Bloons TD 6 - Version 45.0 Update Notes!
Update: Bloons TD 6 v45.0 - Update Notes!
Available now for most platforms please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Update Video: https://youtu.be/j3P5dBAHZyM
Map Specific changes
Boomerang Monkey
Bomb Shooter
Ice Monkey
Glue Gunner
Sniper Monkey
Monkey Sub
Monkey Buccaneer
Heli Pilot
Super Monkey
Alchemist
Mermonkey
Obyn Greenfoot
Captain Churchill
This balance change was added last update although the wrong variable was being applied, this has now been corrected.
Benjamin
Geraldo
Rosalia
As nothing else did what we wanted, we’ve created a new damage for middle path Mermonkey! This has also been adopted for use with the 3xx Druid Tornado & may see more later
Dart Monkey
Juggernaut attacks too slow to fully utilize its knockback, so we’re doubling the knockback to regular Bloons with a smaller increase also to Ceramics. Bottom path is seeing quality of life changes aimed at improved crosspathing and projectile speed progression as this path focusses on projectile range and speed.
With Glaive Lord being the big winner of recent balance, there is a price gap among towers that fill a similar gameplay role so instead of taking away too much power we’re pushing its price up slightly to fit into that gap. We were unhappy with the recent MOAB Press nerf, so this is being undone for further review. Boomerang paragon use has dropped in use recently so we are taking the opportunity to lower its price.
Compared among similarly priced hybrid AoE/supports, Really Big Bombs is a lacking stepping stone so we’re improving its damage and granting much more pushback. Even without the ability popping Black, Eliminator has been doing fine, so we are finishing off removing the Normal type on the main projectile.
Embrittlement had too much going on at T4 without much reason to use T3, as Ice Shards alone is already similarly priced to other Camo removal options and with the Primary category lacking in Camo detection, we have split Embrittlement up and introduced Camo removal at T3 so we can leave Embrittlement to focus entirely on being a damage support upgrade. While we’re still considering future plans here, increasing layers frozen from 5 > 8 at least means that Absolute Zero’s freeze can now last through all standard Bloon layers from a single application. As similar choices are currently leveling out with higher power Cryo Cannon feels like it deserves to have some power brought back.
Top path glue struggles with large numbers of targets until T5 where it suddenly has no trouble at all, to improve earlier tier cleanup we’re taking a small amount of power out of the T5 glue puddles but improving T4 puddles and increasing attack rate across lower tiers. As it only increases attack speed and Glue Splatter already hits the majority of targets with no trouble this leaves Glue Hose not feeling that compelling, as this path becomes the full map glue anyway we felt we could improve tower range along this path as well.
… and more on that now, the improved bounce distance crosspathing hasn’t ever been as useful as we hoped, so this benefit is being greatly improved.
We’re improving Reactor’s attack cooldown to improve general consistency. Ballistic Missile struggles greatly against standard Bloons since almost all of its power is in the Ceramic/Moab bonus, so we’re also balancing this consistency out with greater damage to standard targets while retaining the same total MOAB-Class power at the cost of pierce. Sub Paragon unsubmerged form is overperforming, so we’re reducing the boss power of the main attack while greatly improving the less desirable submerged power.
Aircraft Carrier is too high power for the price so we are reducing plane attack speed but have left 420 path radials unchanged as it has been the less powerful crosspath after T3 for a while. MOAB damage stat buff for middle path's canons as a low portion of the total damage is dealt by these since the frags fix. Due to loud Lead tinking screams, all Navarch damage is been set to Normal instead of flowing up from lower tiers.
Fighter Plane’s missiles often get stuck circling slower targets until they expire, since Ace can’t reasonably plan against this the missile turn acceleration has been tweaked to reduce chance of this happening. Tsar Bomba is a powerful ability that sees a decent lot of use for an ability heavy upgrade, but as it doesn’t really add to the tower outside of that ability we’ve decided to give the base bombs a boost so that well placed Bombing Runs can shred through Super Ceramics.
Among technical players we’ve received feedback that the massive range of the Heli’s missiles causes problems with controlling what heli’s choose to attack & when so we’ve reduced the range of these missiles to a more reasonable number, this is still double the range of the Heli so the missiles will continue to fire first before other attacks but not quite from so far away. As MOAB Shove introduced a supportive mechanic at T3 but never expanded on this again we want to start playing around with this some more, it’s quite strong for a T3 so the slow amount was reduced but we’ve made the T4 now better than the T3 was before.
General tweaks to top path upgrade flow, slightly moving up the costpoint but improving the power of this path. Middle Mortar is seeing improvements mainly for damage over time crosspathing, and we’ve also added Burny Stuff to the Pop & Awe ability with crosspathing. We had been happy with Shattering Shells for a while, but as the game has evolved outright removing Fortification isn’t as valuable anymore, so the price feels high for such a specific role compared to other supportive options.
Since Plasma Accelerator is a heavily MOAB-Damage focussed upgrade so we want to introduce this niche somewhat better at the T3 with a little starting MOAB Damage, while only doing one change here already we also knocked a little price off from Ray of Doom
It only scored 5/5 stars instead of a 6/5 in the Hall of Fame due to the high cost, so we’ve lowered that cost to see if this can be re-evaluated.
We haven’t looked much at Temples since the release of other paragons, as these have solidly carved out a place for themselves in Boss Events the original Temple has fallen behind, we wanted to try work on this again by improving upon the weaker temple sub-attacks, with this increased power we’ve also reduced the basic attack pierce gained on the main temple attack. We will be reviewing temple balance further soon so if, any of your feedback on this Rules, then we’ll take that under consideration for our next look.
To allow Shinobi combos to scale more effectively with the Flash Bomb, the combo-attack pattern is being improved with more base Shuriken pierce & slightly larger bonuses to Stunned & Stickied targets – however the increased range at T4 is being removed. Ninja Paragon’s Camo bonus has been interesting, but we want to scale this up in many places to feel like a more significant overall boost when it comes into play. Additionally this Paragon hasn’t scaled the best at high degrees as Stickies attacking faster than their Fuse Time would make the attack weaker at single target, we are slowing the sticky attack but giving it back proportionally more damage to resolve this with an overall buff.
As a small tax to low tier Alchemists we are moving cost from Stronger Stimulant into Berserker Brew, this shouldn’t hurt much for general play and keeps un-discounted Stimulant the same. As this was an oversight Total Transformation is now being enabled to transform mermonkey.
