How to Calculate Combat Score in Valorant

Have you ever wondered how Riot determines your ranking during the game summary? Here’s how to calculate combat score in Valorant.

I know that we’ve all had that game where we were using our favorite Valorant skin, completely dominating and racking up kills. At this point, you’re super confident that you’re going to get match MVP because you have the highest kills in the game. However, when the game is over, you see that your opponent somehow got match MVP over you, even though you had more kills.

This is because Valorant bases the end-game rankings using your average combat score for that match. There are times where even if you have more kills, someone else can have a higher combat score than you.

Don’t worry. This is perfectly normal because Riot wanted to balance the combat score and didn’t want people focusing on getting more kills. Getting more kills can get you a higher combat score, but kills aren’t the sole stat that gets taken into consideration.

Here’s a complete breakdown of how to calculate combat scores in Valorant.

Calculate Combat Score in Valorant

Like I said earlier, Riot didn’t want people to focus on getting kills. Some agents have kits that are better suited to get kills, specifically duelists like Raze or Reyna. Agents like Sage, Killjoy, and Astra will have a harder time getting kills. These agents shine better when they effectively use their utility to help their team win rounds.

This is also the exact reason why your rank rating gains aren’t entirely based on your combat score. Players who play Sentinels or Controllers would have a more challenging time climbing since they wouldn’t get that many kills.

With that being said, people still wonder how exactly their combat score is calculated and what they can do to increase it. Before we get started, I have some advice for you. Having a higher combat score doesn’t help you win more games or increase your win rate. Yes, you probably have more kills or assists, but that doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t converting rounds.

Personally, I feel it’s better to be a bot frag as long as you properly used your skills throughout the match. Unfortunately, people often hyperfocus on kills rather than your overall impact within a game.

Finding the Formula for Combat Score in Valorant

So, first of all, let’s do a quick breakdown of everything that gets considered when calculating your combat score. You can easily check this through your match history and by hovering over the “Avg Combat Score” tab in the scoreboard.

We see that the Valorant combat score is based on a few things. These are damage, kills, multikills, and non-damaging assists. Let’s break down each stat further.

Damage

You earn a +1 score for each amount of damage that you get. This doesn’t matter if you get the kill or not. As long as you dealt at least 1 point of damage to your opponent, you get an equal amount of combat score for that round.

If you killed an opponent and took them down from 150 health (including shields), then you get a +150 score for that round. If you deal any additional damage to other opponents, you also get the equivalent score for that. Let’s say you hit them with a single Vandal body shot and deal 40 damage, this means you also get +40 to your score.

In short, each point of damage you deal to all of your opponents combined for a specific round is equal to the combat score you get for damage.

Kills

Kills are quite easy to calculate. The amount of combat score you get will depend on the number of enemies alive when you get a kill. You earn 150 combat score if you kill an enemy while they are all alive, 130 when 4 are alive, 110 when 3 are alive, 90 when there are only 2 remaining enemies, and 70 if there’s only one left.

The more enemies that are still alive, the higher the combat score you earn when you get a kill. That’s essentially the main principle. However, you also earn an additional +50 score for each additional kill that you get.

Let’s say that you got the first kill in a round, and you also killed the last enemy. First kill = 150 combat score, last kill = 70 combat score, and earn an additional 50 combat score since you got a multikill. So the total combat score that you earn for that round is 270 from kills alone.

Non-Damaging Assists

The final stat is non-damaging assists. You get these assists by using skills like Sova’s Recon Dart, Brim’s Stim Beacon, and heals, among others. Each non-damaging assist that you get will earn you an additional 25 combat score. This is why it’s important to also help your team secure kills and rounds by properly using your utility.

Round Score

Now that we know each stats’ equivalent values, we can compute for your round score. You simply have to add everything up to get your total combat score for that round. You can use the “timeline” tab in your match history to find out your combat score for each round.

To get a better grasp, let’s break down Reyna’s combat score for round 21.

Note: We’ve removed their Valorant usernames for privacy purposes.

As you can see, Reyna got an ace in Round 21. She got a total score of 1254 for that round. Since she got all the kills, we can add 150, 130, 110, 90, and 70 together for a total of 550. Next, she got multiple kills which earns her +50 per additional kill. Then the rest is the damage that she dealt to the opposing team.

That’s how you calculate your score per round.

Round Score vs. Average Combat Score

Now, your round score isn’t the same as the average combat score metric that you see during game summaries. The round score is just the total combat score that you get within each round. The average combat score is simply your total round scores for all rounds divided by the number of rounds.

If you want to double-check, you can calculate your total combat score by simply adding all of your scores per round. You can also just take a look at the “Score” value that you get under your KDA in your match history. Then, you can simply divide this value by the number of rounds you played.

For example, you get a total combat score of 8383, and you played a total of 23 rounds. To get your average combat score, you simply divide 8383 by 23. This should be equal to 364.47, but it will get displayed as 364 in Valorant.

Some people also mistakenly think that their econ rating is included with the calculation of their average combat score. That’s not the case. Econ rating is just the general efficiency and effectiveness of your buys throughout the game and doesn’t affect the combat score in any way.

Plants and defuses also aren’t considered when determining your average combat score. It doesn’t matter how many times you plant or defuse the spike. Planting or defusing won’t help increase your combat score. It will definitely help you win rounds, though.

That’s everything that you need to know when calculating your combat score in Valorant. It can be quite intimidating at first, but once you know how it’s done, you’ll realize how easy it actually is.

Leave a comment below if you think that Riot should change the average combat score formula.