Friendly fire is weapon/ability fire that comes from your own friendly teammates which causes accidental damage or injury to you or your team. Every team based shooter handles friendly fire differently, but what about Valorant?
Is there friendly fire in Valorant? The answer is YES and NO. In Valorant you can damage and even kill your teammates with abilities and ultimates. With this said, you cannot do friendly fire damage with gunfire.
What this means is that you can kill and hurt your teammates with various agent abilities. For example: Viper’s Toxic Pit emits a huge toxic cloud that does no damage to her, but will damage enemies and her allies if they choose to walk through. Similarly, Raze’s rocket and grenades will damage teammates or Phoenix’s hot hands ability does friendly fire damage.
The good news is that if you accidentally let loose with a gun and spray a teammate you won’t do any damage. How many times have you quietly sneaked around a corner and accidentally got startled by a teammate and shot them? I’ve been there, but thankfully it won’t do any damage to them!
Perhaps in the future Riot Games will allow players to host their own Valorant servers and tinker with the friendly fire settings. Hardcore competitive players may want to turn friendly fire ON for gunfire and abilities. Vice versa more casual players may want to turn friendly fire completely off for everything.
While some players are criticizing Riot Games for allowing abilities to hurt and damage teammates, I think it’s a wise decision. It’d be chaotic and change the vibe of Valorant if every character could toss their abilities about without damaging teammates.
Tips for not Killing Your Teammates
- Situational awareness is key. If you’re about to use an ability be aware of where your teammates are before you activate!
- Communication. Communication. Communication. Often times, you may attack or kill a teammate accidentally because they rush forward right as you use an ability. Use your voice comms and you can protect a teammate from an untimely death at your hands.
- If you’re playing with new Valorant players make sure they understand that your abilities can do damage to them. I’ve watched new players walk into the abilities of teammates, because they thought it would be safe. They learned the hard way.
