Could someone explain the supposed "iso-8" shortage?

IamTheBiggs

I've heard some folx in the higher echelon speak of a supposed iso-8 shortage, but I have yet to see such a thing. In fact, I personally have more iso-8 than I know what to do with it.
Could someone please explain to me this phenomenon?

Unknown

Are you at the point where your strongest characters are two-stars, or maybe with three-stars just pushing up past them? When I was at that point, I had a lot more Iso-8 than characters I could use it on, but as I got more three-star characters to high cover levels, it turned around -- it takes a lot of Iso-8 to level three and four-star characters all the way, and the amount of Iso-8 coming in doesn't keep up with the number of covers you can accrue.

Unknown

There are 3 current stages in this game. There is a 4th on the way.

1. 1 and 2 stars only.
2. 2 stars and 1 or maybe 2 3 stars
3. plenty of 3 stars and a few 4 stars.
4. plenty of maxed 4 stars.


When you're in the 3rd stage, you reach a point where you're getting top 25 or top 5 every single PVP. And you are typically in a top 100 alliance.

So, you're winning 3 to 4 covers for each tournament rather than 1 or maybe 2.

This creates a dilemma because, while your covers gained is doubling or more, your iso gained is not rapidly increasing. Yes, you get 5k ISO for top 5 and only 1K for top 25. But 4k is worth maybe 2 levels for a 3 star above 120 and only 1 level for high leveled 4 stars.

So you get to a point where you have multiple characters with max covers but almost no ISO to level them.

I, for example, have about 16 3 star characters with max covers (or maybe more, I've actually lost count) but only 7 of them are fully leveled.

That's why so many transitioning guides urge newer players not to throw ISO into bad characters just because they have, as you said, more Iso than you what to do with.

Because at a certain point, your needs are going to completely flip. You'll have too many covers and wish you hadn't wasted that ISO on Shehulk or Doc Oc just because they had a good number of covers and you had ISO to blow.

dkffiv

On September 1st I needed 1,205,835 ISO to softcap every character I owned.

Oct 1st - 1,624,856
Nov 1st - 2,277,300
Dec 1st - 2,396,600
Jan 1st - 2,679,600

In that time I've maxed a 4hor along with 2 or 3 other 3*.

tanis3303

onimus wrote:

Because at a certain point, your needs are going to completely flip. You'll have too many covers and wish you hadn't wasted that ISO on Shehulk or Doc Oc just because they had a good number of covers and you had ISO to blow.

This is competlely true, except for the she hulk part. Doc ock I'll give you, he's terribad, but she hulk at 5/3/5 is surprisingly good maxed. She's been responsible for more of my defensive pvp wins than any other character I've left out, and I think it's because people underestimate her. Her and xforce make a great team, adding aoe damage and extra cascades in xforce's only lacking color her blue power at 5 also makes her great for pve battles where special tiles fly all over the place. And don't forget triggering anger on hulk and then getting yourself a shiny new strike tile for your trouble

She hulk rules, the 3*s I wish I could have the ISO i spend back on are M40, beast, doc ock, and storm.

dkffiv

tanis3303 wrote:

onimus wrote:

Because at a certain point, your needs are going to completely flip. You'll have too many covers and wish you hadn't wasted that ISO on Shehulk or Doc Oc just because they had a good number of covers and you had ISO to blow.

This is competlely true, except for the she hulk part. Doc ock I'll give you, he's terribad, but she hulk at 5/3/5 is surprisingly good maxed. She's been responsible for more of my defensive pvp wins than any other character I've left out, and I think it's because people underestimate her. Her and xforce make a great team, adding aoe damage and extra cascades in xforce's only lacking color her blue power at 5 also makes her great for pve battles where special tiles fly all over the place. And don't forget triggering anger on hulk and then getting yourself a shiny new strike tile for your trouble

She hulk rules, the 3*s I wish I could have the ISO i spend back on are M40, beast, doc ock, and storm.

Pre True Heal nerf IM40 paired well with OBW as his yellow powered her steal + heal. Delay a few rounds at the end and your chars would come out with max hp. Post nerf OBW Punisher IM40 is still a good team but cannot be used in several matches back to back due to the damage they take.

Taganov

The long and short is the ISO supply you get by playing--even heavily--is best suited to the 1*-2* transition. It's inadequate for mid 2*-3* transition, and a bad joke for 3*-4*.

Just for clarity: I'm typically top 50-100 in events, so I'll average a single cover per event and I still see ISO drought.

dider152

From what I gather from this thread, if you are a casual/casual to almost hardcore and are content with just placing within the top 50 or top 100, you have nothing to worry about. But when you are really hardcore and start accruing the 3 and 4* covers you start to feel the iso8 pain. I'm a hardcore player that does some PVP but prefers to get my 3 and 4*s from PvE, and the influx of new characters that I just have to have (I dislike Squirrel Girl, but still angle for her) means that the iso8 grind gets harder. I may win 2000 or 3000 iso, but it goes directly into leveling the next big character.

Solution: MPQ looks at your level + character roster to determine scaling difficulty, right (I think; I'm not sure)? Maybe they could do the same as to iso8 and scale how much you get, as well. For example, the player with a lot of 3s and beginning transition to 4s gets 3x iso8.

Talahamut

When I was in the start of the 2-3* transition I had so many ISOs laying around...

If I could only have back all that I spent on the standard token slot machine way back then.

Dauthi

It all depends on how much you play really. If you grind PVE, do some lightning rounds, and play pvp regularly you won't see the shortage until much later, I would say mid 2-3* transition. This is because once you pass level 100-110 or so ISO needed for leveling ramps up quite a bit.

For a typical player they see it at the start of the 2-3* transition. Either way by the end of the transition you will have more 3*s needing to be leveled then you know what to do with. It becomes a game of rationing once you hit the 4* transition.

It also depends on when you started playing. Characters are coming out double or triple time compared to before, so many old players had plenty of time to max them before there were so many 3*s to level. We also had less 2*s to worry about leveling, so all the new 2*s we never had to worry about leveling. Instead we converted them to more ISO. It is like a head start, but we are still being encumbered slowly regardless.

IamTheBiggs

Okay, this helps, guys. Since I am in that to transition (for what seems an interminable amount of time), it makes sense that I've not yet encountered this phenomenon.

Druss

Had to wade in on the Dr Octopus comments - he is awesome for PvE as the main point is to match off the countdown tiles before they go off - having octopus making fists for each of these, drops battle time by about 50%

Getting back to the main point though, when I had a completed 2* roster I amassed over 400,000 spare iso - now I'm about 3,000,000 short - admittedly I do have a very large roster