We are less than 2 days away from the end of Season 5 and the competition at the top is fierce despite the decay bug. While we see the same main archetypes as the Top of the Leaderboard as last week, there has been quite a bit of optimisation and shifts in cards, runes, and charms within the individual archetypes. (Yes, we have a Raven’s Tactic meta!)

tldr for this week:

• Topaz, Sustain, Leafy, Heart of Ocean Sponge, Jinx, Hot Butt, Poison all viable to fight for the Top spot!?

• Raven’s Tactic AoE Leafy gaining traction at high-Challenger

• Diverse meta at mid- and low-Challenger with many archetypes near 50% win rates

Statistics of Player Base

This is a new section I decided to include this time for us to take a step back from looking at the Top and see the whole player base in general.

At the time of writing, there are 67697 players who played Origins this Season. We have the highest number of player in Tiger, so the competition at Tiger for the Top 20000 spots can also be quite intense. One win (10 Victory Star Points) can be a deciding factor on whether you can AXS rewards or not given how many players there are at Tiger.

      Rank  Number of Players       Ranks
Challenger               5432      1-5432
    Dragon               8893  5433-14325
     Tiger              10618 14326-24943
      Bear               4296 24944-29239
      Wolf               5139 29240-34378
      Boar               7195 34379-41573
      Hare               7325 41574-48898
     Chick              10083 48899-58981
       Egg               8716 58982-67697

Less than 10% of the players are at Challenger. Even at Challenger, there is a big range with more than half of the Challenger players below 1900 VStar. Only 1000+ players has 2000+ VStar points and fewer and fewer players getting to the very Top with 2300+ and even 2400+ VStar.

Archetype Usage

Overall Archetype Usage

Here is the statistics of the Overall Archetype Usage for Days 10-12 of the Mystic Era of Season 5. Over 330000 ranked matches were played at Challenger in those 3 days.

           Number of Matches
2400+                    197
2300-2400               4111
2200-2300              14296
2100-2200              26374
2000-2100              45103
1900-2000              88298
1800-1900             159830

At 2400+ VStar, over 50% of the teams are Topaz with 28% Sustain and less than 20% Leafy. The usgae of Topaz decreases as we go down the VStar brackets with increasing Leafy and Jinx. At 1900-2300 VStar, you can expect about a third of the teams are Leafy.

For Poison, only the non-Venoki version can be foudn at the very top. Venoki is still around and is more popular at lower Challenger. There is a relatively constant usage of Jinx and Hot Butt at 1900-2400 VStar with about 7% Jinx and 2% Hot Butt. Sustain is also still around and you can expect about 10% Sustain at 1900-2300 VStar.

Heart of Ocean Sponge is mostly at 2000-2200 at around 7% usage, while it has less than 5% usage in the other VStar brackets in Challenger. In this report, I also included Fury Aggro which is found at 2300-2400 though it is not a popular archetype overall as it requires expensive Mystic Runes (Endless Anger and Last Stand) to be effective.

Archetypes Win Rates and Matchups

Overall Win Rates

At the very top (2400+), we have Sustain, Leafy, and Topaz, with Sustain having the highest win rate, followed by Topaz. Do note that it is likely that a lot of matches are Topaz mirrors, dragging its win rate towards 50%.

At 2300-2400, 7 archetypes are viable in climbing, namely Leafy, Topaz, Sustain, Jinx, Non-Venoki Poison, Heart of Ocean Sponge, and Hot Butt. There are only very few matches for Fury Aggro to say much about its win rate.

Venoki Poison is still viable below 2200 VStar, but it is a bit tough to push above that.

It is nice to see that at 1800-2200, which is 90%+ of the players at Challenger, most archetypes have roughly 50% win rate, meaning at least 9 archetypes are playable at that level. I am sure there are more archetypes that are viable, e.g. Momo, which I have not included in this report.

Archetype Matchups

Here are the Archetype Matchups Win Rates for each VStar brackets. See below for the Discussions of the matchups spreads for each Archetype.

Topaz

Collect & Protect + Last Stand are staples for the top Topaz teams with Holy Prayer or Gloomy Dices as the third Rune. Charms are important with Multiple Energy Drink M to thin out the deck, Gecko Mask in the mid for Taunt. Scotch Tape is often not as important at the highest level as most players are playing Garish Worm and/or Mantis Dagger for Discarding cards from hand anyway.

Different teams can have different techs against the mirror, which is very common at the top. Gloomy Dice, even Catepillars, Paralyzing JellyFish, and Lazy Snail can be used to for slow down opponent’s draw, especially in the mirror. Dual Blade with Hidden Razor also punishes opposing Topaz teams.

Topaz has an overall very good matchup spread, which is not to polarising, meaning there is a chance for each game. The toughest matchups for Topaz are Jinx and Non-Venoki Poison, especially at the lower VStar brackets, but there is a decent chance to win against every matchup at 2100+ VStar for Topaz.

