Colognoisseur's Guide to Mining ISO from LR's 2.1 7/23UPDATE

Colognoisseur

A few months ago I posted a guide to how I mine the ISO i use to max my characters from Lightning Rounds (LR). A couple of months ago there were some significant changes to the way LR work and how much ISO you could get. I thought it was time to do an update taking into account the changes in MMR and the number of seed teams available to farm. In June another change adding higher points to each node changed some of the numbers. The Guide now reflects the current state of LR as of 7/23/2015.

Starting on Tuesday at 1PM ET and going through Thursday at 11 AM there are LR every two hours for a total of 24 LR. If you start the lightning round right when it starts you will get a variable number of seed teams. To truly maximize your ISO return it is critical that you be there when it opens. I have not experienced this but others claimed in responses to my previous guide that just leaving the app open will get you the seed teams. It was important before but now it is critical because if you miss the time by as little as a minute you get no seed teams and three pretty hard nodes.

If you are there on time you will get seed teams up until a score of 212 as a minimum and 245 as a maximum. I have not yet figured out what causes the variation but I mostly can get 10 seed teams which leave me at 185 but it seems that there are a few LR each week which stop at something less.

There are some responses below which indicate there is a pattern but as of this update I still have not found a reproducible way to insure getting all 10 seed teams. There are always one ofr two which end up with less.

The seed teams have been reduced in difficulty so they are pretty easy. In a couple of LR I have farmed the seed teams with a 1* roster of Juggernaut, Iron Man, and Venom. You don't need a big roster to beat the seed teams.
This is unconfirmed because I've only done this twice to prove it could be done but because I stopped with the final seed team it seems like I was not exposed to others to take advantage of and as a result I got a higher placement award.

So how much iso can you get from doing this?

The point totals for matches won go: 38-71-101-128-152-174-194-212-229-245.

Prog awards
25: 140 iso
50: std token
100: 250 iso
250: std token

If you get in at the beginning and hit each one of the easy seed teams:
Play ten seed teams up to a point total of 245 at an average of 100iso/match= 1,000 ISO
Prog awards up to 245 = 390 iso plus at least 100 if you cash in the token
Placement awards at 245 seem to pretty much put you at t250 = 500 iso
Grand total= 1,890 iso per LR for just playing seed teams
Play 5 out of 24 LR and you can realize 9,450 Iso per week
Play 10 out of 24 LR and you can realize 18,900 Iso per week
Play 20 out of 24 LR and you can realize 37,800 Iso per week.

If you get all the seed teams you can end up at 245 meaning one more match against a non-seed team gets you another cover which gets you at the least another 100 iso plus the 100 iso for winning the match. So there is a relatively easy extra 200 iso available for one more match that is much harder than the seed teams.

The scenario laid out above are worst case lowest reward returns. With a kind RNG sometimes there are a lot of 2* covers won from matches. These numbers can only go higher. I have had single lightning rounds net me >3,000iso, not often but sometimes everything comes together.

If you have the roster for it playing just one or two extra matches against non-seed teams will boost your placement award to t100 or t50 and that gets you an extra heroic token for t100 and another heroic token for t50 plus the same 500 iso. These are tough matches as the MMR in LR are the same as in PvP meaning you will face a team similar in level to you. As appealing as it might be; do not use boosts to go for this because it is a break even scenario in regard to iso. Instead this is where I make sure I have three useful team-ups ready to go, to use in case of emergency.

If you combine this with regular play in DDQ you will have a pretty regular stream of ISO that will help you get your characters up to higher levels pretty fast now that the lower end iso costs have been adjusted downward.

The only drawback to this is you have to be there right at the moment the LR opens up. For a playerbase which sets alarms to make PvE refreshes and to make sure their shields don't run out this one thing is well worth the effort to get the timing right.

Good luck and I hope to see some new names in the LR.

Unknown

Thanks for the write up! I'm one of those who never really plays LR because the rewards don't seem to be worth the effort. When I dabble, it's usually up to 100 points then quit. But I'm definitely going to take this info to heart and see if I can't maybe step up my LR game a little.

stowaway

Colognoisseur wrote:

If you are there on time you will get seed teams up until a score of 142 as a minimum and 185 as a maximum. I have not yet figured out what causes the variation but I mostly can get 10 seed teams which leave me at 185 but it seems that there are a few LR each week which stop at something less.

I've no evidence, but I've always assumed the variation was down to who the featured character is. Loki has hardly any health, and a loaner ability he can only use if you let him. So those go by really quickly, and I think you get a couple of extra seed teams because of it. Whereas Sentry or Rags just have a lot more health to whittle down.

