Incendiary Shells Ranked the Most Hated Attachment in Call of Duty History

Incendiary shells take the number one spot on my ranking of the 20 most hated attachments ever put into Call of Duty multiplayer. Noob tubes came a close second, but I gave the top spot to the fire shotguns because, as I put it, "incendiary shells, they refuse to go away."

Attachments are supposed to make guns feel more unique and let players fine-tune their weapon to their own style, but some of them throughout Call of Duty history have been too good, or just too cheesy, and they earned a bad reputation. Here is the full countdown, plus where I think I got the placements right and wrong looking back.

Numbers 20 to 17: Thermal Scopes, the MMS, and Underbarrel Launchers Open the List

At 20 is the thermal scope, a staple of Call of Duty that is perfectly possible to use respectfully, but several versions across the franchise have been too easy to abuse. The Black Ops 3 and Ghost thermals stick out most, with memories of getting lit up from 200 yards away by someone with their face pressed against the scope for an entire match on the huge Ghost maps.

At 19 is the MMS, an optic that only appeared once, in Black Ops 2, and was largely overshadowed by another optic covered later in the list. It sent out a vision pulse every few seconds that let players see enemies through walls, essentially the vision pulse ability from Black Ops 3 slapped onto an optical attachment. It was widely looked down on, especially when used on a foul or a scar to spray targets through walls, and apparently through smoke as well.

At 18 is the underbarrel drill charge from the Modern Warfare reboot era, which expanded underbarrel launcher ammo options in a way that went too far. It let players load a drill charge onto an assault rifle for free in most cases, without sacrificing a lethal equipment slot, and resupply endlessly from teammates' supply boxes. It was good for clearing campers, but annoying to face when someone just ran and spammed it across the map.

At 17 is the underbarrel snapshot from Modern Warfare 2019, hated for different reasons. Equipping the snapshot grenade launcher and firing it across the map at the enemy spawn at the start of a round in a mode like Search and Destroy instantly revealed which direction the enemy team was moving and which bomb site needed attention, a cheap and overpowered use of the attachment.

Numbers 16 to 13: 100 Round Mags, High Caliber, World at War Extended Mags, and a Black Ops 4 Movement Attachment

At 16 are 100 round AR magazines, which have only shown up a few times in Call of Duty history but earned their spot. A 100 round mag should be reserved for LMGs, which come with slow movement and bulky recoil as a tradeoff. Slapping one on something like the Kilo 141 or the XM4 removed that consequence because the movement penalties were not strong enough to feel like a real disadvantage.

At 15 is High Caliber, part of several PS4 era games and disliked by everyone. It boosted headshot bonus damage to reward precision, but the default headshot damage was turned down to compensate, so a target could take three or four headshots and walk it off while a High Caliber user could kill in two or three body shots. The view kick system in Black Ops 3, World War II, and Infinite Warfare made this worse, since getting shot in the chest would kick the gun straight up into a free headshot for the other player.

At 14 is the World at War version of extended mags. Extended mags are normal in Call of Duty, but in World at War they were oversized: the PPSH1 jumped from 35 rounds to 70, and the MP40 went from 32 to 64, with only a 0.2 second slower reload as punishment. That made it a crutch attachment that everyone who played the game remembers being frustrated by.

At 13 is an attachment nobody had a problem with for a long time until Treyarch added it in Black Ops 4. It let players move at full speed while aiming down sights with no accuracy penalty, meaning they could zip around corners and through enemy lines while keeping perfect ADS accuracy. On guns like the SOG SMG it was borderline overpowered, and "if you were going up against a pub stomper or CDL player, there was a 100% chance they had this."

Numbers 12 to 9: Slug Rounds, the Monolithic Suppressor, the Bayonet, and the Heartbeat Sensor

At 12 are slug rounds, part of certain shotguns by default before becoming an attachment starting with Modern Warfare 2019. Some games made them nearly useless, but others were ridiculous, and in Black Ops 6 slug rounds could drastically increase the one shot kill range on shotguns, making it infuriating to get instantly killed by someone camping 30 to 40 feet away.

At 11 is the monolithic suppressor, one of the most spammed attachments in the original Warzone, to the point that people were asking for it to be reworked or removed. It hid shots from enemy mini maps, increased damage range, and sped up bullet velocity, with barely any consequence beyond a slightly slower ADS speed. It was a crutch attachment, though there is some nostalgia for it: "we all knew it was busted, but we had it on every single class."