Now that Tornadoes are one of the more popular Bloon Stall choices we looked more into its upgrade progression, tornado projectile speed is being reduced as a benefit to Ball Lightning to prevent tornado outpacing the lightning ball so quickly, and to more suit it as a Cold/Magic themed upgrade plus differentiate from similar supports the weaknesses are changing. More directly to Ball Lightning we feel it needs a considerably higher freeze duration for the freeze to matter as it casts slowly. Our initial rework to Vine attack rate in v44 caused some issues at T4, to get around these issues T4 now improves the power of vines directly instead.
We were cautious with initial low tier Mermonkey upgrades, but as nothing seriously unexpected came up we’ve reduced the base cost and improved the projectile lifespan which should help with issues on some higher tier upgrades.
As the middle crosspath is currently less useful for higher tiers, we’ve upgraded Sharper Prongs to improve Tentacle pierce as well. As the main Trident’s damage falls behind and has caused annoying layer skipping for some more observant players the damage of this attack is increasing at T3 & T4. The % pierce buff is being improved at all levels since this has settled without causing too much of a stir, and finally Lord of The Abyss’s price is being greatly reduced as a heavily pierce built design it requires some single-target assistance to perform well.
While the Arctic Knight has been popular, Riptide Champion has major pierce issues and is seeing a price reduction as well as a pierce increase to make up for this. Arctic Knight itself is receiving the brand new damage type added this update; as it is gaining a weakness to White Bloons from this and wasn’t too wild before we are increasing the power as well & allowing the ability to carry over 1 round to prevent projectiles timing out immediately when cast at the end of a round. Popseidon had unintentionally more pierce on the central trident’s split projectiles, so this pierce is being spread out for a total increase. Finally popseidon released with a very wide projectile arc to prevent the seeking projectiles from clumping immediately, we like how this has worked out but feel that only the 052 crosspath needs to have this increased arc.
Echosense Network hasn’t felt like it is doing all that it could, so we have increased the maximum number of stacks to raise the ceiling of use here as it is meant to be slow ramping with a high space & cost investment to build heavily into. Mermonkey’s trance was extremely powerful against MOABs but limited against regular Bloons, so we’ve shifted prices apart & improved T3 while raising the cost of T4 to a more appropriate level. Same as with Abyss Dweller the middle crosspath has shown to be less useful for higher tiers, so this also sees a pierce increase to the Trance attack.
Still very strong cleanup, Spiked Balls slowly approaches 10 pierce, while leaving Spiked Mines unchanged for more encouragement to upgrade past it. Permaspike is seeing a small crosspath fix, as the x2x rate change threw this balance out.
The Ultraboost ability is now starting on cooldown to put a limit on buy’n’resell issues, but this is to ease up on the use per round limit which was causing frustration. We felt the Master Builder's perma-buff-per-round wasn’t valuable enough to make use of building in advance, so we are reducing the base attack speed with increased power in return to more heavily improve the maximum scaled power from this.
Base handler's beast range felt too high starting off when considering the tower is built around sharing range between multiple Handlers so this range is being reduced.
Top Handler is designed around huge inconsistent power, however Megalodon feels that it should be more reliable for the investment required so we are improving both thrash radius and reducing the cooldown. Fish RBE limit before being able to devour the target instantly is being increased to last further into freeplay.
Bottoms will now move slower but speed up as more beasts are merged into them, likewise they will attack slower at first but faster through their merges. This should add more merge value to lower tier birds while overall nerfing to the base level for currently overpowered higher tiers.
Lower attack rate hurt Churchill's early game too much so these lower tier rates have been improved. His range upgrade increases were too small considering the large base range, so these have also been improved. While useful when it comes online, Churchill's Machine Gun never scaled the best so needs further improvements to scale up with higher levels. & finally since it's very hard to get to Lv20 at all, we’ve given a nice bump to base damage here as well.
Though we feel she is quite powerful already later in the game, Ezili has quite a hard time in the early game, we’ve given more initial damage over time to allow her to clean up early Green Bloons with one attack
Sauda's early game feels exceptional and is seeing a pierce reduction, however as her Sword Charge struggles to break super ceramics as they first begin to appear we’re also filling a gap and allowing her to sweep the path twice from Lv14, Sword Charge damage is also being reduced at lv16 but this is only to keep the overall same power level now that it hits twice.
We’re happy with how Corvus fits into his new XP curve, although a few edges do need to be smoothed out. First, Corvus early game is kinda broken, for now we’re not touching the spirit itself but have reduced the damage of the Spear spell. Frostbound is currently much better than Repel, so we have doubled Repel’s knockback against non-moabs & increased its radius along with some small nerfs to Frostbound - note that while Frostbound’s freeze on MOABs is being reduced the duration is still longer than the re-application rate so this will rarely be noticed. For Dark Ritual QoL, it will no longer eat up pierce on purple Bloons unless it is able to damage them. Finally, Overload & Might are still somewhat tuned around the higher XP curve and need some nips to their power.
As Rosalia can’t properly attack while moving the repositioning speed has been increased, and we’ve given her extra attack range. Her abilities have also been noted as difficult to effectively utilize, so we’ve eased up on Scatter Missiles and increased the maximum damage on Kinetic Charge to have a higher potential payoff. Her main attacks also feel they start to fall off too early, so higher levels for these have both been improved at their respective strengths.
We didn’t expect the last Deep Heat change to be too crazy of a shakeup, but now that we have new variables opened up for it and have tested these working in the wild we’re going to start improving on these values
These Bloon properties aren’t prevalent enough to justify such small bonuses compared to Raw Damage or MOAB/Ceramic Damage.
We don’t feel Rounding-Up was bad but with Thrive basically always giving significantly more total cash we wanted to close the gap a bit more between these Relics so that the actual fully custom Relic could feel a bit better in comparison to the Power Charge relic.
Previously we scaled Rock Bloon HP in Boss Rush faster than Dreadbloon in order to keep them relevant from start to finish within a rough 100 tier expectation. Players pushing beyond this expected range were finding obvious annoyance with this as the Rock Bloons would eventually outscale the Boss, so we’re reducing their scale to match in line with Dreadbloon but increasing the number of Rock Bloons that spawn.
Going into the home stretch of the year with one massive update yet to come. With the Bloons Card Storm release coming next week, we’re feeling quite tactical, so let’s dig right into the details.