TxMoose

great idea to include this Colognoisseur. regardless of character, if you have a couple of healers/semi healers (i.e. daken/wolvie), you can completely go through the seed teams with no health packs used, even if its a high health featured (although it does become monotonous and boring after a while - but having plenty of iso is worth some monotony once in a while). none have a damaging ability to down axwolvie even if he's a little under half health and daken never gets too low against 70/17/15 teams (that's about the highest seed opponents you'll face and the 70 is a one cover ***). I've been getting a lot of ** cover drops from LRs lately, so that helps with extra iso, and now with finding necessary ** essentials that you might not have.

Unknown

Thanks for writing this. LRs are an interesting phenomenon and while I don't have time to hit too many of them, knowing exactly how to attack them is pretty beneficial.

Thanks!

Sickboy254698

Great guide.

Playing 20 out of 24 rounds in the middle of the week and most likely a season is a lot to ask most people. Not saying that's your fault of course. But even with the new reduced ISO amount for 3 and 4 star covers, ISO grinding is easily the worst part of playing this game. With Deadpools daily giving out 6000 ish ISO, it still takes weeks to get one 3 star from 120-166. Unless you are grinding this game daily to get extra from PVE.

I'm in a top 50 alliance, play Deadpools daily most days, and score 800 minimum in every PVP event. I still only have 2 maxed covers on day 180 something. Sure I have a 20 3 star covers around level 120 but the cost to max them is ridiculous.

Any who. Great guide again. Sorry for the rant

TxMoose

thought I would log one LR (starting in beginning seconds of the LR, playing seeds only then stopping) as a sample for those who don't play them much - if you don't add it all up, you don't realize what its worth. this is from the rags LR that started at noon central time today. I used **daken/**wolvie with my rags (never needed a health pack - usually use the loaner character, but wolvie didn't start full health, and rags tanks the green/red). one thing I didn't log was the number of matches (maybe 8?), but looks like...
pure iso drops from the matches = 970 iso
std token drops = 1 = *storm = 100 iso
cover drops:
moonstone x2 = 500 iso
marvel = 250 iso
daken = 250 iso
cap = 250 iso
**storm = 250 iso
jugs = 100 iso
pts from seeds was in the low-mid 200s (started getting hit shortly after finishing the seeds). don't know what I finished with, but final placement was t1000 = 200 iso.

if I total everything right, that's a total of 2870 iso for 1 LR. the big boost in iso is all the cover drops. any new player that doesn't have a full ** roster yet - free covers right here. if I started from scratch today, the time to full ** player would be lightning quick

I'm doing as many of these as I can this week because I'm starting to level things. its a pve-ish grind though and not super fun, but so much iso is needed later in the game that its worth it to me. if you put in in real dollars, 3200iso is selling for $4.99, so this worth about $4.50 for ~20 minutes of play (maybe 30 if you get an interruption).

Viking Tacos

Awesome post Colognoisseur. I did a LR recently and got the 10 bacon magic teams and honestly thought it was a glitch. I had almost givenup on LRs after the MMR change. Will focus my attention a bit more.

You da man!

TxMoose

i have tried and tried to figure out what is needed to get seed teams. only thing that always works is entering in the first minute and playing through them. if you try to place, really the optimal way to play them is to enter, but not play the seed teams until last 30 minutes the play them plus a few real teams (optimal for t100 or t50), but you have to keep your phone awake for the whole hour or it might go to sleep and reset everything, which you lose the seeds. i have entered 6 minutes into the event and not gotten one seed teams - all leveled teams, mostly 166 daken/patch or 200+ boosteds. i have also forgotten about an LR and entered late, like with 15 min left and still got seed teams. i have also gotten 3 seed - one in each node. i have no idea what the 'requirement' is but it seems like its all over the place.

wymtime

One thing I feel appropriate to add o this thread is to also consider what time slice you can join for PVP. If you can join one of the first 3 time slices for the PVP that ends on Tuesdays and the 4th or 5th end times for the PVP that ends on Fridays you can leave Wednesday's open fr LR. By saving out you PVP's the time that you would normally dedicate to PVP on Wed you can dedicate to LR. You can start PVP later on Thursdays. this will allow you to fit LR into your game time and will make it so LR don't feel like extra work. When I would choose the last end time on Wed LR felt like a chore.
Choose the right PVP end times and LR can be fun and rewarding

GrumpySmurf1002

If you are there on time you will get seed teams up until a score of 212 as a minimum and 245 as a maximum. I have not yet figured out what causes the variation but I mostly can get 10 seed teams which leave me at 185 but it seems that there are a few LR each week which stop at something less.

Just re-reading this and noticed this.

I don't remember the exact wording, but the Devs had said something along the lines of the seed teams being the product of the matchmaking algorithm not having enough to data to find matches. Presumably the variation then comes from the rate at which players join early on in the event.

