BTD6 Tower Path Tier List: S to F Detailed Guide

S Tier
S- Tier
A Tier
B Tier
C Tier
D Tier
F Tier

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S Tier

Bottom Glue

MOAB Glue is a cheap lategame support tower that works well against both dense rounds and DDTs.
Relentless creates a chain reaction of stuns that is very good at holding back MOABs and DDTs. Good at activating Sauda’s prey effects to stunned and slowed bloons.
Super Glue is a more powerful Relentless, able to stun hordes of moab-class bloons for a long time.
Low attack speed and non piercing projectiles causes some issues with it if positioned badly.
Best paths: 01+3

Bottom Heli

Shove is a strong yet cheap mid to late support which can clump or create gaps between moabs.
Can also stall out rounds and delay DDTs enough for them to be popped, making it very valuable.
Comanche Defense is a solid tower that holds its own midgame and saves up to many expensive T5s.
Comanche Commander is a global damage tier 5 that pairs well with damage and pierce buffs.
Needs MIB or some form of lead removal to damage DDTs. Glue Storm or Gwen are good options.
Best paths: 01+3

Top Alch

Brew and Stim can provide massive DPS buffs to certain towers and are used with many strats. Certain towers benefit more than others due to shot limits and flat number buffs.
Brew is also cheap enough to be an affordable earlygame buff and helps with leads.
Stim provides a slightly stronger buff over brew, and is often bought for any main DPS tower.
Permanent Brew mainly helps groups of towers with low damage and pierce, but high attack speeds.
Best paths: 3xx, 4xx

S- Tier

Brickell
Corvus -
Mid Ice ++
Mid Ninja
Bottom Spac
Mid Engi
Bottom Beast
A Tier:

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A Tier

Obyn

Relatively powerful against early bloon rounds, but hampered by the fact that he can’t be afforded on r6. Main attack falls off in power pretty quickly.
Brambles can be used as RNG defense in the earlygame, and deals decent damage lategame if alched.
Totems are very strong due to the moab slowdown, and help your towers not leak ceramics.
His synergy with top path druids is very strong, providing a very consistent ceramic blowback.
Level 18 allows for Total Transformation on Druids of Wrath to get the maximum attack speed benefit.
Wall of trees at lvl 20 can hold a significant amount of RBE, making him a good cleanup hero that can provide value against DDTs.

Psi +

Has a decent earlygame due to being able to instantly kill most bloons that exist earlygame.
Lvl 3 stun is very good at clumping bloons and giving you a few more seconds to pop them.
Being able to take out ceramics makes Psi a pretty good midgame hero despite having low pierce.
Lvl 14 and 16 are huge power spikes that make them heavily reduce moab density lategame, and make psionic scream a very strong ability against hyperdense rounds.
Can no longer stall out the end of the round, so abilities must be used carefully.
Deals no BAD damage, so is usually paired with a T5 that can like MOAB Eliminator.

Rosalia

Great earlygame with the high damage laser and later on bouncing grenades.
Due to needing to constantly fire one weapon to get enhanced shots, she is not micro-heavy, the most micro being storing an enhanced shot of one weapon by switching to the other before it fires.
Kinetic Charge can deal high damage, mainly useful as a r100 tool.
Her laser flight boost is quite strong lategame due to firing both charged lasers and charged grenades.
Her discounts are decent for Apache Prime and Flying Fortress, but aren’t big for cheaper towers.

Bottom Boomer

Kylie is a decent earlygame on maps with straight lines for kylie to fly along.
Press is very potent against dense and slow bloons. Use it with Moab Glue and other slowdowns.
Faster Rangs has more frequent knockbacks while Glaives gives it even more pierce and slow power. 024 reduces its weakness against fast bloons, while 204 improves its strength against slow ones.
MOAB Domination is a good tier 5 for its price range that functions on many maps. Overclock recommended.
Best paths: xx4

Mid Glue

Glue Hose is an alright bloon control but is usually only bought if Glue Strike is also used.
Glue Strike applies a powerful delead and debuff glue to everything on screen, making it a good pairing with high projectile towers.
Corrosive Glue gives an even stronger debuff while soaking through all bloon layers, and is preferred.
Glue Storm extends the length of this to 20 seconds if Stickier Glue is bought, letting it glue ceramic and moab insides as well as delead all of round 95, making for a full MIB skip.
Best paths: 240

Top Sub +

Submerge and Support can work as a decamo but due to the slow decamo rate and large submerge delay, may not be the most reliable.
Reactor is a decent early-mid, having consistent decamo and dealing with most sub-ceramic bloons.
Pairs well with other water towers and Brickell for the cooldown reduction.
Energizer is used to cut the cooldown of water towers, mainly Snowstorm and Brickell, by half.
Also can bring heroes up to level 20, but isn’t amazing outside of Brickell, who gets extra benefit.
Best paths: 4+01+

Mid Sub

Ballistic missile is a stronger spam tower with Sub Commander compared to bottom path sub, but needs lots of water space near the track to be good. Largely only viable on Quad.
First Strike is a strong BAD damage tower, usually used to kill off the BAD’s insides on maps with water, and blast away ZOMGs with groups of MOABs elsewhere.
Pre-emptive strike can instantly kill all DDTs alone in addition to taking out any natural moabs, but is very expensive for this job alone.
Best paths: 040

Bottom Dartling

Buckshot shouldn’t be used alone due to its slow attack rate. 203 is even slower.
BADS is a strong mid game tower, it even performs well in some of the hardest maps.
Laser Shock greatly amplifies the tower’s damage, but sacrifices camo and knockback rate.
Laser Shock BEZ is a powerful T5 tower that needs little help to take out lategame. Use MIB or multiple AMD Alchemists to grant lead popping.
Best paths: 205

Mid Beast

Velociraptor is a very strong midgame, being global range and one-shotting ceramics with high pierce and decent attack speed. It also boasts some useful MOAB damage, unlike other bloon midgames.
Due to the small range it requires micro to maximize effectiveness.
T-Rex takes out regular ceramics with ease and still has decently high moab damage, as well as a very frequent stun ability for the utility. Pair with Overclock.
Max merge T-Rex layerskips through moabs with its attacks, making it much better as a DPS.
Giganotosaurus is useless when not at max degree, which you’ll never afford in a CHIMPS game.
Best paths: x3x (18), x4x (64)

Bottom Beast –

Great White can be used as an r40 solution, but downtime may make it worse than Barracuda. Max power becomes a decent midgame that has good raw damage.
Max Orca is an incredibly powerful lategame attacker. Downtime is still its biggest weakness, as ceramics and DDTs can escape it. Losing Symphonic Resonance means this is far more likely.
As a beast handler, it can naturally save up into itself, with Orca preferring to keep multiple lower tier beasts on the field and merging on 80.
Best paired with Overclock to give it the power to destroy everything but the BAD.
Megalodon requires 4 Orcas and is too expensive. Only used to flex.
Best paths: 4xx (64)

Top Tier Summary

This tier covers mid-to-late game power through diverse capabilities, offering a balance of synergies and raw power across multiple paths.

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B Tier

Gwen

Cocktail is pretty good for earlygame and is usable for midgame ceramic cleanup when alched.
Heat it up has pierce buff and damage buff later on in addition to providing lead popping.
Gwen’s main attack ramps up burn damage after lvl 9 which adds up against moabs.
Firestorm is effectively just Heat It Up on demand, the damage is underwhelming. Can be used on r63/76/78 to help pop the ceramics, but often doesn’t pop them in time until level 16.
Heat it up as a consistent lead solution is the main reason to use her. Make sure she can constantly attack so that the buff is active as much as possible.

Adora

Good earlygame due to high pierce homing projectiles and long range from LAOL.
Alch buff is important for the main attack to not fall off at the end of earlygame and become totally useless midgame.
Has a very weak midgame by design as a key aspect of her gameplay is relying on midgame towers that she can later use Blood Sacrifice on for EXP.
It is important to get her to level 20 using blood sacrifice, as the powerful buff as well as improved ball of light lets her do some decent damage for lategame rounds. Recommended by 98.
Recent nerfs to her level 20 have significantly hurt her ability to actually kill things.
Timing her abilities correctly for hard rounds is a very important task.

Geraldo {#gerald o}

Good earlygame due to the strength of glue, pickles, and turrets.
Pickles can provide great buffs for low damage towers.
Many items can help rounds in the midgame, but using his items is quite expensive and hurts saveups.
The majority of his kit is used to bandaid deaths at specific rounds where the solution otherwise spends a lot more cash on an expensive tower.
Pet Bunny is a worthwhile mid-late attacker which can jump across the map. It returns to Geraldo if no bloons are in its jump range so Geraldo’s placement matters.
Requires almost no micro, but be careful to not overspend on his items.