Available now for most platforms please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Update Video: https://youtu.be/j3P5dBAHZyM
Key New Features
- New Boss Bloon Blastapopoulos, the Demon of the Core has returned!
- While in play, towers suffer from reduced range & ability cooldown rate.
- Blastapopoulos passively burns off damaging effects applied to them, and has the Purple Bloon type property. Damage type enhancements can get around this as normal, but this doesn’t change projectile temperature!
- Overheating! Most projectile hits heat up Blastapopoulos, with anything weak to purple (fire, lasers & plasma) increasing heat even more, so use these damage types at your own risk or bring along some Ice attacks to cool things back down! Whenever maximum heat is reached Blastapopoulos vents the excess, briefly stunning towers & increasing ability cooldowns then superheating the area for a short time, causing all projectiles to burn up faster than normal.
- Skulls when triggered will fill up a portion of Heat, and spew out a number of Fireballs & Pyroclastic Rocks.
- These Fireballs will target your towers & create debuffing pools of magma around their targets while the Pyroclastic Rocks land around Blastapopoulos to form impenetrable barrier rings around the boss until they expire
- You’ll need to carefully manage your heat to avoid dire consequences!
New Awesome
- New Advanced Map, Ancient Portal
- Both ancient and modern, the portal has clearly moved this map through time, so they can easily shift Bloons from one path to another. With all of that energy at play, there is clearly explosive potential.
- New Quests
- 5 Minutes of Frozen Over - a reversed race! With a limit of 5 minutes send as many rounds as you can in this marathon-not-a-sprint to score as much damage as possible
- One Sided - Beat half of Infernal, with half of the play space. Oh it’s the wrong half!
- Fast Tracked - A trial quest that’ll give you a taste of the new Fast Track IAP (More detail on that below!)
- New Trophy Store Items
- Heroes: Pat Fusty Pet Pig
- Monkeys: Buccaneer Flavored Trades projectiles
- Game & UI: Spooky Night banner
- New Limited Time trophy items (Note: Not available until the seasonal event begins!)
- Tricky Ghosts avatar, Bat BFBs Bloon skin
- New CT Team Store items
- Flying Props: Haunting Ghoul
- Icons: Carved Pumpkin Icon
- Frames: Spider's Web Frame
Game Changes / Additions
- Co-op overhaul (Part 1)
- We are currently going through a large overhaul of the co-op code, which will happen over multiple updates. This first phase is already showing us greatly improved average performance and cleaner game state handling.
- Revamped in game store
- We really felt it was time to make our store nicer and easier to engage with. Please browse at your leisure, with separate sections to more easily find what you’re looking for and improved display of visuals and descriptions.
- Along with this we’ve added a couple brand new packs to check out
- Fast Track Pack! A returning favorite from BTD5, with dynamic improvements!
- When enabled, skip the first 25% of rounds for the current game. This scales to match how long the mode is, so for any 300 round custom challenge enjoyers out there you will now be able to skip the first 75!
- Starting Cash is updated to reflect these skipped rounds
- Starting Hero XP is updated to reflect these skipped rounds
- Double Cash & Fast Track can now be enabled/disabled from the play screen
- Available in most areas, however will still not show in Competitive Modes or CHIMPS
- Challenge Editor will support a ‘Fast Track Disabled’ option at launch for any challenge creators who wish to enforce the starting rounds in their challenges
- Pets Pack IAP
- This pack includes all current Hero & Monkey pets up to update v45
- Exclusive Pack of Pets avatar & Gang’s All Here banner
- Challenge Editor ‘modifiers’ have been redesigned
- These now fit into a more understandable inclusions/exclusions list
- Works similarly to how the tower exclusions/inclusions list currently does
- Map Editor support added for a maximum up to 8 track paths, this shouldn’t be too crazy but we feel it still opens up significant room for new ideas.
Bug Fixes & General Changes
- Refactored how all audio clips are played
- Heavy behind the scenes updates & refactoring, we can expect some odd niche problems due to this
- A number of localization fixes
- Holding down the Hero hotkey without enough cash to place that hero will now prime your hero ready for placement as soon as enough cash is available
- A full ability quickbar should now close properly on wide resolutions
- Holding down the ‘Select Hero’ hotkey should no longer rapidly refresh the Hero UI
- Sandbox no longer allow players to include crashy negative values or the brown note
- Resolved a long-standing bug where the Empowered Heroes knowledge applied to heroes again after being sold
- Fixed the moon
- [Achievement] ‘When the going gets tough’ should track correctly again
- The ‘Bats’ placement animation should display correctly again
- Resolved a number of menu UI softlocks & visual glitches
- The ‘Happy Holidays’ emote should now be grouped with other Text Emotes
- Resolved an issue where restarting may not correctly count towards tower unlocks
Event changes
- Resolved some inconsistencies with rule displays
- ‘Boss Appears In’ counter should update correctly after continuing save games
- Resolved a crash when submitting Boss Event scores with a poor internet connection
- Scrolling while in the teams messages page no longer zooms the Boss Rush world UI
- Users noticed that now we have 24 towers in the game, Collection Events will show the same featured monkeys at the exact same hour mark every time that the cycle loops. To break this up, the featured order will now increment forward by 1 upon every loop.
Map Specific changes
- Resolved many cases of inconsistent alignment for text boxes attached to certain map Gizmos and Removables
- Pre-game prep spikes should now position correctly on Luminous Cove in Reverse
- Polyphemus eye mechanic should no longer sometime break with Retry Last Round
- The Flooded Valley removable no longer bricks itself after restarting
- Resolved a number of cases in which map-based Easter Eggs with weapons were not counting their damage to the end-game victory summary.
- On Castle's Revenge Bloonarius bleed bloons should no longer immediately exit
- Luminous Cove seaweed visual state is now co-op synced
Tower Specific Fixes
Boomerang Monkey
- 5xx Glaive Lord should no longer apply DoT to DDTs without Lead power
Bomb Shooter
- xx4 Recursive Cluster, resolved some weird stat population issues across crosspaths, this may unintentionally cause balance to work as intended
Ice Monkey
- xx5 Icicle Impale should no longer fail to slow already Frozen targets
Glue Gunner
- 500 The Bloon Solver can now correctly take buffs without needing a crosspath first
- xx3 MOAB Glue can no longer slow Dreadbloon’s Rock Bloons
Sniper Monkey
- 240 Supply Drop’s projectile bounce distance should now correctly increase with crosspath, more on this later.
