Evidenced before launch

Heavy + Assault: Sweeping Salvo as an area taunt

One Operator carrying both classes turns the Assault's Ultimate into the widest taunt in the game.

Retail-reported

Confidence: Strongly supported
Verified: 10 September 2026
Version: Pre-release evidence, plus retail launch-build observations (August 2026)

What it needs

In the squad: Heavy — for Intimidating Posture · Assault — for Sweeping Salvo · Both on the same Operator, in either Specialization slot
The builder checks: One Operator holding Heavy and Assault. A Heavy standing beside an Assault does not qualify — the passive belongs to whoever fires the attack.

Mechanism

Why it works

Intimidating Posture is one of the Heavy's two unupgradable passives. EA's ability card says the Operator's primary Blaster Attacks taunt the target on a hit, which reads as one taunt per shot.

A launch-week guide reports the trigger being wider than that: the Taunt also fires from blaster-based area attacks and from Assist Attacks. That is the load-bearing claim on this page and it comes from one publisher.

Sweeping Salvo is a blaster-based area attack. It costs 4 Advantage rather than an Action Point, covers a cone reaching 12 metres at its first rank and 18 at its sixth, and can be used three times a combat with no per-turn limit.

Put those together on one Operator and a single Advantage purchase pulls every enemy the cone contains onto the Operator built to survive being pulled. Bulwark, the Heavy's own area taunt, is once per turn and costs Advantage too — this is a second area taunt on the same Operator, on a different cooldown.

The rest of the Heavy's kit is waiting for exactly this. Unstoppable's Retaliation only pays out when the Heavy is attacked, and the Grit Talent's Invulnerable stacks absorb what arrives. A taunt that lands on a group is what turns both from conditional into reliable.

Patch 1.1 tightened one half and improved the other. Sweeping Salvo no longer hits outside its cone, so the taunt reaches exactly what the cone reaches and no more — and Immovable, which Bulwark grants at its final rank, started providing its bonuses on the same day.

Cost

What it gives up

Both Specialization slots on one Operator, which is the whole of that Operator's build. It also spends Advantage on redirection rather than on damage: 4 for the salvo on top of whatever Bulwark costs, from a pool that caps at 10 and is shared with everyone else's Ultimate. And it is the Heavy taking the punishment — a taunt that works is a turn of concentrated fire, so this only makes sense on an Operator that has bought Defense and health first.

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.

Whether the Taunt really fires from area attacks. One guide says so, EA's card says primary Blaster Attacks, and no third source addresses it. Everything on this page depends on it.
Whether it fires once per enemy hit or once per attack. The difference is the whole point: one is an area taunt and the other is a single pull with extra steps.
Sweeping Salvo's cone angle, which decides how many enemies an 18-metre cone actually contains. Its range is published and its width is not.
Whether a taunt landing on several enemies at once behaves the same as several separate taunts, or whether anything caps how many can be pulled onto one Operator.
Whether a secondary Specialization's ranks really stop at Tier 5. If they do, the class you put second loses its sixth rank — Sweeping Salvo's crit unlock, or Bulwark's Impervious and Immovable — so this pairing has an order question that nothing has settled.

Sources

Star Wars Zero Company Heavy Class Guide: Abilities and Builds
VULKK · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 10 September 2026
Supports: Published 9 September 2026, the same day as Patch 1.1, and **it does not state which build it was written against** — which is why nothing taken from it is filed as 1.1 behaviour. Bulwark reported at "up to 24m cast range" with an "8m area" and its Defense bonus "scaling from +2 to +6": all three reproduce `retail-htm-heavy` exactly, and are the first corroboration that ladder has had. Unstoppable "costs 1 AP", "starts with 2 Retaliation stacks", and at maximum rank "can be applied to allies" and permits "up to 4 Retaliation stacks" — the AP cost and the four-stack ceiling appear on no other source read in this pass. Impact Underlay "reduces incoming melee damage by 50%", the first published effect for any Underlay outside the Reinforced line. On Intimidating Posture: its Taunt "also triggers from blaster-based AoE attacks and from Assist Attacks", and the guide draws the conclusion itself — a Heavy with Sweeping Salvo "can Taunt every enemy the cone hits". **Checked for and absent**: any Advantage cost for Bulwark, which remains unpublished everywhere.
Ultimate Star Wars Zero Company Heavy Build and Class Guide
Hack the Minotaur · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 31 August 2026
Supports: Per-ability progression tables, tier by tier. Bulwark six tiers, 16m taunt with 4m area and +2 Defense at tier 1 through 24m/8m/+6 at tier 6, which also "Grants Impervious and Immovable". Unstoppable six tiers, +2 stacks of Retaliation throughout with retaliation damage rising +1 to +4 and tier 6 adding "Can be cast on an ally". Conditioning five tiers, Max Health +4/+8/+12/+16/+20. Heavy Armor Training marked Cannot Upgrade, "Increases Defense by +2". Intimidating Posture marked Cannot Upgrade, "This Operator's primary Blaster Attacks now taunt the target on a hit" — the first published statement of that ability's effect.

Where this came from

The pairing itself comes from the sources below rather than being inferred here. The mechanism, the cost and the unknowns are this site's work, and the advice changes if any of the values behind it change.

Every synergy

Test it on a squad

The Squad Builder raises this finding automatically when a squad meets the condition above, alongside every other rule it knows.

Open the Squad Builder

Editor’s note

Added 2026-09-10, and it is the most single-source record on this hub. The interaction is drawn by the guide itself rather than assembled here — VULKK write that a Heavy with Sweeping Salvo can Taunt every enemy the cone hits — which is why `kind` is `evidenced` rather than `reasoned`. What makes it worth a page is the size of the gap between the two readings. On EA's wording the Heavy taunts one target per shot, which is good. On the guide's, it taunts a group for one Advantage purchase, three times a fight, which would be the strongest defensive interaction anywhere on this site. The honest thing is to publish the pairing with the disagreement visible at the top of `unknowns`, rather than to sit on it until somebody else confirms it or to state it flatly and be wrong in the one place a reader will act. The rule keys on a single slot rather than on the squad, which is the detail most likely to be got wrong later. Both classes have to be on the same Operator; a Heavy beside an Assault triggers nothing, because the passive belongs to whoever pulls the trigger. The second Specialization only unlocks around Cycle 18, so this is a late-campaign pairing and the class pages say so.