Hardcore Guide

Addresses everything: classes, weapons, streaks, specialists, etc.
Beiing a hc player since MW2, I try to share my knowledge with those interested in hc.
Enjoy!

Welcome

I play COD HC since MW2. With this guide I try to encourage some of you to try out HC. I try to cover each and every topic necessary to understand HC, stand your ground in HC, improve and last but not least: have as much fun as i`m having.
BTW.: English is my 2nd language, dont be too harsh on mistakes....

HC Basics and Game Modes

- HC gives you 30 Health points. Gun damage is not changed, so feel free to use any damage chart you can find to judge the weapons of your choice.
- There is no health regen.
- There is no HUD / Mini Map.
- Teamkill / damage is always on.
- Guns that you may feel are garbage in core might end up being your new god gun for hc.
- Prepare to die. A lot.

First of all, core and hc are pretty seperate experiences in cod, so you should ask yourself if you will play hc exclusively or switch between the modes. If you want to constantly switch, consider buying the extra class slots for real money. It`s a convenience thing, having two or more loadout groups saves you some time since the recomended classes differ a lot in each mode.

The most popular mode in HC is Domination, and I consider it the most beginner friendly since your team usually has control of at least some part of the map, so you can start from a safe harbor and group up a bit before going into the action.
Knowing the map rotation and spawn points helps a lot, so you can get around the missing Mini Map a bit easier.
I assume you to go to HC Dom for your first games and learn it from there.

Specialists

I consider you start playing form day one with zero progress in blops3 or maybe after a fresh start.
The best starting character for me is Battery and her War Machine. She can be devastating in HC, the grenades can be shot in arches and around corners. limiting the risk for you to get killed.
Remember: TK is on, and 3 TKs will get you kicked, so watch out for your teammates!

Her ability, the Kinetic Armor, is handy in HC too. It lets you survive far more shots and rush the enemy with ease.

Second best is Outrider with her Vision Pulse ability. It lets you see enemies through walls. Good for flanking or wallbangs.

Reapers Scythe is great too. It got nerfed recently, but you can use it to shoot down enemy scorestreaks like Wraith very quick. Harder to use against infantry in HC, but still great against streaks.

Streaks

In general, the higher streaks in hardcore are more unlikely to get.
You may get shot in the back by a panicing teammate. You may get killed by a wallbang, a random nade, by fall damage.... Everything gets pretty deadly in HC.
So staying alive for that high streaks is much, much harder.
I suggest going for low streaks. Definitely UAV since it is very powerful in HC. Carepackage is great too. CUAV doenst do much in HC, avoid it. Dart is nice, Hellstorm can be devastating. But even the Hellstorm can be very hard to get in HC.

I suggest you go UAV, Package, Dart. Dart is nice on almost every map except Redwood. The explosive it fires are capable of triple kills, and you get three of them. Or just use it as a kamikaze missile and crash it in the enemy.
If you find yourseld not being able to get the Dart, switch it with RC-XD. RC-XD can get shot pretty easy and the stearing fells whonky sometimes, but I had some nice double and triple kills with it in HC. It´s lethal explosive range is very good.
Consider using Engineer (more in the perk sections) to reroll low streaks in your care package.

Perk 1

The suggested perks differ from your playstyle, map, and actual state of the match. But I try to give a general headsup about the usufullness of perks in HC and go in depth on the more importat ones.

Perk 1:
Afterburner: Not so useful in HC since it´s for the very aggressive, fast paced players constantly rushing. Exactly the playstyle which gets you killed the most in HC, definitely not for the beginner.

Blind Eye: has it`s niche in hc, may even be a contender for ghost since ghost has lost lots of it potential and uavs aren`t always there to detect you. Blind Eye helps against the higher streaks like WRAITH and Hellstorms, and are important if you have to shoot them down or hide from a Hellstorm to maintain your own score streaks.

Sixth Sense: Still usable, even w/o minimap it gives a sound when enemies are nearby. But so does the Awareness perk, which makes Sixth Sense pretty unnecessary in HC.

Flak Jacket: Protects from explosive damage, can be a life safer in HC, specially in Dom. But don`t expect too many explosives to be flying arouind in hc, since people are afraid to harm their teammates. Definitely a good perk in that intense seconds you are capping b point and a nade comes by. But apart from those situations you wont get any help from it.
If you want to focus on capping a lot, consider using it.

Overclock: Not necessary imo. You will get your ability or weapon at least one or two times without it, more often if you maintain kills and caps constantly.

