Modern Warfare 3 Tips to Live by

2011′s installment to the Call of Duty franchise brought a lot of changes to the core multiplayer game, big and small.  If you play often like I do, you’ll notice that these strike packages with point streaks, new perks, and new equipment really help you play the way you want to play.  My approach is a silent one and thanks to some of the additions, its a successful one.  In this article, I’ll outline what you want to do to see your K/D ratio start climbing along with your leader board ranking.  These are tips to live by in the MW3 multiplayer world and can be carried to any past or future CoD entries.

You might look like this after having several bad matches in Call of Duty

Having good matches will keep you coming back for more, I guarantee it.  No one wants to go 4-21 and keep playing, with that, no one will go 4-21 and find it fun.  So what do you need to do? First and foremost, slow down!  Unless your eyesight is 20/20 and have the reflexes of a cat, you won’t do very well if your running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  Don’t move at a snails pace as that will just piss people off, but move slow enough to pay attention to whats going on (I’ll go into more detail on this below).

The biggest cause of death for me is sprinting around the corner into an enemy and not having enough time to get my gun up; I also get a lot of kills on people who do the same.  The new Stalker perk helps tremendously if you have this problem.  Stalker will allow you to move with your sights up at the same speed as when your walking with your weapon down.  Stalker doesn’t sound like a useful perk on paper but once you start using it, you’ll notice a significant difference in movement.  In previous CoD games, aiming down sights (ADS) was for picking guys off who didn’t see you or sniping for accurate shots.  In MW3, I’m aiming down my sights as I clear rooms and move through the maps so I can pop off accurate shots on the run and gunners or whoever I see come in my line of sight.

This isn't a good spot to be in even though three is better than two. Exposed on all angles is a no-no

Going back to awareness;  it’ll save your ass to put it in short.  If you were ever involved in any type of conflict whether you were in the armed forces or in a police force, you know more than anyone that paying attention is the difference between life and death.  Take your eyes of the action and you’re a dead man, in reality and in the Call of Duty universe; it’s that simple.  So take this advice and apply it to the game.  If you see a teammate go down in front of you or off in the distance, take that as an enemy being in that area and take cover or get your sights up. Use your mini-map as a guide when moving through the map to keep an eye on teammates, but keep in mind that that won’t show you explosions, tracers, and enemy locations (unless there’s a UAV or someone shooting a loud weapon).

Sounds go with situational awareness like peanut butter goes with jelly.  Listen closely to everything that’s going on, make note of what grenades make what sound, what equipment sounds like, and what guns sound like up close and far away especially when they are aimed at you.  As fast-paced as MW3 is, you can’t be caught off-guard staring at your mini-map or listening to loud music while your playing as it kills your awareness.

Next big thing to consider are “routes”.  You need to find a route to take rather than just follow randoms or run to the loud gun noises/explosions.  considering your route of choice, look for other routes if certain situations arise; meaning, when spawns switch and when your team is stuck in a bottleneck for example.  Get to know the maps like the back of your hand. Know where you’ll be exposed and what kind of sight lines you’ll have when navigating through a map.  If you see a firefight breakout in the center of the map, you need to know where to go to flank to avoid being exposed.  Flanking is your friend on every map, big or small, and if you know your way around, its incredibly easy to catch the unsuspecting with their pants down around their ankles.

If you can do well with any weapon, power to you, because each weapon acts differently from another in its class

Another big point I’ll make is picking your weapons of destruction.  Do you like playing silent? Can you handle recoil well? Do you like guns that shoot fast or ones you can pepper shots with? You need to ask yourself these questions as there isn’t one all great gun to use.  Each gun is diverse enough to change your play style.  So what you need to do is find the gun that best suits your silent but deadly, loud and proud, or run and gun strategy.  If you’re a sniper, the choice is obvious, but you need to be mindful of your ability to snipe.  Can you hold your own with a sniper near and far?  Will I be able to run around with my secondary after I run out of ammo?

You have to remember that your secondary is your fail safe, so never use a launcher on a sniper class unless you have little faith in you staying alive long enough to spend all your ammo, this goes for all types of classes.  If your thinking your going to run out of ammo, there’s a perk for that, Scavenger.  Use Scavenger to pick up ammo from dispatched foes and keep on shooting.  Another thing to consider is how much you’ll switch between both weapons, do you want a fully-auto assault rifle and a single-shot pistol?  Also test how your can hold muzzle-climb, what you need to do to counter it, and where you need to aim without shooting the air around your target.  Your weapons will go hand in hand with your perks so don’t expect to do as well with sniper perks like Marksmen with a sub-machine gun.

MW3 gets class-based, sort of. What is your style?

Strike Packages offer a lot of variety in your role on a team.  Running solo on a team doesn’t mean your abandoning your team if you have the right Strike Package equipped.  There’s an Assault Package that is more or less the same as your kill streaks from previous games.  The difference in Assault and the other packages are that they function on points and not kills.  Points will be rewarded from capping objectives, shooting down air-support, taking out enemy equipment like turrets, and pwning noobs.  Keep this in mind when choosing your Assault streaks as its not about the kills you can rack up but more about what you do in between kills and if your playing the objective.

This might not work for you, that's ok!

The Support package works in a similar fashion to Assault but your streak won’t reset if you die.  On that same note, Support streak rewards aren’t geared towards punishing the enemy team but more about helping yours. If you follow the above advice, this care package is pure choice as you won’t be dying as much but it’s helpful if you have trouble staying alive. The Specialist package allows you to equip 3 perks, 2-4-6, and are unlocked through points as well.  Once you get 8 points, you get all the perks and essentially turn into a one-man army.  Using this package directly impacts what your load out is and what you want an extra perk, if you could have one, to be.  This package is as useful as 3 extra perks on your original class but you’ll never unlock these if you pick bad perks to begin with, savvy?

These are some tips for all, whether you’re bad or good at the game.  Just remember that what works for you might not work for someone else and that every custom option feeds into another one.  I hope this helps for those that have put the game down because they aren’t doing well or are just starting to play.  So try these out, post in the comments if this helps or you think I’m crazy, or let us know how you play the game.  I’m looking forward to hearing what works for you.