Turbosmooth

Yeah, you will get seed teams up until there are other players to match against you. I just play the top node as fast as I can until the seed teams are gone. Then I play the 2nd and 3rd nodes for the remaining seeds knowing that these last two plays will define how I'll show up against newcomers. I usually just pick my best team and stick with it (you might need to switch it up if you are not Lv130+). You can't go wrong with 3*Daken + Patch as they'll take no damage. Just switch to the second enemy match green, then blue and finish with Patch's green or Daken's blue. The next target will automatically be the 3rd character and save the 1st target for last.

I tried different things like rotating around the nodes hoping to find more seeds and there is little difference except that if you gets attacked, it will show up on the top node first. So the best strategy is to exhaust your enemies via top node first as quickly as you can.

Seed teams will never be enough to actually place, but for ISO generation, it's perfect.

amusingfoo1

Thanks for writing this. I'd mined LRs for ISO before (it started when I didn't have enough heroes to do anything else there, and even now it's not a whole lot better), but very haphazardly. After reading this, I've collected a huge amount, and even placed a couple times (only top-50, and even that was pretty lucky, but I wasn't complaining).

stryke

I can't get this to work I must admit. Started three LR's yesterday spot on and even in the pretty short time that it takes to get to 200 I'll take one defeat for a whopping 50 points making the 250 reward impossible to get from the feeder teams and one win.

Quebbster

OJSP wrote:

stryke wrote:

I can't get this to work I must admit. Started three LR's yesterday spot on and even in the pretty short time that it takes to get to 200 I'll take one defeat for a whopping 50 points making the 250 reward impossible to get from the feeder teams and one win.

Go to the event immediately when it starts to confirm that we have seed teams on our nodes. However, don't start playing until there's about 30 minutes left in the event. That way, you won't be attacked by other people looking for easy high point targets.

I tend to prefer to play immediately until the first non-seed team pops up. The longer you wait, the greater the risk the seed teams will vanish and you'll face actual opponents instead.
Also, I have never ever managed to reach 250 points on seed teams alone. 245 points is the maximum I can get from seed teams, to reach 250 points I need to fight an actual opponent or get a defensive win.

TxMoose

I turn the sleep function off on my phone so it stays awake the whole time. enter the event and just set my phone aside (gotta have it plugged in though). then about 30-40 minutes from event end I play through seeds and 2-3 matches of real teams and usually end right at event end and if I don't get hit (starting that late keeps you out of queues until very late), usually at least t50. the risk you run is if you need to use your phone in a way that resets the game. if the app restarts, you'll lose all the seeds under your original 3. guaranteed iso (starting early) vs. tokens (starting later). I won't fight through an entire LR from the beginning - no time for that.

Varg138

Was there some stealth update to LRs? These are my primary source of earning ISO, and I play them diligently. Prior to this week, I would have the game open at the start of the LR, ensuring seed teams, then come to play the last 20 minutes or so, getting anywhere from 194-245 points. However, this week, when doing the same, I am only getting three seed teams (101 points) EVERY time I do this. The only way for me to get more than three seed teams was to play right at the start, which I don't prefer to do since I will inevitably get attacked. This easily cost me 10K+ ISO this week since 90% of my matches only gave me three seed teams.

Has anyone else experienced this? I can live with it I suppose, since technically it will only cost me placement ISO...but still....why can't we have nice things?

Unknown

It could be due to the holiday. People are off of work / home from school and are playing more.

MPQ_Daywalker

aesthetocyst wrote:

I've always loved LRs—short sweet way to crank out 1-2K iso in 10min or less every 2hrs for 48hrs straight, what's not to love? Hey can we add another 24hr period of them on the wknds...please?—and with championing hitting, I've really found religion on them.

I've been hitting the LRs regularly this week too, trying to build my stockpile of ISO in preparation for making a whole bunch of Champions. It's very little work for the ISO payoff; just hitting the seeds is worth the small amount of time. I think it would be awesome to see them on the weekends too.

By the way, aesthetocyst, I was cleaning out my stockpiled covers in prep for Championing and found this... just had to say thanks:

Because, really, who doesn't want their name associated with Moonstone?

Quebbster

I decided to hit the lightning rounds hard this week as I needed all the ISO I could get to max and champion my Ant-man before his covers expire. I think I managed to rack up about 50K ISO - without the LRs I wouldn't even have been close, but now I have enough to max him and have two days to get the Champion promotion ISO...
In short, this is a great ISO source!

The Bob The

Agreed with the above. I had a Human Torch at 120 that I had eight expiring covers for. I got ten seeds every time I played, plus the extra round for the token, and the results got me there with a day to spare. Great guide!