Mid Dart ++

Triple Darts is a cheap earlygame that works fine on Ravine or Dungeons.
Super Monkey Fan Club is expensive, lacks mobility and doesn’t have enough damage.
Plasma Monkey Fan Club is a great tower for lategame burst DPS, given you have something to stall or cover downtime. The tower has good power, but doesn’t last long enough and is hard to use.
Pairs well with Primary Mentoring due to cooldown reduction and free tier 1 upgrades.
Best paths: x5x

Mid Bomb

Maulers are fairly weak in the lategame now, and only sees niche use popping the MOAB.
Assassin doubles the moab damage of mauler and has a valuable ability. The ability can be targeted which is great for midgame but annoying if spammed.
Eliminator is a decent T5 that eliminates entire ZOMGs and can also skip the BAD like First Strike given Striker’s lvl 20, and has a fairly powerful main attack. Pair with towers that have good cleanup.
All middle bombs pair well with Primary Mentoring.
Best paths: x4+x

Bottom Tack

Tack Sprayer is more cost efficient than an overdrive, but a shorter tower height and lack of space make it difficult to use. Popular as very cheap r100 damage with Glue Strike.
Overdrive does great MOAB DPS. Pair with Embrittlement and Brew.
Typically used with Pat or Geraldo, Tack Zone can lock down one half of the map.
Overdrive and Tack Zone’s increased height mean when placed directly below the track, bloons travel right over it. This means tacks fired from all sides hit the same bloon at that point called the dead zone.
Best paths: 204

Top Ice

Ice Shards is relegated to races. It is an extremely weak decamo option.
Embrittlement can provide a MIB skip and is a good debuffer in a small area. With Sabotage, it can more consistently hit DDTs within its range.
Pairs well with pretty much every low damage tower that doesn’t deal extra damage to camos.
Super Brittle superpowers both the ice shard DPS and the debuff strength. Can wipe out clumps of bloons and apply a strong debuff to single targets, but is mostly hurt by its low range.
Best paths: 410

Top Glue

Dissolver can glue a lot more things now, but its DPS doesn’t cut it for expert maps.
Liquefier’s short range as well as inability to glue everything quickly hold it back on most experts.
Solver’s strong puddles enable it to start a chain reaction that can pop up to BFBs and FMOABs in addition to taking out every ceramic. Unfortunately, The Final Harmonic is currently bugged to delete these puddles, which makes the tower significantly weaker.
Weak to high health targets such as FBFBs and ZOMGs, especially after multiple damage nerfs.
Best paths: 51+0

Mid Ace

Bomber Ace is difficult to maximize and inconsistent to boot.
Ground Zero is rather hard to save for with earlygame towers alone, but it is powerful with its stronger bombing runs and faster abilities.
Good lategame blowing up full screens of MOABs and DDTs, but can’t handle higher health moabs.
Tsar deals a single instance of extreme damage, pairs well with slows, and somewhat stalls for itself with the stun on ZOMGs. Very weak to rounds like 92 and 95.
Best paths: 04+0

Top Mortar +

Shell Shock is a decent early that can burn through rainbows or blast down clumps of smaller bloons.
The Big One is good for ceramic damage, but lacks moab damage. Requires Striker for black popping.
The Biggest One is a high pierce moab DPS that struggles to deal point damage.
TB1 can now be run without Overclock, but still requires another tower to handle ZOMGs and the BAD for it. Elim is the best choice as both towers benefit from Striker.
Burny Stuff has more damage, but reduced stuns and slower attack speed make it prone to leaks.
Best paths: 520

Bottom Wiz

Shimmer is a suboptimal decamo option due to limited range and lack of consistency.
Necromancer is a decent ceramic damager midgame. It saves to Prince of Darkness, but falls off quickly. Graveyard runs out quickly and zombie bloons don’t last long.
Prince of Darkness cleans up DDTs and MOABs pretty well as long as ceramics are being popped.
Pairs well with Corvus as he antistalls for graveyard and leaves lots of ceramics for POD to clean up.
Best paths: xx5

Bottom Ninja +

Flash Bomb is a fine supporting tower in ninja strategies but attacks too slow on its own.
Sticky Bomb can be used as a midgame moab damager and is decent at BAD damage.
Master Bomber is a stronger target for shinobis, but doesn’t synergize with damage buffs.
Microing between strong and first targeting allows the global sticky bombs to break down high health targets faster while stunning frontmost MOABs and ceramics.
Best paths: 1+05

Bottom Druid

Druid of Wrath synergizes well with Total Transformation, as you get the extra attack speed for great lategame DPS. Poplusts can boost speed even more.
Speed buffs pair well with Gerry’s Fire, and sharpening stone as well as pickle is great for DPS.
Unlike Grandmaster Ninja, Avatar of Wrath does not require supporting Poplusts though they do help.
Often significantly weaker on DDT rounds due to not much RBE being on screen.
Best paths: 013+

Mid Spac

MOAB SHREDR can be used as a strong moab damager or BAD damager if insides can be dealt with.
Spike Storm shreds through separated MOABs or DDTs, but struggles to take down denser groups.
After many nerfs to price, damage, and cooldown, is not very viable as a mid-late burst damage.
Carpet of Spikes is weak against ceramics, but it deals incredible amounts of moab damage across the whole map, easily taking out the BAD and all DDTs.
Best paths: 1+4+0

Top Village +

Primary Training is useful for many primary towers, especially ones with low pierce.
Primary Mentoring is mainly bought for primary ability towers. Can also be bought to discount upgrades or provide extra range.
Primary Expertise is below average for cleanup and damage, but free upgrades and further reduced cooldowns is very nice for spamming out Snowstorms to achieve a permanent and recurring freeze.
Best paths: 3+xx

Bottom Sub =

Note: In this CHIMPS-hardened list, some sections include cross path references that optimize synergy with other towers; these entries are best used in specific map configurations.

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B Tier

Gwen

Cocktail is pretty good for earlygame and is usable for midgame ceramic cleanup when alched.
Heat it up has pierce buff and damage buff later on in addition to providing lead popping.
Gwen’s main attack ramps up burn damage after lvl 9 which adds up against moabs.
Firestorm is effectively just Heat It Up on demand, the damage is underwhelming. Can be used on r63/76/78 to help pop the ceramics, but often doesn’ t pop them in time until level 16.
Heat it up as a consistent lead solution is the main reason to use her. Make sure she can constantly attack so that the buff is active as much as possible.

Adora

Good earlygame due to high pierce homing projectiles and long range from LAOL.
Alch buff is important for the main attack to not fall off at the end of earlygame and become totally useless midgame.
Has a very weak midgame by design as a key aspect of her gameplay is relying on midgame towers that she can later use Blood Sacrifice on for EXP.
It is important to get her to level 20 using blood sacrifice, as the powerful buff as well as improved ball of light lets her do some decent damage for lategame rounds. Recommended by 98.
Recent nerfs to her level 20 have significantly hurt her ability to actually kill things.
Timing her abilities correctly for hard rounds is a very important task.

Geraldo

Good earlygame due to the strength of glue, pickles, and turrets.
Pickles can provide great buffs for low damage towers.
Many items can help rounds in the midgame, but using his items is quite expensive and hurts saveups.
The majority of his kit is used to bandaid deaths at specific rounds where the solution otherwise spends a lot more cash on an expensive tower.
Pet Bunny is a worthwhile mid-late attacker which can jump across the map. It returns to Geraldo if no bloons are in its jump range so Geraldo’s placement matters.
Requires almost no micro, but be careful to not overspend on his items.

