How can I play effectively with the Guardian?

Question

Blacks Ops 2 has a new scorestreak - "Guardian" which is some kind of microwave turret looking thing. I seem to get them fairly often from care packages, and encounter plenty of enemy deployed ones as well. They seem to be a very different kind of equipment compared to previous offerings, and I don't feel I full understand them. My two main related questions are:

1. How do I use the Guardian effectively? - Where should I put it to make it most useful. What strategies become available once I have one? Normally I just carry it around hording it, and then drop it somewhere haphazardly and it ends up getting killed without seeming to help much.
2. How do I effectively counterattack an opponents Guardian? - Conversely, I have often been owned by opponents Guardians. Is there something to look for or hear to know a Guardian is deployed? Are there any abilities that make it less effective against me, or help me destroy it? What should I do once I'm stuck in it?

Answer 1

Using the Guardian effectively is quite difficult now that they aren't new to players any more. It's on par with the Sentry Gun from previous editions in terms of toughness. Your best bet is to deploy them around the corner from enemy spawn locations. Another good strategy is to have them backed into a corner so that nobody can get them from behind.

In terms of counteracting a Guardian, this is relatively simple. To find them you can either use the Engineer perk, which is particularly helpful as you can see them through walls and floors and will have a very obvious red shading and outline, great thing about this perk is that it also highlights Sentry Guns, Claymores and Bouncing Bettys. You can also hear them when you are close because they make a sound as if though they are emitting radiation, but this isn't very reliable amid the noise of combat. Perhaps in Search and Destroy this would be a good method.

In terms of destroying them, you can shoot them (on hardcore, this only takes a couple of clips), use a Black Hat tactical, which is a pretty nifty tool couple with the Engineer perk. It will hack the enemies equipment and destroy it (Sentry Gun or Guardian) or, with Claymores and Bouncing Bettys, make them yours. Lastly, you can use a Flashbang and temporarily stun it, and you can use this time to run behind it and safely shoot it or get past it.