One of the most anticipated Valorant game modes, the community have been eagerly awaiting the inception of Valorant’s Team Deathmatch. As part of the new features introduced in Episode 7, players can pick loadouts and play on a small map to skirmish to their hearts’ content. Practice the good old Vandal or learn to click heads with the ever-frustrating Sherrif. TDM will encourage growth in player ability usage and will be a low-stakes environment to experiment and adapt to new experiences. Here are the best ways to approach and play TDM for an enjoyable and winning experience.
What TDM Is All About
Short to Mid-Range Engagements
Team Deathmatch’s maps are all tiny and fairly cramped. Even if you’re sniping from the back, there aren’t many traditional long engagements other than very specific areas and most of it is shaped like Split rather than like Pearl or Breeze. What this means is that it will encourage duels at short to mid-range.
For all of the four timed stages of the game, the different loadouts have perks and specialities. Your weapon should determine your playstyle but taking something good at close range seems to be the way to go.
Much like Split, district is a cramped and cluttered map full of angles to jump out of.
Deathmatch With Better Ability Usage and Coordination
The traditional Deathmatch experience in Valorant is free for all with bad spawns and players either pressing W the whole game or camping corners. This new game mode discourages this behaviour because mindlessly pressing W will get you killed or trapped by abilities, and camping corners will not contribute to the race to 100 kills.
TDM requires coordination and good ability usage for maximum effectiveness. Staying with your team to push one side of the map is effective as you can overwhelm enemies with numbers. Spreading out and waiting for aggression as a collective unit is also a strategy that can work.
Overall adjusting to your teammates and making the right on-the-fly play will help you win more TDM games. Oh, and also clicking heads.
Ready for a quick download of Team Deathmatch? Look no further.
Learn more in the Team Deathmatch 101 article:
➡️ https://t.co/9wZgd12uCF pic.twitter.com/rFzrAdCSVH
— VALORANT (@VALORANT) June 15, 2023
How to Approach TDM
A Stress-Free Practice Method
Deathmatch was meant to be the premier game mode to practice gunplay in a risk-free setting without worrying about slow respawns or toxic teammates. The reality is, there are a lot of players that will camp corners, be hard-peeking angles with an Operator, and will run and gun on every engagement. Simply put, it stopped being effective as a practice tool a long time ago.
Team Deathmatch is a new game mode and my experience playing it leads me to think the skirmishes are more realistic and replicate actual Valorant 5v5 combat. Treat Team Deathmatch as a way to work on gunplay for the guns that you use in the game such as the Ghost, Sheriff or Bulldog.
No one really uses these guns in a normal Deathmatch but this game mode gives you an excuse to use these guns for a fairly significant amount of time. Ace your eco rounds and simultaneously work on your half-buy loadouts with TDM.
No econ in TDM. Pick your loadouts and fire away.
A Party Game With Friends
Team Deathmatch has a less sweaty feel in most of the games. It’s a fairly chill environment with the potential for a lot of brainless plays. Hopping into a voice chat and just casually playing to hang out has been very fun for the short while this game mode has been out. TDM doesn’t require a lot of brain power so it’s just a good way to chill when you aren’t in the mood to sweat on Competitive queue.
Treat TDM like an arcade shooter.
Learning Ability Usage in a Short High Tempo Environment
Learning new Agents for Competitive or Premier can be daunting and intimidating at the best of times. Do it in Competitive and the chat can get very toxic, and Unrated is a snore fest. Swiftplay works, but it isn’t much fun to play repetitively and outside of learning lineups, it can become boring very quickly.
TDM addresses a lot of these issues because it’s so high tempo that you can learn how Agents work in a short span and the game forces you to be aggressive which is the most difficult part to master when learning new Agents. Repeatedly using these Agents will give you a sense of how they work and how they’re intended to be used in aggressive ways or to counter aggression from enemies.
New game mode. New Agent. New opportunities to play your way and defy definition. pic.twitter.com/jXB6kRWiI3
— VALORANT (@VALORANT) June 27, 2023
Best Agents for Solo
I’ll be frank and say if you’re playing solo, it’s best to play an Agent that can be fairly self-sufficient in what they do and how they achieve it. Playing something like a traditional Controller or Sage will be frustrating as there’s a lack of coordination and people will just push and die.
While this is kind of the point of the game, understanding that there are limited ways to regain health and that players are going to try and get to 100 quickly due to the short respawn timer will make understanding TDM easier. Agents that can create space are most effective for solos.
Reyna
Reyna has multi-kill potential written all over her and can recover health after kills to keep pushing aggressively against multiple targets and hostile areas. Her health regen and her destroyable blind are both very strong as it weeds out opponent positioning and it makes her ability to withstand long contests in specific areas the best in the game mode.
Reyna’s ability to push and have her teammates follow also gives structure to TDM fights and her kit is simple and doesn’t require a lot of practice to use effectively.
Leer allows Reyna to jump into space and clear angles for teammates safely.
Raze
I thought Raze would be the theoretical best Agent in this game mode. While not as impressive as I’d imagined, she’s still very strong. Don’t know blast pack usage? Just use it to clear corners or pop out by sticking it on a wall. In TDM she doesn’t need to entry, making it a more forgiving experience to use her versus the core game modes.
Her Paint Shells and Showstopper can automatically give you kills, and her Boombot is very easily one of the most powerful clearing tools in the game mode. Her Blast Packs also give her unpredictability in her movement, and it’s a great starting point for players that want to learn to use Raze.
Outside of her kit being theoretically overpowered, she can also spearhead pushes and her abilities don’t have long casting times. This allows players to stay in the fight for longer. Raze is a fun experience on TDM and everyone should give her a try.
Paint Shells can discourage peeks from strong positions.
Best Agent Compositions
I think if you’re a 5 stack, 2 initiators and 2 duelists plus a free role is the most effective composition. This game mode is all about aggressively taking space and taking over areas while rebuffing opponents. Initiators let your team know where enemies are, and some of the enemies have blinds they can use to effectively breach space that multiple enemies are occupying. Duelists are needed to take that space and having two points of attack will give the team options and make them less one-dimensional. The 5th player can be any role, they should just help their team by breaching the area together or holding an angle and covering.
Storm through mid or flank through the sides? Piazza has clear sightlines and a simple design.
Best Initiators
I think KAY/O will be good in team comps because his Knife gives information while suppressing them, and its range is big enough that it can cover a large portion of the map if thrown effectively. His pop flash can also keep enemies on the back foot, and his Null Command is the ultimate push ability.
Another Agent that will be good in group settings is Gekko. His Initiator abilities are quick to cast and his Mosh Pit can clear areas. The fact he has two tools he can use simultaneously to clear two different angles also gives him a clear advantage that other Initiators do not have. While not hugely popular in the base game mode, within the confines of TDM, his kit is excellent for supplying information in a way that can help teammates without the risk of blinding them like Skye.
A common theme in these Agents is that they’re not fiddly to use and their abilities are cast instantly which helps players stay in the fight. Given the high-octane nature of the game, I think it’s important that players use simple effective abilities that can be popped upon activation.
Read more Valorant content.
Check out the details of Team Deathmatch.