Mid Dart ++

Triple Darts is a cheap earlygame that works fine on Ravine or Dungeons.
Super Monkey Fan Club is expensive, lacks mobility and doesn’t have enough damage.
Plasma Monkey Fan Club is a great tower for lategame burst DPS, given you have something to stall or cover downtime. The tower has good power, but doesn’t last long enough and is hard to use.
Pairs well with Primary Mentoring due to cooldown reduction and free tier 1 upgrades.
Best paths: x5x

Mid Bomb

Maulers are fairly weak in the lategame now, and only sees niche use popping the MOAB.
Assassin doubles the moab damage of mauler and has a valuable ability. The ability can be targeted which is great for midgame but annoying if spammed.
Eliminator is a decent T5 that eliminates entire ZOMGs and can also skip the BAD like First Strike given Striker’s lvl 20, and has a fairly powerful main attack. Pair with towers that have good cleanup.
All middle bombs pair well with Primary Mentoring.
Best paths: x4+x

Bottom Tack

Tack Sprayer is more cost efficient than an overdrive, but a shorter tower height and lack of space make it difficult to use. Popular as very cheap r100 damage with Glue Strike.
Overdrive does great MOAB DPS. Pair with Embrittlement and Brew.
Typically used with Pat or Geraldo, Tack Zone can lock down one half of the map.
Overdrive and Tack Zone’s increased height mean when placed directly below the track, bloons travel right over it. This means tacks fired from all sides hit the same bloon at that point called the dead zone.
Best paths: 204

Top Ice

Ice Shards is relegated to races. It is an extremely weak decamo option.
Embrittlement can provide a MIB skip and is a good debuffer in a small area. With Sabotage, it can more consistently hit DDTs within its range.
Pairs well with pretty much every low damage tower that doesn’t deal extra damage to camos.
Super Brittle superpowers both the ice shard DPS and the debuff strength. Can wipe out clumps of bloons and apply a strong debuff to single targets, but is mostly hurt by its low range.
Best paths: 410

Top Glue

Dissolver can glue a lot more things now, but its DPS doesn’t cut it for expert maps.
Liquefier’s short range as well as inability to glue everything quickly hold it back on most experts.
Solver’s strong puddles enable it to start a chain reaction that can pop up to BFBs and FMOABs in addition to taking out every ceramic. Unfortunately, The Final Harmonic is currently bugged to delete these puddles, which makes the tower significantly weaker.
Weak to high health targets such as FBFBs and ZOMGs, especially after multiple damage nerfs.
Best paths: 51+0

Mid Ace

Bomber Ace is difficult to maximize and inconsistent to boot.
Ground Zero is rather hard to save for with earlygame towers alone, but it is powerful with its stronger bombing runs and faster abilities.
Good lategame blowing up full screens of MOABs and DDTs, but can’t handle higher health moabs.
Tsar deals a single instance of extreme damage, pairs well with slows, and somewhat stalls for itself with the stun on ZOMGs. Very weak to rounds like 92 and 95.
Best paths: 04+0

Top Mortar +

Shell Shock is a decent early that can burn through rainbows or blast down clumps of smaller bloons.
The Big One is good for ceramic damage, but lacks moab damage. Requires Striker for black popping.
The Biggest One is a high pierce moab DPS that struggles to deal point damage.
TB1 can now be run without Overclock, but still requires another tower to handle ZOMGs and the BAD for it. Elim is the best choice as both towers benefit from Striker.
Burny Stuff has more damage, but reduced stuns and slower attack speed make it prone to leaks.
Best paths: 520

Bottom Wiz

Shimmer is a suboptimal decamo option due to limited range and lack of consistency.
Necromancer is a decent ceramic damager midgame. It saves to Prince of Darkness, but falls off quickly. Graveyard runs out quickly and zombie bloons don’t last long.
Prince of Darkness cleans up DDTs and MOABs pretty well as long as ceramics are being popped.
Pairs well with Corvus as he antistalls for graveyard and leaves lots of ceramics for POD to clean up.
Best paths: xx5

Bottom Ninja +

Flash Bomb is a fine supporting tower in ninja strategies but attacks too slow on its own.
Sticky Bomb can be used as a midgame moab damager and is decent at BAD damage.
Master Bomber is a stronger target for shinobis, but doesn’t synergize with damage buffs.
Microing between strong and first targeting allows the global sticky bombs to break down high health targets faster while stunning frontmost MOABs and ceramics.
Best paths: 1+05

Bottom Druid

Druid of Wrath synergizes well with Total Transformation, as you get the extra attack speed for great lategame DPS. Poplusts can boost speed even more.
Speed buffs pair well with Gerry’s Fire, and sharpening stone as well as pickle is great for DPS.
Unlike Grandmaster Ninja, Avatar of Wrath does not require supporting Poplusts though they do help.
Often significantly weaker on DDT rounds due to not much RBE being on screen.
Best paths: 013+

Mid Spac

MOAB SHREDR can be used as a strong moab damager or BAD damager if insides can be dealt with.
Spike Storm shreds through separated MOABs or DDTs, but struggles to take down denser groups.
After many nerfs to price, damage, and cooldown, is not very viable as a mid-late burst damage.
Carpet of Spikes is weak against ceramics, but it deals incredible amounts of moab damage across the whole map, easily taking out the BAD and all DDTs.
Best paths: 1+4+0

Top Village +

Primary Training is useful for many primary towers, especially ones with low pierce.
Primary Mentoring is mainly bought for primary ability towers. Can also be bought to discount upgrades or provide extra range.
Primary Expertise is below average for cleanup and damage, but free upgrades and further reduced cooldowns is very nice for spamming out Snowstorms to achieve a permanent and recurring freeze.
Best paths: 3+xx

Bottom Sub +

Note: In this CHIMPS-hardened list, some sections include cross path references that optimize synergy with other towers; these entries are best used in specific map configurations.

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C Tier

Mid Boomer

Bionic Boomerang is consistent, but there are much better options.
Turbo Charge is an alright midgame and can save to its T5 upgrade.
Perma Charge is an okay and affordable T5 that can survive the lategame.
Both Turbo and Perma Charge pair well with Gerry’s Fire, multiplying its DPS. Turbo charge gets significantly more benefit as Perma Charge doesn’t have the 7x attack speed bonus.
Best paths: 042

Top Tack

Hot Shots are bad.
Ring of Fire is good bloon DPS that can take down weakened superceramics. Low range hurts.
Inferno Ring is an average lategame win condition, doing enough DPS while relying on meta support. The meteor gives it some single target, but it can miss fast DDTs.
The meteor itself only has 1 pierce (2 with 520), so Brew and Primary Training are very effective.
Not having Symphonic Resonance spin faster bloons inside its radius means the tower leaks more.
Best paths: 5xx

Top Desp =

Big Iron can function in the early game but struggles massively to high density.
Even after the attack speed fix, Twin Sixes has bad layerskip and opens up too many bloons for it to handle. Has decent single target capabilities but is not a good reason to use the tower.
The Blazing Sun is a midgame T5 that can do a decent amount of single target damage in the lategame. Unfortunately, TBS is hurt by The Final Harmonic nerf. Best used with Psi.
Best paths: 520

Mid Desp =

Deadeye can one shot ceramics from a distance with a decent fire rate. Ability provides unique benefits that have some niche use cases. Lack of ability uptime makes it not a top choice.
Bounty Hunter marking bloons increases damage by a lot and helps out other desperado damage
Ability acts similar to a MIB and has better buffs, but the tower costs a lot and still has low uptime.
While Golden Justice has extremely powerful attacks, it leaks ceramics, requires good line of sight, and if anything is in the pistol’s range, the pistol is prioritised, preventing it from using the rifle attack.
All 3 upgrades are inconsistent due to crits and marked bloons being central to its damage.
Best paths: 230

Mid Sniper

Bouncing Bullets have been greatly weakened, but can be bought in early now.
Don’t stop at Supply Drop, the extra bounces are not worth it.
Elite Sniper is a very easy to use midgame that excels when bloons are clumped. Use with other snipers, an elite defender and maim moab are also helpful.
Despite sharpening stone no longer increasing damage and price shuffling, faster attacks are still favorable with alch buffed shrapnel.
Best paths: 032

Bottom Sub =

Triple Guns builds excellently off an airburst, but needs alch buff so it is a sizable investment.
Decent bloon damage with brew along with having good moab damage, but low pierce.
AP Darts greatly increases the moab damage, allowing it to somewhat help with MOABs in the late 70s and beyond. Most of the damage increase being in a moab bonus leaves its bloon performance lacking.
Sub Commander is weak to pretty much everything in lategame, especially on split lanes.
Its buffs to subs can be taken advantage of, but aren’t great. Pre-emptive is extremely suboptimal.
Pair with Brickell for her water tower buffs and Ballistic Missiles as they provide more power late.
Best paths: 203+

Bottom Ace

Neva-Miss Targeting is very consistent now, but the damage is not good for the price.
Completely dependent on alch buff to do pretty much anything.
Spectre is hurt even more by the lifespan changes as it makes it harder to line up the stream without making the radial darts time out.
Fortress is not easily affordable. Nearly requires Rosalia, and is still difficult to get to.
Best paths: 204

