If you’ve played Axie Infinity even for a moment, you probably already know: there are different classes and they all look and work different. But how do classes work and interact with one another? Are there better and worse classes? Let’s find out!
The Basics
There are 9 classes in the game, which we can divide in 3 groups. Not only are the Axies divided like this, but all abilities (cards) come from one of the 6 common classes. More specifically, abilities come from Body Parts, which you may know about if you read a basic introduction to the game, and those are divided between the 6 common classes: Plants, Reptiles, Beasts, Bugs, Birds and Aquatics.
Each Axie is born with 6 specific body part that make up it’s attributes (stats) and they can be of any common class. Four of those body parts also generate an ability that the Axie can use, while two only contribute with stats. Additionally, Axie all have a body class, which may or may not match it’s parts.
The Classes
Let’s go over the classes one by one, explaining a bit about the playability of the 3 class-groups.
- Reptile parts get a major bonus to HP and a small bonus to Speed.
- Plant parts get a major bonus to HP and a small bonus to Morale.
What does these attributes mean? This class type is known as the Tanks, you will notice almost every team needs a chonky boy in front to absorb the most damage possible while the player try to amass energy and enough cards to dish out a powerful combo from the backline. Plants are usually preferred to be used as Tanks, although Dusk (and sometimes the unusual Aqua) show up too, while Reptiles tend to work best as a backline finisher.
- Beast parts get a major bonus to Morale and a small bonus to Speed.
- Bug parts get a major bonus to Morale and a small bonus to HP.
These are the big damage boys, Morale affects your chance of critical hits, so it’s specially useful for damage dealers that can end up dishing out even 300 damage with 1 card! Of course, this usually means these Axies lack defense (although you may end up being surprised by some of the Bug’s utility cards).
- Aquatic parts get a major bonus to Speed and a small bonus to HP.
- Bird parts get a major bonus to Speed and a small bonus to Morale.
The fast finishers, they usually dish a lot of damage and are the first to do so in any given round, they work as an extremely well oiled counter to glass cannon Axies, but can struggle to finish off more defense-focused enemies.
Now that we have established typical roles, looking at the cards we can find out some interesting things that differentiate the classes that belong to the same group. Let’s take, for example, Beasts and Bugs, what makes them different? Using the card explorer, we can go directly into it:
There are several things to unpack here, but one thing that should stick out like a sore thumb is the amount of damage the cards do, especially if you consider bonuses from Single Combat or Nut Throw along with Nut Crack. We established these are the big damage dealers, then why do the Beast move set seem to have way more overall damage? Are the Bugs cards just worse?
If you look a bit more closely, you’ll notice Bugs have a LOT of cards that provide utility. Snail Shell is considered by many to be one of the strongest cards in the game, anyone who ever played against the double Fear of Terror Chomp can confirm it’s a pain to deal with, while going against the Melee disable of Numbing Lecretion can make some Axies be completely useless in a 1v1, unable to use any card!
While one class in a group is more specialized and does one job very well, the other has either more utility or versatility on its use. Plants are the exceptional Tankers, while Reptiles can can provide all kinds of utility. Birds are the exceptional fast killers, but almost all cards from the Aquatic class provide a buff to itself and having way more HP it can sustain more damage before falling (while still being the first to dish out damage in a round).
No one class is above the other, it’s just how you use them!
Damage Bonuses and Interactions between Classes
While there already are some great articles explaining how Damage and Shield works, let’s go over the basics. If you ever played Pokémon, you already know how it works with class advantages: it’s a circular advantage/disadvantage diagram, also called a Rock-Paper-Scissors system.
The bonus from using the correct card class against the enemy is 15%, but it also works in reverse: trying to hit a Beast Axie with a Reptile card will result in a 15% damage reduction, so be careful what cards you use to attack when you want to dish out more damage.
One final bonus, that’s sometimes overlooked, you can get is the 15% you also get while using a card with the same class as the body of your Axie. A Plant Axie using a Plant card will get 15% bonus damage AND shield. It’s the major reason Pure Axies are more coveted among players.
About the Secret Classes
The 3 Secret Classes are: Dawn, Mech and Dusk. They are not exactly specialists of any sort and, although rarer, are not currently more sought after. For now, none of them have any cards, although they benefit from half the bonus of the same class-type cards. A Dusk Axie will get 7.5% bonus damage and shield from Plant and Reptile cards, for example. The game is always changing, so expect them to have a more important role in the future!
What is the ideal combination? What classes should I get to win?
There’s no hard rule or tricky combination that will land you more wins. If you follow the players on top of the Leaderboard you’ll notice that there is an incredible variety in their combinations, although some things are more common than others. In my previous article I’ve talked about how a safe bet is going for the Plant-Beast-Bird combination, this will not make you shoot up to the top, but it may help you maintain a decent rating.
Thanks for joining us for class, I hope that you’ve learned something useful! More articles and content will be coming along in the near future, stay tuned.
