May 2025 MOBA competitive digest

Thirty one evening cups and a rolling schedule of smaller ones paid out in cash alone across the MOBA month of May 2025, and the calendar split cleanly between rosters that won by volume and one that won by picking its spots.

The month

Two clocks ran through the MOBA month. One ticked every hour: small fields of four to nine rosters, $7,640 in the pot, $5,000 to a winner who had to finish unbeaten to collect it. The other ticked once a night, thirty one times, $76,700 on the table and $50,000 of that reserved for whoever came through 7-0. Almost every story in May lives in the gap between those two clocks.

Anastas Palin PH played the fast clock harder than anyone: 1,913 appearances, 1,682 wins against 224 losses, 241 titles, $1,579,180 banked. Pharaohs of Eternity tracked them all month at 1,540 wins to 224 losses and $1,255,020. Neither pile was built in the evening showcase. Four of those 241 titles came from it, and one of the 180. The money at the head of the table was made in bulk, in tiny fields, at $5,000 a time.

Washed Team did the exact opposite and got most of the way to the same place. They logged 336 appearances, went 299-34, and collected $808,350, which is close to three times the cash per game played that the month’s money leader managed. Between 4 May and 20 May they entered sixteen evening cups and won twelve, every one of them 7-0. Their club was also the loudest voice in the transfer market over that same stretch.

Then it stopped. From 21 May they went 6-1 on three consecutive nights, second each time and $15,000 instead of $50,000. On 24 May they sold a player and did not enter another evening cup before the month ended, eight nights left blank. The vacuum closed quickly. Solary had been turning up almost every night since 1 May with only three evening titles to show for the first three weeks; from 21 May they won six of the ten they entered and finished on $1,081,470 and 59 titles. SAIYAN arrived later and louder, taking 26 May at 8-0, the only night of the month that demanded an eighth win. Omega team won 25 May after three earlier second places, and Esperia Academy closed the calendar 7-0 on 31 May.

So May resolves into three linked movements: a volume game at the head of the money list that never lost its rhythm, a mid month monopoly on the only event paying serious money, and a late scramble for that event once the monopoly stopped showing up. The transfer file runs underneath all three, and it is busiest exactly where the results turn.

Competitions and leagues

The calendar had two shapes and no third. Thirty one evening cups, one for every day of the month, $76,700 apiece and $2,377,700 in total, contested by fields of thirteen to eighteen rosters. Underneath them, cups running through the day and into the night, four to nine rosters, $7,640 in the pot. Both formats paid the winner only for a perfect run: across the month’s events, no champion dropped a single game on the way, and second place in an evening cup paid $15,000 against the $50,000 waiting for an unbeaten run.

What was absent shaped behaviour as much as what was present. Entry was open worldwide, with no residency restriction anywhere on the schedule. Separately, the reward ledger records cash and nothing else: no competition points were claimed across the month, and no qualification places were handed out. There were no standings to defend and no event anyone had to enter because it fed a later one. That is precisely why two opposite strategies could both look rational, and why the month never converged on a single way of winning.

Eight rosters won the thirty one evening cups, and two of them took twenty one. Washed Team had twelve, Solary nine, Anastas Palin PH four on 7, 9, 16 and 30 May, and SAIYAN two. One apiece went to Pharaohs of Eternity on 2 May, BDS Esports on 5 May, Omega team on 25 May and Esperia Academy on 31 May.

The runner up column tells a second story. Pharaohs of Eternity finished second on five separate nights and converted only once from nineteen entries, an odd line for a roster that ended the month 1,540-224 with $1,255,020. Omega team was second on four nights across the month, three of them behind Washed Team, and converted on 25 May. Being the second best team on any given evening was worth a great deal of money and no trophies at all, and several clubs spent May living in that band.

The hourly schedule is where the accounting happened. It is the only thing that explains 1,913 appearances inside thirty one days, or 241 titles when four of them came from the evening bracket. That tier asked for no peak, only the willingness to keep entering small fields for a $5,000 top prize and to hold a win rate near ninety percent while doing it. The evening cup asked for something else: seven wins in a row, once, against the strongest field of the day. May is interesting because those two demands were answered by different rosters, and because the calendar gave neither of them a reason to meet in the middle.

Best rosters

My order for the month: Anastas Palin PH, Washed Team, Solary, Pharaohs of Eternity, SAIYAN.

First goes to Anastas Palin PH, and not only for the $1,579,180 and the 241 titles, both the largest counts of the month. Volume alone would be a weak case. What strengthens it is 1,682-224, a win rate a shade under eighty nine percent sustained across 1,913 games, plus four evening titles spaced across the calendar on 7, 9, 16 and 30 May. That last date matters: they were still winning the showpiece on the penultimate night, at a point when the two rosters that had owned the middle of the month were either absent or losing finals.

