That's a strange set of choices. The weakest Optimus Prime ever was Marvel's Hi-Q. Can't get any weaker than sharing your mind with a small humanoid. Incidentally, Optimus prime was rebuilt around Hi-Q...so in theory, late G1 Marvel Optimus had a humanoid body decomposing inside of him until he was destroyed and rebuilt by the Swarm.
Recuse Bots Prime is the same Optimus from WFC, FOC, Prime and RiD 2015, so... nah. Bay Prime has alot of endurance, and is pretty powerful. And I never seen Cyberverse Optimus in action.
Of the three in your poll, definitely Rescue Bots Optimus. I'd say he's the weakest of all the Optimus Prime incarnations. He is after all, in a "show" with no Decepticons, so I'm pretty sure if a Decepticon did show up, even a weaker Con could defeat him. Bayverse is definitely the strongest of those three. He had some moments throughout the films where he really unleashed his potential, a good example being the forest battle in ROTF against Megatron, Starscream, and Grindor. He got beat up for a decent portion of it, but eventually he got to where he was able to keep up with all three of them, and IMO, if he didn't have Sam Witwicky as a distraction, he probably would've won. And from what all I've seen of Cyberverse, it looks to me like Cyberverse Optimus can hold a decent fight. I'm not 100% sure though, I've only seen bits and pieces of Cyberverse.
Rescuebots Optimus is a rather weak one. I would say that with no Cons to fight he has forgotten his fighting skills. Rid15 Optimus was also quite pathetic.
From what I've seen, Cyberverse has done nothing impressive. Bayverse is a close second but for the fact he has kiloton missiles, and Rescuebot Optimus is the same guy as Aligned Prime making him quite respectable power-wise.
The only reason Bayverse Optimus belongs on this list is because he operates in a continuity where humans can kill Transformers using modern tech (which is a lot more reasonable than most people think - it may be primitive compared to TF tech, but it'll wreck your whole week). In terms of fighting ability and drive, he's the deadliest Optimus. As to the list itself, I'm surprised that Animated Optimus wasn't on the list - yeah, he's mentally tough, but physically he's always overmatched by his opponents, and the Magnus Hammer carried him through the climactic fight.
Animated Optimus is clearly not weak in context. He may be a junior character but thanks to toon-force Animated bots and cons are very impressive when you actually analyze their feats. Add in toy bios and it's a wrap. People wank movie Optimus because Muh Gimme Your Face. Movie Optimus would get wrecked in a fight with most major incarnations of Optimus. The best thing going for Bayverse Prime is a guidebook claiming his rounds pack 3 kiloton warheads. And that's very low-end nuclear level power. Animated characters are way above that in terms of durability. That's the power of toon-force.
I haven’t got quite the same urge to engage with these who is the most powerful pissing contests especially with Optimus Prime as there is so much more into what makes that character compelling or not than how powerful he is. As for the weakest Optimus Prime I would go with the idw one especially when written by barber as whilst it isn’t easy to convey strength in peace time they could of at least made him command respect as he came across as a indecisive, unsure of himself, boring, endlessly brooding, jaded and patronising. He was occasionally written pretty well as Orion pax in the same continuity also in a peace time setting and Simon Furman at least started that version as a competent leader but for the most part idw Optimus Prime to me felt like the weakest version of the character for reasons very different to how powerful his arms and guns are. Animated and the beast wars Optimus Prime equivalent both commanded respect without being boring Mary Sues so I would go with them as the most powerful leaders.
Not gonna lie I am genuinely surprised movieverse Optimus Prime is on this list. I understand why he could be considered weak but you can't seriously tell me he's the weakest or second weakest incarnation of Prime without being biased in some way or another or having a screw loose.
