#4 Mercules: Top 20 Players of Black Ops 7

The #4 player of the Black Ops 7 season is OpTic Texas' superstar AR & new Iceman, Mason "Mercules" Ramsey.

Mercules used his sophomore season to answer the only real question left about him: could last year's rookie magic hold up over a full year of scrutiny? By the time the season wrapped, he'd delivered arguably the most dominant SND campaign of any AR in the league, closing out a career-defining year with his first Major title and a second straight Esports World Cup championship.

Season Review

Mercules broke onto the scene as a rookie the year before, helping power OpTic to both a Champs and Esports World Cup title while taking home BP's Rookie of the Year honors as one of the best ARs in the league. With that breakout behind him, OpTic locked in the same core of Cuyler "Huke" Garland, Anthony "Shotzzy" Cuevas-Castro, Brandon "Dashy" Otell, and Mercules for Black Ops 7, entering the season as the widely regarded favorites even as plenty of competition loomed across the league. The lingering question all offseason was whether Mercules could take another step forward in his sophomore campaign.

The preseason unfolded exactly as expected. OpTic dominated the Monster Energy Launch Invitational, highlighted by wins over FaZe Vegas (3-0) and a pair of victories against Paris Gentle Mates in the Winners Final (3-0) and Grand Final (4-3). Kaysan's Showdown VIII ended in a runner-up finish, but the team looked ready to carry that form into the regular season.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

The Major I Qualifiers were far choppier than the preseason suggested. OpTic finished 4-3 with a 14-13 map count, good for the 6th seed but far from the dominant showing fans expected. Mercules was the standout regardless, leading the team across multiple categories in the opening qualifier, including K/D (1.11), Slayer Rating (96.2), and Damage Rating (12,973), while topping the entire league in SND K/D (1.53), kills per round (0.93), and ADR (144). OpTic shook off the rocky qualifier fast on LAN, winning three straight matches by 3-0 scorelines over Riyadh Falcons in Winners Round 1, G2 Minnesota in Winners Round 2, and Paris in the Winners Final. Many expected a rout in the Grand Final rematch with Paris, but the Gentle Mates flipped the script, beating OpTic 4-3 on Texas home turf to send them to a runner-up finish in the opening Major. Mercules kept his run going regardless, posting a 1.14 overall K/D at the event, with a downright nasty SND performance: a 1.42 K/D, 0.87 kills per round, and 125.8 ADR.

If Major I made people notice Mercules's SND game, Major II made it impossible to ignore. He again topped the league with a 1.61 K/D in the mode, tacking on 0.90 kills per round and 3 clutches, and paced the entire roster with a 1.13 overall K/D through the qualifiers, a stretch where OpTic barely broke a sweat, rolling to the 1st seed at 10-1 with a lone loss to the Falcons. The Major itself played out like a rerun: three lopsided wins to open (Toronto KOI, Minnesota, FaZe Vegas, each dispatched without much drama), then a Grand Final rematch with FaZe that went the other way, a 4-1 sweep that sent OpTic packing with their second straight runner-up finish. Mercules barely noticed the team-wide letdown, delivering another SND clinic at the event: a 1.48 K/D, 0.98 kills per round, 127.1 ADR, and 2 clutches that had people calling him the game's newest Iceman.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

The nickname only gained steam from there. Stage III's qualifiers were a rare quiet spot for Mercules individually, a 93.3 Slayer Rating and 1.19 SND K/D that blended into a roster where all four starters sat within three-hundredths of a point of each other in K/D, part of a perfect 5-0 run to the 1st seed. That balance didn't carry into the Minor, where a 2-3 Semifinal loss to LA Thieves kept the Kickoff title as OpTic's only trophy of the year to that point. Atlanta brought the Pro-Am format and a clean sweep through Pool A over OMiT and Minnesota, followed by three more bracket wins that pushed OpTic to a third consecutive Grand Final, this time against LA Thieves. The result, though, belonged to someone else entirely: Jeremiah "Nium" Harrison, once an OpTic academy prospect, delivered a seven-map dagger that sent his former organization home in 2nd yet again, an eleven-match win streak in best-of-5s undone by a 0-3 record on the sport's biggest stages.

