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With all the heroes running around Fortnite Season 4, this season has managed to give players a few new toys to play with, and plenty of old favorites as well. The new Stark Industries Energy Rifle adapts to how you want to use it in real time, and gives players more control over how they want to play, but does that make it good enough to use?
Where to find the Stark Industries Energy Rifle
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Currently, the Stark Industries Energy Rifle can only be found at the Quinjet Portal Sites. It comes in Rare, Epic, and Legendary variants. The Rare version drops from the local Stark Robot mobs at the location, while the Epic and Legendary versions drop from the Stark Industries Supply Drones flying up above.
For stat comparisons, we’ll be looking at how the Legendary variant holds up against the other assault rifles in Fortnite to see if this new weapon is worth picking up.
Assault rifles in Fortnite
Assault rifles fill a pretty vital niche, they are often the best weapons to use at a medium range, they let you tag in some extra damage on players attempting to rotate, and are okay at weakening enemy builds. They are never the best weapon for a job, but they are always capable of doing whatever a Fortnite player needs.
There are three main stats to look at for assault rifles in Fortnite; damage, fire rate, and headshot multiplier. Depending on how these stats are balanced out will determine how an assault rifle is most optimally used.
Assault Rifle comparisons
The stats for the SCAR (1.5x headshot multiplier):
The stats for the Scoped Assault Rifle (2x headshot multiplier):
The stats for the Stark Industries Energy Rifle (1.5x headshot multiplier):
In-depth analysis of Assault Rifles in Fortnite
When looking at the stats, it’s clear why the SCAR has been the king of the assault rifles for so long. Nothing compares to the raw damage per second from the SCAR. With each shot hitting for 36, and a fire rate of 5.5/s, the SCAR can drop a Fortnite player with full shields 1.09 seconds (6 shots).
The Scoped AR might hit for more with each individual shot, but without landing consistent headshots the weapon is significantly weaker. Even if you do land consecutive headshots, it would still take 1.5 seconds to eliminate a player (3 shots), and be slower than a SCAR player hitting nothing but body shots.
So how does the Stark Rifle stack up? It blends the line between the two rifles, fulfilling both roles without committing to either. Compared to the SCAR, the Stark Rifle takes 1.36 seconds (6 shots) to deal over 200 damage, making it a little more than a quarter of a second slower than the SCAR.
However, since fights in Fortnite almost never consist of two players landing all their shots one after another, the Stark Rifle will hit for 3 points more than the SCAR on single stray hits, which does give it an edge in fights where both players are attempting to tag each other during rotations.
The Stark Rifle also has the added bonus of hitting for 52 in a single hit when aiming (78 on headshot), which could completely turn the tide of the fight. When aiming, it also ends up eliminating players with 3 consecutive headshots, just like the Scoped AR, but the added fire rate means that it can do that quicker.
What limits the Stark Rifle in Fortnite?
The biggest limiting factor for the Stark Rifle in Fortnite is that it only has a 15 round magazine size, in addition to having a slower than average reload time. This means that Fortnite players who use this should consider how long and how often they will be defenseless when using this weapon.
Nevertheless, the Stark Rifle is a weapon I expect will see some experimentation due to how individually impactful each shot is, and how comparable it is to both other Assault Rifles currently in Fortnite.
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