The cost table is a role table in disguise
Every list of ultimate costs gets published as a balance chart. Read the numbers in role order and it turns out to be something else entirely.
| Energy cost | Heroes |
|---|---|
| 2500 | Venom |
| 2800 | Blade, Groot, Spider-Man, Squirrel Girl, The Thing, Wolverine |
| 3100 | Angela, Black Cat, Black Widow, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Emma Frost, Hawkeye, Iron Fist, Mister Fantastic, Moon Knight, Namor, Phoenix, Star-Lord, Thor, Winter Soldier |
| 3300 | Black Panther |
| 3400 | Cyclops, Daredevil, Devil Dinosaur, Elsa Bloodstone, Gorr, Human Torch, Iron Man, Magik, Magneto, Peni Parker, Psylocke, Rogue, Scarlet Witch, Storm, The Hood, The Punisher |
| 3700 | Hulk |
| 4000 | Hela |
| 4300 | Invisible Woman, Jubilee, Mantis, Rocket Raccoon, Ultron |
| 4500 | Adam Warlock, Cloak & Dagger, Gambit, Jeff the Land Shark, Loki |
| 4800 | Luna Snow, White Fox |
Two structural facts jump out, and neither is visible if you read the table as a single sorted list.
Every Strategist sits at 4300 or above. Count the names in the top three bands: five at 4300, five at 4500, two at 4800. That is twelve heroes, which is exactly the Strategist count. No Strategist is cheaper than Invisible Woman’s 4300.
No non-Strategist sits above 4000. Hela at 4000 is the ceiling for everyone else. The highest Vanguard or Duelist cost is lower than the lowest Strategist cost.
So the cost table is not really a hero-by-hero balance chart. It is a two-population chart with a gap between 4000 and 4300, and the gap separates the role that heals from the roles that fight.
Cost varies 1.9×, conversion varies 2.7×
The cost is only one of two inputs. The other one is how fast you accumulate energy, and it moves more than the cost does.
| Source | Conversion | Passive gain |
|---|---|---|
| Vanguard and Duelist, damage or healing dealt | 55% | 11 per second |
| Strategist, damage dealt | 50% | 8 per second |
| Strategist, healing dealt | 65% | 8 per second |
| Bruce Banner, damage dealt | 150% | 10 per second |
| Monster Hulk | does not convert damage | 12 per second |
| Gorr | standard conversion | 12 per second |
Put the spreads side by side:
- Cost spread: 4800 ÷ 2500 = 1.92×.
- Conversion spread: 150% ÷ 55% = 2.73×.
The conversion gap is larger than the entire cost range. Which means the question “which ultimate charges fastest” cannot be answered from the cost list at all — a 150% converter with a 3400 ultimate fills it far faster than a 55% converter with a 2500 one.
Bruce Banner is the clearest case, and it is not a small edge. His conversion is 2.73 times a normal Duelist’s, so the same damage output builds his ultimate almost three times as fast. Monster Hulk is the opposite extreme: zero conversion, 12 per second passive only. Hulk’s ultimate is therefore the only one in the game you cannot earn — you can only wait for it.
What the cost actually costs in seconds
Strip out damage entirely and see what the passive alone buys. This is the floor — the time you are guaranteed to wait even if you do nothing.
| Hero | Cost | Rate | Pure passive time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venom | 2500 | 11/s | 3:47 |
| Spider-Man | 2800 | 11/s | 4:15 |
| Thor | 3100 | 11/s | 4:42 |
| Hela | 4000 | 11/s | 6:04 |
| Rocket Raccoon | 4300 | 8/s | 8:58 |
| Luna Snow | 4800 | 8/s | 10:00 |
The gap from Venom to Luna Snow is 2.64× of waiting, and it comes from both ends at once: the most expensive ultimate in the game is also on the slowest passive rate. Strategists are double-penalised on the clock — 4800 against 8 per second, where a Vanguard gets 2500 against 11 per second.
Note what that does not mean. It does not mean Strategists charge slower in practice, because their healing converts at 65%, the highest standard rate in the game. It means their floor is lower. A Strategist who spends a fight doing damage instead of healing is charging at 50% on a 4300-plus ultimate — the worst combination available. The healing and support guide turns that into a targeting rule.
100% is a wall, not a bank
Ultimate charge stops at 100%. It does not accumulate, it does not overflow, and there is no way to store a second ultimate. The moment you hit full, every point of energy you would have generated is simply not generated.
That makes holding a full ultimate the most expensive habit in the game, and the price is computable.
A Duelist passive generates 11 energy per second. Sit on a full ultimate for 30 seconds and you have forfeited 330 energy. Against the median 3400-cost ultimate that is 9.7% of the next one.
But the loss is not evenly distributed:
| Hero | Cost | 30 seconds held | Share of next ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venom | 2500 | 330 energy | 13.2% |
| Hela | 4000 | 330 energy | 8.3% |
| Luna Snow | 4800 | 240 energy | 5.0% |
Cheap ultimates punish hoarding 2.6 times harder than expensive ones. Venom loses 13.2% of his next ultimate per 30 seconds of holding; Luna Snow loses 5%. The heroes with the fastest-charging ultimates are the ones with the most to lose from sitting on them, which is exactly backwards from how most players play — they treat the cheap, fast ultimate as the one worth saving for a good moment.
