Fortnite's BRUTE Mechs Are Getting A Competitive Nerf

Ever since Fortnite season X launched a couple of weeks ago, the new BRUTE mechs have dominated discussion about the game. In short, a lot of people believe the mechs are overpowered, and some are worried about the implication their presence will have competitive play throughout the course of the season. Epic has already done some things to address those concerns, but now it's going one step further by restricting how often BRUTEs will appear in competitive modes.In a post to the Fortnite subreddit, Epic shared changes it's implemented to scale back BRUTE spawn rates in the Tournament and Arena playlists. Perhaps the biggest change comes right at the beginning of the match – previously, there was a 100% chance that 2-4 BRUTEs would spawn across the map at the start of the match. After this update, there's a mere 21.5% chance that 1-3 of them will spawn.

So, not only is the number of start-of-match spawns being decreased, there's a significant chance that none of them will spawn at all. However, BRUTEs don't just spawn at the beginning of a match, as they also spawn with each Storm circle. Those spawn rates have all be changed too, and it looks like they've been significantly decreased across the board:

Storm 1

44% chance that between 1-4 BRUTEs will spawn (previously was 100% chance that between 2-4 BRUTEs would spawn)

Storm 2

40% chance that between 1-2 BRUTEs will spawn (previously was 100% chance that between 1-3 BRUTEs would spawn)

Storm 3

40% chance that between 1-2 BRUTEs will spawn (previously was 66% chance that 2 BRUTEs would spawn)

Storm 4

10% chance that 1 BRUTE will spawn (previously was 50% chance that 1 BRUTE would spawn)

Storm 5

3% chance that 1 BRUTE will spawn (previously was 10% chance that 1 BRUTE would spawn)

So, as you can see, those are some pretty dramatic decreases in spawn rates throughout the entire match, and though they'll still be around, they shouldn't have as much of an influence on a match as they do now (or at least that's the hope). Last week, Epic announced even more changes to the BRUTE, saying that while they'll remain in Tournament and Arena matches, players will be able to see where the mechs are aiming their rockets and even hear an audio cue when they're being targeted.

Epic also said last week that it will close an exploit associated with the BRUTE's boost mechanic, and that all of these changes will be going live in the 10.10 content update. In the Reddit post about these spawn rate changes, Epic also said that it will continue to monitor BRUTE's performance in the lead up to this weekend's Champion Series event, so don't be surprised if we see BRUTEs tweaked once more this week.