Zero Company operator tier list

Ranked first partly on strength and partly on arithmetic: Hawks is required in story missions, so this Talent is running in every story fight whether you planned around it or not. Fearless Leader gives every Operator in the squad increased assist damage, Defense and chance to hit, it cannot be swapped, and it persists across Specialization changes. Hawks is also the only Operator who cannot permanently die — falling ends the mission instead — which removes the single largest risk in a permadeath campaign from one of your four slots. And spending 3 Advantage grants an ally an extra Action Point, the only known way to add AP to a turn rather than transfer it. A squad-wide buff, immunity to the permanent loss, and the only AP creation in the game is not a slot you evaluate; it is the baseline the other three are measured against.

Moves if Fearless Leader's numbers turn out to be small. "Increased" is EA's word and no value is published — if it is +1 Defense and +2% hit, this is an A on the immortality and the AP alone.

The only Operator any previewer has described as reshaping how they built a squad. Combat Jump costs 2 Advantage and no Action Point, moves her anywhere in range, shoves nearby enemies aside — stripping their cover — triggers neither Overwatch nor retaliation, and at final rank applies Burn. That is mobility, displacement, cover removal and damage over time out of one free action, which is more roles than any other Talent covers. Her Mandalorian armour gives +3 base Defense where an ordinary value is 2, and Ruthless adds up to +6 critical damage, which makes every point of critical chance worth more on her than on anyone else. The Electro Web pair is mediocre apart and severe together: 10 Advantage tags three enemies and detonates all three, ignoring Defense, with overlapping blasts compounding on anything between them. She is S with a condition attached — everything she does spends the shared pool, and a previewer who paired her with a Scout describes battlefield-clearing turns.

Moves if Advantage proves too scarce to fund her alongside anyone else's Ultimate. She is the placement on this list most likely to fall, and it would fall to A rather than further — the +3 Defense and the free jump stand on their own.

The refund is the whole argument. Uppercut costs 1 Action Point plus more for distance travelled, and if it kills, every point it cost comes back — the travel as well as the strike. So a rank-and-file droid is not a target, it is a stepping stone: spend three Action Points crossing the map, punch a B1, get all three back, keep going. That makes him one of the most mobile Operators in the game rather than a melee specialist. EA state the intended use outright — knock a target out of cover into a squadmate's Overwatch — and previewers confirm doing it through barriers. Forced movement also damages a droideka through its ray shield, which makes him a specific counter rather than general utility. He is A rather than S because the engine only runs on kills, and against enemies he cannot one-shot the whole economy stops.

Moves if Common enemies survive the punch at standard difficulty. The Talent then costs Action Points rather than returning them, and this drops to B.

For My Brothers is the only self-rescue in the game, and its top rank changes what it is. The ladder runs from reviving at half health on the next turn, to full health, to taking no Injury the first time he is downed, to standing up immediately in the same turn with an Action Point refunded. At the first rank that is insurance against a permadeath campaign's worst moment. At the last it is a tactic — walking deliberately through a known Overwatch cone becomes a plan when being shot down costs a moment and nothing else. Against that, his explosive strike is priced by one preview at 10 Advantage for a single use per fight, which is the entire pool. He is the most expensive Advantage spender recorded, so a squad fielding him needs a generator alongside him rather than merely benefiting from one.

Moves if The Injury-negating rank arrives early in the Focus Tree. Removing the first Injury of a campaign for free is worth more than any other Talent on this list in a permadeath run, and would make this S.

The most self-sufficient Operator in the roster and the least flexible. Strong with the Force starts every turn with up to six Harmony stacks, each worth 4% deflection and 4 lightsaber damage — a per-turn allowance rather than something accumulated, so she is at full strength from turn one and waiting never makes her stronger. The deflection arithmetic is published and it is severe: 30% base from Padawan Training, 54% at six Harmony, roughly 84% with all three Action Points poured into Noble Stance, and deflected shots are reflected back at whoever fired them. Lightsaber Strike spends three Harmony per swing for 4 damage a stack, which makes protection and damage the same currency. Shockwave pushes every nearby enemy at once, stripping a group's cover and killing by displacement alone. She is A rather than S because she cannot take a Specialization at all — where every other companion adds a second class at the dual-Specialization unlock, she invests in three more abilities of her own — so a squad cannot shape her toward what it is missing.

Moves if Deflection turns out to apply only to the direction she faces in a way that ordinary enemy positioning defeats. That would cut the defensive half of the kit and drop this to B.

The most flexible authored Operator and the one whose value is set entirely by the other three slots. Final Shot fires once per turn when another Operator's attack leaves an enemy below a health threshold — from anywhere on the map, before the triggering action has resolved, and it cannot miss. Ranks raise the threshold from 4 health to 10. It works on any Specialization and with any weapon, so nothing amplifies it and nothing wastes it: give her whatever the squad is short of and the Talent keeps running underneath. That is genuinely rare. It is B because a free cleanup pass is worth what the squad leaves for it to clean up — area damage from Rocket Strike or Sweeping Salvo manufactures exactly its triggers, while a squad of single-target finishers gives it almost nothing — and it does nothing at all while she is downed.

Moves if The 10-health threshold at maximum rank covers a large share of common enemies. Final Shot then fires nearly every turn for free and this is A, or S in a squad built on area damage.

A strong Talent held back by when it arrives and by one anti-synergy. Combat Gas costs 2 Advantage and no Action Point, once per battle, granting stacks of Sharpened Senses worth +5% chance to hit and +1 ranged damage each — two at first rank, six at the last, one consumed per ranged attack. Costing no Action Point is what decides how he plays: activate on turn one, reposition, and still fire a 2 AP long arm. It solves accuracy and damage together, which is exactly the problem a long-range Operator has. But he unlocks late, around cycle 18, so he is absent for the part of the campaign a tier list is most useful for. And the Sharpshooter Ultimate he starts alongside always hits and still consumes a stack, so part of the Talent is wasted on his own default class — the interesting build is a Scout, whose Ultimate scales with the pool and can miss.

Moves if Cycle 18 turns out to be early in a 30–40 hour campaign rather than a third of the way through it. Availability is most of what holds this at B.