The new season of Warzone looks to be packed as we build towards Vanguard later this year. Beginning August 12, Season 5 of Call of Duty Warzone will bring along new map updates, new guns, two new perks, a new gulag, and a mid-season Clash mode.
New battle pass for Season 5: here’s what’s in it
As you would expect, we have a new battle pass with Season 5 of Call of Duty: Warzone, complete with three new operators, two new weapons, and a boatload of cosmetics. More on the new weapons later.
New Operator Kitsune heads up the promotion and story portion of the Season 5 update, prominently displayed across the battle pass. You unlock her immediately and there will be several challenges to unlock various cosmetics styles for her as you play. Reach level 100 to unlock her masked assassin look, complete with a Japanese-style devil mask.
Two new perks added to Warzone: Combat Scout and Tempered
In a big shakeup to the Call of Duty: Warzone meta, we have two new perks added for the first time in the game’s history.
First up is Combat Scout, a perk designed around providing teams with quick and reliable intel. Players running this perk will automatically ping any enemies they shoot, highlighting them in bright orange for the rest of the team to see. For those of you that struggle with giving clear callouts, this perk is for you. We suspect this will work similarly to snapshot grenades with a short lingering effect, allowing you to track and wallbang foes through soft cover.
The second new perk is Tempered, which shakes up the Armor meta. This essentially expands the maximum number of plates you can hold by condensing your Armor bar from three plates to two while maintaining the same level of protection. Players running Tempered will receive 75 points of protection per plate instead of 50 but are limited to two equipped plates at a time. This means you can plate up from 0 to full 4 times with one armor satchel, as opposed to twice without the perk. An added downside is that you also sacrifice your second perk slot, so goodbye Ghost.
Raven Software also indicated that they will be looking to tweak existing perks, either in the Season 5 launch patch or at a later date. One addition will allow High Alert to hear players running Dead Silence, which could have huge ramifications for the flanking meta.
New weapons: the EM2 and the TEC-9
This season sees the addition of a new assault rifle in the form of the EM2 and a new SMG with the fan-favorite TEC-9 making a first appearance in a Call of Duty game. Shooter fans will recognize it primarily from CS:GO, but it has also shown up in many other games.
The British EM2 is a slow fire rate gun similar to the C58, with built-in optics similar to the BO:CW Aug, saving you a potential attachment slot. As with most slow-firing guns, the TTK will really depend on how consistently you land those shots compared to the faster-firing guns such as the Krig 6.
I was expecting the TEC-9 to be a close-range monster, but it appears Activision have other ideas:
“Semi-auto submachine gun. Improved accuracy from longer ranges with low recoil and slower fire rate. Good damage output with moderate range.”
TEC-9 description in Call of Duty: Warzone
This seems to indicate that it will play similarly to the Milano.
Mid-season will also introduce a new pistol added in the form of the Marshal, which fires shotgun shells, and a new Cane melee weapon for bashing kids off of your lawn in style.
We will need to get our hands on these guns to fully test their stats and meta viability once the patch launches, but we expect both guns will be meta viable at launch.
Speedball Gulag: what to expect
With a layout ripped straight from the speedball portion of the classic Black Ops II map, Rush, the new Gulag will provide a fast-paced and slightly more focused experience than we have been used to in recent times. This Gulag is going to be considerably narrower than the previous two, with fewer options for sneaking all the way around behind your opponents, so be prepared for a straight-up gunfight.
Map changes, weapon balance updates, and new modes
It doesn’t look like we will be getting a massive map overhaul this time (we expect that will come in the build-up to Vanguard next season) but we are receiving a spattering of new points of interest across Verdansk. There are numerous Mobile Broadcast Stations dotted around the map that looks to offer mini-event style rewards similar to the satellite crash sites at the start of Season 4.
Later in the season, the red door teleportation network will start to do more than teleport you across the map to a loot room, but it is currently unclear what these changes will be.
As you would expect, there will also be a swathe of weapon balance changes, the previously mentioned perk balance tweaks, mid-season events including a new 50v50 Clash mode, which will pit two teams against each other across sections of Verdansk in a Battlefield Conquest-style game mode.