Top Dartling

Laser cannon is an expensive early-mid tower with a bad damage type, but has pretty good damage.
Plasma accelerator can serve as a decent midgame with high MOAB DPS. Completely falls off past round 80 due to very low ceramic damage, requiring other ceramic cleanup.
Synergizes with Ezili’s hex due to being a controllable DPS that helps hex remove moab children.
Ray of Doom is too expensive and can still die to lategame if you aren’t careful.
Best paths: 420

Mid Dartling

Hydra Rocket Pods is a usable spam strat with Permanent Brew after the double damage buff.
Rocket Storm is a workable tower midgame, being able to save up large amounts through the 80s.
MAD is a powerful MOAB DPS tower with little ceramic damage and a very difficult saveup.
Pair with heavy ceramic control.
All of the upgrades in the path pair well with alch due to it multiplying the explosions.
Best paths: 13+0

Top Super

Sun Avatar is a decent saveup tower for its cost and can be used as a lategame attacker.
Range helps it deal more damage, but knockback is better at controlling ceramics.
Becomes far stronger when combined with damage buffs such as Geraldo’s Pickles.
The rest of this path is a meme in CHIMPS mode.
Best paths: 301+

Bottom Merm -6

Alluring Melody’s long downtime severely cripples its use cases against fast ceramics.
Symphonic Resonance is “bugged” to be significantly weaker than before. Ninja Kiwi currently has no plans to fix this, as people have wanted Symph nerfs for a while now.
The removal of the BFBs grab limits what it can do on dense lategame rounds.
Can grab 2 MOABs at once with the middle crosspath. (Tidal Chill not needed)
The Final Harmonic can do some funny things to the BAD with Glaive Lord or The Bloon Solver.
Currently bugged to delete glue puddles from The Bloon Solver, which significantly hurt its strongest strategy.
The hero buffs are notable but not centric.
Best paths: 205

Top Engi

Sprockets lacks both camo and lead, but is a high power earlygame.
Sentry Expert is a well statted attacker in the midgame that can support lategame. Its AI can actively screw it over since the reactive system means the sentries are replaced only once every 6 seconds.
Sentry Champion is somewhat weak alone, but since aura buffs affect both the placement and attack rate of sentries, it can receive double the benefit from Jungle Drums and Call to Arms.
Recent buffs to Faster Engineering carry over very well to this entire path.
Best paths: 402, 520

Bottom Village +

MIB is only used as DDT support. Often skippable, but sometimes necessary.
Call to Arms is fairly expensive and is similar to an Overclock, but for multiple towers.
Somewhat usable with towers that use subtowers like Carrier Flagship and Sentry Champion.
Homeland Defense is very expensive and typically not worth it.
Best paths: x3x

C Tier

Mid Boomer

Bionic Boomerang is consistent, but there are much better options.
Turbo Charge is an alright midgame and can save to its T5 upgrade.
Perma Charge is an okay and affordable T5 that can survive the lategame.
Both Turbo and Perma Charge pair well with Gerry’s Fire, multiplying its DPS. Turbo charge

gets significantly more benefit as Perma Charge doesn’t have the 7x attack speed bonus.

Best paths: 042

Top Tack

Hot Shots are bad.
Ring of Fire is good bloon DPS that can take down weakened superceramics. Low range hurts.
Inferno Ring is an average lategame win condition, doing enough DPS while relying on meta support. The meteor gives it some single target, but it can miss fast DDTs.
The meteor itself only has 1 pierce (2 with 520), so Brew and Primary Training are very effective.
Not having Symphonic Resonance spin faster bloons inside its radius means the tower leaks more.
Best paths: 5xx

Top Desp =

Big Iron can function in the early game but struggles massively to high density.
Even after the attack speed fix, Twin Sixes has bad layerskip and opens up too many bloons for it to handle. Has decent single target capabilities but is not a good reason to use the tower.
The Blazing Sun is a midgame T5 that can do a decent amount of single target damage in the lategame. Unfortunately, TBS is hurt by The Final Harmonic nerf. Best used with Psi.
Best paths: 520

Mid Desp 2

Deadeye can one shot ceramics from a distance with a decent fire rate. Ability provides unique benefits that have some niche use cases. Lack of ability uptime makes it not a top choice.
Bounty Hunter marking bloons increases damage by a lot and helps out other desperado damage.
Ability acts similar to a MIB and has better buffs, but the tower costs a lot and still has low uptime.
While Golden Justice has extremely powerful attacks, it leaks ceramics, requires good line of sight, and if anything is in the pistol’s range, the pistol is prioritised, preventing it from using the rifle attack.
All 3 upgrades are inconsistent due to crits and marked bloons being central to its damage.
Best paths: 230

Mid Sniper

Bouncing Bullets have been greatly weakened, but can be bought in early now.
Don’t stop at Supply Drop, the extra bounces are not worth it.
Elite Sniper is a very easy to use midgame that excels when bloons are clumped. Use with other snipers, an elite defender and maim moab are also helpful.
Despite sharpening stone no longer increasing damage and price shuffling, faster attacks are still favorable with alch buffed shrapnel.
Best paths: 032

Bottom Sub 2

Triple Guns builds excellently off an airburst, but needs alch buff so it is a sizable investment.
Decent bloon damage with brew along with having good moab damage, but low pierce.
AP Darts greatly increases the moab damage, allowing it to somewhat help with MOABs in the late 70s and beyond. Most of the damage increase being in a moab bonus leaves its bloon performance lacking.
Sub Commander is weak to pretty much everything in lategame, especially on split lanes.
Its buffs to subs can be taken advantage of, but aren’t great. Pre-emptive is extremely suboptimal.
Pair with Brickell for her water tower buffs and Ballistic Missiles as they provide more power late.
Best paths: 203+

Bottom Ace

Neva-Miss Targeting is very consistent now, but the damage is not good for the price.
Completely dependent on alch buff to do pretty much anything.
Spectre is hurt even more by the lifespan changes as it makes it harder to line up the stream without making the radial darts time out.
Fortress is not easily affordable. Nearly requires Rosalia, and is still difficult to get to.
Best paths: 204

Top Dartling 2

Laser cannon is an expensive early-mid tower with a bad damage type, but has pretty good damage.
Plasma accelerator can serve as a decent midgame with high MOAB DPS. Completely falls off past round 80 due to very low ceramic damage, requiring other ceramic cleanup.
Synergizes with Ezili’s hex due to being a controllable DPS that helps hex remove moab children.
Ray of Doom is too expensive and can still die to lategame if you aren’t careful.
Best paths: 420

Mid Dartling 2

Hydra Rocket Pods is a usable spam strat with Permanent Brew after the double damage buff.
Rocket Storm is a workable tower midgame, being able to save up large amounts through the 80s.
MAD is a powerful MOAB DPS tower with little ceramic damage and a very difficult saveup.
Pair with heavy ceramic control.
All of the upgrades in the path pair well with alch due to it multiplying the explosions.
Best paths: 13+0

Top Super 2

Sun Avatar is a decent saveup tower for its cost and can be used as a lategame attacker.
Range helps it deal more damage, but knockback is better at controlling ceramics.
Becomes far stronger when combined with damage buffs such as Geraldo’s Pickles.
The rest of this path is a meme in CHIMPS mode.
Best paths: 301+

Bottom Merm 2

Alluring Melody’s long downtime severely cripples its use cases against fast ceramics.
Symphonic Resonance is “bugged” to be significantly weaker than before. Ninja Kiwi currently has no plans to fix this, as people have wanted Symph nerfs for a while now.
The removal of the BFBs grab limits what it can do on dense lategame rounds.
Can grab 2 MOABs at once with the middle crosspath. (Tidal Chill not needed)
The Final Harmonic can do some funny things to the BAD with Glaive Lord or The Bloon Solver.
Currently bugged to delete glue puddles from The Bloon Solver, which significantly hurt its strongest strategy.
The hero buffs are notable but not centric.
Best paths: 205

Top Engi 2

Sprockets lacks both camo and lead, but is a high power earlygame.
Sentry Expert is a well statted attacker in the midgame that can support lategame. Its AI can actively screw it over since the reactive system means the sentries are replaced only once every 6 seconds.
Sentry Champion is somewhat weak alone, but since aura buffs affect both the placement and attack rate of sentries, it can receive double the benefit from Jungle Drums and Call to Arms.
Recent buffs to Faster Engineering carry over very well to this entire path.
Best paths: 402, 520

Bottom Village 2

MIB is only used as DDT support. Often skippable, but sometimes necessary.
Call to Arms is fairly expensive and is similar to an Overclock, but for multiple towers.
Somewhat usable with towers that use subtowers like Carrier Flagship and Sentry Champion.
Homeland Defense is very expensive and typically not worth it.
Best paths: x3x

D Tier

Bottom Dart

Crossbow loves to miss its shots and is somewhat expensive, but is barely passable for earlygame.
Sharp Shooter is a decent early-mid that comes after Crossbow, but has very bad pierce and is reliant on crit RNG to beat ceramics.
Crossbow Master can beat midgame, but it falls off heavily lategame and isn’t a good investment.
The pierce path makes the tower too weak to single targets to be the optimal choice for all 3 upgrades.
Best paths: 023+

Mid Tack

Blade Shooter has a hilarious amount of range, but still struggles without any loops or curves.
Blade Maelstrom can be used to burst through dense rounds like 78, and will take out insides of BFBs.
Super Maelstrom is a very cheap burst damage tower, but requires too much support for not enough reward with limited ability uptime and low damage far away.
More Tacks allows it to burn longer rounds while Even Faster Shooting chunks through dense rounds.
Best paths: 24+0

F Tier

Bottom Boat {#bottom-boat-f Tier}

You receive: A Tier 2 Buccaneer. I receive: $34,400.
Buffs to other merchantmen is a rather powerful stat buff, but merchantmen suck too.

