Fortnite update 12.21 is now available on all platforms and update 12.20 has been live for more than a week. With limited patch notes available, we’ve put in the hours to find all the changes that have been made to the game. Major updates have happened with regards to C4 explosives and the harpoon gun in competitive arena mode. Besides that, the major inclusion of helicopters to the game is what the community is buzzing about.
Choppa make rotations easy now!
First and foremost, nope, helicopters are not included in Arena and any other competitive mode that’s live at the moment. Keeping that in mind, lets head straight to its use in the game and how pro’s are using the vehicle.
Choppa Breakdown
- Mobility: Rotations for a whole squad is now practical during the early game. Irrespective of how far the circle is, players can now start off at various remote locations and rotate in-time for the next zone.
- Fall Damage: Unlike many expectations, jumping from the helicopter does not enable glider re-deploy. Hence, makes sure you’re at optimum height while jumping off the Choppa. Jumping from any height above two floors will result in its respective fall damage.
- Health and Visibility: The helicopter has a total of 2000 hp and is invisible to opponents if you take it really high. The helicopter takes damage on shots and when the choppa blades hit anything including opponent builds. Flying the choppa really high (staying invisible) and dipping rapidly while pressuring the opponents is the aggressive approach while using the choppa. The safest way though would be to always maintain a safe height while flying, which means flying low. The helicopter explodes knocking the player in it and lands straight down if opponents shoot it down successfully. It’s risky business staying on a choppa if your visible and low on choppa HP.
- Firepower: It’s a risky strategy to try and pressure opponents from the helicopter if you’re playing solo. If you’re a sniper player though, you can switch seats and take shots at players already engaged in fights. Landing on opponents directly damages them only by 50hp and might force you to jump out early if your being AR sprayed by your opponent.
For squads or duos, the helicopter might be “OP” in so many ways if you play it right. The secret lies in selecting the right guns if you’re a passenger on the helicopter. A passenger with a Mini-gun seems to be the right choice for duos. Besides the mini-gun, any other gun with apt range and fire-rate is the meta. If aggressive gameplay is your style, Skye’s AR is another weapon that enables a team to enter into fights by breaking builds and tagging the high ground player.
Other important competitive changes
C4 Explosives: The number of C4s you get from loot has decreased from 3 to 1. This change reflects only in Arena and competitive playlists. Players are shifting to the good ol’ grenade throws because of this change. Grenades thrown by a team in perfect sync instantly destroys teams that are turtled up within their huge bases.
Harpoon Gun nerfed: Harpoon gun had a feature in which you could pick up ground loot from a distance. Well, that feature has been nerfed in this update. Players used this feature during intense late-game Arena matches to steal mats whenever they saw a player get eliminated. This was a common strategy used during end game moving circles and now it has been removed.
Grappler nerfed: The fire-rate of the mythic grappler has been decreased drastically. Upon release, the mythic grappler could be used back to back with almost no delay and unlimited usage. Now, the grappler still has unlimited usage but the delay between each use has increased to almost one second. If grappler is to your go-to mythic item, make sure you get a feel of it again before you attempt anything as the change is immediately noticeable.
A quick update 12.21 has been rolled out this week and most of the changes were fixes to many existing bugs. Apart from that, “Legacy controls” for the controller have been permanently disabled in this new update.
I hope you’ve all stayed indoors safe and sound, playing the games you love. Do let us know in the comments what your thoughts about the latest patch.
