How to use the knife in Black Ops 6

Black Ops 6 shakes up many gameplay aspects of Call of Duty, such as movement. One of the new features is the dedicated slot for the melee in your loadouts—but how do you pull out your knife?

Unlike Modern Warfare 3, there’s a dedicated melee slot for your knife in Black Ops 6, which lets you run three weapons in your loadouts. The knife is a one-hit kill up close and pairs well with the omnimovement, making it a useful tool in your arsenal.

Here’s all the info you need on how to use the knife in Black Ops 6.

How to pull out the knife in Black Ops 6

To use your knife in Black Ops 6 on PC, press and hold V on your keyboard. On PlayStation’s DualSense, tap R3 if you’re using the default layout and Circle if you’re running the Tactical preset. On the other hand, use RS or B depending on your Xbox controller preset.

You can press the melee switch button again to swap back to your primary weapon. You also run faster with your knife out, so pull it out after respawning to head to the objective quickly. While the Riot Shield isn’t available in Black Ops 6 (and it’s unlikely to be introduced if Treyarch’s previous games are any indication), you can run the correct set of Perks to use the melee more effectively.

Best loadout for melee and knife in Black Ops 6

• Tactical: Concussion
• Lethal: Frag
• Field Upgrade: Trophy System
• Perk 1: Assassin
• Perk 2: Gung-Ho
• Perk 3: Double Time
• Wildcard: Overkill 

Concussion and Frag grenades are reliable tools to throw and aggress toward enemies. I like to run the Trophy System while playing around an objective. Then, the most important part of your melee loadouts in Black Ops 6: Perks. I’m running Assassin, Gung-Ho, and Double Time to get Enforcer as my Speciality, which grants a temporary buff to your movement speed and health regeneration when you secure a kill.

Once you unlock the Perk Greed Wildcard by reaching Level 19, I strongly recommend running it over Overkill. As the name suggests, it unlocks a bonus Perk slot, allowing you to run four instead of three. With the now additional slot, I would definitely go with Ghost to stay off the minimap as much as possible.

You can also use an enemy as a body shield in Black Ops 6, but you need to approach them from behind. The feature would’ve been great for knife-only builds (again, similar to the Riot Shield in MW3), but it slows your movement speed considerably.