#6 HyDra: Top 20 Players of Black Ops 7

The #6 player of the Black Ops 7 season is LA Thieves superstar SMG & French Phenom, Paco "HyDra" Rusiewiez.

HyDra spent the year proving exactly why LA built its offseason around him, delivering SND performances that ranked among the best in the league even as the team's biggest results kept slipping away in Grand Finals and Champs brackets. A Major title and a bronze-medal finish at EWC gave the year real substance, but the search for that elusive Champs breakthrough continues for one of the league's most dangerous SMGs.

Season Review

Coming off a disappointing finish to Black Ops 6, LA Thieves committed to building around their two stars, HyDra and Thomas "Scrap" Ernst. With plenty of names to choose from, the organization settled on former World Champions Tyler "aBeZy" Pharris and Kenneth "Kenny" Williams to round things out, assembling a roster viewed as the strongest challenger to OpTic Texas heading into the season, one expected to compete for multiple titles.

The early results didn't match those expectations. At the Monster Energy Kickoff Invitational, LA picked up wins over amateur competition, a 3-2 series over Telluride Bush Gaming and a 3-0 sweep of Team WaR, but were swept by both an Still Orgless (Paris) and G2 Minnesota. Kaysan's Showdown VIII brought more of the same, a 3rd-place finish following losses to Paris Gentle Mates (1-3) and OpTic Texas (1-3). It was a shaky launch for a roster many expected to contend from day one, leaving them looking more like the league's 3rd-best team than a true frontrunner.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

That inconsistency carried into the Major I Qualifiers, where LA closed at 4-3 with a 14-13 map count, just enough for the 5th seed. The results made little sense on paper: wins over FaZe Vegas (3-0) and OpTic Texas (3-1) sat alongside losses to Carolina Royal Ravens (2-3) and Paris (0-3), hardly the profile of a convincing top team. With the pressure mounting for a quick turnaround, LA opened the Major with a 3-0 win over Carolina before dropping back-to-back matches to Paris (0-3) and Vegas (0-3), eliminated Top 6. It wasn't HyDra's best stretch individually either, closing the stage with a 1.03 K/D and a 92.8 Slayer Rating. Not long after, LA made a change, benching Kenny for rookie Jeremiah "Nium" Harrison out of the Huntsmen.

The swap breathed new life into the roster, and Nium's arrival coincided with HyDra finding his own form again during the Major II Qualifiers, even if LA still couldn't quite crack the league's best. They finished 7-4 with a 26-17 map count for the 3rd seed, with losses to FaZe (2-3), OpTic (1-3), and Riyadh Falcons (0-3) leaving work to do. HyDra heated up online, posting a 1.09 K/D and 96.2 Slayer Rating across the qualifying stretch; his SND wasn't quite there yet at 0.95 K/D, but his Hardpoint play (1.13 K/D) took a real step forward from Stage I. The rebuilt roster's LAN debut opened rough as well, falling 2-3 to FaZe Vegas in Round 1 and dropping to the Lower Bracket. LA answered with wins over Miami Heretics (3-0) and G2 (3-1), before falling to Toronto KOI 0-3, closing the event in 4th. Unlike the qualifiers, HyDra's SND caught fire at the Major itself while his respawn numbers cooled, closing the event with a 1.70 SND K/D, 1.07 kills per round, 134.4 ADR, and an 88.9% opening duel win rate.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

Stage III arrived alongside the new MPC meta, and LA turned in another respectable qualifier, finishing 3-2 for the 3rd seed. They also claimed the stage's opening Minor during qualifying, beating Minnesota (3-0), Texas (3-2), and Miami (4-2) in the Grand Final. HyDra's SND stayed white-hot through that stretch, closing the qualifiers with a 1.48 K/D, 0.84 kills per round, and a 66.7% opening duel win rate. The next task was carrying that form onto LAN. At the Major, LA went unblemished through Pool Play, beating The Pit (3-1) and Boston Breach (3-0) to escape Pool C. FaZe Vegas remained a persistent thorn, beating LA 3-2 to send them into the Lower Bracket to open the Playoffs. LA answered with one of the best runs of the season, beating Minnesota (3-1), Riyadh Falcons (3-0), FaZe Vegas (3-1), and Toronto (3-0) on the way to the Grand Final, where they outlasted OpTic Texas 4-3 in a seven-map classic. It was a quieter Major by HyDra's own standards, closing with a 1.06 overall K/D and a 91.0 Slayer Rating, though he still contributed heavily across the board, adding 68.5 hill time per 10 minutes in Hardpoint, 15 plants in SND, and 6 goals in Overload.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

