It was announced that Momo and Venoki will be nerfed from the Epic Era of Season 5. The community has different views on the nerfs. Obviously with every change made, some will benefit and some will be disadvantaged. Some think it is fair as Momo and Venoki are too powerful; some feel that it is unfair for Sky Mavis to make changes during the Season as people have invested into buying and/or breeding Axies because of the New Starter Axies.
Problem with Starter Axies being too powerful
Before I go through the specific changes, I want to share a bit about my thoughts on the problem of having Starter Axies being too powerful. I think the problem with Momo and Venoki lies in the combination of accessibility and the current reward system for the game. Every player can obtain Momo and Venoki for free. Having more Axies that can are competitively viable itself is actually a good thing, not a bad thing, for the meta as it contributes to the diversity of the meta. The problem lies in the mismatch between the amount of investment and reward. Typically Axies that are competitive on the Leaderboard for AXS rewards are more expensive on the marketplace, so that the rewards are somewhat correlated with the investment in Axies.
The problem with free Starters Axies being competitively viable is that it breaks the correlation between rewards and investment. If everyone can use Starter Axies to climb up the Leaderboard and earn a significant amount of AXS rewards, players are less incentivised to buy expensive Axies from the marketplace to compete for Leaderboard rewards if they can do the same without any monetary investment. This will obviously have a negative impact on the Axie economy. It will also lead to a less diverse meta if most players decide to play with the Starter Axies instead of other strategies.
Specific Changes with Momo and Venoki
Momo
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[Concentrate] : +2 DMG/Hit→ +1 DMG/Hit
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[Death Shower] : Base DMG 25 → 20
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[Lil Bro (α)] : Base DMG 20 → 18
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[Lil Bro] : Base DMG 25 → 22
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[Feathery Dart (α)] : Base DMG 20 → 18
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[Feathery Dart] : Base DMG 25 → 22
6 changes to Momo, all decreasing its damage output. It will surely slow Momo down and allow other archetypes to have a chance to outrace Momo in terms of damage. Having said that, Momo is still good, especially with its targetting ability which can still be difficult for some teams to deal with.
With the prevailance of Leafy, together with more synergies in other archetypes made available by the Epic Runes and Charms, I expect Momo to fall off of Top 100. I would expect to see Momo making it to Top 1000-2000 but it could be difficult for Momo to making it further up given the strengths of other archetypes in the Epic Era. I think it will have a similar fate as Glorious Mane in the Mystic Era last season - it is still good but just not good enough to compete with other archetypes at the Top.
Venoki
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[Venom Nail] (both) : Remove Retain
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[Punky α] : . When your turn starts, apply 3 {Poison} to a random Enemy. .
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[Punky] : . When your turn starts, apply 2 {Poison} to a random Enemy 2 times. .
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(Rune) [Venoki’s Poison] : Until 4, when your turn starts, apply 2 {Poison} to a random Enemy 2 times.
Some small nerfs to Venoki but power level still stays pretty similar. Removing Retain on Venom Nail makes it less consistent (or require more resources to Keep). The other changes concentrates Poisons on fewer Axies, but still apply the same total number of Poison stacks. None of these changes are too significant, so I would expect that Venoki will continue to see play at the highest level in Poison teams in the Epic Era. Venoki’s Poison on the other hand might be a bit too weak for Epic Era as there are better Runes available in Epic. If Poison is getting out of hand, I will not be surprised to see another nerf to Venoki before the Mystic Era.
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