Friendly fire means that team members can cause accidental damage or injury to other teammates. In this guide, we’ll see if there is such as thing as friendly fire or team damage in Valorant and how the shooter handles it.
Is there friendly fire in Valorant?
Valorant players cannot injure or kill their teammates using their weapons or gunfire. However, they can cause accidental damage to their teammates using their agents’ abilities.
The good news is that friendly fire deals less damage than the damage your enemies would take when using the same abilities.
Take for example the Toxic Pit that Viper can create. She won’t take any damage from it but all the other players will if they walk through. The same is valid for all the other agents and their specific abilities.
In other words, players need to be extra cautious when using their agents’ capabilities so as to avoid injuring their own team members.
Keep in mind that any ability that does damage will have the same effect on your teammates.
- Learn more: Is Shooting Through Walls Possible in Valorant?
Why is there friendly fire in Valorant?
Valorant is a competitive, tactical and cooperating shooter. If you take these three keywords into account, you’ll quickly realize that friendly fire is a must for this type of game.
Think about it balance-wise. If there was no friendly fire in Valorant, players could use their agents’ abilities on the entire map without affecting their teammates.
In this manner, matches would end up very quickly with the enemy team not standing a single chance of winning.
Some like it, others don’t
When it comes to team damage, Valorant’s fans split into two camps. Casual players who don’t have much experience playing shooter games would rather play with friendly fire turned off.
On the other hand, experienced competitive players love this challenge and would rather play with friendly fire for both weapons and abilities.
We’ve got to admit that adding the team damage feature is actually a good decision and spices the game up. Being aware that your agent’s abilities could hurt your teammates makes players more cautious and pushes them to use their agents’ abilities wisely.
Moreover, this prevents more experienced players from intentionally taking out less experienced players who don’t perform just as well, as this Redditor explains:
I think friendly fire on firearms should be off, at least for casual (In ranked people might take it more seriously). Looking at rainbow 6, sometimes it’s just stupid how people behave that some matches are unplayable.
Just an example, some guy would team kill someone else because “he sucks” (I see this a lot), the dead guy’s buddy team kill the killer, and if the killer has a buddy as well. Well , you get the idea, at that point I just have to leave the match. And similar things happens quite a bit in casual.
How to avoid injuring or killing teammates in Valorant
- Be aware of your teammates’ positions before using your agent’s abilities.
- Coordinate the attacks and decide on the role that every team member plays in your team’s strategy.
- Don’t rush. When unsure, it’s best to use plan B.
- If you spot new players, let them know there is team damage in Valorant. It’s better to sound patronizing at first and then take on the enemy team with a crippled team.
Friendly fire penalties
There will also be penalties for players causing team damage or team killing.
As first spotted by ValorLeaks, Penalties for Friendly Fire add major changes to the game. The damage no longer affects teammates who find themselves on the receiving end of the damage.
This new mechanic automatically inflicts damage onto the players whose ability causes the damage.
To get the Penalty, your ability usage has to impact your allies. When this happens, you’ll get an in-game message that reads: Looks like your ability usage adversely impacted your allies in a recent game.
⇒ Learn more about Valorant:
- Valorant Terminology Explained in Simple Words
- Valorant Guide: How to go to the Shooting Range
- Is Shooting Through Walls Possible in Valorant?
This post was updated in December 2021 to add additional information about friendly fire penalties.