The rule that falls out: if your ultimate is cheap, spend it on the first fight that is even slightly worth winning. If it is expensive, you can afford to wait for a better one.
Healing is the fastest charge in the game
The Strategist numbers look like a penalty until you read the whole row: 50% on damage, but 65% on healing. That 65% is the highest standard conversion in the game.
Work out the break-even. Let a Duelist deal D damage per second and a Strategist heal H per second, and set them equal:
0.55D + 11 = 0.65H + 8
At a Duelist output of 100 damage per second, that solves to H ≈ 90 healing per second. A Strategist healing 90 per second charges at the same rate as a Duelist dealing 100.
Two consequences follow, and they point in opposite directions from the usual advice:
- A Strategist who stops healing to trade damage charges slowest of all. They drop from 65% to 50% conversion while keeping the low 8/s passive.
- Healing uptime is a damage-equivalent stat. Treat a lapse in healing as lost damage, because in energy terms it is.
Where charge is lost, and where it is not
Four rules govern the edges of the system, and each one changes a decision.
Switching heroes carries a maximum of 50%. Swap at full charge and you start the next hero at half. That is a full ultimate’s worth of buildup burned on the swap, which is why the hero-swap decision in a ranked game is more expensive than it looks. If you must swap, swap early, not at 100%. The charge-faster checklist covers the sources that matter most.
An interrupted ultimate refunds 50%. A countered ultimate is half a loss, not a full one. Doctor Strange’s Eye of Agamotto and Scarlet Witch’s Reality Erasure both have windows where a stun cancels them, so baiting a stun before committing is worth real value.
Domination carries energy between rounds; escort modes do not. On Domination, a hero who ends round one at 100% starts round two at 100%. On Convoy and Convergence, every round starts at zero. This inverts the spending rule by mode: on an escort map, an unused ultimate at the end of a round is destroyed, so spending it on a lost fight costs nothing. On Domination, an unused ultimate is an asset you keep.
Deadpool is outside the system. He has no energy bar at all. He earns Style Rating by landing abilities and unlocks his ultimate at S Rank, loses that charge when he dies, and has a 60-second cooldown after using it. He is the only hero in the game who is punished for dying in the ultimate economy.
The exceptions worth memorising
Three heroes break the standard rules, and each one changes how you should fight them. Reading the enemy’s charge off their animations is a separate skill — the enemy ult timer page covers the tells. Bruce Banner converts 150% of damage dealt and passively gains 10 per second. Shooting Banner is expensive — every point of damage you deal him is nearly three points of ultimate for him.
Monster Hulk converts nothing. His ultimate runs on a 12-per-second clock alone, so there is no way to speed it up and no way to slow it down by denying him damage. Time is the only variable.
Devil Dinosaur hands energy back to whoever hits him: any incoming damage or healing dealt to him converts 40% into energy for the attacker or healer. He is the only target in the game with a built-in charge refund for the person shooting at him. Dumping a magazine into Devil Dinosaur is not just inefficient, it is funding the enemy’s next ultimate.
Fastest-charging ultimates (derived ranking)
The cost table and conversion table above are enough to rank who fills an ultimate fastest. Charge speed scales with cost ÷ conversion, not with cost alone. Two heroes at the same cost fill at different rates if their conversion differs.
| Tier | Heroes | Why they are fast |
|---|---|---|
| Fastest converter | Bruce Banner | 150% damage conversion — ~2.73× a normal Duelist, so the same damage builds his ult almost three times as fast |
| Cheapest cost | Venom (2500) | Lowest cost in the game; even at 55% conversion the floor is 3:47 of passive gain |
| Cheap band | Blade, Groot, Spider-Man, Squirrel Girl, The Thing, Wolverine (2800) | One step above Venom; fast floors, standard conversion |
| Standard | 3100–3400 band | The bulk of the roster; mid-speed, no edge |
| Slowest floor | Strategists at 4300–4800 | Highest costs, but their 65% healing conversion pulls practical charge back up — the floor is low, the real rate is not |
The table inverts the obvious read: cheapest cost does not mean fastest ult. Bruce Banner at a higher cost out-charges Venom because conversion beats cost by 2.73× to 1.92×. The charge-faster checklist covers the in-fight sources that move you up these tiers.
Hold or spend: decision thresholds
The 100% wall makes holding a full ultimate the most expensive habit in the game, but “always spend” is wrong too. The threshold depends on cost.
| Ultimate cost | Rule | Trigger to spend |
|---|---|---|
| Below 3000 (Venom, 2800 band) | Spend early, often | The first fight that is even slightly worth winning — hoarding loses 13% of the next ult per 30 seconds held |
| 3100–4000 (most Duelists, Hela) | Spend on value | A pick, an objective capture, or a fight you would otherwise lose |
| 4300+ (Strategists) | Hold for the teamfight | A healing ult spent on a stray duel is wasted; wait for the fight where the heal matters |
Mode changes the last row. On Domination, energy carries between rounds, so a held Strategist ult is an asset you keep — hold it into round two. On Convoy and Convergence, every round starts at zero, so an unused ult at the end of a round is destroyed; spend it even on a losing fight, because it is gone either way.
The break point is roughly 3000 energy: below it, the cost of waiting outweighs the value of the perfect moment; above it, the perfect moment is worth waiting for. This is the same “cheap ults punish hoarding” rule from earlier, written as a number you can act on.