Star Wars Zero Company: Best Kabb Build for Free Uppercut Kills

Kabb Uppercut joins the squad early in Star Wars Zero Company, and he is the one operator built around a single sentence of rules text: if his signature punch kills the target, the action point it cost comes straight back. Built correctly, the Felshi ex-prizefighter stops being a slow melee liability and starts clearing weakened enemies for free while shoving the survivors out of cover.

Quick answer: Run Kabb as Assault with Soldier as his second specialization, then rank Uppercut, Fleet of Foot, Bull Rush, and Strength. Every Uppercut that kills refunds all action points spent on it.

How Uppercut’s action point refund works

Uppercut is Kabb’s fixed talent. It costs 1 AP, rushes an enemy, deals melee damage, and pushes the target backwards. It also adds +4 impact damage for every object the target is knocked into. Defeating the target restores all action points used, which means a kill costs Kabb nothing and he can immediately spend that point on another attack, another rush, or a safer position.

Because it is a story companion talent, it survives any respec and it keeps scaling as you invest focus into it.

Uppercut rank	Base damage
I	10
II	11
III	12
IV	14
V	16
VI	18

Those are the talent’s own numbers. The figure shown on the ability card in a finished build reads higher, because melee damage bonuses and impact damage from nearby objects stack on top of it. That is the whole reason the build below exists: push the displayed damage high enough that ordinary droids die to one punch, and the refund happens on nearly every turn.

The push matters as much as the damage. Knocking an enemy out of cover hands your ranged operators a high percentage shot, and enemies shoved into a teammate’s Overwatch field trigger that reaction fire for extra damage. On the right map, a well-angled punch removes an enemy entirely.

Combat targeting view with an enemy highlighted and a 100 percent attack trajectory displayed — An enemy pulled out of cover leaves the rest of the squad with a clean, high-percentage shot. Image: Bit Reactor

Best specializations for Kabb: Assault and Soldier

Kabb arrives with the Scoundrel specialization, which you can change as soon as you reach the Den. Swap him to Assault immediately. Once operators unlock a second specialization at Cycle 18, add Soldier. Focus tree upgrades for a secondary specialization cap at Tier 5, so the class you want at full strength should always be the primary one.

Assault solves Kabb’s distance problem

Melee operators lose turns to walking. Assault fixes that, and its cover-busting kit points in the same direction as Uppercut.

Fleet of Foot (passive): increases first movement, up to +3.0m at Tier 5.
Bull Rush (1 AP): charges an enemy, deals melee damage, and pushes it back, with added movement range per rank.
Strike the Flanks (passive): +20% critical chance against Exposed enemies.
Sweeping Salvo (ultimate, 4 Advantage): cone attack that damages and Disorients, and can crit at Tier 6.

Fleet of Foot is the unglamorous node that makes the build function. Extra first movement means Kabb can start the turn behind real cover instead of being parked in the open just to guarantee he reaches someone next turn.

Tactical combat screen showing a move command and the blue movement range costing one action point — Movement range shown during a turn, with the move costing one action point. Image: Bit Reactor

Soldier scales the punches

Soldier is the second half because every one of its useful pieces makes an attack Kabb was already making hit harder.

Strength (passive): increases melee damage and grenade throw range, up to +6 melee damage at Tier 5.
Brutal Strike: a second rush attack that deals melee damage and applies Daze.
Armsmaster (passive): +2 blaster and grenade damage.
Rocket Strike (ultimate): explosive area damage, applying Vulnerable at Tier 6.

Daze is the reason Brutal Strike earns a slot. A Dazed enemy can only use non-damaging moves on its next turn, which effectively deletes a dangerous humanoid target like a Coil unit for a round without needing to chew through its health bar.

Battlefield view showing the Dazed status effect applied to an enemy during combat — The Dazed status applied to an enemy, locking it out of damaging actions on its next turn. Image: Bit Reactor

Rocket Strike is a fallback, not the plan. Save it for clustered enemies or a target Kabb cannot sensibly reach, since every ultimate draws from the same shared Advantage pool.

