Are LRs still worth the time?

SnowcaTT

They are no longer my primary source of ISO like they were about a year ago.

They are still a needed source of ISO. I play them for 10 minutes or less at the top and (do to not having a whaled/lucky heavy 5* account) don't worry about placement.

Rhycar

LRs have become a matter of convenience rather than necessity for me. If I see seed teams, I beat them. If I have an hour or so to burn, then I'll fight my way toward the top where you can find the seals and just hit nonstop for 4-8 points each. After the hour, I usually throw up a 30-minute shield and call it a day. Once you start hitting seals, you can get in around two matches every three minutes, and the ISO and XP is excellent at that rate. Plus, the top scores usually avoid each other in LRs; why hit a 5* roster when you can hit a 3* for the same reward? So yeah, not as good as they used to be, but if you have the time to sink into it, LRs can still be the most profitable investment of your time in the game.

SummerGlau

if you're on steam?
don't play them myself though

MaxxPowerz

No. Life is too short and I've learned to accept the fact that this game is a marathon, not a sprint.

TxMoose

until I'm 'caught up', if I have the time, they will be worth the time. at a minimum, getting 3 seeds in to 101 takes about 60-90 seconds with 3thanos. playing up to 250 or playing to t25 or t50 at the end is fun, but not always possible. as long as I don't forget and lose seeds (or forget about the afternoon data push), I at least spend the 90 seconds to get to 101. I currently have 6 4*s at 13 covers and I'm about to have 5s to worry about. I still have a looong way to go to thing LRs aren't worth at least 90 seconds each.

broll

I've never thought they were worth my time. I've only done them a handful of times, but the ISO gained certainly didn't seem like a windfall. I don't bother.

If they put them on the weekend instead of the work week I might have the time to devote to grinding them for ISO, but the cost benefit analysis of doing them during the work week has never worked out for me.

wymtime

Here are the numbers posted in the tips section

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.

The thing is how much time do you have to play and can you time them properly. For 10 LR that is 19K ISO and no health packs wasted. Again if you have 3* Thanos championed it can go by extremly fast compared to a hard node in PVE and watching a shield intercept.

GrimSkald

I can usually make somewhere around 20-25K of extra Iso on Wednesday due to them. My phone is pretty consistent with getting seeds, I'll give you my method but bear in mind this may be different for other Operating Systems, or even different implementations of Android. I can give you this information as pretty solid - my game treats itself as "open" even if the phone is asleep for the most part. I'm beginning to wonder if this is why I'm not seeing the extra Intercepts, but I digress.

Anyway, my method. So long as the game is running when the hour mark passes, I generally get full seeds. I try to enter the LR within the first few minutes, if it goes past ten sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't. When it matters, it usually means I get less seeds. Anyway, full seeds will take you to 239 - very rarely 245.

I do have some 390 5* characters, when the round is about 15-20 minutes from ending, I re-enter and clear the seeds. After I have cleared my last seeds, I generally do one more hit for the standard token, then if I have time one or two more for placement. Sometimes I get top 50, sometimes top 100, sometimes top 250 because someone hit me at the last minute. Obviously, your own experience will vary depending on your roster. If you have a 4* roster this is still possible, just start earlier. Before my 5*s were 390, I used RHulk/Switch for the seeds - it's very fast as even the basic "Hammer and Anvil" will literally kill any seed team outright unless it has a relatively undamaged Ragnarok.

I've contemplated doing a guide to the Lightning Rounds, above is the short version...

The Bob The

udonomefoo wrote:

Since posting this I have leveled my 2/4/2 Black Bolt to 360 and rostered (not maxed yet) 3hanos.

LR's are DEFINITELY worth the time now because everyone is dead by turn 2.

The "join in the first 2 minutes or get nothing" part is still annoying though, I just don't have that kind of life where I can drop what I'm doing every two hours on the dot.

You don't have to. Join spot-on at the flip, yes, but then go do something else for an hour. As long as your game doesn't restart, you'll still get 10 (very occasionally fewer) seeds, and it's often easier to place to boot since you've missed the opening scrum.

