rebels characters abilities besides chopper?

Hera has a leadership that gives every phoenix squad unique to the rest of phoenix squad. So everyone gets Chopper's heal, Sabine's whatever, etc. This leads me to strongly suspect the characters will be pretty bad on their own (like Chopper), and really only usable as a group, so it's going to be a reeeeeeally long time before they see much action since you need to gear all of them (and get gouged at $500 each for them).