A Quantitative Approach to Weapon Selection in Fortnite [Part 2]

One of the most persistent and perplexing questions in Fortnite pertains to weapon selection, specifically, what weapons should I fill my loadout with? In the first part of this series we discussed a new metric and a ranking of all similarly classed weapons to find the most lethal weapons in each category. In this article, we will introduce the concept of weapon rarity to find out if it should change your weapon selection decision making and answer the following questions: 

As a reminder we will be using StK (Seconds to Kill) metric that we established in the first part of this series. This metric measures the lethality of a weapon, in this case the lower the value the better. In order to calculate this metric we used Damage per Second, Reload Time, and Opponent Total Health (shield, overshield, full health) to determine how quickly a stand alone weapon can deplete an opponents health, (the full calculation able to be found here). In some cases in the data, due to missing data, we have modeled the performance in terms of StK using the performance improvement slope of similar weapons. 

1. What is rarity? and how does it pertain to weapons?

Rarity is a common concept in Fornite and used to correspond to a number of items in the game. The rarity of an item generally corresponds to its availability and effectiveness within the game, for weapons this means more rare weapons are generally more lethal. The following chart summarizes the standard hierarchy used by the game starting from most common to most rare and the corresponding improvements to weapon lethality on average. (We use the already derived StK metric to evaluate each weapon).

Takeaways: It is fairly safe to assume that any increase in rarity corresponds to an actual increase in the efficacy of the weapon of between 5 -10%. In total, this means that Legendary weapons are 26% better than Common weapons (2.0 vs. 2.7) with the largest single tier lethality improvements coming for Uncommon over Common weaponry (+9.3%) and Legendary over Epic weaponry (+7.9%). So consider looting thoroughly to unlock the best weapon selection.

For now, I have greyed out the Mythic and Exotic weapons because the data for these types of weapons is very limited and is only there to be comprehensive not necessarily to inform decisions. 

How do I evaluate specific weapon vs. weapon selection decisions?

As you will realize almost immediately if you play the game, selecting weapons of varying type and rarity can get confusing. Is a Rare DMR better than a Common Striker Burst Rifle? Or a Legendary Striker Pump Shotgun better than a Green Auto Shotgun? These are specific questions we will aim to answer.

Let's first compare Shotguns:

Conclusion: We don't have full data (the dotted line is data extrapolated from the lethality improvement slope for other shotguns, the mythic value is the only actual data point we have), however, using the extrapolated trend line. Users should choose any type of auto shotgun over any rarity tier of the striker pump or the two-shot. If we ignore the Auto Shotgun trend line we can say the same for the Striker pump over the Two-Shot shotgun. Here the player should index highly on weapon type when making weapon evaluations.

Pistols:

Conclusion: Quite clearly the sidearm pistol is significantly better than the revolver for every rarity level significantly outperforming on StK, but it does appear to have a much flatter lethality improvement trend than other weapons.

SMG:

Conclusion: We are using modeled data to compare many of the data points for both the combat and the Stinger SMG, however, it appears that you should choose the Combat SMG for same tier trade offs generally. In cases of different tier tradeoff decisions, you should only select the Stinger if it is two rarity levels better than your combat comparison.

Assault Rifle:

Conclusion: The Ranger Assault Rifle is better than the Hammer Assault Rifle for all levels of rarity, however, you should choose the Hammer over the Ranger if it is at least one rarity level higher.

Scoped Rifles:

Conclusion: Clearly the Boom Sniper Rifle, Striker Burst, and DMR are significantly more lethal than the Heavy Sniper Rifle. It also appears that Striker Burst and DMR are very similar in their capabilities. Having said that Striker Burst is marginally better at all levels than the DMR and you should only choose the DMR over the Striker Burst if the DMR is at least two rarity levels better than the DMR you are comparing it to. In this particular analysis, I don't think it is worth while to attempt to extrapolate the trend line for the Boom Sniper Rifle given the lack of sniper rifle data but it appears significantly better than the Heavy Sniper Rifle at all levels. 

Collectively, players should be keenly aware of the following when it comes to rarity and weapon selection: 

1. Higher rarity tiers correspond with higher levels of weapon lethality (5%-26% improvement) depending on rarity type. 

2. Within a category, a single gun generally outperforms all others in the category for the same rarity tiers. 

3. In cases of SMG, AR, and Scoped Rifles moving away from the category top performer makes sense in situations where the opposing gun is 1-2 tiers better than the top performer. 

If players take this data into account they can materially improve their weapon efficacy and increase their odds of winning. 

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