Monkey Sub
- Monkey sub should no longer display a paragon pip without all T5s unlocked
Monkey Buccaneer
- 5xx Carrier Flagship crosspaths have had a number of inconsistencies resolved in how stats add together
Heli Pilot
- x5x Special Poperations can no longer Door Gunner towers down on top of Helipads
- xx4 Comanche Defense resolved a crash which re-broke another crash
- Resolved the other crash again
Super Monkey
- 4xx Temple when sacrificing towers with platforms, should no longer sell the towers on those platforms instead of sacrificing them
- 052 Anti-Bloon’s left hand now correctly deals +1 damage to Camo. You’re welcome, lefties!
Alchemist
- x5x Total Transformation should no longer cause a crash when transforming a tower with its own platform
Mermonkey
- 120 should no longer have more range than 220
- 3xx Abyss Dweller pierce buff should now stack correctly with other pierce increases
- 5xx Lord of the Abyss resolved some inconsistencies applying buffs to supported towers
- 5xx Lord of the Abyss should no longer have a weaker slow against MOABs than the T4
- xx4 Symphonic Resonance totem can be redeployed, it’s neat so we’re not changing this
- xx4 Symphonic Resonance totem can no longer place out of range with Drop & Lock
- xx4 Symphonic Resonance totem should save location correctly on moving platforms
- xx5 The Final Harmonic totem spawn cooldown 6s > 12s (This was hard capped at a 12s minimum makes no difference)
- xx5 The Final Harmonic’s trance visual should now update to reflect attack rate changes
Obyn Greenfoot
- Lv11 Nature’s Clarity no longer increases lifespan by a factor of acquisition range
Captain Churchill
This balance change was added last update although the wrong variable was being applied, this has now been corrected.
- Lv13 armor piercing shells flat bonus damage increased from 1 > 3
- Lv17 armor piercing shells flat bonus damage increased from 2 > 6
Benjamin
- Benjamin’s cash counter now displays earnings from Skimming in Half Cash
Geraldo
- Gerry’s Fire should no longer be placable on xx4 Mermonkey Totems
- Geraldo’s Quincy Action Figure should no longer display Favoured Trades’ sell buff icon
- Rejuv Potion should no longer cause some abilities to double up in a single use
Rosalia
- Lv7 Flight Boost should no longer be drainable by Lych
- [Steam Versions] Hotkey changes
- Monkey Bank 'Collect' money: linked to the 'Monkey Special 1' key
- Monkey Bank 'Deposit' money: linked to the 'Monkey Special 2' key
- New Advanced Hotkey: Ace Centered Path
- New Advanced Hotkeys: Selected tower Active Ability 1, 2 & 3
- [Steam Versions] when using click and drop, moving cursor outside of window should no longer snap towers to the middle of the screen rather than deselecting it
- [MacOS] Resolved an issue that could cause loading to get stuck at step 5 of 9
- [MacOS] Added support for Retina resolutions
- [Mods] Resolved crash that could occur after removing some modded maps
As nothing else did what we wanted, we’ve created a new damage for middle path Mermonkey! This has also been adopted for use with the 3xx Druid Tornado & may see more later
Dart Monkey
Juggernaut attacks too slow to fully utilize its knockback, so we’re doubling the knockback to regular Bloons with a smaller increase also to Ceramics. Bottom path is seeing quality of life changes aimed at improved crosspathing and projectile speed progression as this path focusses on projectile range and speed.
- 4xx Juggernaut Bloon light knockback amount increased 3 > 6
- 4xx Juggernaut Bloon heavy knockback amount increased 1.5 > 2
- xx1 Long Range Darts projectile lifespan multiplier increased 15% > 35%
- xx2 Enhanced Eyesight projectile lifespan multiplier reduced 35% > 25%
- xx2 Enhanced Eyesight projectile speed increased 330 > 350
- 103 Crossbow pierce increased 4 > 6
- 203 Crossbow pierce increased 6 > 9
- Pierce crosspathing carries up to Sharpshooter
- xx3 Crossbow acquisition range increased 56 > 60
- xx4 Sharpshooter acquisition range remains 60
- xx3 Crossbow projectile speed increased from 360 > 400
- xx4 Sharpshooter projectile speed increased from 400 > 450
- xx5 Crossbow Master projectile speed remains 450
With Glaive Lord being the big winner of recent balance, there is a price gap among towers that fill a similar gameplay role so instead of taking away too much power we’re pushing its price up slightly to fit into that gap. We were unhappy with the recent MOAB Press nerf, so this is being undone for further review. Boomerang paragon use has dropped in use recently so we are taking the opportunity to lower its price.
- 5xx Glaive Lord DoT duration reduced from 15s > 10s
- 5xx Glaive Lord price increased from $29,400 > $32,500
- 104 MOAB Press pierce increased from 260 > 300
- 204 MOAB Press pierce increased from 320 > 420
- Glaive Dominus price reduced from $275,000 > 250,000
Compared among similarly priced hybrid AoE/supports, Really Big Bombs is a lacking stepping stone so we’re improving its damage and granting much more pushback. Even without the ability popping Black, Eliminator has been doing fine, so we are finishing off removing the Normal type on the main projectile.
- 3xx Really Big Bombs damage increased 3 > 4
- 3xx Really Big Bombs Bloon pushback increased 10 > 20
- 5xx Bloon Crush pushback amount to MOAB-Class Bloons unchanged
- x5x MOAB Eliminator base attack type Normal > Explosion
- 024 Recursive Cluster cluster projectile speed now scales with Missile Launcher
Embrittlement had too much going on at T4 without much reason to use T3, as Ice Shards alone is already similarly priced to other Camo removal options and with the Primary category lacking in Camo detection, we have split Embrittlement up and introduced Camo removal at T3 so we can leave Embrittlement to focus entirely on being a damage support upgrade. While we’re still considering future plans here, increasing layers frozen from 5 > 8 at least means that Absolute Zero’s freeze can now last through all standard Bloon layers from a single application. As similar choices are currently leveling out with higher power Cryo Cannon feels like it deserves to have some power brought back.
