Forward Intel Guide: Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War

In this article, we're going to be taking a look at what I consider to be probably the most underrated perk in Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War at this point simply because most people still don't understand how it works and this perk is Forward Intel.

Now, this is in the tier 1 slot and the description for it says see indicators for enemy reinforcements on your mini-map and then the mini-map also shows a larger area. So in this guide, I wanted to break this down and share just how powerful this perk can be.

So let's start this off with the most straightforward part of this the mini-map covers a larger area, most people understand what this means and we have had perks like this in the past in Call Of Duty but I did do the testing to find out exactly how much larger of an area the mini-map will cover and it turns out your mini-map diameter is increased by 60 which is a really nice boost and just showing you on the map overview just how much of Moscow. It covers actually a pretty good area especially compared to a lot of recent Call of Duty games that have really been shrinking down their mini-maps you actually get pretty decent coverage by default in Cold War. However, this is what the Forward Intel mini-map will cover, which is a very good portion of this map and Moscow's not a small map by any means. 

So already you can see that this perk could be very useful just for the increased mini-map size because that just gives you a lot more information to deal with if you are somebody that's good at utilizing your mini-map properly and for many people this part alone would be enough for them to choose this perk. 

However, now I want to take a look at the other part of this perk that many people don't really understand the description isn't really clear there. So let's take a look at what it means. For indicators to show up for enemy reinforcements after some testing it turns out. What this means is anytime an enemy player respawns you will get a red dot on them in real time without having to have any UAV up and without them firing an unsuppressed gun. So this perk essentially reads the spawns for you and especially early on in this game's life cycle. I think this is an extremely valuable perk to be selecting because we're all still learning the spawns and learning the spawn algorithms and how it works and how far you can push up before you trigger a spawn flip and this perk will give you feedback on that constantly all the time. It'll show you exactly when that spawn flips, it'll show you anytime an enemy is spawning and it looks like there is no limit to the range of this either you can be on the complete opposite side of the map and the red dots will still be showing up for you anytime an enemy is respawning. Now it turns out there is one counter to this and I thought this counter would be ghost that seems like the obvious one and it turns out ghost does not counter this at all. You will still show up as a dot just like everybody else when you respawn. So then I also tested ninja and cold blooded to see if those had any effects and no those ones aren't counters either. The only counter that I've been able to find to this Forward Intel perk is spycraft, which is another tier 3 perk which counters a lot of things but I really don't think too many people are using the spycraft perk at this point. I think the majority of players are currently using ghost or ninja on their classes and this means right now at this point in the game's life cycle at least you're gonna be seeing the red dots popping up all the time and you can pretty much rely on this perk to show you where the enemy is respawning at all times.

So that's the Forward Intel perk and exactly how it works in Cold War.

Now, I just wanted to share my thoughts on this perk like I said at this point in the game's life cycle. I think it's a really valuable perk just to help you get a head start on learning the spawns and how the spawns are working on the various maps in the various modes and therefore I am going to be putting this on a bunch of my classes not necessarily all of my classes because it is competing against flak jacket and tack mask and those are both really good perks but at least for now I'm definitely using Forward Intel on many of my classes.

Having said this, there is a big part of me that's thinking that a perk like this maybe shouldn't exist this completely. Replaces the need for learning how spawns work and actually understanding the spawn system, which is traditionally something that only the better players really learned how to master. Now, the perk just does it for you and I think for some people once they figure out how good this perk can be at doing that it's going to end up becoming a crutch for them. Now, for good players probably not so much I think they'll use it at first just to get a good handle over the spawn system and then once you understand the spawns and how they work then you don't need a perk telling you where the enemies are respawning because you'll just sort of know that intuitively.

So yeah at this point I kind of have mixed feelings on this perk I don't think it's too ridiculously overpowered. I just feel like it might be revealing some information that shouldn't just be revealed right up front by a perk. Now, of course it's also worth mentioning that for non-respawn game modes like search and destroy or VIP escort this isn't going to be the greatest perk out there unless you just want that larger mini-map coverage which is still very useful but that's obviously not gonna be telling you when people respond because people won't be respawning and with that that's pretty much it.