Imbalance is fun to exploit

Everyone knows that the air support in Modern Warfare 2 is ridiculous. However, it often feels daunting for the average player. And I don’t mean getting killed by it — I mean getting to use it.

I am a prime example of this as I’m new not only to the game but to online gaming via console as well. My overall kill-death ratio sits at 1.33 at the moment; it’s nothing too impressive but it has been steadily rising as I’ve gotten more and more accustomed to the damned thumbsticks. For the first 40 or so levels of MW2 multiplayer I had a negative ratio. Yes, I’ve got skills.

When players like me look at these assholes getting chopper gunners and AC-130s again and again, the one thought on our mind is “How do they do that?” Well, that’s probably the second thought as the first is something like “God fucking dammit! That guy got another chopper gunner?!”

The idea of managing 11 kills without dying is a daunting one, and as a result many people do not run such high kill streaks. Instead they tend to stick to the lower ones like UAV, predator missile, and harrier. That’s a nice setup — it’s one I stuck with for quite some time — but it’s not going to get you a chopper gunner.

You see, thinking that you’re not good enough to get a chopper gunner is the very thing preventing you from getting a chopper gunner. It certainly kept me from getting one legitimately (i.e. not from an air drop) until just the other night. And upon getting one I realized the truth — it’s really not that difficult to pull off. You know, assuming your team isn’t full of bad players who are getting beaten to a pulp.

Just like in CoD4 air support kills count toward more air support (provided you don’t die which is unlike CoD4). This means that with the proper kill streak setup you can basically coast your way to a chopper gunner once your air support starts rolling in. The setup I and many others like to use is 5-7-11 — predator, harriers, chopper gunner. It’s quite efficient and in many cases you only need to get about half of your kills with your gun and/or equipment as the air support will take care of the rest.

The hard part, of course, is going the initial five for the predator. Once you’ve got it odds are good that it’ll get at least one kill. About half the time I get two or more (I got at least five the other day!) which gives me my harriers straight away. Yes, that’s at least as unbalanced and stupid as CoD4 air strikes getting you a heli. Harriers are quite strong. The initial bombing run cannot be stopped via stingers so it generally gets a couple kills if you’ve placed it well. From there it’s likely the last one will zap a couple more enemies with its minigun before getting blown out of the sky. And just like that you’ve gotten a chopper gunner.

It’s simply not as difficult as it sounds. If your predator strike gets two kills and your harriers aren’t shot down, you’re guaranteed a chopper gunner by only having to get five kills with your own talent. Dumb? Yep. But you might as well take advantage of it if others can and will do so against you. Of course, it’s entirely possible that your predator and harriers miss the mark and then that last harrier is shot down before getting any kills. That’s annoying as hell but, hey, it happens.

My best example thus far of the power of this setup happened last night. I was playing Ground War Domination on Scrapyard with a silenced TAR-21. The enemy team wasn’t bad and did a good job of stealing the B point from us constantly but I was in a zone and they couldn’t do much against me. I actually managed to call in two chopper gunners in the same game and ended with a kill-death of 53-12. That’s a normal score for me in CoD4 on PC; this was a stand-out performance and the best game I’ve gotten thus far on my PS3. And the only reason it happened was because I decided to enable the chopper gunner kill streak a couple rounds prior.

Random update on 4/27: My current best match given to me thanks to double chopper gunners is 60-4 on Wasteland Domination.