Perk 1
Afterburner
Thrusters have faster recharge rate.
If you greatly favor mobile combat and use your thrusters frequently, Afterburner is a great choice. If you often fight at long range or rarely use your thrusters, skip this perk.
Afterburner significantly cuts the thruster recharge time, so this makes repeated double jumps and slides more viable, and reduces the time you need to spend sprinting or wall running to recover thrust charge.
With practice, you can use wall runs to move quickly and recharge your thrusters in time for any double jumps you need to make to traverse levels quickly even without Afterburner, but this perk gives you more freedom to use your thrusters as often as you wish.
Sixth Sense
Displays a mini-map indicator with the direction of nearby enemies.
A defensive situational awareness perk, Sixth Sense detects any nearby players and flashes a directional alert on your minimap.
This perk can save your life in a lot of situations, so it is very useful, but learning to react to the direction of the flash in relation to the terrain around you takes practice—and in some multi-level areas, the constant proximity alerts can be distracting (but also often a really good sign you should be getting away from that area!).
Like Tracker, Sixth Sense is heavily weakened by Hard Wired. An enemy with Hard Wired can move into melee range before they trip the alert!
Blind Eye
Undetectable by enemy air support.
The airborne twin to Cold Blooded, Blind Eye prevents automated aerial streaks from attacking you, and conceals you from the vision of player controlled aerial streaks.
Player controlled streaks can absolutely still spot you without targeting assistance, and nearby explosions on players without Blind Eye are a hazard even from automated attacks, so mind your positioning if you’re using Blind Eye and another friendly is nearby.
Always keep a build with Blind Eye and a launcher handy as an emergency defense against powerful aerial scorestreaks. If something truly nasty comes up, switch to the class and use Blind Eye to help you take out the streak safely.
Overclock
Earn your Specialist Weapon or Specialist Ability faster.
If you favor using your Specialist powers frequently, Overclock is a simple and obvious pick.
Reducing the time it takes to earn your power means more kills per match from offensive powers, and more clutch plays from utility powers.
Because Specialist powers are new to Call of Duty, we strongly recommend taking this perk for your first week or two of play, simply to get the maximum use of your powers and learn their ins and outs more quickly.
Flak Jacket
Take less damage from enemy explosives and flames.
A powerful defensive perk, Flak Jacket provides damage resistance to Thermite grenades, Firebreak’s specialist attacks, and (most importantly) all forms of explosive damage.
Flak Jacket is another general purpose perk that is very useful on builds devoted to securing objectives, but it provides protection from such a wide range of threats it can be a safe choice on a lot of combat focused classes.
Ghost
Cannot be detected by enemy UAVs while moving, planting or defusing bombs, or while controller scorestreaks.
A powerful stealth perk, Ghost has some distinct limitations. In order to remain active, you must keep moving. If you remain stationary for more than a few moments, you again appear to enemy UAV coverage.
Because Ghost demands that you keep moving, it’s very useful either for aggressive stealthy builds with suppressed weapons, or simply for getting into a key position without worrying about a UAV giving away a flanking move or attempt to secure a key firing line.
Ghost also remains active while planting and defusing bombs and controlling scorestreaks, so you aren’t penalized for playing the objective or using your hard earned streaks.
Perk 2
Fast Hands
Swap weapons faster and aim faster after sprinting. Reset the fuse when throwing back frag grenades.
A useful combat perk in general for the quick switching and faster recovery from sprints, Fast Hands can give you an edge in dicey CQC encounters.
If your build is focused on short range combat or aggressive stealthy play, Fast Hands is a good choice.
The perk of safely returning thrown Frag grenades is occasionally nice when defending an objective area, but doesn’t come up very often in most situations.
Ante Up
Spawn in with a starting bonus to your scorestreak meter.
Ante Up provides a small bit of bonus score to your scorestreak when you first spawn. Because this is a one-time bonus, it is best used by pairing it with a set of low cost scorestreaks, so you can reliably and quickly hit them repeatedly during a match.
Ante Up is less effective for securing high end streaks, and less useful in general if you’re playing very defensively (or literally on defense in modes like CTF), and you expect to survive for longer than aggressive builds.
Hard Wired
Immune to Counter-UAV, Power Core, EMP Grenade, and Smoke Screen. Won’t trigger Trip Mines, Shock Charges, or C4. Reduce your digital imprint against enemy Tracker and Sixth Sense Perks.
An extremely useful defensive perk, Hard Wired protects you from a host of equipment and streaks, and even protects you from both perks that locate players.
Hard Wired is a good general perk choice for most combat builds, due to the wide array of dangers it protects against.
