We are now in the Mystic Era of Season 5 of Axie Infinity: Origins. As usual, there is a lot of experimentation at the beginning of the Era. For this Meta Report, I decided to focus on the most popular archetypes as data from uncommon archetypes are less reliable due to low sample sizes. If you want to see what uncommon archetypes you can play, check out my previous post highlighting 7 uncommon archetypes in this Mystic Era.

tldr for this week:

• Topaz set to be dominating the meta again!?

• Topaz, Jinx, Poison, and Leafy are the Top 4

• Heart of Ocean Sponge may be on the rise(?)

Archetype Usage

Overall Archetype Usage

If you have been following my Meta Reports, you can see that this is a bit different from the data from previous reports. I have decided to change the way I analyse my data. Below are the matches played by players at a certain Victory Star (VStar) bracket before the match starts. I decided to look at everyone at Challenger at the time of writing, collected their matched for Days 4-6 of the Mystic Era (after Mystic Runes and Charms available in the marketplace), and sorted the matches by VStar brackets.

          Number of Matches
2400+                      6
2300-2400                553
2200-2300               4173
2100-2200              13714
2000-2100              30274
1900-2000              62156
1800-1900             114103

Currently there is only 1 player who reached 2400+ VStar playing only Topaz. Interestingly, despite the nerf, Topaz is still very strong in the Mystic Era and is looking to dominate the Mystic Era (again) with nearly 50% of matched played above 2300 VStar (Top 16 players at the time of writing).

Leafy is still the most popular archetype overall at Challenger followed by Venoki, Topaz, Sustain, Jinx and Non-Venoki Poison. It is interesting to see Jinx played more frequently at 2300-2400, probably due to more Topaz and fewer Leafy up there.

One interesting observation is that there are more non-Venoki Poison and fewer Venoki near the Top, suggested that Non-Venoki Poison may be more optimal in the Mystic Era, but it is too early to tell at this stage.

Given that I decided to not include archetypes that are not popular at at the Top in this analysis, there is a significant proportion of archetypes that are defined as ‘Others’ at low Challenger which includes but not limited to Glorious Mane, Triple Owl, Momo, Pure DMG Sturdy Fighter etc.

Archetype Usage by Hour

Below are the matches played by Archetypes by Hours for Days 4-6 in Season 5 Mystic Era for different VStar brackets. For lower Challenger, the time of hour matters less because the number of matches are large enough but at above 2200 (or even 2100), there could be difference in matchup expected depending on the time of the day.

I have decided to include these plots in the main text this time. Moving forward, I will probably move these to the Data Dump at the end of those who are interested. I may also trying plotting as percentages instead of absolute number of matches for easier interpretation.

Archetypes Win Rates and Matchups

Overall Win Rates

Here I have changed the way I calculate the win rates. It is now sorted by the VStar of players entering the matched and only show the Win Rates for Archetypes with more than 10 matches in a VStar bracket (hence nothing in 2400+ as there are only 6 matches played at that VStar).

Note that the overall Win Rates are higher at higher VStar brackets because players at higher VStar have higher Win Rates, especially when matched with players at lower VStar.

Despite the nerf this Season,Topaz is still doing extremely well at 2300+, suggesting that the power level of optimised Topaz is still higher than other Archetypes. Poison (both Venoki and non-Venoki) are also doing well at 2300+. Leafy is still doing well above 2200 and so is Jinx.

By definition, if everyone are playing a lot of games everyday and settled at a particular VStar based on the power levels of their teams and players’ abilities, we would see 50% across the board, which seems to be the case for most Archetypes below 2200.

Heart of Ocean Sponge stand out as an Archetype that has the potential to climb (at least to 2300) as it has a positive Win Rate across Challenger. It seems like Hot Butt might be on the decline from the Top and Sustain is not looking like it can push further at the Top.

Of course we are still early in the Mystic Era. We will probably see some shifts in the meta by the end of the Era. My guess is that Topaz will still be the team to beat, allowing Jinx to be around, and perhaps pushing out some Leafy at the Top.

Archetype Matchups

Here I sorted Archetype Matchups by VStar, filtering out matchups with fewer than 10 matches. Note that higher VStar has higher Win Rate as they could be matched against lower ranked players.

See below for Discussions on the matchups for each Archetype.

Leafy

In general, Confused, Sustain, and Topaz are Leafy’s weaknesses. Heart of Ocean Sponge can also be tough for Leafy below 2200. Leafy’s good matchups are Poison and Jinx, with Poison being the factor that it different from last season in keeping Leafy more relavent.

Venoki & Non-Venoki Poison

Non-Venoki Poison seems to be doing better than Venoki Poison at the highest level. The matchup spread are largely similar between the two Poison Archetypes with Non-Venoki being better at handling Heart of Ocean Sponge, whereas Venoki is slightly better at handling Jinx.

The crucial difference is that Non-Venoki Poison has a very good matchup against Venoki Poison, which accounts for some of the differences in overall Win Rates.

Topaz

Well, Topaz is just Topaz. What else is there to say. At least it has a weakness in the form of Jinx. Otherwise, it does not look like there is anything else stopping Topaz again.

In the less optimised versions of Topaz, it can suffer against Poison and Sustain, but Jinx is really the main killer of Topaz. Seems like we will get another Jinx vs Topaz Era!?

Sustain

Sustain is slowly getting pushed out. Leafy is its only good matchup. The most optimised Sustain with Rise & Ruin and/or Metamorphosis may be able to deal with Hot Butt, but Sustain below 2200 is having a tough time except against Leafy.

Jinx

Jinx is back in the Mystic Era with the Mystic Charms helping to shuffle more Curse Cards into opponent’s deck. The main reason why Jinx is back is because Topaz is back.

Jinx is a prime example of a team that is good in some VStar brackets but not others. Jinx is good at 2200 or above because there are more Topaz and less Leafy. Below 2200, there are more Leafy, making Jinx harder to climb. Poison and Heart of Ocean Sponge can also be tough for Jinx.

Hot Butt

Hot Butt may be slowly getting pushed out, especially with Heart of Ocean Sponge coming in. Hot Butt has a very terrible matchup against Heart of Ocean Sponge. Jinx, which is getting popular at the top, is also tough for Hot Butt. Poison and Topaz are not easy for Hot Butt either.

Its only good matchup is Sustain, but Sustain is getting pushed out as well. The only thing keeping Hot Butt around is its even matchup against Leafy.

Heart of Ocean Sponge

Heart of Ocean Sponge is good against Leafy, Venoki Poison, Jinx, Sustain, and Hot Butt. It is looking pretty good for Heart of Ocean Sponge except for Topaz and Non-Venoki Poison which are keeping Heart of Ocean Sponge from its dominance.

I expect that more Heart of Ocean Sponge to climb but Topaz and Poison will make life a bit more difficult for the Sponge players.

Confused

I included Confused here because there were some well performing Confused teams near the Top. However, it seems like it may get pushed down as its best matchup, Leafy, is slowly losing to the dominance of Topaz at the Top. We may not see Confused around much for the remaining of the Season.

Conclusion

The meta is slowly settling and it seems like it is converging to something similar to last Season with Topaz and Jinx fighting with each other. This season we see Poison entering the scene, which is a good addition with Poison doing well against Jinx (and possibly Topaz). Leafy is still in the mix, doing well against Jinx and Poison, but suffers against Topaz. Let’s see if Heart of Ocean Sponge can squeeze it to join those 4 at the Top by the end of the Season.

Thank you so much as always for your support! If you have any comments and/or suggestions on the data analysis, please feel free to reach out to me on X (Twitter) or Discord - @mauriceccy.

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