When to take Heavy instead

If Kabb keeps dying on higher difficulties, swap Soldier for Heavy and lean into the tank version of the build. Conditioning raises his maximum health, Unstoppable grants two stacks of Retaliation so he shoots anyone who attacks him, and Bulwark taunts every enemy in a radius, pulling fire off the rest of the squad. You lose the melee scaling from Strength, so the free-kill refunds happen less often, but Kabb survives standing in the middle of a fight. Take Conditioning before Bulwark; there is no point taunting a room until he can absorb the response.

Focus point priority order

Priority	Node	Source
1	Uppercut	Talent
2	Fleet of Foot V	Assault
3	Bull Rush VI	Assault
4	Strength IV–V	Soldier
5	Brutal Strike	Soldier
6	Rocket Strike	Soldier

Rank Uppercut before anything else, since it is the only ability on Kabb that pays its own cost back. Fleet of Foot comes next because a punch he cannot reach is worth zero damage. Bull Rush follows, giving him a second push with its own +4 impact damage per object, so he can knock two different enemies into walls in the same turn. Strength then raises the damage on all of it at once, with no status effect or enemy type required to switch it on.

Weapon, mods, and utility slots

Give Kabb a Repeater. Repeating blasters have modest base damage but gain substantial Rapid Fire Damage when fired with 2 or 3 AP, and firing one consumes all remaining AP. That fits a character who closes the distance first and shoots at point-blank range, where accuracy matters less. A Blaster Rifle is the alternative if you want cleaner mid-range chip damage. Against droid armies, switch to an Ion variant.

Repeater stat	Value
Weapon damage	8
Critical hit damage	+4
Critical chance	11%
Range	Medium

For utility, a Medpac is the first slot. Kabb spends every fight in the line of fire, and healing him without pulling another operator out of position keeps the aggressive turns going. A Tracking Scope is a solid first weapon mod, since his position next to the enemy puts him in range to assist teammates’ shots often.

Combat screen during the Eradicate the Droid Remnants objective with a missed attack shown — A missed shot during a droid clearing objective, the situation Kabb’s pushes are meant to prevent. Image: Bit Reactor

How to sequence a Kabb turn

Before moving him, scan the enemy formation for three things: the most dangerous enemy, the nearest wall or solid object, and any wounded enemy that a single punch would kill. Kabb’s turn is decided by which part of the map those three things share.

Open with Uppercut on the enemy you can actually finish, not the toughest one on the board. The kill restores the action point, so this first punch is the one that funds the rest of the turn.

Check the action point pips after the killing blow. If they refilled to what they were before the punch, the refund triggered and Kabb still has a full turn to spend.

Spend the refunded point on the angle, not just the nearest body. Aim pushes so the target slams into a crate, railing, or wall for the extra impact damage, and shove enemies out of cover where your ranged operators or an Overwatch line can punish them.

Combat screen with an enemy highlighted in red and an invalid target warning blocking the attack — An invalid target warning during targeting, which is the cue to pick a different enemy or reposition first. Image: Bit Reactor

Use Brutal Strike when there is no available kill. Dazing a sniper, a support unit, or an Enforcer blanks its next turn and buys the squad a cleaner round, which is often worth more than the raw damage.

End the turn with Kabb next to something solid rather than in the open, and prioritize enemy melee units on the following turn. Those hit hard and can inflict Shock, which restricts your operators’ movement.

Squad members that keep the refunds coming

Kabb wants a Medic and two dedicated damage dealers alongside him. The Medic supplies Medpacs and stims so he can stay in the middle of a fight through a long encounter, which is mandatory if you go the Bulwark taunt route. Cly and Tel-Rea both work well in the damage slots, rushing into the openings Kabb creates and getting out again.

Tel-Rea is the strongest partner specifically because her Force Push and Force Pull stack displacement on top of Kabb’s. Between them, you can drag enemies out of cover almost every round, which means your ranged operators consistently shoot at high hit percentages instead of gambling. Hawks also matters here, since spending Advantage to refresh one squadmate’s action point once per turn can extend a Kabb turn that ran out of kills.

The build rewards patience more than aggression. Kabb is not a character you walk into the nearest enemy and hold down the melee button with; he is a positioning tool that happens to hit very hard, and the free kills only stack up when you pick the target the refund actually fires on.