Ghost: Still one of the best perks. UAVs will happen. A lot. And in this times you can be sure that the enemies general awareness lowers, since they start to rely on the map. Not showing up on the map can be a huge advantage then. But: Often you show up on their radar for a short second when the uav is up but you havent got the voice message to alarm you yet. Or you start shooting someone. Or aim down sights and slow down.
And your teammates may have a habit of shooting down enemy uavs quickly, which limits Ghosts usufulness even more.

GENERAL: Perk 1 is not easy to judge. I tend to just run ghost, since it gives me the overall most advantage: each UAV lasts 25 seconds, IF not shot down ASAP....

Perk 2

Fast Hands: HC has different play styles, and you have to know yours to judge Fast Hands properly.
Do you tend to run around and rely on your snap aim? Go fast hands.
Do you walk around cautious, maybe being a soundwhore, pre-aiming a lot? Then you shouldn`t need Fast Hands.
Think about your playstyle. Most players in HC tend to be of the latter type, pre aiming and being very focused on their moving, try to use cover all the time, not running out in the open unprepared.
Those players and playstyles won`t be supported by Fast Hands.
For more aggressive players, Fast Hands is recommended, since every milisecond counts sometimes. If you go SMG, LMG or Argus Shotgun, you will love Fast Hands, specially with the Quick Draw attachment.

Ante Up: Since you should go low streaks, Ante Up is not that useful imo.

Hard Wired: A good alround perk, specially since it countersTripmines, CUAV and Tracker by some amount.
Later on, when you unlock tier 3 perk Engineer, you may not find it that useful anylonger since it gets easy to avoid mines, shockcharges etc. with it.
Personally run it till I unlock engineer on almost all classes.

Tracker: Some people use it, but it`s hard to judge if you died because someone saw your footsteps. Mapknowledge, Rotation- and Movement-awareness and knowing where the enemy spawns is more important than what Tracker grants you.
I found myself having little success with this perk, so I switched to Hard Wired.
May be useful in the beginning, though.

Cold Blooded:Helpful on some classes for taking out / avoid Hardened Sentries and AI controlled streaks.
First, those streaks are less common since most people run low streaks. Second, if you run into a cerberus, it`s probably controlled by it`s owner, so Cold Blooded won`t help. GI Units are pretty rare, too. R.A.P.S. Drones won`t find you either, but in HC their blast radius is often deadly enough, so as long as there are teammates around you you are never considered safe!
Thermal Sights are countered by Cold Blooded, but only a few abuse Thermals for hardscope-camping. If you experience a camper, just avoid that camped area. Chance is that he will kill you, if you equip Cold Blooded or not.
Suggestion: another perk with limited usefulness, and once again Engineer should be more helpful with dealing with the enemy streaks.

Scavenger: Lets you refill ammo and sometimes explosives. Helpful for high rate of fire weapons like Vesper maybe, and if you dare to throw explosives out a lot. Always a handy perk.

Perk 3

Gung Ho: Nice for Shotty and SMG rushing. Again, this is not the most succesful playstyle in HC for the most players, so just use it on the very aggressive classes.

Blast Suppressor: suppresses Blast sound and keeps you of the mini map when using it. Limited usefulness in HC. Since Soundwhoring still is a tactic in HC, silencing your blasts may counter it.

Awareness: Makes enemies footsteps louder and the steps from those useing Dead Silence audible again. Some can`t go without Awareness, some never use it. I´m the latter type, never use it. Sure, it helps on the smaller maps, lets you guess whats going on around the corner. But I jsut assume there is someone around that corner. Always. I try to be prepared as good as possible, pre aim and take it slow. Not hearing a movement doesn`t mean the corner is safe, a corner camper will never be heard, even with Awareness. Plus, you can`t judge if the footsteps you hear are caused by a friend or enemy, so you need visual contact anyway to make sure you don`t teamkill.
Try it out, but honestly: try to keep getting along without Awareness in the long run.

Tactical Mask: Maybe gets useful the day that Nuketown enters HC playlists... until then: I don`t get stunned very often in HC, don`t need Tactical Mask.

Engineer: My personal preference. Shows any enemy equipment on your screen, therefore you can avoid mines, shockcharges, c4, turrets, cerberus, GI-Units, etc. It highlights enemy uav, cuav,wraith, r.a.p.s. carriers and motherships, so you can shot them down easily ( even on Redwood!). You can reroll your own care packages, doubling up your chance to get something useful. You can booby-trap enemy care packages.
I run it on almost every class. Great Perk with great usability! Don`t forget your rocket launcher!

