When your hot your hot even if the pump drive is not

I'm thinking you don't want to harden the whole tip. It'll be brittle and just snap off if it gets a little crack. Case hardening is what seems like you'd want, so the core is still tough and not brittle.

And that radius taper of the mp piece is going to get you a lot further for durability than the hardened tip.

The hardening is for a different possible failure that the tapering does not solve; the problem of the shaft's hex tips rounding off. The tapering does nothing for that.