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Specialization

Zero Company Gunslinger class guide

Attack-stacking damage dealer whose damage climbs +1 per shot each turn and whose Quick Draw refunds its own Action Point on a kill.

Confirmed
Confidence
Confirmed
Verified
19 August 2026

Quick answer

Fast multi-target blaster specialist that stacks many shots into a single turn and converts kills back into actions.

Range
close, medium
Ultimate
Open Fire
Build themes
Stacking Onslaught across a turn · Free Quick Draw kills on weak enemies · Crit chance from volume · Open Fire as the payoff shot · On-attack Weapon Mod effects, which pay per attack rather than per turn
Suggested weapons
PistolRepeater
Tags
multi-target, mobile, advantage-generator, advantage-spender

Ultimate

Gunslinger Ultimate: Open Fire

Every Specialization has exactly one Ultimate. It is the ability the class is built around, and the one it spends the squad's shared resources on.

Costs 9 Advantage and fires two attacks, either at one target or split between two. Both shots carry whatever Onslaught damage the Gunslinger has stacked that turn. Five ranks raise it to three shots and add a 20% chance-to-hit bonus. It has no per-turn use limit.

Build value: The payoff shot for a turn spent stacking Onslaught. After three Quick Draw kills and three ordinary attacks, each Open Fire shot carries roughly +6 damage, which is why the Gunslinger wants to clear chaff before firing rather than after. Uninvested it is the weakest Ultimate of the eight; fully invested it is the most flexible, because no other Ultimate can be used more than once in a turn.

Abilities

Confirmed abilities

Only abilities named by an official source appear here. The complete kit has not been published.

  • Quick Draw

    Retail-reported

    Costs one Action Point and fires a fast sidearm pistol shot, separate from the Operator’s primary blaster. At first rank it deals 8 base damage and applies a 25% chance-to-hit range penalty; the six ranks raise the damage to 14 and remove the penalty outright at the last of them. If the shot defeats its target the Action Point is refunded. It does not trigger enemy Overwatch or Retaliation, and as a sidearm attack it takes no benefit from Weapon Mods.

    Build value: A chaining engine rather than a damage ability. Against weak enemies already inside kill range it costs nothing at all, so a Gunslinger can clear a line of droids and still hold a full turn of Action Points. Two caveats decide whether it works: the refund only pays on a kill, so a miss is a wasted point; and because the shot comes from the sidearm it builds Onslaught without receiving it, so the stack it creates is only worth what a later primary blaster attack spends it on. Clearing chaff with grenades instead throws the whole economy away.

  • Open Fire

    Confirmed

    Costs 9 Advantage and fires two attacks, either at one target or split between two. Both shots carry whatever Onslaught damage the Gunslinger has stacked that turn. Five ranks raise it to three shots and add a 20% chance-to-hit bonus. It has no per-turn use limit.

    Build value: The payoff shot for a turn spent stacking Onslaught. After three Quick Draw kills and three ordinary attacks, each Open Fire shot carries roughly +6 damage, which is why the Gunslinger wants to clear chaff before firing rather than after. Uninvested it is the weakest Ultimate of the eight; fully invested it is the most flexible, because no other Ultimate can be used more than once in a turn.

  • Keen Eye

    Retail-reported

    Increases this Operator’s Critical Chance for all Ranged Attacks by +6%. It costs nothing and cannot be switched off. Its Focus Tree row runs to five ranks; only the first rank’s figure is published.

    Build value: Far larger than +6% sounds, because the base it is added to is tiny: every weapon in the game has a Critical Chance of 5% unmodified, so this is **more than doubling it** — for free, on every ranged attack the Operator makes. It is also what makes a Gunslinger a reasonable carrier for critical-damage weapon mods that a class without it cannot justify — a mod paying out on a critical is worth whatever the critical chance is. Ranged only, so it does nothing for Bull Rush or any other melee action a dual-specialized Gunslinger brings along.

  • Onslaught

    Retail-reported

    Each attack within a single turn grants this Operator +1 Blaster Damage. The bonus applies only to attacks made with the Operator’s primary blaster.

    Build value: The reason a Gunslinger’s turn has an order to it. The stack builds from *any* attack and pays out only on primary blaster attacks, so the profitable sequence spends the cheap actions first and the expensive one last — clear chaff with Quick Draw, which builds the stack without receiving it, then spend Advantage on Open Fire while the stack is at its highest. Reversed, the same actions produce a materially smaller turn. It is also why a Gunslinger wants a target-rich fight rather than one large enemy: the stack is bought with attack count, not with damage.

Squad partners

Who to pair the class with

Each pairing states whether the interaction is officially confirmed or our reading of confirmed mechanics.

  • Medic

    Combat Stim's flat damage bonus is applied to every shot, and no class takes more shots. At max rank that is +3 on each of them, all fight.

  • Sharpshooter

    Zero In's +40% chance to hit and +24% crit chance apply to whatever the Operator fires next — including a full Quick Draw chain. The strongest reason to take dual specialization.