Leafy

Raven’s Tactic AoE Leafy is now the top Leafy build. A Raven’s Tactic Bird with Ranchu for Vulnerable and Buzz Buzz for massive AoE damage. It is often coupled with a Last Wish front for more AoE damage and a Holy Prayer (or Pure Instinct) to add more damage.

Charms are again playing an important part with Oak Bud being the default choice for Leafy at the highest level for massive healing in place of Ancient Root since Discard is too common that Retaining cards are not worth it any more. Mantis Dagger is still good for Discard and Flammingo Hammer for Weak.

Instead of Retain, Card Draw with Clear or Nerdy is the key for consistency in getting into your Bamboos, at the same time buffing your Buzz Buzz.

The toughest matchup for Leafy is Sustain. Other than against Sustain, Leafy has a decent chance in every game across Challenger.

Venoki & Non-Venoki Poison

Poison teams at the very Top are dropping Venoki though there still quite a number of Venoki Poison above 2200 VStar. Paralyzing Glare is a must. You often see a combination of Last Stand (for buying an extra turn), Last Wish (to deal a one-off AoE damage), Regenerator (to survive of longer), and Rise & Ruin (to target KO specific Axie).

At the highest level, Dual Blade with Hidden Razor, Chubby, Gila on Last Stand Mech, Cottontail are crucial to race against Topaz and Leafy.

Leafy and Fury Aggro are the toughest matchups for Poison. It has a good matchup against Sustain, and also against Topaz at mid-Challenger level. Interestingly Poison suffers against Jinx at the higher level but does well against Jinx at the lower level in Challenger, showing that even within Challenger, the meta can be quite different at different levels.

Sustain

There are many variants of Sustain teams at the Top. The example shown is not the most common setup. The most common setup is probably Adaptive Program, Shellshock, and Holy Prayer. The example illustrated is a Rise & Ruin variant to use Forest Wrath in the late game to finish off opponents.

Sustain is for sure farming on Leafy. It also does pretty well against Topaz, but it loses to Poison, Jinx, and Hot Butt.

Jinx

The Top Jinx teams are mostly running Regenerator and Gaia’s Embrace for survivability. Gloomy Dice and Bloodlust are popular options for the third Rune (some may run both in place of Regenerator or Gaia). Cards and Charms are mostly pretty standard. Some may run White Sage for Debuff instead of HP Charms.

Jinx stays relevant in the meta because it is good against Sustain, Topaz, and non-Venoki Poison. However, it is still tough against Leafy (and Venoki Poison).

Hot Butt

All the Top Hot Butt teams rely on Rise & Ruin to damage against certain matchups. Regenerator and Gloomy Dice are the top options for the other 2 Runes. As for Cards, Rosa and Swirl slow the opponent down. Garish Worm and Mantis Dagger are must to Discard Cards from opponent’s Hand. Clover is good to have to gain Leaf or take a hit.

Hot Butt is not doing well against Topaz and Jinx (and also Heart of Ocean Sponge at lower level). Its main prey is Sustain (and to some extent Poison). The fact that it is even against Leafy allows Hot Butt to be relevant in the meta.

Heart of Ocean Sponge

Heart of Ocean and Energy Shard are staples for Heart of Ocean Sponge teams. Popular options for the third Rune includes Collect & Protect, Gaia’s Embrace, and Last Wish. Having a way to apply Taunt at the back is important to protect the Heart of Ocean Aqua.

Heart of Ocean Sponge does well at lower level in Challenger but the tough matchup at higher level is Topaz, which limits how high Heart of Ocean Sponge can go. The rest of the matchups are at least even but Topaz at the highest level is just too fast (and too many Discards).

Fury Rage

I have included Fury Rage in this Report as it is a viable archetype to get above 2300. Endless Anger and Last Stand are must with Collect & Protect as the best third Rune. Having Taunt on the Mech can be important for certain matchups, especially for getting the best value for Shiba on the Mech. Triple Imp is good for the Retain and bonus DMG at Fury as all 3 Axies can get into Fury mode in this archetype.

There is not a lot of data in terms of matchups as there are very few Fury Aggro team. One thing we can say is that Fury Aggro seems to have good matchups against Poison.

Conclusion

It is good to still see some innvoations near the end of the Season with Raven’s Tactic AoE Leafy, which is less affected by Discard, the evolving tech with Gloomy Dice and Dual Blade in Topaz at the Top, and the dynamics of players teching Discard and (the lack of) Retain.

While the top players are fighting hard teching against the meta at the Top, the majority of the players in Challenger (1800-2200 VStar) are enjoying a pretty diverse meta with many archetypes having close to 50% win rates.

As Season 5 is coming to a close, I am looking forward to the changes in Season 6, and hopefully we will see some more archetypes being balanced to the point that they can be viable to reach mid-Challenger.

Best of luck in the Arena for the rest of Season 5!

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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Additional Data Dump