Zero Company status effects explained

Evasion, Vicious and Invulnerable were all described from spoken commentary until launch week, when a guide reading the Focus Tree printed definitions for all three. They matter more than their vocabulary suggests, because all three are absolutes rather than probabilities in a game whose combat is otherwise built on percentages.

Evasion — the next incoming attack on that Operator is automatically evaded and misses. Anticipation grants one stack, once per turn at its base rank and three times per turn fully upgraded, castable on an ally at the last step.

Vicious — the Operator's next ranged or melee attack is a guaranteed critical hit. Cold Blooded grants one stack once per combat at base, and two stacks three times per combat when finished. It is why a squad can skip a dedicated crit-setter: the Scoundrel's Identify Weakness does the same job for somebody else, and Cold Blooded does it for you.

Invulnerable — all damage from the next incoming attack is prevented. Grit grants one stack per turn and +2 max health at base, two stacks and +12 at the top. It is a hard stop, not mitigation, which is why it stacks so well with a Heavy's taunt: the attacks you invited land on nothing.

Read all three the same way when you build. Each converts one enemy action, or one of yours, from a dice roll into a certainty. That is worth most where the roll is worst — Evasion against the attack that would down someone, Vicious on the shot that has one chance to land, Invulnerable on the turn you deliberately stood in the open.

Defense is flat damage reduction: an enemy with 4 Defense takes 4 less from every attack that lands. A previewer states the number and shrugs it off while attacking with a heavy hitter, which is exactly the right instinct.

The consequence is the most important build interaction found before launch. Flat reduction scales with how many times you hit, not how hard. A Gunslinger firing four cheap shots into a 4-Defense target loses 16 damage; a Sharpshooter firing once loses 4. A squad built entirely on volume has a hard counter, and it is a common enemy trait rather than a boss mechanic.

Fire bombs strip Defense as well as applying Burning, which makes a cheap thrown Utility the setup for every volume-damage squad facing armour.

Burning is applied by fire bombs, by environmental explosions, and reportedly by at least one weapon mod that ignites on every hit. It stacks — one observed application reached eight — and deals damage each turn.

A previewer describes the stack halving after it ticks rather than counting down by one, which would make heavy applications decay quickly rather than burning for many turns. That is a single source and the sort of detail auto-generated captions garble, so it is recorded as reported rather than as a rule.

It burns your own Operators too. The same previewer deliberately walks a Padawan through fire to reach a position, which is a reasonable trade and worth knowing is available.

A Scout's attacks mark their target, and a marked target no longer benefits from range or smoke penalties against it. That recasts the class: the Scout is the squad's accuracy enabler rather than a mobility pick.

The smoke half is the sharper one. Smoke normally cuts both ways — your shots through it are penalised as much as the enemy's. Spotted cancels that, turning a mutual trade into a one-sided one, so a squad carrying smoke wants a Scout more than a squad without it.

It also pairs with Overwatch, where a far-placed cone suffers precisely the range penalty Spotted removes.

Disoriented, applied by the Assault's Sweeping Salvo, lowers enemy accuracy — a defensive result bought with an offensive resource.

Invulnerability, from the Grit Talent, works in stacks where one stack absorbs one attack completely. It is not damage reduction; it is a hard stop, and it is the reason the taunt-and-absorb pattern works at all.

On the enemy side, Infinite Coil leaders raise a shield that makes them much harder to hit, and a droideka's ray shield deflects ordinary attacks entirely until the unit moves.