Second, and genuinely arguable for first, Washed Team. Nobody else paired 299-34 with twelve titles in the only bracket paying $50,000, and per game entered nothing else in May is close: $808,350 from 336 appearances. Two things hold them here. The sample is roughly a fifth the size of the roster above them, and the month finishes with eight empty nights after a run of three straight second places. A month is thirty one days, not seventeen, and the last week counted.

Third, Solary, which is the placement I expect to be argued with, because Pharaohs of Eternity finished with more cash, $1,255,020 to $1,081,470, and a much cleaner record, 1,540-224 against 1,341-409. I still put them third. Twenty seven evening entries from thirty one nights is more than any other roster managed, nine titles is bettered only by the twelve directly above them, and six wins from ten entries after 20 May is the strongest closing stretch of the month. The honest counterpoint is that their run started the same week their main obstacle stopped entering. Cash rewards the grind; the evening cup was the month’s scarce thing, and they took it repeatedly once the door opened.

Pharaohs of Eternity lands fourth on trophies rather than on quality, which feels harsh next to that win loss record, and fifth goes to SAIYAN on the strength of a finish rather than a full month: 21 titles and $408,090 overall, but the only 8-0 night of May on the 26th and another perfect run three days later, precisely when the rosters ahead of them were fading or gone.

This order is a reading, not a result. So here is the argument worth having: does a month of 1,913 games, 241 titles and $1,579,180 from Anastas Palin PH outrank twelve evening titles from twenty one entries and a 299-34 record from Washed Team, when the second of those two walked away from the final eight nights of the calendar?

Notable transfers

Sixty four flagged moves were logged in the month, every one priced in USD, for $5,664,000 in fees. The busiest club in that file was the one behind Washed Team, with $933,000 spent and $620,000 recouped. On 19 May it did both at once: eDsake67 arrived for $650,000, the largest single fee in the file, while WT | OG ⚫🟡 went back to the same counterparty for $300,000. That was the night they won their eleventh evening cup of the month.

The selling had begun earlier and did not stop. organicmouse373 left for $120,000 on 13 May, in the middle of the winning run. Nikoff left for $100,000 on 24 May, the first of eight consecutive nights without an evening entry, and the club did not contest another one before the month ended. Nine flagged moves through a single club in thirty one days is a lot of churn to carry while going 7-0 twelve times, and the calendar record is blunt about where that stretch stopped.

The buyer of that 13 May sale had already made the third largest move of the month, beautifulfrog165 for $330,000 on 4 May. Two purchases, $450,000 committed, and one evening final to show for it, a 6-1 second place on 18 May. Spending is not a plan on its own.

The club behind Solary was the most active trader of all, nine arrivals for $544,000 against three departures for $280,000. Two of those arrivals bracket the exact point its form turned: whhtemouse9 for $70,000 on 20 May, the day before four straight evening titles began, and AP 𖤍 Alas for $100,000 on 22 May, in the middle of them. Sequence is not cause, and the single biggest change to that bracket was a rival’s absence. Still, the club that had been buying every week was the one standing there when the door opened.

Two quieter deals carry the end of the month. POE Takahashi moved for $180,000 on 19 May, out of the roster with the month’s second largest bankroll and into Omega team, who had already been second three times before finally winning on 25 May. And ticklishhostrch9 at $40,000 on 25 May is the cheapest deal listed here and lands on the neatest ending: Esperia Academy went 6-1 and 5-1 in the days that followed, then took the final night of the month 7-0.

One last line from the sell side. The club behind Anastas Palin PH appears eight times as a seller in this file for $483,000 combined, including both AP 𖤍 Alas and ticklishhostrch9, while its roster was banking $1,579,180 and 241 titles. Leading the money list and holding a squad together were not the same project in May, and the rosters that bought hardest were mostly buying their way toward one specific bracket rather than toward the ledger.

MOBA GOAT debate

Four months of supported record now exist in MOBA, and May is the first of them that tests the argument by subtraction rather than by addition. The roster I placed first in April, Skillbox, appears nowhere in the May evidence. Neither does Ferenheit Esport, the roster I named as the strongest counter to it. Both cases now rest entirely on February and March, and the record says the circuit has grown in every month of it: February’s leader assembled its month from 748 appearances, March’s cash leader from 1,054, April’s leading group from between 1,356 and 1,977 matches each, and May’s leading roster from 1,913. Competition point standings and rating movement were unavailable across February, March and April, and May’s reward ledger records cash and nothing else, with no competition points claimed and no qualification places handed out. There is still no independent measure to correct for that growth. Cash and championship totals therefore do not compare cleanly from month to month, and what does travel is narrower: the win and loss line, the conversion of entries into titles, and whether a roster keeps entering at all.

