The MW2 perk Hardline sounds good in theory — it reduces the number of kills you need to get a kill streak reward by one. UAVs come in after two kills, chopper gunners fly overhead after 10, and so on.
The problem is that it’s ultimately not that useful. At best it reduces the number of kills required to get a perk by 33% — at worst it’s only a 4% reduction. The lower your rewards the higher the percentage of kills you save by running Hardline. Conversely, the higher your rewards the less Hardline actually helps you. It’s simple math. Additionally, when running higher kill streaks it is your kill streaks themselves getting a large percentage of your kills, so having to get one less kill is not very worthwhile. Here are some handy charts so you can see this visually.
| UAV | Predator missile |
|---|---|
| Chopper gunner | Nuke |
Since Hardline is most useful with low level rewards, it’s best to run a class that isn’t designed for big kill streaks. Use something annoying to pester the enemy team — something with Marathon, for instance, so you can flank the other team and put constant pressure on them.
Strive to get a least two kills for every death so your team will have constant UAV coverage. Let your team worry about camping and getting the big kill streaks. A 2:1 ratio is certainly nothing to scoff at, and with UAVs overhead for most of the match, you’re much more likely to do better than that.
Less pew-pew power
Running Hardline means, of course, that you won’t have access to Stopping Power to lessen your burden in killing enemies. Whenever I’m not using using Stopping Power I tend to run a gun that can kill in 3-4 shots or one with very manageable recoil.
Any assault rifle will probably suit you fine with the possible exception of the F2000. The others are either heavy-hitting (SCAR-H, TAR-21, etc.) or easy to use (M4A1, ACR). Well, I guess the FAMAS and M16 were really designed to be used with Stopping Power but they’re still pretty strong. The MP5K is a decent choice for flanking duties as it takes three shots at close range and sports a high rate of fire, but without Stopping Power it’s nearly useless at a distance thanks to its recoil. The UMP will kill with three shots at any distance and is a player favorite. Just be aware that it shoots as slowly as the SCAR-H (and is thus tied for the lowest rate of fire) and has some pretty high recoil.
If I were running Hardline I’d probably use Marathon and Ninja and go for the TAR-21 with a noob tube or a silent UMP. Then again, I probably wouldn’t actually run Hardline. Stopping Power is quite good and doesn’t lessen in usefulness due to the kill streak rewards I’ve chosen. And if I were running a silenced UMP I might as well stick Cold-Blooded on there for the full ninja effect. Like I said, Hardline just isn’t that good.
2 Comments
That’s a fairly comprehensive run down of Hardline – never really thought about it before in the % return vein. It is a major trade off between hardline and stopping power – do you go for the quicker kills, or the quicker kill streaks? As a fairly incompetent player, the quick kills are where I’m at.
I’m a big fan of Stopping Power and run it on nearly all of my classes no matter what gun I’m using. That said, Stopping Power and general ease of use of the assault rifles play a big part in how camp-happy MW2 is. It makes it so that sitting around and guarding an area is a much more sound tactical choice. Which is why I don’t like TDM very much in this game — people need objectives other than simply killing people to prevent them from camping all the time.