LA carried that momentum straight through the Major IV Qualifiers, going a perfect 5-0 with a 15-7 map count, and won the stage's Minor as well, beating G2 (3-0), FaZe (3-0), and OpTic (4-2) to become the first team to win two Minors in a single season. HyDra heated back up through the stretch, closing it out with team-highs in K/D (1.12), Slayer Rating (100.2), and Overload K/D (1.14), adding a 1.29 K/D in SND. Chasing a second straight Major title, LA opened by sweeping the Royal Ravens 3-0, got revenge on FaZe with a 3-2 win in Winners Round 2, and swept OpTic 3-0 in the Winners Final to punch into the Grand Final. OpTic flipped the script there, though, winning a seven-map thriller 4-3 to claim their first Major title and send HyDra and LA to a runner-up finish heading into Champs. SND remained his best mode at the event, closing the Major with a 1.59 K/D, 0.94 kills per round, and 2 clutches.

HyDra and Scrap had come up short at Champs the year prior, and aBeZy's arrival was supposed to be the missing piece to finally break through. Instead, the story repeated itself. LA fell 1-3 to Riyadh Falcons and 2-3 to Minnesota, eliminated Top 8 at the year's biggest event, marking three consecutive disappointing Champs finishes for aBeZy dating back to Top 6 results in both Black Ops 6 and Modern Warfare 3.

LA needed a strong showing at EWC to validate the season, competing under the 100 Thieves banner with real pressure attached. They opened clean, beating Boston (3-0) and OpTic (3-2) to reach the playoffs. In the Quarterfinals, 100 Thieves swept Movistar KOI 4-0 and looked like the team to beat entering the Semifinals, but that run ended there, falling 3-4 to OpTic Gaming and dropping to the Bronze Medal match. After a slow start, 100 Thieves rallied to win 4-3, closing the year with a 3rd-place finish, a result that felt like a fitting send-off for yet another iteration of the LA Thieves roster. HyDra closed out the tournament with a 1.13 K/D and a 100.7 Slayer Rating, leading the entire event with a 1.27 K/D in Hardpoint.

How Good Was HyDra in 2026?

Hardpoint

HyDra closed the year with a 1.05 K/D in Hardpoint, adding 25.8 kills per 10 minutes, 3,183 damage per 10 minutes, and 57.6 seconds of hill time per 10 minutes. Those numbers improved on LAN, climbing to a 1.08 K/D and 26.4 kills per 10 minutes. It wasn't quite his best season in a mode he's usually counted among the league's best in.

Search & Destroy

HyDra was one of the premier Search & Destroy players in the league this season. He finished with a 1.23 K/D, 0.82 kills per round, 102.4 ADR, a 56.5% opening duel win rate, and 15 clutches. His level climbed even higher on LAN, up to a 1.28 K/D, while tying for 2nd-most clutches in the league at 9 and leading the CDL with 6 1v2 clutches. Paco ranked 3rd in the league's Cellium Index for SND, finishing with a positive K/D in 70.6% of his maps played.

Overload

Paco was an underrated force in Overload this season, backing a less flashy K/D with strong individual numbers across the board. He finished with a 1.04 K/D, along with 25.5 kills per 10 minutes, 3,166 damage per 10 minutes, and 54 goals scored.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

A Look Ahead to Modern Warfare IV

HyDra and Scrap are both free agents after their two-year contracts expired at the end of the season. HyDra in particular is the biggest SMG name on the market, reportedly fielding offers from LA, Paris, FaZe Vegas, Riyadh, and others, with some reports suggesting he had interest in joining OpTic before the organization confirmed it was standing pat with its current roster.

Whatever team Paco and Scrap ultimately land on together, that roster should immediately be considered one of the title contenders heading into Modern Warfare IV.