Here's what changed in the latest update for Call of Duty BO7. By S.E. Doster on November 21, 2025 at 11:25AM PST Treyarch has rolled out a new update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, and the patch notes detail plenty of the changes discussed in the studio's recent Dev Talk video. This includes a buff for guns in the submachine class, a nerf for the powerful Drone Pod field upgrade, and adjustments to Black Ops 7's controversial aim-assist. There's been plenty of community debate around Black Ops 7's aim-assist, which features greatly reduced rotational aim-assist compared to recent Call of Duty games. Black Ops 7 launched with a new right-stick aiming requirement for achieving maximum rotational aim-assist strength, meaning that when the right-stick isn't used or isn't tracking a target effectively, players experience minimal rotational aim-assist strength. This minimum aim-assist is a 35% reduction from what players experienced in the beta. Want us to remember this setting for all your devices? Now Playing: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Multiplayer Review - Strong Map Design Makes Multiplayer A Blast In the patch notes, Treyarch says the studio "slightly overshot" its target balance, and a small tuning change is made to reduce this aim-assist penalty from 35% to 25%. "Our goal for this new mechanic and our other aim-assist range changes is to provide the most competitive experience for all players and inputs," the developer says. "Aim Assist is one of the most integral components of gameplay feel, so it's crucial for us to settle on tuning that both feels great to play with and hits our balance goals." To help provide better balance with Black Ops 7's assault rifles and submachine guns, Treyarch has included a damage range buff across all submachine guns in the game, and all of the assault rifles will feature slightly increased flinch. The developer says this is just the beginning of the weapon tuning players can expect in the coming weeks. Additionally, the game's powerful Drone Pod field upgrade is now nerfed with the following changes: The update includes Zombies changes meant to improve the main Ashes of the Damned Easter egg experience for all players, including adjustments to the difficulty of the boss fight. The boss fight's Hoard Husk will now regenerate after a minute of collection and give 25% more health, and the boss's missile barrage has reduced effectiveness. It also reduces damage to passengers riding in Ol' Tessie and removes the repair cooldown. To improve the Zombies quest for solo players, Zursa the zombie bear will no longer spawn in solo boss fights before round 100 and will have reduced speed. This new update also unlocks the campaign's Endgame mode for all Black Ops 7 players to enjoy. Those who unlocked Endgame naturally by beating the campaign will receive a variety of Black Ops 7 rewards. Black Ops 7 features double level XP, weapon XP, and GobbleGum earn rates from now until November 24. The full Black Ops 7 patch notes can be found below, as shared by Activision. Season 1 of Black Ops 7 begins in December, which will add the game's first battle pass, Warzone integration, additional multiplayer maps, and a brand-new Zombies map. Season 1's Astra Malorum Zombies map trailer reveals the fight against the undead is headed into space. We intentionally took a big swing with our Aim Assist changes between Beta and Launch. Now that we've had time to collect data and player feedback, we're making a slight adjustment as we do with all aspects of gameplay over time to hit our targets and address the wide range of feedback. Black Ops 7 launched with a new right-stick aiming requirement for achieving maximum Rotational Aim Assist strength. When the right-stick isn’t used, or isn’t tracking a target effectively, players now experience a minimum Rotational Aim Assist strength. At launch, the minimum Rotational Aim Assist was a 35% reduction from the Beta. Our goal for this new mechanic and our other Aim Assist range changes is to provide the most competitive experience for all players and inputs. This slightly overshot our balance target, so we’re making a small tuning adjustment to the minimum Rotational Aim Assist. Aim Assist is one of the most integral components of gameplay feel, so it’s crucial for us to settle on tuning that both feels great to play with and hits our balance goals. As always, we'll continue to closely examine game data and player feedback. We are pushing an early round of weapon tuning that aims at addressing some of the common pieces of feedback we have been seeing at launch. The main area of feedback has been SMG balance, particularly in relation to Assault Rifles. Most of our changes today aim to reduce the versatility of our highest performing ARs, and improve the mid-range performance of SMGs. You can find more details below. Aside from the SMGs, we have a handful of other individual weapon and prestige attachment adjustments. In general we really like the class variety we have been seeing so far. This is just the beginning for weapon tuning in the opening weeks of Black Ops 7. We’ll be continuing to dial things in across weapons, prestige attachments, and the general attachment portfolio as we roll into our first season. Assault Rifles are receiving a small flinch nerf so that they flinch harder than SMGs. This is not a huge adjustment, as we also don’t want to introduce lucky headshots into our full-auto gunfights. This flinch increase is small enough that it may affect players aiming for headshots and not well centered, but still not force most torso shots into headshots unintentionally. Weapon Class Adjustment SMGs are receiving a similar list of buffs across the board. Baseline, they are all receiving an improvement to their final damage range to add a handful of meters to some of their mid-range power. In addition, multiple attachments are receiving substantial improvements to their damage range traits. Our goal here is to help SMGs to contend with ARs more effectively out into medium ranges, but also require some build investment to do so especially well. We still want players to make some choices between creating ultra-fast SMG builds and those that have higher range capabilities, but Gunfighter shouldn’t feel like a requirement. Similarly, the Rear Grip attachments that improve recoil are seeing a buff. There’s a tough handling tradeoff when taking recoil in that node, so we felt there was room to push these further. A few of the SMGs are receiving additional, baseline improvements to recoil as well. Overall, we think this will give SMGs a more solid footing in Black Ops 7. We’ll continue to fine tune to make sure both SMGs and ARs have a role to play across our map portfolio. Weapon Class Adjustment The Warden 308 and M34 Novaline are both very high-power, precision weapons that we see doing very well so far in Black Ops 7. Our sentiment here is the same as the X9 Maverick, in that we are excited to have Marksman Rifles in the mix and want to keep it that way. For now we want to make sure there’s some counterplay to these weapons, and that playing aggressively with them requires attachment investment. Upping the flinch they receive and hitting the handling and mobility is the approach we’re taking for that. Latest in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Black Ops 7's Nuketown Map Doesn't Have The Mannequin Easter Egg Yet, But That's No Surprise You Can Now Slay Zombies In Space Thanks To New CoD: Black Ops 7 Zombies Map CoD: Black Ops 7 Aim-Assist Changes And Weapon Balancing Are Coming In Season 1 Update