Bottom Village

Monkey City lets you get 1 free dart per round, taking 65 rounds to pay off. That’s what I call a long term investment.
If you ever accidentally put your village out of range, you can spend 14k to have the village reach.
If you ever forget what time it is, buy a Monkey City, as its clock tells you.

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BTD6 Tower Path Tier List: S to F Detailed Guide

S Tier
S- Tier
A Tier
B Tier
C Tier
D Tier
F Tier

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S Tier

Bottom Glue

MOAB Glue is a cheap lategame support tower that works well against both dense rounds and DDTs.
Relentless creates a chain reaction of stuns that is very good at holding back MOABs and DDTs. Good at activating Sauda’s prey effects to stunned and slowed bloons.
Super Glue is a more powerful Relentless, able to stun hordes of moab-class bloons for a long time.
Low attack speed and non piercing projectiles causes some issues with it if positioned badly.
Best paths: 01+3

Bottom Heli

Shove is a strong yet cheap mid to late support which can clump or create gaps between moabs.
Can also stall out rounds and delay DDTs enough for them to be popped, making it very valuable.
Comanche Defense is a solid tower that holds its own midgame and saves up to many expensive T5s.
Comanche Commander is a global damage tier 5 that pairs well with damage and pierce buffs.
Needs MIB or some form of lead removal to damage DDTs. Glue Storm or Gwen are good options.
Best paths: 01+3

Top Alch

Brew and Stim can provide massive DPS buffs to certain towers and are used with many strats. Certain towers benefit more than others due to shot limits and flat number buffs.
Brew is also cheap enough to be an affordable earlygame buff and helps with leads.
Stim provides a slightly stronger buff over brew, and is often bought for any main DPS tower.
Permanent Brew mainly helps groups of towers with low damage and pierce, but high attack speeds.
Best paths: 3xx, 4xx

S- Tier

Brickell
Corvus -
Mid Ice ++
Mid Ninja
Bottom Spac
Mid Engi
Bottom Beast
A Tier:

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A Tier

Obyn

Relatively powerful against early bloon rounds, but hampered by the fact that he can’t be afforded on r6. Main attack falls off in power pretty quickly.
Brambles can be used as RNG defense in the earlygame, and deals decent damage lategame if alched.
Totems are very strong due to the moab slowdown, and help your towers not leak ceramics.
His synergy with top path druids is very strong, providing a very consistent ceramic blowback.
Level 18 allows for Total Transformation on Druids of Wrath to get the maximum attack speed benefit.
Wall of trees at lvl 20 can hold a significant amount of RBE, making him a good cleanup hero that can provide value against DDTs.

Psi +

Has a decent earlygame due to being able to instantly kill most bloons that exist earlygame.
Lvl 3 stun is very good at clumping bloons and giving you a few more seconds to pop them.
Being able to take out ceramics makes Psi a pretty good midgame hero despite having low pierce.
Lvl 14 and 16 are huge power spikes that make them heavily reduce moab density lategame, and make psionic scream a very strong ability against hyperdense rounds.
Can no longer stall out the end of the round, so abilities must be used carefully.
Deals no BAD damage, so is usually paired with a T5 that can like MOAB Eliminator.

Rosalia

Great earlygame with the high damage laser and later on bouncing grenades.
Due to needing to constantly fire one weapon to get enhanced shots, she is not micro-heavy, the most micro being storing an enhanced shot of one weapon by switching to the other before it fires.
Kinetic Charge can deal high damage, mainly useful as a r100 tool.
Her laser flight boost is quite strong lategame due to firing both charged lasers and charged grenades.
Her discounts are decent for Apache Prime and Flying Fortress, but aren’t big for cheaper towers.

Bottom Boomer

Kylie is a decent earlygame on maps with straight lines for kylie to fly along.
Press is very potent against dense and slow bloons. Use it with Moab Glue and other slowdowns.
Faster Rangs has more frequent knockbacks while Glaives gives it even more pierce and slow power. 024 reduces its weakness against fast bloons, while 204 improves its strength against slow ones.
MOAB Domination is a good tier 5 for its price range that functions on many maps. Overclock recommended.
Best paths: xx4

Mid Glue

Glue Hose is an alright bloon control but is usually only bought if Glue Strike is also used.
Glue Strike applies a powerful delead and debuff glue to everything on screen, making it a good pairing with high projectile towers.
Corrosive Glue gives an even stronger debuff while soaking through all bloon layers, and is preferred.
Glue Storm extends the length of this to 20 seconds if Stickier Glue is bought, letting it glue ceramic and moab insides as well as delead all of round 95, making for a full MIB skip.
Best paths: 240

Top Sub +

Submerge and Support can work as a decamo but due to the slow decamo rate and large submerge delay, may not be the most reliable.
Reactor is a decent early-mid, having consistent decamo and dealing with most sub-ceramic bloons.
Pairs well with other water towers and Brickell for the cooldown reduction.
Energizer is used to cut the cooldown of water towers, mainly Snowstorm and Brickell, by half.
Also can bring heroes up to level 20, but isn’t amazing outside of Brickell, who gets extra benefit.
Best paths: 4+01+

Mid Sub

Ballistic missile is a stronger spam tower with Sub Commander compared to bottom path sub, but needs lots of water space near the track to be good. Largely only viable on Quad.
First Strike is a strong BAD damage tower, usually used to kill off the BAD’s insides on maps with water, and blast away ZOMGs with groups of MOABs elsewhere.
Pre-emptive strike can instantly kill all DDTs alone in addition to taking out any natural moabs, but is very expensive for this job alone.
Best paths: 040

Bottom Dartling

Buckshot shouldn’t be used alone due to its slow attack rate. 203 is even slower.
BADS is a strong mid game tower, it even performs well in some of the hardest maps.
Laser Shock greatly amplifies the tower’s damage, but sacrifices camo and knockback rate.
Laser Shock BEZ is a powerful T5 tower that needs little help to take out lategame. Use MIB or multiple AMD Alchemists to grant lead popping.
Best paths: 205

Mid Beast

Velociraptor is a very strong midgame, being global range and one-shotting ceramics with high pierce and decent attack speed. It also boasts some useful MOAB damage, unlike other bloon midgames.
Due to the small range it requires micro to maximize effectiveness.
T-Rex takes out regular ceramics with ease and still has decently high moab damage, as well as a very frequent stun ability for the utility. Pair with Overclock.
Max merge T-Rex layerskips through moabs with its attacks, making it much better as a DPS.
Giganotosaurus is useless when not at max degree, which you’ll never afford in a CHIMPS game.
Best paths: x3x (18), x4x (64)

Bottom Beast –

Great White can be used as an r40 solution, but downtime may make it worse than Barracuda. Max power becomes a decent midgame that has good raw damage.
Max Orca is an incredibly powerful lategame attacker. Downtime is still its biggest weakness, as ceramics and DDTs can escape it. Losing Symphonic Resonance means this is far more likely.
As a beast handler, it can naturally save up into itself, with Orca preferring to keep multiple lower tier beasts on the field and merging on 80.
Best paired with Overclock to give it the power to destroy everything but the BAD.
Megalodon requires 4 Orcas and is too expensive. Only used to flex.
Best paths: 4xx (64)

Top Tier Summary

This tier covers mid-to-late game power through diverse capabilities, offering a balance of synergies and raw power across multiple paths.

