New Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Perk Is Perfect for Shutting Down Killstreaks

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has introduced a new perk in the game’s PlayStation 4 beta that’s looking like it’ll be one of the go-to options for shutting down enemy killstreaks before things get too out of hand. The perk is called “Assassin,” and whenever you have it equipped, you’ll receive an indicator on the map to show the location of an enemy who’s on a killstreak. It’s a perk that’s already caught the attention of the community, but some clarifications on how it works shared after it went live show that it’s not quite as oppressive as its description makes it out to be.

We’ve seen Assassin perks in Call of Duty games before, but not like this. The perk was mentioned in Activision‘s breakdown of different possible loadouts in the Black Ops Cold War beta, but it wasn’t until players got into the game and saw it for themselves that many people started talking about it. Assassin is found in the Perk 2 category with a description that reads as follows.

“Enemies on a killstreak have a crosshair indicator on your mini-map,” the description from Activision said. “Receive extra score for taking them down.”

As a reminder, “Killstreaks” in the sense of weapon-based rewards from stringing together kills are not in Black Ops Cold War. They’ve been replaced with “Scorestreaks” which, for the first time, do not reset on death. But stringing together kills in a single life does give you more points towards your Scorestreak, so going on a killstreak is still important and can easily turn the tide of a match.

From the description of the Assassin perk, it sounds like an anti-fun perk if there ever was one in Black Ops Cold War. The description makes it sound like there’d be a constant indicator on the map to reveal players who are on killstreaks. However, it appears that’s not the case.

Josh “FoxhoundFPS” Torres, community manager at Treyarch, responded to a post on Reddit that argued against the perk to clarify how it works. Torres said that the only way that special identifier would appear on the map is if a player would’ve already been revealed by something. That means that if a player shoots their unsuppressed weapon or does anything else to make them show up on the mini-map while they’re on a killstreak, they’ll be marked with a unique indicator to anyone using Assassin. If they stay off the mini-map, the special indicator won’t have a chance to show up.

“A player would need to be on a killstreak using unsuppressed weapons, not using Ghost while a Spy Plane is active, or not moving/defusing/planting/controlling streaks while having Ghost equipped while a Spy Plane is active in order to be identified with the special indicator on the mini-map,” Torres said in a follow-up comment.

So it’s not nearly as oppressive as it may have appeared to be at first, but it’s still a prime perk candidate for breaking someone’s momentum, keeping things even, and limiting enemies’ Scorestreaks.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s beta is live now on the PlayStation 4.