Archetype Usage, Win Rates, and Matchups
[Reposted from my Axie blog - https://paragraph.xyz/@lunacian - if you like the post, consider collecting it on Paragraph.xyz
This Season we have a short 1-week long Mystic Era before heading into the Final Era in Axie Origins. While the Mystic Era is short, it probably caused the biggest drama of the Season with an early domination of Momo with Feather Descend, leading to a quick nerf to Momo coming in the Final Era. The heavily buffed Bleed mechanic finally gets to shine with the Brutal Claw Runes as well as the changes to Arco and Gerbil to AoE Attacks. It is looking like a Bleed and Feather Era with some Sandal, Sponge, and Fury.
Momo nerfed in Final Era due to its domination in the Mystic Era
Brutal Claw, Momo, Sandal at the Top 10
Feather Topaz - the up-and-coming Challenger for the Top
Player Base Statistics
Rank # Players RankingsChallenger 4742 1-4742 Dragon 7666 4743-12408 Tiger 8556 12409-20964 Bear 4322 20965-25286 Wolf 4005 25287-29291 Boar 4839 29292-34130 Hare 6134 34131-40264 Chick 10960 40265-51224 Egg 10768 51225-61992
Total number of players in Season 6 is now up to 60k+ with Chick and Egg (the lowest 2 Ranks) have the highest number of players with over 20k+ players combined. An interesting observation is the steady decrease in the number of players in Tiger, which is a result of the top being more spread out with more people managing get from Tiger to Dragon and Challenger. In Axie Origins, one gets 20 VStars per win below Tiger, but once one gets to Tiger, it becomes 10 VStars per win, making Tiger the choke point for many players. For new players, getting to Tiger would be a good first target before aiming higher.
Close to 5000 players are in Challenger close to the end of the Mystic Era, with another 7500+ players in Dragon. In order to earn AXS rewards from Leaderboard, one will have to be at least at high Dragon to be safe.
Archetype Usage
Overall archetype usage
# Matches Played in Days 4-52400+ 712300-2400 22542200-2300 74022100-2200 152902000-2100 285241900-2000 573411800-1900 108549
For the Mystic Era, only data from Days 4-5 was used as Mystic Runes and Charms were not available before Day 4 while the Era is only 7 days long, so I want to get the Meta Report out before the start of Day 7.
There are only 9 players at 2400+ at the time of writing, with the majority of the matches played with Brutal Claw teams at that level with some Momo and Sandal, and a small amount of Feather Topaz which is up-and-coming near the end of Day 5. 30 players are in 2300-2400, playing mostly Sandal, Fury Aggro, Momo, and Brutal Claw, with a bit of AoE, Sponge, and Perch. There is a significant amount of "Multiple archetypes" where players are playing Momo with other strategies like AoE.
2200+ corresponds to about Top 150 where we starts to see a bit of Poison, Anenome, Sustain, and Feather Fan. The other perviously popular archetypes of Topaz, Leafy, and Triple Owl can only be found below 2200 VStar.
Archetype Win Rates and Matchups
Overall Archetype Win Rates
Feather Topaz and Brutal Claw are the key archetypes with major success, especially at the Top. Besdie these 2, Sandal, Fury Aggro, and Momo (and to some extent AoE and Perch) also have the potential to get close to the Top. It should be noted that when looking at win rates at lower VStar brackets, they are highly dependent on the amount of suboptimal teams there are for those archetypes.
Archetype Matchups
This data gives an overall picture of the archetype matchups across Challenger, which is dominated by players at lower Challenger as there are a lot more players in lower VStar levels. See Additional Data for Matchups Data for each VStar bracket.
Only matchups with more than 10 matches in Challenger are included. Note that the data for Feather Topaz is scarce as it is a relatively new innovation with very few players playing it.
Archetype Highlights
Here I am only highlighting the new archetypes that were not seen in previous Eras. There are archetypes which are successful in the Mystic Era but not highlighted here, notably Sandal, Sponge, Fury Aggro, Perch, Anemone etc. Please see my previous Meta Reports for example of those archetypes.