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B Tier

Gwen

Cocktail is pretty good for earlygame and is usable for midgame ceramic cleanup when alched.
Heat it up has pierce buff and damage buff later on in addition to providing lead popping.
Gwen’s main attack ramps up burn damage after lvl 9 which adds up against moabs.
Firestorm is effectively just Heat It Up on demand, the damage is underwhelming. Can be used on r63/76/78 to help pop the ceramics, but often doesn’t pop them in time until level 16.
Heat it up as a consistent lead solution is the main reason to use her. Make sure she can constantly attack so that the buff is active as much as possible.

Adora

Good earlygame due to high pierce homing projectiles and long range from LAOL.
Alch buff is important for the main attack to not fall off at the end of earlygame and become totally useless midgame.
Has a very weak midgame by design as a key aspect of her gameplay is relying on midgame towers that she can later use Blood Sacrifice on for EXP.
It is important to get her to level 20 using blood sacrifice, as the powerful buff as well as improved ball of light lets her do some decent damage for lategame rounds. Recommended by 98.
Recent nerfs to her level 20 have significantly hurt her ability to actually kill things.
Timing her abilities correctly for hard rounds is a very important task.

Geraldo {#gerald o}

Good earlygame due to the strength of glue, pickles, and turrets.
Pickles can provide great buffs for low damage towers.
Many items can help rounds in the midgame, but using his items is quite expensive and hurts saveups.
The majority of his kit is used to bandaid deaths at specific rounds where the solution otherwise spends a lot more cash on an expensive tower.
Pet Bunny is a worthwhile mid-late attacker which can jump across the map. It returns to Geraldo if no bloons are in its jump range so Geraldo’s placement matters.
Requires almost no micro, but be careful to not overspend on his items.

Mid Dart ++

Triple Darts is a cheap earlygame that works fine on Ravine or Dungeons.
Super Monkey Fan Club is expensive, lacks mobility and doesn’t have enough damage.
Plasma Monkey Fan Club is a great tower for lategame burst DPS, given you have something to stall or cover downtime. The tower has good power, but doesn’t last long enough and is hard to use.
Pairs well with Primary Mentoring due to cooldown reduction and free tier 1 upgrades.
Best paths: x5x

Mid Bomb

Maulers are fairly weak in the lategame now, and only sees niche use popping the MOAB.
Assassin doubles the moab damage of mauler and has a valuable ability. The ability can be targeted which is great for midgame but annoying if spammed.
Eliminator is a decent T5 that eliminates entire ZOMGs and can also skip the BAD like First Strike given Striker’s lvl 20, and has a fairly powerful main attack. Pair with towers that have good cleanup.
All middle bombs pair well with Primary Mentoring.
Best paths: x4+x

Bottom Tack

Tack Sprayer is more cost efficient than an overdrive, but a shorter tower height and lack of space make it difficult to use. Popular as very cheap r100 damage with Glue Strike.
Overdrive does great MOAB DPS. Pair with Embrittlement and Brew.
Typically used with Pat or Geraldo, Tack Zone can lock down one half of the map.
Overdrive and Tack Zone’s increased height mean when placed directly below the track, bloons travel right over it. This means tacks fired from all sides hit the same bloon at that point called the dead zone.
Best paths: 204

Top Ice

Ice Shards is relegated to races. It is an extremely weak decamo option.
Embrittlement can provide a MIB skip and is a good debuffer in a small area. With Sabotage, it can more consistently hit DDTs within its range.
Pairs well with pretty much every low damage tower that doesn’t deal extra damage to camos.
Super Brittle superpowers both the ice shard DPS and the debuff strength. Can wipe out clumps of bloons and apply a strong debuff to single targets, but is mostly hurt by its low range.
Best paths: 410

Top Glue

Dissolver can glue a lot more things now, but its DPS doesn’t cut it for expert maps.
Liquefier’s short range as well as inability to glue everything quickly hold it back on most experts.
Solver’s strong puddles enable it to start a chain reaction that can pop up to BFBs and FMOABs in addition to taking out every ceramic. Unfortunately, The Final Harmonic is currently bugged to delete these puddles, which makes the tower significantly weaker.
Weak to high health targets such as FBFBs and ZOMGs, especially after multiple damage nerfs.
Best paths: 51+0

Mid Ace

Bomber Ace is difficult to maximize and inconsistent to boot.
Ground Zero is rather hard to save for with earlygame towers alone, but it is powerful with its stronger bombing runs and faster abilities.
Good lategame blowing up full screens of MOABs and DDTs, but can’t handle higher health moabs.
Tsar deals a single instance of extreme damage, pairs well with slows, and somewhat stalls for itself with the stun on ZOMGs. Very weak to rounds like 92 and 95.
Best paths: 04+0

Top Mortar +

Shell Shock is a decent early that can burn through rainbows or blast down clumps of smaller bloons.
The Big One is good for ceramic damage, but lacks moab damage. Requires Striker for black popping.
The Biggest One is a high pierce moab DPS that struggles to deal point damage.
TB1 can now be run without Overclock, but still requires another tower to handle ZOMGs and the BAD for it. Elim is the best choice as both towers benefit from Striker.
Burny Stuff has more damage, but reduced stuns and slower attack speed make it prone to leaks.
Best paths: 520

Bottom Wiz

Shimmer is a suboptimal decamo option due to limited range and lack of consistency.
Necromancer is a decent ceramic damager midgame. It saves to Prince of Darkness, but falls off quickly. Graveyard runs out quickly and zombie bloons don’t last long.
Prince of Darkness cleans up DDTs and MOABs pretty well as long as ceramics are being popped.
Pairs well with Corvus as he antistalls for graveyard and leaves lots of ceramics for POD to clean up.
Best paths: xx5

Bottom Ninja +

Flash Bomb is a fine supporting tower in ninja strategies but attacks too slow on its own.
Sticky Bomb can be used as a midgame moab damager and is decent at BAD damage.
Master Bomber is a stronger target for shinobis, but doesn’t synergize with damage buffs.
Microing between strong and first targeting allows the global sticky bombs to break down high health targets faster while stunning frontmost MOABs and ceramics.
Best paths: 1+05

Bottom Druid

Druid of Wrath synergizes well with Total Transformation, as you get the extra attack speed for great lategame DPS. Poplusts can boost speed even more.
Speed buffs pair well with Gerry’s Fire, and sharpening stone as well as pickle is great for DPS.
Unlike Grandmaster Ninja, Avatar of Wrath does not require supporting Poplusts though they do help.
Often significantly weaker on DDT rounds due to not much RBE being on screen.
Best paths: 013+

Mid Spac

MOAB SHREDR can be used as a strong moab damager or BAD damager if insides can be dealt with.
Spike Storm shreds through separated MOABs or DDTs, but struggles to take down denser groups.
After many nerfs to price, damage, and cooldown, is not very viable as a mid-late burst damage.
Carpet of Spikes is weak against ceramics, but it deals incredible amounts of moab damage across the whole map, easily taking out the BAD and all DDTs.
Best paths: 1+4+0

Top Village +

Primary Training is useful for many primary towers, especially ones with low pierce.
Primary Mentoring is mainly bought for primary ability towers. Can also be bought to discount upgrades or provide extra range.
Primary Expertise is below average for cleanup and damage, but free upgrades and further reduced cooldowns is very nice for spamming out Snowstorms to achieve a permanent and recurring freeze.
Best paths: 3+xx

Bottom Sub =

Note: In this CHIMPS-hardened list, some sections include cross path references that optimize synergy with other towers; these entries are best used in specific map configurations.

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B Tier

Gwen

Cocktail is pretty good for earlygame and is usable for midgame ceramic cleanup when alched.
Heat it up has pierce buff and damage buff later on in addition to providing lead popping.
Gwen’s main attack ramps up burn damage after lvl 9 which adds up against moabs.
Firestorm is effectively just Heat It Up on demand, the damage is underwhelming. Can be used on r63/76/78 to help pop the ceramics, but often doesn’ t pop them in time until level 16.
Heat it up as a consistent lead solution is the main reason to use her. Make sure she can constantly attack so that the buff is active as much as possible.

Adora

Good earlygame due to high pierce homing projectiles and long range from LAOL.
Alch buff is important for the main attack to not fall off at the end of earlygame and become totally useless midgame.
Has a very weak midgame by design as a key aspect of her gameplay is relying on midgame towers that she can later use Blood Sacrifice on for EXP.
It is important to get her to level 20 using blood sacrifice, as the powerful buff as well as improved ball of light lets her do some decent damage for lategame rounds. Recommended by 98.
Recent nerfs to her level 20 have significantly hurt her ability to actually kill things.
Timing her abilities correctly for hard rounds is a very important task.

