Strategies to Improve Your Call of Duty Kill to Death Ratio

Call of Duty 4 and 4.5 (Modern Warfare and World at War, respectively) boast some of the best online multiplayer around.  Chances are if you're reading this you've already experienced the adrenaline rush of taking out multiple enemies in a Rambo-style - you versus the world - with you coming out on top.

However, if there's one thing that's hard to ignore with CoD's online, it's that the gap between "good" and "not-so-good" players is pretty vast, with "not-so-good" making up a good portion of the general population. In any given match the leaderboard is usually held by the same 2-3 people, with kill-death ratios of 5:1 or better, which leaves you scratching your head wondering "how the hell did they do that? They've gotta be cheating!".

Well, we'll here to give you some insight into our particular strategies.  Keep in mind that these are only suggestions, as actual results will depend on your particular play style and individual skill level.

• Know thy map: The first, and most important, item is to know each map within the CoD universe, and to know it well. Obviously the only way to do this is to get your game on and play - usually resulting in mass slaughter - but while you're getting slaughtered take note of all the nuances of a given map.  While just learning the general layout is extremely important, so is knowing where other players are hiding out at, popular camping areas/hangouts (hangouts being where a team will general congregate - in the Makin maps in W@W, this would be the central circular hut), and where to run to when the heat is on and you need a place to reload and/or regenerate health. Knowing these areas will go a long way in prolonging your life and thus increasing your kills to death ratio.
• Keep your eyes peeled: You should be constantly scanning the environment on screen, obviously looking for enemies but more importantly looking for movement - especially in your periphery view.  It's easy to see what's right in front of you, but it's usually more important to know what's going on around you. In many instances your enemy will be concealed (particularly pesky snipers), so discerning an enemy is as much about being able to see the gun muzzle as it is about seeing the white's of your enemy's eyes.  Spotting the enemy before they spot you allows you to proactively strategize your approach as opposed to reactively attempting to stay alive.
• The Lone Wolf approach: As much as Call of Duty is a "team" game, unless you're playing with a finely tuned clan that communicates well and knows each other's tendencies and strategies, you'll most likely be playing with people whose CoD style is unknown to you (and "strategy" is immediately thrown out the window). The Lone Wolf is pretty self explanatory - you go out alone, taking on the enemy without much help from your teammates. The beauty of this strategy is that the enemy team is usually so focused on the rest of your team, that going Lone Wolf and flanking them often results in mass casualties for your opponent.  This strategy is risky in that you're essentially going for the element of surprise, and one slip up can result in the whole team turning you into bullet-laden swiss cheese.  Keep in mind that if you attempt to go the stealth route in CoD, Lone Wolf is absolutely necessary, as hanging out nearby with non-Camouflaged or non-silenced teammates will give away your position as well.
• Thy enemy is human: You must keep in mind that the person on the opposite end of the enemy's gun is human - and therefore responds as such. Call of Duty (and all online games, really), have a certain psychological aspect to them that you must keep in mind as you're playing. It's as much chess as it is brute-force.  For example, there will be times when you're running from one spot on a map to another, and notice in the corner of your eye that an enemy has spotted you.  If you act as though you don't see the enemy (in other words, don't turn and fire), but instead keep running, your enemy more often than not will think that they were undetected and either attempt to follow you or cut you off. Knowing this, you can then reverse course and counter attack - the hunted becoming the hunter at its finest. 
• Patience, grasshoppa: Even if you're a run-and-gunner, patience is an absolute virtue. You cannot just run out into an open area of the map and expect to survive. Plan your strategy and destination beforehand, and adapt should you run into unexpected resistence.  Also, know when running away from a firefight to survive isn't practical and dive onto your belly instead.  The hardest target to hit is one that's lying flat on the ground, doing a belly flop gives you time while your enemy is unloading his clip - this increases your odds of staying alive while your enemy runs out of ammo, giving you an opportunity to pop up and wipe him out.  Patience also requires that you know when to take a time-out and find a place to relax, reload your weapon, and restrategize based on your enemy's current whereabouts.  This is key in order to run up a kill streak so that you can call in artillary/air strikes and helicopters/dogs - which both can result in a major boost to your kill-death ratio.
• Keep those feet moving: A stationary solider is a dead soldier - agility is key. The fact that enemies respawn (with an assist from Killcam) means that they know exactly where you were when you killed them - want to guess where they're most likely headed once they return from the grave?  For this reason, sniping isn't particularly useful either.  Sure, sniping can be fun, but aside from the console's awful auto-aim, it's also not very practical in substantially increasing your kill to death ratio.  Snipers are the bain of CoD, and once an enemy has been sniped you can bet your ass that they'll be coming after you with a vengance thanks to the Killcam (unless you're playing hardcore, obviously, in which case killcam doesn't exist). If you insist on sniping, your location won't be secret for long, so make sure that you're constantly on the move, using multiple sniping points from which to pick off the enemy.
• Choose your weapon and perks wisely: Some of Infinity Ward's more widely used perks, oddly enough, cater to post-death assistance (see: Martyrdom and Last Stand/Second Chance). We don't want to die, therefore we should use perks that PREVENT death. The perks you ultimately choose will depend on your play style, so mix and match combinations until you find one that suits your needs.  We have found a lot of success with a relatively simple combination: a silenced gun, Camouflage, Extreme Conditioning and Satchel Charges.  
  
