Critical support equipment
Black Hat
Hacks enemy scorestreaks and equipment to take control of them. Powerful scorestreaks require one use to breach the firewall, and a second use to hack.
The Black Hat is a powerful anti-scorestreak tool that can also be used to disable enemy equipment. It’s about as effective as a secondary launcher, though it usually takes a bit longer to hack than it does to lock and fire a missile (or quite a bit longer than dumbfiring the XM-53).
However, the Black Hat has one very significant advantage over a launcher—streaks and equipment hacked come under your control! You can quite literally turn the enemies’ weapons against them, and there’s nothing quite as satisfying as stealing a high end scorestreak and watching it devastate its owner and everyone else on the enemy team.
To hack a target, however, you must get a clean line of sight to initiate the hack, then continue to hold the Tactical button long enough to complete the hack.
It’s possible to hack any enemy streak (even the HATR!) if you’re fast enough, but be wary of trying to hack enemy streaks near hotly contested objectives or the midfield of any map—you’re a corpse if an enemy spots you.
Pair the Black Hat with the Engineer and Scavenger perks and you can roam the map and support your team by disabling any equipment the enemy team puts out, hacking it right through walls. A nasty surprise on enemy Trip Mines or Shock Charges!
Concussion
Disorients enemies and slows movement.
A very powerful support weapon, concussion grenades stagger any target in the blast radius, severely impairing their ability to move. The blast also causes a disorienting flash, though not quite on the level of the actual Flashbang grenade.
Concussion hits make it almost impossible to turn while afflicted by the blast, which means that if you score on a Concussion hit on a target (or targets!) and then flank them, you can score easy kills against enemies that cannot retaliate.
Be aware that, like most other grenades, throwing a Concussion alerts any nearby enemies to your position, and throwing a Concussion and then rushing straight ahead is often a good way to get killed—even staggered, enemies can still aim and shoot in their frontal arc.
Be careful—players with the Tactical Mask perk can ignore the effect of Concussion grenades!
EMP
Disables nearby enemy electronic systems.
The EMP is another powerful anti-equipment tool, though compared to the Black Hat, it is all but useless against aerial scorestreaks, and very useful against ground based scorestreaks or equipment.
Enemy players hit by an EMP do suffer a loss of their HUD temporarily (and cannot activate streaks or equipment), but the effect is fairly minor—save your EMPs for nasty enemy gear.
EMPs can shut down a variety of nasty enemy streaks, from Guardians and Sentries to Cerberus and G.I. Units.
Like the Black Hat, pairing it with Engineer and Scavenger gives you a powerful weapon to disable enemy streaks and equipment quickly and easily.
Flashbang
Blinds enemies and impairs hearing.
Flashbangs cause a severe blinding effect, whiting out the screen of anyone directly hit by the blast. Unlike Concussion grenades, Flashbangs don’t impair mobility, but the blinding effect is intense enough to let you easily win a gunfight against a blinded target.
Like Concussions, be very careful about throwing a Flashbang and running in straight at a target—they might be blind, but skilled players will spot the incoming grenade, and aim for the most likely point of entry to their position to shoot you while they are blind.
Throwing a Flashbang from a distance toward an objective or crowded chokepoint as your team attacks can be quite effective, as can throwing a flash from one direction and attacking from another.
Shock Charge
Proximity triggered mine that electrocutes and stuns nearby enemies.
A non-lethal trip mine of sorts, the Shock Charge stuns any enemy that comes close to it, temporarily paralyzing them.
The stun effect is extremely intense, more powerful than the Concussion, but it is very short lived. It’s just about enough time to react to the sound of the charge triggering and attacking the stunned player if you are nearby.
Placing them randomly around a level while you are elsewhere is generally ineffective, so make use of Shock Charges to aid you when defending an area, particularly if you’re trying to cover an objective with multiple approaches.
Planting a Shock Charge in one direction can alert you to enemies before you can see them—just be wary of players with Hard Wired, who won’t trip the charge, or Tactical Mask, who won’t be stunned.
Smoke Screen
Produces a smoke screen upon impact. Allies within the smoke cannot be detected on the enemy mini-map.
A passive defensive tool, Smoke Screen grenades are easy to overlook, but they are very powerful tools in objective modes.
Paired with a proper build equipped with Flak Jacket, or a teammate using the Trophy System, and you can set up a smoke cloud to completely conceal and protect an objective.
Using smoke wisely can make otherwise severely exposed objectives very difficult for the enemy to attack effectively, and placing smoke at key chokepoints can also work well to provide cover for you and your team where none exists.
Thermal Scopes can cut through smoke, but otherwise, the smoke is anywhere from extremely difficult to impossible to see through.
You certainly aren’t protected from bullets while inside the cloud, but enemies blindly firing into it are far more likely to miss you prone on the other side of a bomb plant site or the edge of a Domination point than they are if you’re visible out in the open.
In pure deathmatch modes, Smoke Screen is typically less useful.
Trophy System
Destroys enemy Lethals, Tacticals, and explosives within 10 meters. High velocity missiles have a chance to penetrate the system.
The Trophy System shoots down any two incoming projectiles. This includes everything from the obvious hand grenades, right up to Outrider’s Sparrow shots, Battery’s War Machine explosives, or scorestreak missiles. If it’s a dangerous enemy object in the air, odds are the Trophy System can (usually!) stop it.
The Trophy System is a great tool for defending objectives, because while Flak Jacket and Tactical Mask can protect against most bad things coming at you, the Trophy System can outright destroy almost all of them.
The Trophy System isn’t a glamorous or lethal tool, but like the Smoke Screen, used well it can score your team the win in many objective game modes.