- 3xx Ice Shards now also removes Camo & Regrow properties from targets
- 050 Absolute Zero main attack layers frozen increased from 5 > 8
- xx3 Cryo Cannon price reduced from 2250 > 1950
- xx3 Cryo Cannon freeze duration 1.2s > 1.5s
Top path glue struggles with large numbers of targets until T5 where it suddenly has no trouble at all, to improve earlier tier cleanup we’re taking a small amount of power out of the T5 glue puddles but improving T4 puddles and increasing attack rate across lower tiers. As it only increases attack speed and Glue Splatter already hits the majority of targets with no trouble this leaves Glue Hose not feeling that compelling, as this path becomes the full map glue anyway we felt we could improve tower range along this path as well.
- 3xx Bloon Dissolver price reduced from $2,500 > $2,000
- 3xx Bloon Dissolver attack cooldown 1s > 0.5s
- 4xx Liquefier attack cooldown reduced from 0.75 > 0.5s
- 4xx Bloon Liquefier lingering puddles damage increased 2 > 4
- 5xx The Bloon Solver price increased from $22,000 > $22,500
- 5xx The Bloon Solver attack cooldown remains at 0.25s
- 5xx The Bloon Solver track puddles damage reduced 20 > 15
- x3x Glue Hose range increased from 46 > 58
… and more on that now, the improved bounce distance crosspathing hasn’t ever been as useful as we hoped, so this benefit is being greatly improved.
- 240 bounce distance increased 50 > 80
We’re improving Reactor’s attack cooldown to improve general consistency. Ballistic Missile struggles greatly against standard Bloons since almost all of its power is in the Ceramic/Moab bonus, so we’re also balancing this consistency out with greater damage to standard targets while retaining the same total MOAB-Class power at the cost of pierce. Sub Paragon unsubmerged form is overperforming, so we’re reducing the boss power of the main attack while greatly improving the less desirable submerged power.
- 4xx Bloontonium Reactor attack cooldown reduced 0.3 > 0.28
- x3x Ballistic Missile damage increased from 1 > 3
- x3x Ballistic Missile bonus Ceramic/Moab damage reduced from 5 > 3
- x3x Ballistic Missile pierce reduced from 60 > 40
- Sub Paragon Main Dart bonus damage to boss reduced from 300 > 200
- Sub Paragon Airburst bonus damage to boss reduced from 180 > 100
- Sub Paragon Submerged radiation damage increased from 50 > 250
- Sub Paragon Submerged radiation bonus damage to boss reduced 500 > 250
- Sub Paragon Submerged radiation bonus damage to Ceramic 50 > 250
- Sub Paragon Submerged radiation attack cooldown reduced 0.425 > 0.28
Aircraft Carrier is too high power for the price so we are reducing plane attack speed but have left 420 path radials unchanged as it has been the less powerful crosspath after T3 for a while. MOAB damage stat buff for middle path's canons as a low portion of the total damage is dealt by these since the frags fix. Due to loud Lead tinking screams, all Navarch damage is been set to Normal instead of flowing up from lower tiers.
- 4xx Aircraft Carrier forward darts attack cooldown 0.15s > 0.18s
- 4xx Aircraft Carrier radial darts attack cooldown 1s > 1.2s
- 410 Aircraft Carrier plane grapes attack cooldown remains 1s
- 5xx Carrier Flagship main attack pierce increased from 4 > 7
- 040 Monkey Pirates cannons bonus damage to MOABs 3 > 5
- 050 Pirate Lord cannons bonus damage to MOABs 5 > 10
- Paragon damage Type Sharp > Normal
Fighter Plane’s missiles often get stuck circling slower targets until they expire, since Ace can’t reasonably plan against this the missile turn acceleration has been tweaked to reduce chance of this happening. Tsar Bomba is a powerful ability that sees a decent lot of use for an ability heavy upgrade, but as it doesn’t really add to the tower outside of that ability we’ve decided to give the base bombs a boost so that well placed Bombing Runs can shred through Super Ceramics.
- 3xx Fighter Plane missile attack max turn rate increased 400 > 500
- 3xx Fighter Plane missile attack turn rate change reduced 160 > 150
- x5x Tsar Bomba bombing run damage increased from 10 > 15
- x5x Tsar Bomba bombing run deals bonus damage to Ceramic 8
Among technical players we’ve received feedback that the massive range of the Heli’s missiles causes problems with controlling what heli’s choose to attack & when so we’ve reduced the range of these missiles to a more reasonable number, this is still double the range of the Heli so the missiles will continue to fire first before other attacks but not quite from so far away. As MOAB Shove introduced a supportive mechanic at T3 but never expanded on this again we want to start playing around with this some more, it’s quite strong for a T3 so the slow amount was reduced but we’ve made the T4 now better than the T3 was before.
- 4xx missile attack range reduced from 173 > 84
- x3x Downdraft rate 0.225 > 0.2
- xx3 MOAB Shove MOAB pushback reduced -0.33 > -0.3
- xx3 MOAB Shove BFB pushback reduced 0 > 0.1
- xx4 Comanche Defense BFB pushback increased 0.1 > 0
- xx4 Comanche Defense ZOMG pushback increased 0.33 > 0.22
General tweaks to top path upgrade flow, slightly moving up the costpoint but improving the power of this path. Middle Mortar is seeing improvements mainly for damage over time crosspathing, and we’ve also added Burny Stuff to the Pop & Awe ability with crosspathing. We had been happy with Shattering Shells for a while, but as the game has evolved outright removing Fortification isn’t as valuable anymore, so the price feels high for such a specific role compared to other supportive options.
- 3xx Shell Shock price reduced from $900 > 825
- 302 Shell Shock no longer reduces DoT duration 1.875 > 3.75
- 302 Shell Shock DoT tic duration remains at the higher rate
- 4xx The Big One price increased from $6500 > 7200
- 4xx The Big One shockwave bonus damage to ceramic 1 > 2
- 5xx The Biggest One center explosion bonus damage to Ceramic 20 > 30
- 5xx The Biggest One center explosion bonus damage to MOAB 20 > 30
- 502 The Biggest One DoT damage increased from 50 > 60
- 032 Heavy Shells burning damage per tick 2 > 3
- 042 Artillery Battery burning damage per tick 3 > 4
- 052 Pop and Awe burning damage per tick 5 > 18
- 052 Pop and Awe DoT duration increased from 3.75s > 7.5s
- 052 Pop And Awe ability now applies Burning Stuff of damage 36
- xx4 Shattering Shells price reduced from $10,500 > $9,500
Since Plasma Accelerator is a heavily MOAB-Damage focussed upgrade so we want to introduce this niche somewhat better at the T3 with a little starting MOAB Damage, while only doing one change here already we also knocked a little price off from Ray of Doom
- 3xx Laser Cannon now deals bonus damage to MOABs +2
- 5xx Ray of Doom price reduced from 80,000 > 75,000
It only scored 5/5 stars instead of a 6/5 in the Hall of Fame due to the high cost, so we’ve lowered that cost to see if this can be re-evaluated.