Dead Silence: Great. Just great. With silent running and not having to listen to your own footsteps all the time, you dont have to run Awareness to hear whats going on around you.
Plus, it counters the effect of enemies running Awareness: your footsteps sound like they normally would (step-sound without awareness or dead silence) for them.
This is not perfectly correct, but think about it like that: as long as you are having Dead Silence equipped, Awareness does not pump up the noise you make by about 100% like it normally does, making it harder for the enemy to hear you.
An enemy not running Awareness is likely not able to hear you at all, even right next to him!
Dead Silence is half a convenience perk, half a must have to counter Awareness users.
I run it on almost every class.

Attachments & Wildcards

The "Pick 10" System comes with tough choices.
I just give up some ideas here:

I try to use each and every gun without any optics. There is no gun I put any optic on, other than for challenges the game throws at me. If you have to "waste" a point for an optic, try to run another gun that you can use without optics. All my classes have 2 attachments, no optics, a launcher / pistol as secondary, a lethal equipment and 4 Perks. An optic on any of those setups would force me to drop either the launcher / pistol or the lethal. Or even worse: a perk.
So: try to get away without optics!

Quick Draw may not be necessary if you have a habit to pre aim and playing cautious. Try with and without it to see if it helps you.

Stock is a viable choice for SMGs, LMGs and ARs alike. Again, it comes down to your personal playstyle. If you make use of your snap aim, stock is less important. If you check every corner and strafe a lot, stock helps tremendously.

Rapid Fire is statistically near to useless on most guns. It got changed recently, but on most SMGs it gives 4-7% more ROF according to spreadsheets, and 8-10% on AR, which is barely noticeable.
But some guns just don`t work for everyone, I had a hard time with the ICR until I put Rapid Fire on it. Rapid Fire ended up being the one attachment that made the ICR useable for me.

Extended Mags: you shouldn`t have ammo problems in HC - firefights, but Ex.Mags boosts your overall ammo stockpile by one magazine in general.

Fast Mags: Can be good for LMGs maybe, but definitve a good idea for high ROF fire guns like the Vesper.

FMJ / High Caliber: Not really needed in HC.

Long Barrel: In general, LB helps ARs the most, doubling its Highest damage range (For example: ICR has 30 damage up to 19m, with LB it has 30 damage up to 38m). Very good for almost every AR, but again: Nerfs and changes have been made recently, when in doubt check spreedsheats for exact stats.

Secondaries & Lethal Equipment

Secondaries:
If you just started playing recently, use a launcher as your secondary on every class (except maybe your shotgun class). Get a habit of shooting down enemy streaks, enjoy the xp. Since you don`t run ghost that early, there is not much more that you can do when your enemy has a uav up, anyway. Rushing without ghost is a bad idea in such situations.

Use a pistol on your shotgun class for covering the mid range fights, but best avoid open areas outside your shotguns reach. Pistols are great in HC, so don`t worry. As long as your aim is good your gonna be ok.

Equipment:
For your rushing classes: grenades of your choice, some prefer frag, some semtex. What ever feels good for you.

But don`t forget about the Tripmines! I have far more kills with trip mines than with thrown explosives. Remember: It´s hc, and throwing around explosives might get your teammates killed and you kicked... Tripmines can only be triggered by enemies, they can watch your back by shutting down a lane you don`t want to go, you can pick them up and place them again.
Overall, the mine is a great equipment in hc. Placing is a bit tricky at the beginning. Best place is usually next to a doorframe, on the wall, not the ground. Never at a ceiling, doesn`t work. Some people put shockcharges and tripmines together, but a well placed mine doesn`t necessarily need support by a schockcharge.
Again: using It can be tricky in the beginning, so watching some youtube guides is the best advice i can give you.

Thermite is nice to play around with, but even in hc it is more of a short - time area denial utility than a lethal option. You often get burned when it goes off near you, you get hurt, but you won`t die. And it only burns for a couple of seconds. Getting hit directly is a different story... Overall, I tried Thermite for a long time, barely got any kills with it.

C4, which comes late in the game, changes everything again. It alarms you when an enemy is nearby (granted he doesn`t use hardwired), so you can detonate it manually. Placing it near a capture point can provide you with easy kills.
As long as the enemy doesn´t use Engineer, in this case your C4 is a big red box on his screen and will get shot on sight as your enemies main priority.

Ideas for Classes

I run SMGs and ARs on a quite similar basis, so....:

Kuda, Razorback, Weevil or Pharo with Quick Draw & Stock (Lethal: Semtex or TripMines)
KN-44, ICR, Man-O-War, HVK-30 with Quick Draw & Stock (Lethal: Grenades or TrimpMines)
Black-Cell
Ghost
Fast Hands
Dead Silence
Engineer

Vesper and VMP I somehow need Scavenger, so I drop Dead Silence for Scavenger.

