Another Season, another set of meta following nerfs and buffs. Meta teams from previous seasons, e.g. Leafy and Topaz, fall while buffed archetypes this Season, e.g. Feather, Bleed, and Ramp, rise to the Top in this Final Era.
tldr:
Feather, Sandal, and Brutal Claw at the Top
Poison, Leafy, and Topaz nowhere to be seen near the Top
Another Pay-to-win Era with Mystic Runes and Charms!?
Rank # Players Rankings
Challenger 5432 1-5432
Dragon 7659 5433-13091
Tiger 7954 13092-21045
Bear 4412 21046-25457
Wolf 4077 25458-29534
Boar 5473 29535-35007
Hare 7296 35008-42303
Chick 12174 42304-54477
Egg 12466 54478-66943
Over 5000 players have reached Challenger at this point with the total number of players in Season 6 above 66000 players. Having said that, over 20000 players are below 200 Victory Stars, representing new players who tried that game but likely to have left the game without making too much progress.
Being the main game fo Axie Infinity, Axie Origins has established a core community at this point. The question is how will Sky Mavis balance between player retention and player acquisition. Will we see a surge in player numbers when the highly-teased Parts Upgrade is released? We shall see.
# Matches Played in Days 4-6
2400+ 682
2300-2400 6181
2200-2300 14614
2100-2200 22151
2000-2100 41588
1900-2000 76197
Feather teams are dominating the meta with over 50% of the matches played at 2400+ VStar being Feather teams. Having said that, there are different ways to build Feather teams, some with Feather Spears, some with Wing Horn, some with Cloud, some with AoE etc.
Up there we also find Sandal, Brutal Claw, and Anenome with a small amount of Sponge, Momo, and Confused.
Sustain, Momo, Triple Owl, and Fury Aggro can also be found at 2300-2400. Perch and Leafy can only be found below 2300 VStar. Sacred Feather and Last Stand make it very difficult for OTK teams like Perch. The traditional Nimo tail Topaz can only be found below 2200 VStar.
Feather, Momo, Brutal Claw, and Sandal are the 4 main archetypes fighting for the Top spot with Anenome and Sponge hanging around the Top.
Poison, Leafy, and Topaz are struggling hard in this Final Era as they are not fast enough compared to other Aggro archetypes. It should be noted that Sustain is still around even though it is not at the very top, which is good news for players who would enjoy more the more defensive style of game play.
The example of Perch highlights how different the meta can be as well as the "pay-to-win" aspect of Axie Origins. Last Stand, a Mystic Rune that is currently at around USD50 at the time of writing, is used by majority of the players at the Top of the leaderboard, which (together with Sacred Feather) pretty much hard counters Perch teams. Teams lower on the Leaderboard likely lose to Perch if they do not run Last Stand and/or Scared Feather, but for top players running Last Stand, Perch is an easy win. I believe that most players hope Axie Origins can be more about the Axies and less about the Runes and Charms. Let's hope Axie Origins will move towards that direction with Parts Upgrade coming in the near future.
This matchup chart serves as a general guide for casual players to see what your teams could be good / bad against. See Additional Data at the end for matchup data in different VStar brackets.
Feather, Ramp Aggro with Sandal and Anenome, and Bleed with Brutal Claw are the winners of this Season in the Final Era so far as one would expect given the buffs these archetypes received this Season. Archetypes that were dominating in previous seasons which were nerfed this Season, e.g. Leafy and Topaz, are nowhere to be seen near the Top. This is another cycle of Axie Origins Meta.
Let's look forward to Parts Upgrade and see if it will actually have an impact on the gameplay for Axie Origins.
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Maurice