On that narrower basis I now put Anastas Palin PH first, and I hold it loosely. It has two supported months and both are heavy. April gave it 110 titles and $788,910 on a 1,056 and 279 record with no recorded appearance before the thirteenth, third in the month off roughly half of it. May gave it 241 titles, the largest single month championship count anywhere in the four month record, plus $1,579,180 and 1,682 wins against 224 losses across 1,913 games, a win rate a shade under eighty nine percent held at a volume no other roster paired with that loss column. It also took four evening cups, on 7, 9, 16 and 30 May, and the last of those dates carries more weight than the count: it was still winning the $50,000 bracket on the penultimate night, at a point when the two rosters that had owned the middle of the month were either absent or losing finals.

The deductions are real. Two months is the shortest supported history of any roster I would place this high, and both of them fall on the largest version of the circuit, which is precisely the comparison problem described above. Four evening titles from thirty one nights is modest conversion in the only bracket paying $50,000, and the bulk of that haul came from a schedule where $5,000 was the ceiling. A first place built on accumulation is the easiest kind to overturn, and I expect it to be tested in June.

The alternative I find hardest to dismiss is Washed Team, and it is a peak argument rather than a volume one. It was February’s runner up on $997,590, 84 championships and a 485 and 67 record from 570 appearances, with five daily titles from the sixteenth onward and a month closing daily win taken without dropping a match. In May it went 299 and 34 from 336 appearances for $808,350, and between 4 and 20 May it entered sixteen evening cups and won twelve, every one of them 7-0. Twelve titles in a single month’s headline bracket is more than the supported record shows for anyone: February’s leader is recorded with six from the sixteenth onward, April’s leader with eleven of the final fourteen, April’s runner up with ten. No other contender has produced a month at both ends of this record either. What holds it back is the middle and the finish. March survives only as market traffic in the narrative, April is blank at roster level, and May closes with three consecutive 6-1 second places and then eight nights with no entry at all. If your standard is the highest single month anyone has produced, this is your first place, and that is not an unreasonable standard, only a different one from the thirty one day month the record actually measures.

The rate case still belongs to Skillbox. A 674 and 57 February and a 477 and 55 March are the two cleanest loss columns anywhere here, they came with $1,229,490 and 155 championships in the first month and 76 championships from 534 appearances in the second, and it finished inside the leading two of every month it contested in full. April is 164 matches with one sixteen roster daily bracket taken on the twenty sixth, which is a dent rather than a refutation, and May is silence. Nothing in the evidence says this roster declined. Everything in it says the circuit grew around it and there is no recent result to check that against. I moved it because a case that stops being added to stops being testable, not because anything beat it.

April’s closing question asked whether Pharaohs of Eternity would bank a second two hundred title month. May answers no, and it answers awkwardly. The loss column improved, 1,540 and 224 against April’s 1,470 and 251, and $1,255,020 trailed only the month’s leader. But nineteen evening entries returned a single title, on 2 May, with second place on five separate nights. Rarely beaten and rarely unbeaten in the same month is a profile this evidence cannot rank, because there is no measure sitting between a match result and a bracket result. Solary has the cleaner two month shape: $1,640,140 and 173 titles from 1,977 April matches with a sixteen day grip on the first half of that month, then 59 titles, $1,081,470 and nine evening cups from twenty seven entries across thirty one nights in May. It also carries the plainest asterisk, a 1,341 and 409 loss column, and six wins from ten entries after 20 May that arrived in the window when the roster monopolising the bracket stopped showing up.

Three rosters deserve naming without a place. OpTic Gaming owns the longest continuous workload in the record, 1,027 and 427 through March and then 1,342 April matches with 221 semifinal or better finishes and $464,290, all of it converting into 34 titles, and it is absent from May. juster is the same idea from a February starting point, 824 appearances for 39 championships and 245 losses, then 18 April titles and five daily runner up finishes, also absent from May. And SAIYAN has no supported record before May and still produced 21 titles, $408,090, the only 8-0 night of the month on the twenty sixth and another unbeaten run three days later. One month is an entry into the argument, not a claim on it.

So here is the question worth putting to managers. If Washed Team had entered the eight evening cups it skipped after 24 May and held the 7-0 rate it managed through the first twenty days, it would finish with a bracket haul no month in this record has come near, so does that hypothetical count for anything against the 241 titles and 1,682 wins Anastas Palin PH actually banked across all thirty one days, or is the willingness to keep entering the thing the record is measuring in the first place?