At 10 is the bayonet. Older Call of Duty games gave everyone a one hit kill knife melee, but starting with Black Ops 3, melee became a two hit kill using the gun's butt instead. That made bayonet style attachments, like the ones on every rifle in World War II or the pistol bayonet in Black Ops 4, more frustrating because a target sees a standard gun and expects a two hit melee, only to be instantly killed instead.

At 9 is the heartbeat sensor from classic MW2 and MW3, which let players slap it onto an assault rifle barrel for a constant personal UAV sweep. Some classic perks could counter it, but it still removed a lot of situational awareness from the game since there was no need to pay attention to surroundings with a free UAV built into the gun.

Numbers 8 to 5: The Target Finder, Select Fire, Rapid Fire, and Akimbo

At 8 is the target finder, described as easily the most hated optic in Call of Duty history. It appeared only in Black Ops 2 and never returned. The close range optic took up most of the screen, but painted a big red diamond on anyone who walked into frame, letting LMG users camp a corner, hold the trigger, and light people up before being seen.

At 7 is select fire and full auto attachments as a group, starting with Black Ops 2's introduction of select fire. Attachments that turn semi auto or burst fire weapons into fully automatic ones have almost always been game breaking, and the original Black Ops 2 select fire attachment led to nerfs because burst fire weapons were too powerful in full auto.

At 6 is rapid fire, an attachment that has shown up under different names across the customization menu for years. Any attachment that drastically speeds up fire rate draws criticism, and in newer games with the gunsmith system, players can offset the recoil penalty that used to come with rapid fire by adding another attachment or two, making several recent guns totally busted with it.

At 5 is akimbo, which is not technically an attachment but takes up an attachment slot and is infuriating to face. Running two guns at once means getting killed twice as fast, and akimbo is often paired with the most obnoxious guns in the game, like full auto pistols and fire shotguns, which are fun to use but hated by most of the community to fight against.

The Top Four: A Black Ops 4 Revolver Attachment, the Strobe Light, Noob Tubes, and the Incendiary Shells That Take the Top Spot

At 4 is a one time attachment in Black Ops 4 that made a revolver an instant headshot kill from any distance. That was a major balancing problem in a game where time to kill was otherwise long, since a player could either shoot someone six or seven times normally or click once on their head with a small revolver and drop them, feeling "like Clint Eastwood would in an old western movie."

At 3 is the strobe light, available for the SG12 shotgun in Black Ops 4. Holding the left trigger activated a strobe on the gun's barrel that blinded anyone who got close and disabled their aim assist, making it almost impossible to counter at close range. Getting hit by it meant putting down the controller, since even drawing a weapon back was pointless when aim assist was gone and the strobed player would strafe out of the reticle.

At 2 are noob tubes, grenade launchers that were one of the original gun attachments all the way back in Call of Duty 4 and have been nerfed and reworked several times since. Their appearance in classic Modern Warfare 2 was so dominant that people still have nightmares about being cross mapped by someone resupplying endlessly with One Man Army, though the original COD 4 version, the OG Black Ops version on the AK74u "for some reason," and the underrated Black Ops 2 version were all strong in their own right. Underbarrel grenade launchers disappeared for years before returning, weaker, in the Warzone era, but anyone caught using one in multiplayer still gets roasted in the game chat.

At number 1 are incendiary shells, introduced in Call of Duty World War II, where people were asking for their removal right from the start. Setting a target on fire to finish them off without firing again was too much, and despite the backlash, incendiary shells have appeared in every Call of Duty game since and are hated every time. The ranking between incendiary shells and noob tubes was close, but incendiary shells take the top spot because noob tubes were at least nerfed and even removed for long stretches, while, as I said, the fire shotguns "just keep making the game less fun every single time they're brought back."

Looking Back: Which Placements I'd Already Change

Reviewing the list afterward, there are a couple of placements I'd reconsider. I could see an argument that the target finder deserved to be in the top five, maybe even higher, and the same goes for the strobe light, especially for anyone who played Black Ops 4 and has nightmares about it.

I also went back and forth a lot on noob tubes versus incendiary shells for the number one spot, and I understand there are plenty of people who will argue nothing should ever beat the classic Modern Warfare 2 One Man Army noob tube era. A handful of attachments barely missed the cut too, including dual band optics, certain laser attachments, and Dragon's Breath, before incendiary shells were chosen as the bigger overall category, along with some of the newer gunsmith conversions that make it almost impossible to fit everything into a top 20 without leaving something out.

Which attachment do you think I ranked too high, which one should have been higher, and what is the biggest omission from the list?