in other modes. These changes have already been implemented in the game, and to read more about them – including Epic's reasoning for each individual change – be sure to check out the official Fortnite site.