Geraldo

Good earlygame due to the strength of glue, pickles, and turrets.
Pickles can provide great buffs for low damage towers.
Many items can help rounds in the midgame, but using his items is quite expensive and hurts saveups.
The majority of his kit is used to bandaid deaths at specific rounds where the solution otherwise spends a lot more cash on an expensive tower.
Pet Bunny is a worthwhile mid-late attacker which can jump across the map. It returns to Geraldo if no bloons are in its jump range so Geraldo’s placement matters.
Requires almost no micro, but be careful to not overspend on his items.

Mid Dart ++

Triple Darts is a cheap earlygame that works fine on Ravine or Dungeons.
Super Monkey Fan Club is expensive, lacks mobility and doesn’t have enough damage.
Plasma Monkey Fan Club is a great tower for lategame burst DPS, given you have something to stall or cover downtime. The tower has good power, but doesn’t last long enough and is hard to use.
Pairs well with Primary Mentoring due to cooldown reduction and free tier 1 upgrades.
Best paths: x5x

Mid Bomb

Maulers are fairly weak in the lategame now, and only sees niche use popping the MOAB.
Assassin doubles the moab damage of mauler and has a valuable ability. The ability can be targeted which is great for midgame but annoying if spammed.
Eliminator is a decent T5 that eliminates entire ZOMGs and can also skip the BAD like First Strike given Striker’s lvl 20, and has a fairly powerful main attack. Pair with towers that have good cleanup.
All middle bombs pair well with Primary Mentoring.
Best paths: x4+x

Bottom Tack

Tack Sprayer is more cost efficient than an overdrive, but a shorter tower height and lack of space make it difficult to use. Popular as very cheap r100 damage with Glue Strike.
Overdrive does great MOAB DPS. Pair with Embrittlement and Brew.
Typically used with Pat or Geraldo, Tack Zone can lock down one half of the map.
Overdrive and Tack Zone’s increased height mean when placed directly below the track, bloons travel right over it. This means tacks fired from all sides hit the same bloon at that point called the dead zone.
Best paths: 204

Top Ice

Ice Shards is relegated to races. It is an extremely weak decamo option.
Embrittlement can provide a MIB skip and is a good debuffer in a small area. With Sabotage, it can more consistently hit DDTs within its range.
Pairs well with pretty much every low damage tower that doesn’t deal extra damage to camos.
Super Brittle superpowers both the ice shard DPS and the debuff strength. Can wipe out clumps of bloons and apply a strong debuff to single targets, but is mostly hurt by its low range.
Best paths: 410

Top Glue

Dissolver can glue a lot more things now, but its DPS doesn’t cut it for expert maps.
Liquefier’s short range as well as inability to glue everything quickly hold it back on most experts.
Solver’s strong puddles enable it to start a chain reaction that can pop up to BFBs and FMOABs in addition to taking out every ceramic. Unfortunately, The Final Harmonic is currently bugged to delete these puddles, which makes the tower significantly weaker.
Weak to high health targets such as FBFBs and ZOMGs, especially after multiple damage nerfs.
Best paths: 51+0

Mid Ace

Bomber Ace is difficult to maximize and inconsistent to boot.
Ground Zero is rather hard to save for with earlygame towers alone, but it is powerful with its stronger bombing runs and faster abilities.
Good lategame blowing up full screens of MOABs and DDTs, but can’t handle higher health moabs.
Tsar deals a single instance of extreme damage, pairs well with slows, and somewhat stalls for itself with the stun on ZOMGs. Very weak to rounds like 92 and 95.
Best paths: 04+0

Top Mortar +

Shell Shock is a decent early that can burn through rainbows or blast down clumps of smaller bloons.
The Big One is good for ceramic damage, but lacks moab damage. Requires Striker for black popping.
The Biggest One is a high pierce moab DPS that struggles to deal point damage.
TB1 can now be run without Overclock, but still requires another tower to handle ZOMGs and the BAD for it. Elim is the best choice as both towers benefit from Striker.
Burny Stuff has more damage, but reduced stuns and slower attack speed make it prone to leaks.
Best paths: 520

Bottom Wiz

Shimmer is a suboptimal decamo option due to limited range and lack of consistency.
Necromancer is a decent ceramic damager midgame. It saves to Prince of Darkness, but falls off quickly. Graveyard runs out quickly and zombie bloons don’t last long.
Prince of Darkness cleans up DDTs and MOABs pretty well as long as ceramics are being popped.
Pairs well with Corvus as he antistalls for graveyard and leaves lots of ceramics for POD to clean up.
Best paths: xx5

Bottom Ninja +

Flash Bomb is a fine supporting tower in ninja strategies but attacks too slow on its own.
Sticky Bomb can be used as a midgame moab damager and is decent at BAD damage.
Master Bomber is a stronger target for shinobis, but doesn’t synergize with damage buffs.
Microing between strong and first targeting allows the global sticky bombs to break down high health targets faster while stunning frontmost MOABs and ceramics.
Best paths: 1+05

Bottom Druid

Druid of Wrath synergizes well with Total Transformation, as you get the extra attack speed for great lategame DPS. Poplusts can boost speed even more.
Speed buffs pair well with Gerry’s Fire, and sharpening stone as well as pickle is great for DPS.
Unlike Grandmaster Ninja, Avatar of Wrath does not require supporting Poplusts though they do help.
Often significantly weaker on DDT rounds due to not much RBE being on screen.
Best paths: 013+

Mid Spac

MOAB SHREDR can be used as a strong moab damager or BAD damager if insides can be dealt with.
Spike Storm shreds through separated MOABs or DDTs, but struggles to take down denser groups.
After many nerfs to price, damage, and cooldown, is not very viable as a mid-late burst damage.
Carpet of Spikes is weak against ceramics, but it deals incredible amounts of moab damage across the whole map, easily taking out the BAD and all DDTs.
Best paths: 1+4+0

Top Village +

Primary Training is useful for many primary towers, especially ones with low pierce.
Primary Mentoring is mainly bought for primary ability towers. Can also be bought to discount upgrades or provide extra range.
Primary Expertise is below average for cleanup and damage, but free upgrades and further reduced cooldowns is very nice for spamming out Snowstorms to achieve a permanent and recurring freeze.
Best paths: 3+xx

Bottom Sub +

Note: In this CHIMPS-hardened list, some sections include cross path references that optimize synergy with other towers; these entries are best used in specific map configurations.

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C Tier

Mid Boomer

Bionic Boomerang is consistent, but there are much better options.
Turbo Charge is an alright midgame and can save to its T5 upgrade.
Perma Charge is an okay and affordable T5 that can survive the lategame.
Both Turbo and Perma Charge pair well with Gerry’s Fire, multiplying its DPS. Turbo charge gets significantly more benefit as Perma Charge doesn’t have the 7x attack speed bonus.
Best paths: 042

Top Tack

Hot Shots are bad.
Ring of Fire is good bloon DPS that can take down weakened superceramics. Low range hurts.
Inferno Ring is an average lategame win condition, doing enough DPS while relying on meta support. The meteor gives it some single target, but it can miss fast DDTs.
The meteor itself only has 1 pierce (2 with 520), so Brew and Primary Training are very effective.
Not having Symphonic Resonance spin faster bloons inside its radius means the tower leaks more.
Best paths: 5xx

Top Desp =

Big Iron can function in the early game but struggles massively to high density.
Even after the attack speed fix, Twin Sixes has bad layerskip and opens up too many bloons for it to handle. Has decent single target capabilities but is not a good reason to use the tower.
The Blazing Sun is a midgame T5 that can do a decent amount of single target damage in the lategame. Unfortunately, TBS is hurt by The Final Harmonic nerf. Best used with Psi.
Best paths: 520

Mid Desp =

Deadeye can one shot ceramics from a distance with a decent fire rate. Ability provides unique benefits that have some niche use cases. Lack of ability uptime makes it not a top choice.
Bounty Hunter marking bloons increases damage by a lot and helps out other desperado damage
Ability acts similar to a MIB and has better buffs, but the tower costs a lot and still has low uptime.
While Golden Justice has extremely powerful attacks, it leaks ceramics, requires good line of sight, and if anything is in the pistol’s range, the pistol is prioritised, preventing it from using the rifle attack.
All 3 upgrades are inconsistent due to crits and marked bloons being central to its damage.
Best paths: 230

