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Talent

Zero Company Fearless Leader Talent

Hawks' fixed Talent: a squad-wide buff to assist damage, Defense and hit chance, active simply by being present.

Confirmed
Confidence
Confirmed
Verified
14 August 2026

Quick answer

While Hawks is in combat, every Operator in the squad gains increased assist damage, Defense and chance to hit. It requires no action and cannot be switched off.

Available to
Hawks only — fixed, and it persists across every Specialization
Cost
Passive — no cost
First rank
A squad-wide bonus to assist damage, Defense and hit chance.
Max rank
Not published — only that its ranks raise all three bonuses.
Tags
critical-setup, mitigation

Build value

What this Talent is actually for

The most valuable Talent in the game by a wide margin, because it is unconditional, squad-wide and always present: Hawks is required on every story mission, so this is running in every story fight you will ever play. It is also the reason assist-based builds work at all — it raises the damage of the assist mechanic that Easy Mark, Call for Backup and the Scoundrel's Never Play Fair all feed into. Treat it as a permanent squad-wide baseline rather than a choice.

Focus Tree

Every rank, and what each one changes

Focus Points buy these steps in order. Several of them change what the Talent does rather than making it bigger, so the last row is worth reading before you commit to the first.

Unpublished. Nobody has printed this Talent’s ladder step by step, so this page gives the first rank and the last and invents nothing in between — the middle ranks frequently change what a Talent does rather than scaling it, and a guessed row would be a made-up fact rather than a rounded one.

Pairings

Specializations it combines with

A Talent is chosen separately from a class, so these are combinations you assemble yourself rather than anything the game groups for you.

  • Scoundrel

    Never Play Fair and Easy Mark are both assist abilities, and this Talent raises assist damage for the whole squad — the two stack on the same action.

  • Medic

    Stacking two always-on support layers on the one Operator that is always present frees the other three slots entirely for damage and control.

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.

  • The size of each of the three bonuses, at any rank.
  • Whether the bonuses apply to Hawks as well as to allies.
  • Whether it has a range limit or covers the whole map.

Other Talents

Sources