Dash : 7
Shockwave : 6
Whirlwind : 5
Barrier : 5
Spawn Sentry : 4
Hover : 3
Cloaking : 2
Drain : 1
Warcry : 1
Disguise : 0
Moleculon Bomb : 0
Mark Target : 0
Ammo Beacon : 0

This is the current distribution of abilities on the iconic characters. I've included disguise as well, because even though it wouldn't differ from cloaking aside from the effect, that alone would mix the whole thing up a bit. Also, I think Demolisher has Ammo Beacon and/or Moleculon Bomb, but he doesn't count since he's preorder only. Even if that wasn't the case, we they could've still mixed the abilites up a bit. Dash, besides being more or less pointless against the AI, is still shared between 7 characters!

I know there are 3 more abilites, as well. However these wouldn't really make sense or work against the AI. The abilites I'm talking about are:

Disruption
Energon Sling
Decoy Trap

What are your thoughts on this matter?


EDIT:

There are 34 aviable ability slots on all characters and, as listed above, 13 usable abilites. That means every ability should be used 2,6 times, so let's just say a maximum of 3 times. Which leads us to the conclusions that 5 abilites are used too often while many are used only once/twice or not at all. I for one think they were just lazy with the iconic characters.

 

Demolisher does have Ammo Beacon, and Jazz has the Moleculon Bomb.

I've actually found Dash incredibly useful for either closing the distance for a melee attack, or putting myself out of danger.

 

Whirlwind and ammo beacon are Demolishor's skills.

 

he sounds like he kicks ass, funny i never seen any one use him

 

You forgot the Fembots.

I actually find this spread to be pretty balanced. Disguise and Mark Target are really aimed at PvP, so there's not much point in including those. Moleculon Bomb and Ammo Beacon could be used in campaign and Escalation, but the bomb is a bit wonky in it's operation and the ammo beacon breaks the game if you have more than one person with it.

Drain and Warcry are very powerful abilities, and thus only given to Prime and Megatron respectively. Again, more than one character with those abilities would start to affect balance.

This leaves you with Dash, Shockwave, Whirlwind, Barrier, Spawn Sentry, Hover, and Cloaking. Granted, there are a few duplicate skill sets, but I think they are distributed pretty well and match the characters they are equipped to. Cloaking is a very powerful escape and recon tool, so I don't think it should be in use any more than it already is. Hover could probably get a bit more love, but it is designed to be used with some heavy firepower for maximum effectiveness. Having two or three members of the team using Hover with Scrapmakers would seriously tear apart your enemies. Dash and Shockwave are more defensive in nature, and so it makes sense that they have more slots. This leaves situational abilities: Barrier, Spawn Sentry, and Whirlwind, all about equal.

So, yeah. I think it turned out about right.

 

Completely agree with this.  

 

I would have liked Brawl to have the shock wave ability, since he uses it in a cutscene (or something similar to it) but I don't find too many issues with the spread of abilities.

 

wish a decepticon had warcry