New Character - Winter Soldier (Thunderbolts) 5*

@LavaManLee said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
So apart from red guardian none of the actual cast of characters are thunderbolts
Amazing
Also where is the power budget? Which power overpowers the other 2? Why are all 5 star characters so weak now?
Professor...would you say now is the perfect time to panic?
Yes I would Kent

I get quite a chuckle from your posts (in a good way) but you have something serious buried in this one. I would love for them to explain this mysterious "power budget". It seems to be the default answer for way characters are they way they are but that makes no sense as some are so overly powerful and others are fairly DOA. Maybe the new Unity Engine will help us make sense of power budget?

At least I amuse one person
I'm saving my one question for this very thing
What the hell is a power budget and why is it only in effect on some characters and others (the last couple of 5) still get the shaft?
Also bucky over sentry?! I'm not sure if they are worried about spoilers but it's common knowledge what's going on with him.

Well, 1* Juggs has the Thunderbolts tag, given his red does 300k damage with godboost, the purple passive should do 200k damage to the priority target

@Heartbreaksoup said:
This may be a known change, but I'm not sure where in the ascended threads to find it...

I have about 9 4s ascended to 5, and they all have similar nice rewards at levels 451-460ish, latest legends, 5000 iso, 25cp, 250hp, etc.

My 4to5 Winter Soldier, however, got a rather wild set of rewards. Mine is at 451 and so I got 1800 Infinity War Cap shards this morning. His 452-459 rewards are all shards and covers for either Cap or this new 5* Bucky. (Sadly, he's still at 451, so this is the first new 5* in absolutely ages that I didn't get shards for the newest five star character.) None of my other ascended 5*s have a reward package like this, so I have never seen it before. Has this happened to any other characters?

I feel a little bittersweet because I burned all my cp in a failed attempt to get even one red iso bundle from the Cosmic Legends vault (I got 32 of 40, missed all three!), didn't get any new 5* Bucky rewards this morning, and only have a week to build up some cp to try his store. Haven't had a challenge like this in a while.

The ascended characters get temporary feeder cover rewards when retro rewards are added to someone (or they are changed) to feed a new character. From the character release you have 4 days (I am not sure of the exact cutoff time) to add levels to an ascended character (or possibly to ascend them for the first time) and collect those cover rewards before it reverts to be just like every other ascended character.

So basically I would think that sometime after midnight EST on Sunday night the rewards will revert for 4-5 WS.

Oh boy another **** 5 star I will only use in PVE required parts. I miss when 5 stars actually kicked **** IE Shang Chi MThor BRB etc

The only thing exciting me Scott this character is the thought of the affiliation hard push leading to actual original Thunderbolts being added to the game.

Much as they're absent from the movie though (as far as I know), I don't think it'll actually happen. I'm going to choose to enjoy the momentary slightly reasonable expectation of the possibility though.

Welp, here we go again.

I've got no idea why they worded his powers the way they did. "Thunderbolt ally" counts him for both of the relevant passives. Reread his powers with that information in mind (just replace "thunderbolt ally" with "winter soldier") and presto! suddenly he's a guy with a 5ap AoE and two different passives that can do multiple hits.

I don't get it. He's perfectly fine but they've gone out of their way to make him read like trash.

The yellow power is pretty useless unless you have multiple Thunderbolts. The damage is good, and there are situations where I'd pay 9ap to blow out a specific special tile (hello Leapfrog!) but it can only target SAP and I can't think of a situation where taking out one SAP is ever necessary. The CD is unfortified so it's unlikely to survive.

If you're somehow getting three of these I think that can be quite good but I really wouldn't go out of my way to build that team.

@dianetics said:
He is not worth the investment.
You can get better things from other characters with less issues.
The synergies aren't great.
Why should I waste my time looking for good synergy?
As long as we are still winning turn 1 and turn 2 with the stupid **** boosters whatever we talk about here doesn't matter at all.

This is perfectly valid and a good reason not to bother investing in any more than one cover (for essentials) of ANY character except the turn0 winners. All evaluation comes down to "is this guy better than the current top few characters" and that answer is almost always no.

Honestly it's just sort of a boring discussion to have though. I get it, I don't even disagree with it, and it's probably even the CORRECT discussion to have about new characters...it's just boring. "Does this guy win immediately without moving the board? No. Ok, next!"

So, I guess people should prepare for the three after this guy. Unless everyone is wrong, it sounds like that's going to be a group that gets a lot of attention.

@Blackstone said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
So apart from red guardian none of the actual cast of characters are thunderbolts
Amazing
Also where is the power budget? Which power overpowers the other 2? Why are all 5 star characters so weak now?
Professor...would you say now is the perfect time to panic?
Yes I would Kent

While I totally understand the power budget question (it's valid and brings up several very good questions: is the budget real? Are there different budgets available to different employees? Why would anyone waste budget for things on affiliation boosts when the affiliation lacks representation? Do they borrow budget from some characters to give to others?) my brain is stuck on the first part of your comment.

Where (outside of the movie is RG a Thunderbolt?

He's not affiliated in the game and I don't recall him in the comics. (Granted I read/own the original run and only sporadically followed the group after it changed.)

He could totally be one of the Raft/Luke cage era prisoner members and I would have no idea.

To be quite honest thunderbolts wasn't in circulation when I was a lad back in the day. So dunno who the roster should/shouldn't be but I would of thought that with the release of the film said featured characters would have the thunderbolts affiliation but perhaps I'm hoping for too much