- xx5 Legend of the Night price reduced from $200,000 > $165,650
We haven’t looked much at Temples since the release of other paragons, as these have solidly carved out a place for themselves in Boss Events the original Temple has fallen behind, we wanted to try work on this again by improving upon the weaker temple sub-attacks, with this increased power we’ve also reduced the basic attack pierce gained on the main temple attack. We will be reviewing temple balance further soon so if, any of your feedback on this Rules, then we’ll take that under consideration for our next look.
- Magic Arcane Blast attack pierce increased 7 > 15
- v1 Magic Arcane Blast attack damage 20 > 40
- v2 Magic Arcane Blast attack damage 30 > 60
- v3 Magic Arcane Blast attack damage 35 > 70
- v1 Primary Golden Glaives attack damage 10 > 50
- v2 Primary Golden Glaives attack damage 20 > 100
- v3 Primary Golden Glaives attack damage 30 > 150
- v1 Primary Golden Blades attack pierce 10 > 100
- v2 Primary Golden Blades attack pierce 20 > 200
- v1 Primary Golden Blades attack damage 15 > 150
- v2 Primary Golden Blades attack damage 25 > 250
- $300 Primary pierce buffs reduced 5 > 2
- $10k Primary pierce buffs reduced 5 > 2
- $15k Primary pierce buffs reduced 5 > 3
- $25k Primary pierce buffs reduced 5 > 3
- $1k Military pierce buffs reduced 5 > 3
- $7.5k Military pierce buffs reduced 5 > 3
- $15k Military pierce buff reduced 5 > 4
To allow Shinobi combos to scale more effectively with the Flash Bomb, the combo-attack pattern is being improved with more base Shuriken pierce & slightly larger bonuses to Stunned & Stickied targets – however the increased range at T4 is being removed. Ninja Paragon’s Camo bonus has been interesting, but we want to scale this up in many places to feel like a more significant overall boost when it comes into play. Additionally this Paragon hasn’t scaled the best at high degrees as Stickies attacking faster than their Fuse Time would make the attack weaker at single target, we are slowing the sticky attack but giving it back proportionally more damage to resolve this with an overall buff.
- xx3 Flash Bomb shuriken pierce increased 2 > 4
- xx3 Flash Bomb shuriken bonus to stunned 3 > 4
- xx4 Sticky Bomb shuriken bonus to stickied 3 > 4
- xx4 Sticky Bomb no longer increases range
- xx5 Master Bomber main shuriken bonus to stunned 9 > 19
- xx5 Master Bomber main shuriken bonus to stickied 9 > 19
- Paragon Main Attack bonus damage to Camo increased 6 > 16
- Paragon Flash Bomb explosion bonus damage to Camo increased 20 > 48
- Paragon Flash Bomb shuriken bonus damage to Camo increased 16 > 40
- Paragon Main Attack bonus damage to Stunned/Sticked increased 15 > 64
- Paragon Sticky Bomb attack cooldown increased from 5.5 > 6.5
- Paragon Sticky Bomb explosion damage increased from 3500 > 4200
- Paragon Sticky Bomb explosion bonus damage to Boss 1400 > 2100
- Paragon Sticky Bomb explosion bonus damage to Camo 700 > 2100
As a small tax to low tier Alchemists we are moving cost from Stronger Stimulant into Berserker Brew, this shouldn’t hurt much for general play and keeps un-discounted Stimulant the same. As this was an oversight Total Transformation is now being enabled to transform mermonkey.
- 3xx Berserker Brew price increased from $1,300 > $1,400
- 4xx Stronger Stimulant price reduced from $2,950 > $2,850
- x5x Alchemist can now transform Mermonkey
Now that Tornadoes are one of the more popular Bloon Stall choices we looked more into its upgrade progression, tornado projectile speed is being reduced as a benefit to Ball Lightning to prevent tornado outpacing the lightning ball so quickly, and to more suit it as a Cold/Magic themed upgrade plus differentiate from similar supports the weaknesses are changing. More directly to Ball Lightning we feel it needs a considerably higher freeze duration for the freeze to matter as it casts slowly. Our initial rework to Vine attack rate in v44 caused some issues at T4, to get around these issues T4 now improves the power of vines directly instead.
- 3xx Druid of the Storm tornado projectile speed reduced from 90 > 72
- 3xx Druid of the Storm tornado weakness changed from Lead > White, Purple
- 4xx Ball Lightning freeze duration increased from 1.5s > 4.5s
- 5xx Superstorm DDT pierce penalty reduced from 9 > 7
- x3x Druid of the Jungle track brambles refresh rate can now receive buffs
- x4x Jungle’s Bounty number of vines 2 > 1
- x4x Jungle’s Bounty has a cooldown rate of 2.6s
- x4x Jungle’s Bounty track brambles pierce refresh rate 0.3 > 0.2
- x4x Jungle’s Bounty track brambles clear targets hit rate 0.3 > 0.2
- x4x Jungle’s Bounty track brambles duration increased 4.5s > 9s
We were cautious with initial low tier Mermonkey upgrades, but as nothing seriously unexpected came up we’ve reduced the base cost and improved the projectile lifespan which should help with issues on some higher tier upgrades.
- 000 Mermonkey price reduced from $600 > 475
- 000 Mermonkey projectile lifespan increased from 100 > 200
As the middle crosspath is currently less useful for higher tiers, we’ve upgraded Sharper Prongs to improve Tentacle pierce as well. As the main Trident’s damage falls behind and has caused annoying layer skipping for some more observant players the damage of this attack is increasing at T3 & T4. The % pierce buff is being improved at all levels since this has settled without causing too much of a stir, and finally Lord of The Abyss’s price is being greatly reduced as a heavily pierce built design it requires some single-target assistance to perform well.