Holy shit have you actually watched the movies? Optimus is practically overpowered! (I mean, he is OP.) It's not his plot armor, it's the fact that he's a tactical genius and has the savagery to use it properly. Hell, I'd go to say that Bayverse Prime is closer to IDW Prowl than any other Optimus Prime. Let's look at the RotF forest battle for evidence. Lots of people say that Prime was weak in that battle because he died at the end and he got his ass handed to him for half of it. But when you look at it from a logistics standpoint- Jesus, Prime is underrated. At first he's beaten up. That's understandable; he had trouble fighting Megatron alone in the first film, and now he's also handling two other opponents (one of which is 50ft tall, and the other can fly in robot mode). Of course he's beaten up. But after that, he begins to go for joints, which are less armored. He kills the 50ft tall one, and severely wounds the flying one. Oh, and he nearly tears Megatron's leg off. The only reason he dies is because, in true fashion, he turns to save the human. His compassion, not his weakness, kills him. That's my problem with Bayverse Prime. Bay took him away from the original character, made him an action hero type, but didn't take him all the way. Bayverse Prime just ends up as a character who doesn't know what he's supposed to be, and the films suffer for it. It almost feels like the version we got for most of TLK was the true Bayverse Prime. He was what RotF and the rest of the films had set him up to be but didn't have the balls to show him as. Bayverse Prime is, without a doubt, the Prime who would win if the three from the poll went at it. I'd say Cyberverse Prime would die first, and then RB/Aligned.
There’s nothing in Bay Prime’s arsenal that would KO Aligned Prime. All the excuses and embellishments won’t compensate for the stat gap.
I'll admit a bias, but when a question like this is asked, I naturally think Bayverse. Marvel Megatron walked out and let the US Army pour everything that they had short of nuclear weapons for 15 minutes and wasn't even scratched. Later, Optimus who is near his equal takes a beating from the US Military and isn't perturbed but calls a retreat as he feels he and the other Autobots are too banged up after driving through the attacks to take on full power Decepticons. Click to Enlarge Human knowledge doubles roughly every 20 years, Animated takes place 50 years in the future after a massive robotics revolution advancing human technology immensely and an entire flight team is completely outmatched by Starscream, who takes them out without effort, while their firepower doesn't even injure him. Jump to 50 seconds IDW Comics presents humans as a threat en masse and after they've developed tech in response, but the common soldier would have no chance against a Transformer. Yet Bayverse have humans wiping them out with conventional weaponry, and not just one or two, or even a fluke. The military takes down several Decepticons and many Autobots throughout the course of the films. Prime himself is even short term disabled after taking a single projectile shot from Lockdown. They are comparatively not made of sterner stuff. Of the choices, Cyberverse Optimus Prime may not have the most firepower, but he does have a great deal of defensive power, almost shield hero levels. The Matrix shields he can create at will in any mode are virtually impenetrable and then in the final arc of the third season, an upgrade is unlocked and his offense becomes more potent to match it. Rescue Bots Optimus Prime is also Prime Optimus Prime, which includes eventually becoming the Beast Hunter Optimus Prime, who is far too tough to be the weakest Prime, even if he's not in the top tier either. It's not a question of relative competence, it's simply a matter of power scaling.
If you're using damage done to TFs by human weapons to power scale, in the first movie the excuse given for why TFs were able to be damaged by humans was that TFs were vulnerable to high heat sabot rounds. For example, the military tried attacking Scorponok with other ordinance beside the sabot rounds but it seemed to be ineffective besides turning Scorponok upside down. Watch the Scorponok desert battle scene and then the tail examination scene, they explain it there. Before the final battle, Simmons also tells the soldiers to use 40mm sabot rounds, so they weren't using normal grenades during the final battle either. Those rounds were what the army seemed to switch to after the Scorponok fight. So, basically humans were supposed to be exploiting TFs vulnerability to high heat (at least in the first movie but they never really retconned that detail outright in the later movies). This may or may not be 100% accurate to real life (the whole sabot explanation, I mean) but this was the narrative of the first movie. Also, they did tone it down in the last movie where Nitro Zeus and Megatron didn't seem to receive any external damage to the armor when they were hit by tank rounds. TLK Optimus also shrugged off a rocket in the back with no armor damage. Of course, I might be bias too but as I said, this was the narrative they went with. Also, there has been times where TFs from other series were damaged from conventional ordinance. Also in that Animated clip, while Starscream is largely unaffected, it seems to me like those jet lasers are still chipping little pieces off of Starscream's armor.