Brutal Claw
At the time of writing, the team played by the #1 player on the leaderboard is a Brutal Claw team with a 6-AoE Attacks Brutal Claw beast. With the change in Arco and Gerbil to AoE attacks, it is possible to have a Beast with 6 AoE Attacks and enough PP to equip 2 Hidden Razor. With the buff of Bleed and Brutal Claw this Season, it is very easy to stack Bleed onto the opponent. Bleed and Grievous Wound are also great against another dominate strategy in the current meta - Feather - as Feather Daggers count as the Axie's card, triggering Bleed and Grievous Wound HP Loss when used.
It is effectively an AoE team using Brutal Claw to deal a lot of Bloodstorm damage when using AoE attacks from the Brutal Claw beast. The main limitation is that a 6-AoE Attack Beast is quite rare at this point, making is less accessible than other strategies.
The team often run double or triple Chubby to get a lot of Bleed stacks on opponent consistently early game, 1 Cottontail Last Stand Mech, and Dual Blade and Scarab to put Grievous Wound on a particular enemy.
The matchup data for Brutal Claw teams varies a lot depending on the VStar brackets, which is likely due to how suboptimal buildsmay have certain weaknesses about certain matchups that the optimal builds may not have.
Momo (+ Feather Descend)
Momo is dominating the Mystic Era in Season 6, so much so that the dev decided to nerf it mid-season before the start of the Final Era.
Momo Final Era Adjustments
The following changes will be applied at the beginning of the Final Era:
Concentrate: Momo's Mark is only applied by Attacks with Energy Cost > 0.
Momo's Mark: Is now a Debuff allowing it to be Cleansed among other interactions.
Feather Dagger added by the effect capped to 2 copies.
Starter axies are here to help new players learn the game and kickstart their journey towards owning NFT axies to progress to the next level.
We are wary of any situation where starter axies are defining the meta at top ranks as we also observed with Momo and Venoki back in August.
With the "Feather Daggers deal 2 hits" effect together with the ability to gain Feather Daggers from the Feather Descend Rune, it allows Momo to scale up its damage very quickly. The upcoming nerf will slow down the scaling of Momo's damage significantly, especially with Concentrate not scaling with Feather Dagger any more. Momo's Mark can now be Cleansed, creating potential counter play against it for more defensive teams. While it is likely that we will not see Momo at the very top of the Leaderboard in the Final Era, other Feather-based teams will like to still remain strong in the Final Era.
Sponge seems to be a tough matchup for Momo. If you want to beat Momo before it is nerfed, why not give Sponge a go.
Feather Topaz
Feather Topaz is likely going to be the dominate Feather-based strategy after the nerf to Momo in the Final Era, followed by AoE and Feather Fan. One can get many Feather Daggers from Cloud and from Feather Descend when getting to 10 Feather Stacks, which is relatively easy to do with Feather Spears, Tri Feather, and the Runes and Charms. Feather Daggers not only scale up the Feather Bonus damage but also scale up Topaz damage as Feather Daggers get Banished when used.
Note that the top players playing Feather Topaz are not even playing the most optimal versions as those Axies are yet to be bred. It is likely that we will see further development and optimisation of Feather Topaz in the remaining of the Mystic Era as well as in the Final Era. I will not be surprised if the Final Era will be dominated by Feather Topaz, probably followed by a nerf to Feather Descend in the next Season.
Bleed and Feather, the 2 mechanics that received the most buffs this Season, are finally seeing their full potential with the corresponding Mystic Runes being available in the Mystic Era. We are seeing another cycle of making certain uncommon strategies OP to stimulate breeding and market activities this Season. I wonder how many cycles of this we will see before we get some new content beside minor adjustments. Will we see Parts Upgrade soon?
I was not sure why the Final Era was brought back this season. Perhaps the devs were half-expecting potential slip-ups during the testing phase, such as the one regarding the interaction of Momo and Feather Descend, where the separation of Mystic and Final Eras would allow the devs to make another mid-season nerf between Eras. One thing for sure is that it will become harder to climb for budget players in the Final Era without Momo.
Thank you so much for your support! If you have any comments and/or suggestions, please feel free comment or reach out to me on X (Twitter) or Discord @mauriceccy.
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