Personally I never fight obvious hardcore ganks unless i'm invading one of the pvp zones or at meta or higher. To me, outside of those conditions ganking is a major detriment to the game. They aren't technically playing the game, thus they shouldn't be being invaded. But more than that it leads to this weird arms race where you get super sweaty ganks, super sweaty invaders built to fight those ganks and the myriad of 'casual' hosts and invaders caught in the middle. And even worse than seeing invaders beat up by overlevels is seeing some regular host being invaded by the typical poise Claymore 2k hours of pvp type dude who proceeds to drop them a few embers and Crystal out. I mean, wow, what an amazing experience for that guy! Death by condescension. Couldn't even be bothered to give them a fight. But to each their own.

TLDR: If you're not in it to fight ganks, then don't.