This week in Destiny marks the return of the fabled Iron Banner PvP playlist, which in turn brings with it a series of armour pieces and weapons that have Raid-level stats – a must-have for any player looking to expand their current inventory. What follows is a guide in order to avoid grinding your hours away, and tips on how to quickly reach Rank 5 to get the best gear.

Personal Destiny power leveling, plus some helpful tables from Reddit, suggest that the best way to complete the Iron Banner is to spread your hours of playtime evenly across the week in which it’s available. This piece of information is, of course, a no-brainer; but it’s the math behind it that’s interesting.

Destiny‘s Iron Banner offers multiple buffs – an Armour Shader, an Emblem, a Class-item, a purchasable ‘Tempered Buff’, and a multiplier for every day it’s available. Basically, if you equip all these and play later in the week, you’ll rack up experience faster than you will earlier. The trick is knowing when to play, and for how long.

Just as a start: The best method to achieve Rank 5 is to either play 1 hour per day for the whole week; or 2 hours per day over the last 4 days.

The following table, as provided by Reddit user GenericDeadHead, offers stats based on the following variables:

• You play 6 matches per day
• You have the Shader, Emblem, and Class-item equipped
• You have the Tempered Buff
• You win 50% of your matches
• You turn in 3 Bounties per day

Although it may look confusing at first glance, the data shows that if you play roughly 6 games of Iron Banner per day, with all the buffs active while winning at least half of your games, you will achieve Rank 5 by the end of the week. The chart shows how much Rep you gain from handing in your Bounties and winning your games for each day, and shows how far along that gets you towards each rank.

If you aren’t available earlier in the week, or you need to catch up on lost time, there’s another chart to calculate how long you need for the last 4 days of the week.

The following table offers stats based on the following variables:

• You play 10 matches per day
• You have the Shader, Emblem Class-item equipped
• You have the Tempered buff each day
• You win 50% of your matches
• You turn in 4 Bounties per day

 

This chart shows that, by starting on Friday, you only need to put in an extra 4 games per day on average, and you should be able to hit Rank 5 by the day before reset.

All of this information is based on the variables presented, and is certainly up for change depending on how many of the buffs you have, or how many games you win/lose. Ultimately, it provides a guide to how many games you should be playing per day, so as to avoid mindless grinding.