  Why do we go this route? The element of surprise is huge in CoD and goes a long way in improving your kill-death ratio.
  A silenced weapon lets us take down enemies without giving up our position in exchange for reduced weapon range - this is particularly useful when you don't kill your enemy on the first chance as they won't know your location unless they've seen you.
  Camouflage allows us to go undetected for the entire match, so while the enemy is hunting down the red lights on their recon, you can go in undetected and wipe them out.  
  Extreme Conditioning gives us the ultimate in fight or flight - when we need to get away, this perk ensures that the enemy won't be able to keep up with us, allowing us to fight another day (or minute). We can also travel longer distances at the start of matches - giving us an extra element of surprise.
  Your explosive selection will definitely vary - we generally use Satchel Charges are our explosive, as they're wonderful on those pesky tank maps, and even extremely useful on non-tank maps when enemies are grouped together in hard-to-reach spots that grenades aren't quite effective in (both sniper perches in the Castle map is one example). You can't go wrong with Bouncing Betty's here either. 
• Utilize cover to the max:  Tanks. Artillary. Airstrikes. Helicopters. Dogs. All of these things lend themselves to one big distraction to the enemy.  Use those distractions to your advantage. When a teammate hops in a tank, hang out nearby and pick off anyone who goes in to blow it up. Follow your team's dogs or helicopter fire and take out the enemy as they scramble for their lives.
• Limit your running: Try as best as possible to limit your running to areas where you know the enemy is absent.  Since you can't fire while you're running, the time it takes to stop running and start firing is usually enough for the enemy to put a bullet in your skull.  Use your time running wisely.
• Master your weapon: This goes without saying - but we'll say it anyways... know your weapon. Each weapon has its own set of pros and cons - knowing how to exploit the pros while avoiding the cons is pivotal in successfully taking out hordes of enemies while limiting your own destruction.  Does your rifle have a strong kickback that will force you to recalibrate how you aim?  Is the machine gun you selected weak, requiring more bullets to take down the enemy?  Attempting to kill an enemy with a shotgun from a few hundred feet may sound silly and against common sense - but we've seen it happen more than we care to admit. Selecting the appropriate weapon based on the map is also key - a sniper rifle in a small, close-quarters map defies logic and will ensure that you will die early and often. Taking the specific behaviors of your weapon into account is essential in taking out the enemy and staying alive.

Using these strategies, I personally average a near 4:1 kill-to-death ratio in core team deathmatch.  Obviously the skill of the opponent has something to do with that as well, however keeping this ratio over the long term shows that these suggestions do work.

Practice these strategies and you should have a consistently higher kill-to-death ratio (and a very low rep if you're playing on XBL - because nothing pisses off CoD players than being good!) in no time!

Have other suggestions for staying alive in CoD?  Interested in starting up a match with similarly-skilled players? Sign up now and let us know your strategies, or create a scheduled match with Game On!