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Anti Streak Class, against Wraith, R.A.P.S. Ships or well placed Hardened Sentries:

HVK with Quick Draw and Stock
Black-Cell
Grenades of choice
Blind Eye
Cold Blooded
Scavenger
Engineer

You will see all the enemy streaks with ease, but they don`t engage you as long as they are AI controlled. Shoot them down, reequip rockets on your teammates bodies. Also keep tossing grenades in the enemies direction to buy you the time to shoot down the streaks.
I suggested HVK, because it´s like a SMG/AR hybrid, capable of close & long range combat.

Prestiging

After 55 levels, you can choose to prestige. You will loose every unlocked weapon, perk, equipmnet, wildcard and specialist. But you gain one more class slot, making it 6 on your first prestige, 7 on second, 8 on third prestige, and so on.
Maximum of your class slots is 10, which you will get at the fifth prestige.

Each time you prestige, you can choose Fresh Start, Refund or a permanent unlock Token.
Chances are, because you need a guide like that, that you will never complete 100% of the games challenges. If you accept this, you don`t have to bother around with Fresh Start. It would give you a Calling Card, couts as a Dark Ops challenge, and just resets you to level one, clearing all your records. You don`t need that Calling Card, you will probably never complete each and every one of the other Dark Ops Challenges, so f*** Fresh Start!

Refund is stupid, too.
Just take the Perma Unlock Token!
Great, congratukations. Now you have a real Problem: Only one Token, but sooo many things you want to Perma Unlock and use right from level 1....
Ask yourself: what do you consider your best gun / perk?
Is it the Razorback, which you will unlock at level 47? Or M8A7, which is level 55? Or Dead Silence at level 50?

Just don`t unlock something:
- that comes early in the game (level 1-40) by itself
- that you can replace with e.g. another perk without loosing much (Engineer can be replaced with Hard Wired, Scavenger with Extended Mags, M8A7 with XR-2...)
Pick the one thing you think your gameplay improves the most. Maybe Ghost, maybe Dead Silence...

My unlock history so far (End of 4th Prestige)
Razorback
Dead Silence
Ghost
M8A7
My next unlock will probably be Scavenger or maybe Engineer.

DARK MATTER

You probably saw Dark Matter Camo somewhere before. Looks awesome.
You want it, too.

Get real. You won`t. You are reading this guide to get better at the game. I hope it helps. But you and me are not the players that the Dark Matter challenge was made for.

The Deal is like that: get 100 headshots will all the guns. Then the game throws more stupid challenges onto you. After those you will get golden camo for that particular gun. After you got the golden camos for all guns in that categoriy, you get the diamond camo for each gun in that category.
When you have diamond camo for all SMGs, AR, Shotguns, Snipers and LMG, Pistols, Launcher and Knifes, you unlock Dark Matter.
Simple as that!

To be honest: I´m like the worst sniper in the world. I haven`t even touched the LMGs yet. Idon`t think I ever will. I doubt I will ever master each and every Sniper Rifle to perfection. I don`t want to hunt down 200 people with Knife only to get a camo.
I will never get Dark Matter.

I got gold camos for 50% of the ARs and 70% of the SMGs, probably will get Diamond for those soon. But I just don`t feel like forcing myself to switch to a whole different playstyle, suddenly playing the Sniper. I plan on playing the game as I like.
And you should do that, too!

You almost made it!

I hope this guide helps you. I hope I didn`t made too much mistakes. I hope anyone is reading it at all :-)
Thanks for you time, have fun playing. Pls stay with Hardcore, help keeping that Gamemode alife!

Now, enjoy this motivational picture, and remeber: you can be just like me ;-)

[Batman]

I completely agree @Alex, when I go on core, I can't kill people with 2 full clips yet they kill me with like 15 bullets xD

[honk mimimimi]

I approve of this message.

[ToXXicPanda]

@___MaZ__o MW2 is a other Call Of Duty

[ToXXicPanda]

if HC isnt in the game i go kill everyone from activision and treyarch

[Happy9000]

ew man, this guide is aight but flak jacket doesnt do anything in HC. Its also (perosnally) easier to streak on HC. Try UAV, cerb and wraith or raps w/ combat focus for KC.

[ShadowWizardMoneyGang]

Im about to get dark matter and personally I didnt have to change my play style. Only had to camp a bit for sniper blood thirsty's

[_MaZ_TeR_]

what is MW2? Is it food?

[Alex]

BO3 should be only-HC, on core you need to shoot like a mad man to get a kill.

[potato]

Well written and informative guide. Thanks!