  • Scout

    Spotted removes range penalties and Tactical Timing pays Advantage per kill, so a Gunslinger clearing a group both hits more often and funds Open Fire while doing it.

  • Scoundrel

    The Scoundrel's armour penetration answers the flat Defense that hurts volume attackers most, and Identify Weakness converts one of the many attacks into a guaranteed crit.

Talents

Talents that suit the Gunslinger

A Talent is chosen separately from a Specialization, so these are combinations you assemble yourself. The Squad Builder models the class half only.

  • Built-In Comlink

    An extra Action Point spent on Quick Draw can refund itself on a kill, which makes the Gunslinger the highest-return recipient in the squad.

Strengths

  • Onslaught adds +1 blaster damage every time the Gunslinger fires within a turn, so each shot makes the next one bigger.
  • Quick Draw refunds the Action Point it cost whenever it defeats an enemy. Walking a line of B1 battle droids down with it costs nothing at all.
  • Every free Quick Draw kill still stacks Onslaught, so clearing chaff is what loads the gun for the priority target rather than a distraction from it.
  • Keen Eye adds +6% crit chance on ranged attacks and invests four times to +18%. Against that many attacks per turn, criticals stop being occasional.
  • Open Fire costs 9 Advantage and attacks one target twice or two separate targets, with Onslaught applied to both shots. After three Quick Draw kills and three basic attacks, that is +6 damage on each.
  • Open Fire has no per-turn use limit, so a squad generating enough Advantage can fire it more than once in a turn.
  • Five ranks turn Open Fire into three shots with a +20% chance-to-hit bonus, which is where the ultimate stops being the weakest of the eight and becomes the most flexible.
  • Anything that triggers on an attack triggers most often here. A previewer respecced their Hawks into Gunslinger for exactly that reason — to get more applications out of a Weapon Mod that ignites the target on every attack — which makes this the class that turns an item into a build.

Weaknesses

  • Quick Draw carries a 25% chance-to-hit penalty until its ranks erase it, and a miss loses the Action Point outright — the refund only pays on a kill.
  • It is a finisher, not an opener. The whole economy depends on targets already being inside kill range.
  • Onslaught counts the primary weapon only. The sidearm Quick Draw fires and anything slotted as a Utility add no stacks.
  • Onslaught resets between turns, so the damage curve starts from zero every round.
  • Flat Defense is the hard counter. An enemy with 2 Defense subtracts 2 from every shot, so a volume attacker loses several times what a single-hit attacker does.
  • Clearing weak enemies with grenades wastes the refund. The class needs the chaff alive to convert it.
  • Open Fire is unimpressive before it is invested, and 9 Advantage is a large share of a pool that caps at 10.

Open questions

Points the shipped game has not yet answered for us, or that need a controlled comparison to state as fact — recorded rather than guessed at.

  • Quick Draw's base damage and its Action Point cost.
  • Whether Onslaught stacks have a ceiling.
  • What Open Fire's third shot at maximum rank costs in Advantage, if the 9 covers it. The cost itself does not fall with rank — a 7-Advantage figure that suggested it did turned out to be a pre-release reading of a different build.
  • The intermediate rank values for Quick Draw's hit penalty.
  • Focus Point costs for each rank.

Other Specializations

Sources

  • Star Wars Zero Company: A New Hope for Turn-Based Tactics

    Xbox Wire · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 19 August 2026

    Supports: Difficulty — the writer played on Hard, "third highest out of four difficulties", and "the cutely named Beskar mode is this game's equivalent for XCOM's Ironman, with no reloading previous saves". That line was the basis of this site's difficulty record from 2026-08-19 and was missing from this locator until 2026-08-27; a cited claim whose location is not recorded is a claim nobody can re-check. Combat and squad sections — Advantage accumulating when a squad member successfully deals damage, and capping at 10; respeccing Hawks from Scoundrel into Gunslinger to exploit a Weapon Mod that applied an accumulating Burn status on every attack; unique-specialisation recruits being unable to respec the same way; an astromech with no basic attack, carrying three different Utility items with two uses each; a Concussion Grenade knocking enemies clean out of the combat space. 15-hour preview build.

  • Lead Zero Company To Victory on August 27

    Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 6 August 2026

    Supports: Operator introductions; 3 Action Points per turn; Advantage caps at 10; the eight Specializations; Bonds in the Personnel Facility; Hawks' species options

  • Star Wars Zero Company: How Some of the Greatest Minds in Tactics Games are Pushing the Genre, Again

    Xbox Wire · Tier 2 — Developer interview · accessed 6 August 2026

    Supports: Greg Foertsch and James Brawley on the eight Specializations, Combat Stim + Gunslinger synergy, Advantage, and Specialization changes on authored characters

  • Star Wars Zero Company is full of (excellent) surprises

    Skill Up · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026

    Supports: 2:09–15:14 — the Gunslinger's core ability refunding its point on a kill; half and full cover; Hawks' two voices sharing one personality; companions able to leave the squad entirely; a closed-doors developer briefing and the studio's Firaxis lineage