Three silver medals into the season, something had to give, and it finally did at Major IV. OpTic limped into the event with a 3-2 Qualifiers record and a Minor II final loss to LA Thieves still fresh, hardly the springboard anyone wanted heading into a European trip hosted by Paris Gentle Mates. For the first time all year, the road ran through the Lower Bracket, a 0-3 Winners Final loss to LA Thieves forcing OpTic to fight back, which they did, eliminating the tournament hosts 3-0 before setting up a decisive rematch. This time, the seven-map thriller broke OpTic's way, a 4-3 win that finally delivered a Major title. Mercules's own numbers, a 1.06 overall K/D, 94.2 Slayer Rating, and 12,571 damage rating, were solid rather than spectacular, but the trophy itself mattered more than the stat sheet, arriving right on schedule before the two biggest events of the year.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

Champs carried the weight of history: win it, and OpTic becomes the first team ever to three-peat. A 1st-seed regular season, another league first, teed up a clean run past Miami and Paris before the inevitable eClassico rematch with FaZe in the Winners Final. This time, OpTic couldn't find an answer, falling 2-3 there and 2-5 in the Grand Final rematch, a crushing finish that left the roster 1-4 in Grand Finals for the season. It was arguably Mercules's quietest event of the year too, a 1.02 K/D and 93.6 Slayer Rating paired with an uncharacteristic SND slump, 0.98 K/D, 0.68 kills per round, and a 43.8% opening duel win rate. Whatever went wrong in Texas, he'd need to leave it behind once the tour shifted to Paris.

He did exactly that. OpTic Gaming stumbled early in EWC Pool Play, a 2-3 loss to 100 Thieves, but recovered to sweep Team WaR and Project Notorious into the playoffs, then blitzed through FaZe Esports 4-0 and grinded past 100 Thieves in a seven-map rematch to reach the Grand Final, where Team Heretics fell 5-3 for OpTic's Esports World Cup title and its $600,000 prize. Mercules turned the page on Champs almost instantly, posting a 1.09 K/D and 97.5 Slayer Rating in Paris while his SND game roared back to life: a 1.49 K/D, 0.92 kills per round, 130.4 ADR, a 64.3% opening duel win rate, and 5 clutches, a fitting way for last year's Rookie of the Year to close out his sophomore campaign.

How Good Was Mercules in 2026?

Hardpoint

Merc was sneaky good in Hardpoint this season, closing the year with a 1.04 K/D, 26.1 kills per 10 minutes, 3,377 damage per 10 minutes, and 70 seconds of hill time per 10 minutes, with every mark landing inside the Top 15 in the CDL. He was elite across every facet of the mode, and that level held steady on LAN as well (1.04 K/D, 26.3 kills per 10, 3,438 damage per 10). Mercules led OpTic with three 40-kill Hardpoint maps and twenty maps of 4,000-plus damage, and led the entire CDL in win percentage in maps where he posted a negative K/D, with OpTic still going 20-21 (48.8%) even on his off nights.

Search & Destroy

Mercules was the best Search & Destroy player in the league this season. He led the CDL with a 1.31 K/D and 22 clutches, while ranking 2nd in kills per round at 0.83. The superstar AR also posted a 119.6 ADR and a 53.7% opening duel win rate. That level carried onto LAN, where he posted a 1.27 K/D, 0.83 kills per round, and 12 clutches. He tied for 2nd-most double-digit kill maps with 22, doing so in 24% of his maps played, and outside of Wevy, ranked 1st in the league's Cellium Index for SND, finishing with a positive K/D in 72.2% of his SNDs.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

Overload

Mercules ran hot and cold in Overload this season, closing with a 1.01 K/D, 23.7 kills per 10 minutes, 3,035 damage per 10 minutes, and 1.3 goals per 10 minutes. He still finished with 90 goals, the 2nd-most in the league, to go with 12 hat tricks.

A Look Ahead to Modern Warfare IV

Despite rumors that HyDra had interest in joining OpTic this offseason, the organization has confirmed there will be no changes to the roster heading into Modern Warfare IV. As always, new challengers will emerge, and superteams will form around the league, but as it stands, every one of them will still have to get through OpTic to win it all. Mercules has continued taking steps forward in his young career, and that trajectory alone should be enough to worry the rest of the competition heading into next season.