- 310 Abyss Dweller, Sharper Prongs grants tentacles pierce +35%
- 3xx Abyss Dweller trident damage 2 > 4
- 4xx Abyssal Warrior trident damage 2 > 8
- 3xx Abyss Dweller pierce buff increased from 5% > 10%
- 4xx Abyssal Warrior pierce buff increased from 15% > 20%
- 5xx Lord of the Abyss pierce buff increased from 30% > 40%
- 5xx Lord of the Abyss price reduced from $29,000 > $23,000
While the Arctic Knight has been popular, Riptide Champion has major pierce issues and is seeing a price reduction as well as a pierce increase to make up for this. Arctic Knight itself is receiving the brand new damage type added this update; as it is gaining a weakness to White Bloons from this and wasn’t too wild before we are increasing the power as well & allowing the ability to carry over 1 round to prevent projectiles timing out immediately when cast at the end of a round. Popseidon had unintentionally more pierce on the central trident’s split projectiles, so this pierce is being spread out for a total increase. Finally popseidon released with a very wide projectile arc to prevent the seeking projectiles from clumping immediately, we like how this has worked out but feel that only the 052 crosspath needs to have this increased arc.
- x3x Riptide Champion price reduced from $2,800 > 2,300
- x3x Riptide Champion pierce increased from 8 > 12
- x4x Arctic Knight pierce increased from 14 > 15
- x4x Arctic Knight weakness changed from Purple > White, Purple
- x4x Arctic Knight ability weakness changed from Purple > White, Purple
- x4x Arctic Knight ability damage increased from 15 > 20
- x4x Arctic Knight ability projectiles last through 1 round end
- x5x Popseidon central trident pierce increased from 16 > 18
- x5x Popseidon side tridents pierce increased from 16 > 18
- x5x Popseidon central trident split pierce reduced from 24 > 18
- x5x Popseidon side tridents split pierce increased from 16 > 18
- x5x Popseidon projectile arc reduced from 60 to 45
- 052 Popseidon projectile arc remains at 60
Echosense Network hasn’t felt like it is doing all that it could, so we have increased the maximum number of stacks to raise the ceiling of use here as it is meant to be slow ramping with a high space & cost investment to build heavily into. Mermonkey’s trance was extremely powerful against MOABs but limited against regular Bloons, so we’ve shifted prices apart & improved T3 while raising the cost of T4 to a more appropriate level. Same as with Abyss Dweller the middle crosspath has shown to be less useful for higher tiers, so this also sees a pierce increase to the Trance attack.
- xx2 Echosense Network maximum stacks increased from 5 > 10x
- 013 Alluring Melody gains extra pierce from Sharper Prongs +1
- xx3 Alluring Melody price reduced from $2800 > 2000
- xx3 Alluring Melody base pierce increased from 2 > 3
- xx4 Symphonic Resonance pierce unchanged
- xx4 Symphonic Resonance price increased from $4600 > $7600
Still very strong cleanup, Spiked Balls slowly approaches 10 pierce, while leaving Spiked Mines unchanged for more encouragement to upgrade past it. Permaspike is seeing a small crosspath fix, as the x2x rate change threw this balance out.
- 3xx Spiked Balls pierce reduced from 12 > 11
- 205 Permaspike pierce reduced from 90 > 85
The Ultraboost ability is now starting on cooldown to put a limit on buy’n’resell issues, but this is to ease up on the use per round limit which was causing frustration. We felt the Master Builder's perma-buff-per-round wasn’t valuable enough to make use of building in advance, so we are reducing the base attack speed with increased power in return to more heavily improve the maximum scaled power from this.
- x5x Ultraboost ability now starts on cooldown
- x5x Ultraboost uses per round increased 3 > 10
- Paragon attack cooldown increase per round increased 0.1 > 0.3
- Paragon minimum attack cooldown increased 0.05 > 0.15
- Paragon nail gun attack cooldown increased from 0.3s > 1s
- Paragon nail gun attack damage increased from 100 > 300
- Paragon nail gun attack boss bonus increased from 100 > 500
- Paragon nail gun pin duration increased from 1 > 5
- Paragon Green Sentry now has a Lock in Place target option
Base handler's beast range felt too high starting off when considering the tower is built around sharing range between multiple Handlers so this range is being reduced.
- 000 Beast Handler acquisition range reduced from 60 > 50
Top Handler is designed around huge inconsistent power, however Megalodon feels that it should be more reliable for the investment required so we are improving both thrash radius and reducing the cooldown. Fish RBE limit before being able to devour the target instantly is being increased to last further into freeplay.
- 5xx Megalodon thrash radius increased from 36 > 48
- 5xx Megalodon cooldown reduced from 1 > 0.8
- 3xx Max Pull RBE limit increased from 250,000 > 500,000
Bottoms will now move slower but speed up as more beasts are merged into them, likewise they will attack slower at first but faster through their merges. This should add more merge value to lower tier birds while overall nerfing to the base level for currently overpowered higher tiers.
- xx1 Gyrfalcon fly speed reduced from 110 > 80
- xx2 Horned Owl fly speed merge range increased from 0 > 40
- xx2 Horned Owl ceramic penalty reduced from 5 > 4
- xx2 Horned Owl attack cooldown increased from 0.7s > 1s
- xx2 Horned Owl attack cooldown merge range 0.28s > 0.4s
- xx3 Golden Eagle attack cooldown merge range 0.28s > 0.52s
- xx3 Golden Eagle attack cooldown increased from 0.6s > 1s
- xx5 Pouakai attack cooldown increased from 0.6s > 0.8s
Lower attack rate hurt Churchill's early game too much so these lower tier rates have been improved. His range upgrade increases were too small considering the large base range, so these have also been improved. While useful when it comes online, Churchill's Machine Gun never scaled the best so needs further improvements to scale up with higher levels. & finally since it's very hard to get to Lv20 at all, we’ve given a nice bump to base damage here as well.
