Valorant Friendly Fire Explained (The Pros & Cons)

Valorant is one of the world’s most popular shooters and the reason behind this is that it combines an element from every aspect of the genre. Whether you like the special abilities that Apex Legends features or the straightforward shooting that CS:GO offers, Valorant offers a perfect mix of both. This also includes friendly fire!

Valorant abilities and ultimates can be used to do damage to friendlies. It’s important to mention that regular shooting will not do friendly fire. Despite that, players need to be careful when using their special abilities and ultimates because they can end up hurting their allies. In fact, there are many Valorant players that can get banned for friendly fire after griefing their teammates with abilities such as Pheonix’s “hot hands” for example. In addition, damage done to friendlies and to yourself will be only 33% (including the burn rate of AoEs).

Knowing how to use your abilities when playing Valorant makes the difference between a good and a great player. Keep reading to check out all there is to know about friendly fire in this popular game.

Is There Friendly Fire in Valorant?

There is friendly fire in Valorant, but it can only be done by the special abilities and ultimates that characters have in their set. This means that players can’t use regular gunfire to hurt teammates. However, players still need to be careful when using abilities that do AoE (area of effect) damage. A great example here is Pheonix’s ability called “hot hands”.

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Another important factor that we need to mention about friendly fire in Valorant is the fact that the damage done by abilities and ultimates is nerfed. In order to prevent griefing or accidental friendly fire, Riot reduced the damage that players can do to themselves and teammates to 33%. Valorant should also keep in mind that friendly abilities, like turrets for example, will not take damage from teammates.

Valorant Friendly Fire Ban

Ever since Riot announced that abilities will do friendly fire damage, the players were against it because this means that they can be trolled. Luckily, Riot is not lenient on trolls and griefing. In fact, getting doing abusive friendly fire is one of the easiest ways to get banned in the game.

To make things even better, Riot released a brand-new 3.12 patch that introduces the ability to automatically detect friendly fire. Here is how Riot describes the new feature:

“You Better stop purposely blasting grenades on your teammates cause we’re tracking them and will be punishing excessive damage to allies!