Tracker
See a digital imprint of enemy footsteps.
Tracker causes enemy players to leave a trail of digital footprints behind them. Players with the Hard Wired perk barely leave the footprints for a few feet before they vanish. For any other player however, Tracker can alert you to their presence and lead you to their position.
Be very careful about getting too focused on the footprints! Use them to alert you to enemy presence, then stay on guard and focused on your surroundings.
Cold Blooded
Not targeted by ground-based AI Scorestreaks. Immune to Thermal Optics.
Cold Blooded causes ground-based streaks to ignore you. Because this streak is useful only if the enemy team is capable of calling in lethal streaks consistently, you should keep a build in reserve that has this perk alongside a launcher or EMP grenades to shut down the streaks safely.
For general use, Cold Blooded won’t protect you from anything outside the occasional Thermal scope user, so there are better options for general combat builds.
Scavenger
Replenish ammo and equipment from enemies killed by non-explosive weapons.
An extremely powerful support perk, Scavenger lets you resupply your ammo and equipment from enemies that have been killed by non-explosive weapons.
You can refill your lethal and tactical equipment, and keep running and gunning with your customized weapon by making use of Scavenger.
Scavenger is vital on builds that intend to make heavy use of lethal and tactical equipment, but it can also be important if you are running a favored custom weapon and you are capable of routinely scoring mid to high tier scorestreaks—without it, you’re forced to pick up an enemy weapon that may not suit your tastes when you run out of ammo.
Perk 3
Gung-Ho
Hip-fire your weapon, deploy equipment, and throw grenades while sprinting.
Gung-Ho gives you a bit of an edge in mobile combat, allowing you to hipfire while on the run. You can also drop equipment or toss grenades, which can be useful in some situations where you are sprinting toward an objective and can’t afford any lost time.
While Gung-Ho allows you to hipfire while running, the main advantage this has is letting you begin shooting as you stop and transition into ADS, or a side-strafing hipfire.
Running straight at enemy players while hipfiring isn’t a great way to stay alive, so use the extra timing edge it gives you to initiate fights with your gun already firing, rather than trying to charge straight at enemies!
Blast Suppressor
No mini-map signature when thrust jumping. Thruster sound is suppressed.
A minor stealth perk, Blast Suppressor hides the mini-map ping from using thrust jumps and suppresses the sound your thrusters make.
Blast Suppressor can be used alongside a suppressed weapon and the Ghost perk to completely hide your minimap presence from the enemy team—important for aggressive CQC builds where you plan to spend a lot of time in close proximity to the enemy team with little or no friendly support.
Awareness
Enemy movements are easier to hear.
A perk that works best with an excellent audio setup or good headphones, Awareness extends the range that you can detect enemy footsteps.
A useful perk for situational awareness, but only if you are capable of learning and then reliably recognizing and picking out enemy sounds in the midst of all the other noises on the battlefield!
Engineer
Show enemy equipment and Scorestreaks. Re-roll and booby trap Care Packages.
A useful support perk for certain builds, Engineer lets you spot enemy gear and streaks through walls, highlighting them in bright orange.
This perk pairs extremely well with the Black Hat tactical equipment, allowing you to easily and safely hack enemy gear through walls at short ranges. You can also use it to find good targets for launchers and EMP grenades.
Engineer also has some defensive and offensive utility, as well. You can protect yourself from enemy equipment and streaks by simply avoiding them once aware of their presence.
For the offensive use, pay careful attention to where enemy equipment is located and you can often figure out where enemies are hiding out. If you happen to spot a piece of gear going down in front of you, you have instant information on an enemy location!
Tactical Mask
Reduce the effects of Flashbangs, Concussions, and Shock Charges.
Tactical Mask protects you from a small but powerful subset of equipment. Flashbangs, Concussion grenades, and Shock Charges are all completely ignored while you have this perk.
If you know for a fact that the enemy team is using these items heavily, this can be a useful perk, or you can take it if you’re planning on sitting near objectives, with the expectation that they’ll be mixed in with the usual hail of explosives.
In general, Flak Jacket is a safer pick, but if you’re fully committing to an objective securing build, adding Tactical Mask isn’t a bad idea.
Dead Silence
Move silently.
The inverse of Awareness, Dead Silence reduces your sound footprint, making you more difficult to detect from audio cues.
Dead Silence fits into a stealthy offensive build, but its actual utility is difficult to gauge—it’s hard to tell if you’re sneaking up another player because of Dead Silence, or if they wouldn’t have even noticed you in the first place.
In slower paced modes like Search & Destroy or some types of Hardcore, players are often far more alert to sounds, so Dead Silence can help you in those situations with more certainty.