- Lv1 Attack cooldown reduced from 1.8s > 1.5s
- Lv8 Attack cooldown reduced from 1.5 > 1.2s
- Lv1 Acquisition range increased from 63 > 65
- Lv4 Acquisition range increased from 66 > 75
- Lv5 machine-gun damage increased from 1 > 2
- Lv7 machine-gun damage increased from 2 > 4
- Lv12 machine-gun damage increased from 3 > 6
- Lv14 machine-gun damage increased from 4 > 8
- Lv18 machine-gun damage increased from 5 > 10
- Lv15 machine-gun bonus damage to Fortified increased from 1 > 2
- Lv18 machine-gun bonus damage to Fortified increased from 1 > 4
- Lv20 Cannon damage 15 > 20
Though we feel she is quite powerful already later in the game, Ezili has quite a hard time in the early game, we’ve given more initial damage over time to allow her to clean up early Green Bloons with one attack
- Lv1 damage over time damage increased from 1 > 2
- Lv8 damage over time damage remains 2
Sauda's early game feels exceptional and is seeing a pierce reduction, however as her Sword Charge struggles to break super ceramics as they first begin to appear we’re also filling a gap and allowing her to sweep the path twice from Lv14, Sword Charge damage is also being reduced at lv16 but this is only to keep the overall same power level now that it hits twice.
- Lv1 pierce reduced from 4 > 3
- Lv14 Sword Charge sweeps the path twice
- Lv16 Sword Charge damage reduced from 120 > 60
- Lv20 Sword Charge damage remains 220
We’re happy with how Corvus fits into his new XP curve, although a few edges do need to be smoothed out. First, Corvus early game is kinda broken, for now we’re not touching the spirit itself but have reduced the damage of the Spear spell. Frostbound is currently much better than Repel, so we have doubled Repel’s knockback against non-moabs & increased its radius along with some small nerfs to Frostbound - note that while Frostbound’s freeze on MOABs is being reduced the duration is still longer than the re-application rate so this will rarely be noticed. For Dark Ritual QoL, it will no longer eat up pierce on purple Bloons unless it is able to damage them. Finally, Overload & Might are still somewhat tuned around the higher XP curve and need some nips to their power.
- Lv1 Spear spell damage reduced from 2 > 1
- Lv5 Frostbound spell cooldown increased 45s > 50s
- Lv5 Frostbound spell mana cost increased 170 > 190
- Lv9 Frostbound spell reduced freeze duration to MOAB-Class 50% > 75%
- Lv1 Repel knockback radius increased 8 > 10
- Lv1 Repel knockback amount increased 4 > 8
- Lv12 Repel knockback against MOAB-Class unchanged
- Lv10 Dart Ritual filters out Purple targets unless can damage
- Lv13 overload damage reduced 1500 > 1150
- Lv20 overload damage reduced 3000 > 2250
- Lv7 Ancestral might mana cost increased 440 > 550
- Lv13 Overload mana cost increased 520 > 620
As Rosalia can’t properly attack while moving the repositioning speed has been increased, and we’ve given her extra attack range. Her abilities have also been noted as difficult to effectively utilize, so we’ve eased up on Scatter Missiles and increased the maximum damage on Kinetic Charge to have a higher potential payoff. Her main attacks also feel they start to fall off too early, so higher levels for these have both been improved at their respective strengths.
- Lv1 Acquisition range increased 32 > 40
- Lv1 Repositioning speed increased 0.7 > 1.5
- Lv3 Scatter Missile initial target delay reduced 1s > 0.4s
- Lv10 Kinetic Charge pierce increased from 100 > 500
- Lv10 Kinetic Charge max additional damage 3000 > 4500
- Lv20 Kinetic Charge max additional damage 8000 > 12000
- Lv13 Cluster grenades pierce increased 5 > 8
- Lv15 Grenade ceramic damage increased 5 > 6
- Lv15 Grenade cluster ceram dmg increased 3 > 4
- Lv12 Laser bonus damage to MOAB-Class increased 5 > 10
- Lv15 Laser bonus damage to MOAB-Class increased 20 > 30
- Lv19 Laser bonus damage to MOAB-Class increased 30 > 45
We didn’t expect the last Deep Heat change to be too crazy of a shakeup, but now that we have new variables opened up for it and have tested these working in the wild we’re going to start improving on these values
- Deep Heat freeze duration bonus increased from 10% > 30%
- Deep Heat extra layers frozen increased from 1 > 3
These Bloon properties aren’t prevalent enough to justify such small bonuses compared to Raw Damage or MOAB/Ceramic Damage.
- Fortified damage bonus to Fortified increased from 2 > 3
- Broken Heart damage bonus to regrow increased 2 > 5
We don’t feel Rounding-Up was bad but with Thrive basically always giving significantly more total cash we wanted to close the gap a bit more between these Relics so that the actual fully custom Relic could feel a bit better in comparison to the Power Charge relic.
- Rounding Up end-of-round cash bonus increased from $20 > 25
Previously we scaled Rock Bloon HP in Boss Rush faster than Dreadbloon in order to keep them relevant from start to finish within a rough 100 tier expectation. Players pushing beyond this expected range were finding obvious annoyance with this as the Rock Bloons would eventually outscale the Boss, so we’re reducing their scale to match in line with Dreadbloon but increasing the number of Rock Bloons that spawn.
- Dreadbloon’s Rock Bloon HP scaling reduced 1.07 > 1.055
- Dreadbloon Rock Bloons per spawn increased 3 > 6
Going into the home stretch of the year with one massive update yet to come. With the Bloons Card Storm release coming next week, we’re feeling quite tactical, so let’s dig right into the details.
- Game Editor
- We have delayed this to give us more time to iterate and polish. This has become a very robust technical feature, with an emphasis on technical, as we are allowing interaction with the game’s baseline behavior scripts. The technical functionality is complete, but we have not had time to build enough games internally nor share with any modders, so we did not feel comfortable releasing as part of 45. We will complete this work in the next weeks and then decide whether to release as a 45.x update or hold until update 46, so please stay tuned.
- Game Editor remains a highly technical feature for its first release, so it may only appeal to players with a solid understanding of code, modding, and/or game scripting. We will be working to improve accessibility in future updates, especially as we build the tower editing features that we’re still keen to offer.
- Update 46
- Tack Shooter Paragon still on track - this was already planned for 46 so no change there.
- Legends is shaping up to be amazing and we’re eager to share more details (check back to the Update 44 Notes Looking Forward if you missed the explanation). We’ll plan on at least one dev diary during development to preview the art and gameplay of this super cool rogue-lite DLC.
- Quests, a new “revenge” style map, and maybe some additional surprise content!
- PlayStation and Xbox Content Update
- Adding 9 maps, 5 hero skins, and 50+ trophy store items to bring the console version further up to date.
- Changes are made and we’re working through the submission process.