...probably shouldn't have said that.

Akari

I don't know if LR participation has gone down, but lately a score of 250-280 is pretty much a guaranteed t100. I'll do a couple seeds at the start if I have them, or maybe 1 match if not, then in the last 20-45 minutes I'll make a bum rush for 250 and try to get a heroic token out of it. Heroic tokens are always worth some effort since they can (rarely) yield 4* covers.

GrimSkald

Akari wrote:

I don't know if LR participation has gone down, but lately a score of 250-280 is pretty much a guaranteed t100. I'll do a couple seeds at the start if I have them, or maybe 1 match if not, then in the last 20-45 minutes I'll make a bum rush for 250 and try to get a heroic token out of it. Heroic tokens are always worth some effort since they can (rarely) yield 4* covers.

That's my experience as well. If I do one node past the seeds (to get to 250,) and don't get hit, I generally score top 100. I can think of one or two times when this wasn't the case, but the vast majority of the time it was good enough.

Of course, the "and don't get hit" is kind of key.

BoyWonder1914

broll wrote:

I've never thought they were worth my time. I've only done them a handful of times, but the ISO gained certainly didn't seem like a windfall. I don't bother.

If they put them on the weekend instead of the work week I might have the time to devote to grinding them for ISO, but the cost benefit analysis of doing them during the work week has never worked out for me.

This. I work a 9-5 in an open cubicle area where I just can't sit for 15-20 minute periods on my phone. I'll lose my job lol. People swear to me up and down that the iso is worth it, but I don't think 2k/round and maybe a heroic is. I need breaks from this game, even moreso now since I've started doing regular PVP events more often. Even if the matches go quick, to me its just another commitment to the game when I already juggle whats left of my social life with post-work fatigue. I've never gotten a high rate of 2-star covers from LRs or even PVP in general, so the "possibility" of getting one isn't really a draw for me.

Orchedelia

I pulled one 2* cover from LRs this past week, playing the typical 10 "seed-only" teams, every two hours. With 24 events over 48 hours, I usually manage to play about 10-15 of those (so, easily 100+ matches in a week).
Pulling a dozen 2* covers from LRs every week seemed typical.

It appears in 2017 they have effectively found a way to slow 2* farming, unless you are willing to pay the HP and draw for covers.
So...the 2* draw % has changed SIGNIFICANTLY.
And cashing in your 1* covers plus the slight ISO gets you maybe 1000-1500 with luck. (talking about seed-team LRs only)

Anybody see things otherwise?

Jam_Adams

no. I didn't play as many LRs as you this week (I think only 4 rounds), but of those 8 seed teams or so in each round, I totaled only a couple of rewards above the 70 iso/140 iso/std token/1* character level of prize.

sad. the LR needed to be reworked in so many other ways than tweaking the 2* rewards down.

smkspy

Not since the 2 star rate has dropped. Also seems like the number of seeds has started to go down also. Where I would get 10 seeds every other LR, this week was 3 seeds every 2 or 3 LRs.

stowaway

aesthetocyst wrote:

Takes less time, pays less too. I guess that's fair(ish), but also makes them less significant. UNLESS....!

.... you can play one fully. Farm the **** out of it for an hour and shield out at 400+ pts.

I dunno. . . I agree with everything you wrote except this part. As others have observed, participation seems to have gone way down. Placement is easier, and I get hit a lot less often. I play the seed teams at the beginning. Then I check back in 75 minutes later, and if no one has hit me, 1-2 fights against real opponents is good for 1-2 heroic tokens, no shielding necessary. In the past, I might do this once a week. This week, I probably got 10-12 heroic tokens out of Lightning Rounds. (And they happened to be very juicy tokens this week, including what will be a 13th Nova cover.)

JeffCascadian

I have the advantage of being a stay-at-home dad/house hubby. The flexibility of that lets me play a lots of Lightning Rounds and I certainly do. As soon as I finish one LR, I set a timer to go off a minute before the next one starts. Each battle may not be much ISO but it adds up very quickly.