Mid Sniper

Bouncing Bullets have been greatly weakened, but can be bought in early now.
Don’t stop at Supply Drop, the extra bounces are not worth it.
Elite Sniper is a very easy to use midgame that excels when bloons are clumped. Use with other snipers, an elite defender and maim moab are also helpful.
Despite sharpening stone no longer increasing damage and price shuffling, faster attacks are still favorable with alch buffed shrapnel.
Best paths: 032

Bottom Sub =

Triple Guns builds excellently off an airburst, but needs alch buff so it is a sizable investment.
Decent bloon damage with brew along with having good moab damage, but low pierce.
AP Darts greatly increases the moab damage, allowing it to somewhat help with MOABs in the late 70s and beyond. Most of the damage increase being in a moab bonus leaves its bloon performance lacking.
Sub Commander is weak to pretty much everything in lategame, especially on split lanes.
Its buffs to subs can be taken advantage of, but aren’t great. Pre-emptive is extremely suboptimal.
Pair with Brickell for her water tower buffs and Ballistic Missiles as they provide more power late.
Best paths: 203+

Bottom Ace

Neva-Miss Targeting is very consistent now, but the damage is not good for the price.
Completely dependent on alch buff to do pretty much anything.
Spectre is hurt even more by the lifespan changes as it makes it harder to line up the stream without making the radial darts time out.
Fortress is not easily affordable. Nearly requires Rosalia, and is still difficult to get to.
Best paths: 204

Top Dartling

Laser cannon is an expensive early-mid tower with a bad damage type, but has pretty good damage.
Plasma accelerator can serve as a decent midgame with high MOAB DPS. Completely falls off past round 80 due to very low ceramic damage, requiring other ceramic cleanup.
Synergizes with Ezili’s hex due to being a controllable DPS that helps hex remove moab children.
Ray of Doom is too expensive and can still die to lategame if you aren’t careful.
Best paths: 420

Mid Dartling

Hydra Rocket Pods is a usable spam strat with Permanent Brew after the double damage buff.
Rocket Storm is a workable tower midgame, being able to save up large amounts through the 80s.
MAD is a powerful MOAB DPS tower with little ceramic damage and a very difficult saveup.
Pair with heavy ceramic control.
All of the upgrades in the path pair well with alch due to it multiplying the explosions.
Best paths: 13+0

Top Super

Sun Avatar is a decent saveup tower for its cost and can be used as a lategame attacker.
Range helps it deal more damage, but knockback is better at controlling ceramics.
Becomes far stronger when combined with damage buffs such as Geraldo’s Pickles.
The rest of this path is a meme in CHIMPS mode.
Best paths: 301+

Bottom Merm -6

Alluring Melody’s long downtime severely cripples its use cases against fast ceramics.
Symphonic Resonance is “bugged” to be significantly weaker than before. Ninja Kiwi currently has no plans to fix this, as people have wanted Symph nerfs for a while now.
The removal of the BFBs grab limits what it can do on dense lategame rounds.
Can grab 2 MOABs at once with the middle crosspath. (Tidal Chill not needed)
The Final Harmonic can do some funny things to the BAD with Glaive Lord or The Bloon Solver.
Currently bugged to delete glue puddles from The Bloon Solver, which significantly hurt its strongest strategy.
The hero buffs are notable but not centric.
Best paths: 205

Top Engi

Sprockets lacks both camo and lead, but is a high power earlygame.
Sentry Expert is a well statted attacker in the midgame that can support lategame. Its AI can actively screw it over since the reactive system means the sentries are replaced only once every 6 seconds.
Sentry Champion is somewhat weak alone, but since aura buffs affect both the placement and attack rate of sentries, it can receive double the benefit from Jungle Drums and Call to Arms.
Recent buffs to Faster Engineering carry over very well to this entire path.
Best paths: 402, 520

Bottom Village +

MIB is only used as DDT support. Often skippable, but sometimes necessary.
Call to Arms is fairly expensive and is similar to an Overclock, but for multiple towers.
Somewhat usable with towers that use subtowers like Carrier Flagship and Sentry Champion.
Homeland Defense is very expensive and typically not worth it.
Best paths: x3x

C Tier

Mid Boomer

Bionic Boomerang is consistent, but there are much better options.
Turbo Charge is an alright midgame and can save to its T5 upgrade.
Perma Charge is an okay and affordable T5 that can survive the lategame.
Both Turbo and Perma Charge pair well with Gerry’s Fire, multiplying its DPS. Turbo charge

gets significantly more benefit as Perma Charge doesn’t have the 7x attack speed bonus.

Best paths: 042

Top Tack

Hot Shots are bad.
Ring of Fire is good bloon DPS that can take down weakened superceramics. Low range hurts.
Inferno Ring is an average lategame win condition, doing enough DPS while relying on meta support. The meteor gives it some single target, but it can miss fast DDTs.
The meteor itself only has 1 pierce (2 with 520), so Brew and Primary Training are very effective.
Not having Symphonic Resonance spin faster bloons inside its radius means the tower leaks more.
Best paths: 5xx

Top Desp =

Big Iron can function in the early game but struggles massively to high density.
Even after the attack speed fix, Twin Sixes has bad layerskip and opens up too many bloons for it to handle. Has decent single target capabilities but is not a good reason to use the tower.
The Blazing Sun is a midgame T5 that can do a decent amount of single target damage in the lategame. Unfortunately, TBS is hurt by The Final Harmonic nerf. Best used with Psi.
Best paths: 520

Mid Desp 2

Deadeye can one shot ceramics from a distance with a decent fire rate. Ability provides unique benefits that have some niche use cases. Lack of ability uptime makes it not a top choice.
Bounty Hunter marking bloons increases damage by a lot and helps out other desperado damage.
Ability acts similar to a MIB and has better buffs, but the tower costs a lot and still has low uptime.
While Golden Justice has extremely powerful attacks, it leaks ceramics, requires good line of sight, and if anything is in the pistol’s range, the pistol is prioritised, preventing it from using the rifle attack.
All 3 upgrades are inconsistent due to crits and marked bloons being central to its damage.
Best paths: 230

Mid Sniper

Bouncing Bullets have been greatly weakened, but can be bought in early now.
Don’t stop at Supply Drop, the extra bounces are not worth it.
Elite Sniper is a very easy to use midgame that excels when bloons are clumped. Use with other snipers, an elite defender and maim moab are also helpful.
Despite sharpening stone no longer increasing damage and price shuffling, faster attacks are still favorable with alch buffed shrapnel.
Best paths: 032

Bottom Sub 2

Triple Guns builds excellently off an airburst, but needs alch buff so it is a sizable investment.
Decent bloon damage with brew along with having good moab damage, but low pierce.
AP Darts greatly increases the moab damage, allowing it to somewhat help with MOABs in the late 70s and beyond. Most of the damage increase being in a moab bonus leaves its bloon performance lacking.
Sub Commander is weak to pretty much everything in lategame, especially on split lanes.
Its buffs to subs can be taken advantage of, but aren’t great. Pre-emptive is extremely suboptimal.
Pair with Brickell for her water tower buffs and Ballistic Missiles as they provide more power late.
Best paths: 203+

Bottom Ace

Neva-Miss Targeting is very consistent now, but the damage is not good for the price.
Completely dependent on alch buff to do pretty much anything.
Spectre is hurt even more by the lifespan changes as it makes it harder to line up the stream without making the radial darts time out.
Fortress is not easily affordable. Nearly requires Rosalia, and is still difficult to get to.
Best paths: 204

Top Dartling 2

Laser cannon is an expensive early-mid tower with a bad damage type, but has pretty good damage.
Plasma accelerator can serve as a decent midgame with high MOAB DPS. Completely falls off past round 80 due to very low ceramic damage, requiring other ceramic cleanup.
Synergizes with Ezili’s hex due to being a controllable DPS that helps hex remove moab children.
Ray of Doom is too expensive and can still die to lategame if you aren’t careful.
Best paths: 420

Mid Dartling 2

Hydra Rocket Pods is a usable spam strat with Permanent Brew after the double damage buff.
Rocket Storm is a workable tower midgame, being able to save up large amounts through the 80s.
MAD is a powerful MOAB DPS tower with little ceramic damage and a very difficult saveup.
Pair with heavy ceramic control.
All of the upgrades in the path pair well with alch due to it multiplying the explosions.
Best paths: 13+0

Top Super 2

Sun Avatar is a decent saveup tower for its cost and can be used as a lategame attacker.
Range helps it deal more damage, but knockback is better at controlling ceramics.
Becomes far stronger when combined with damage buffs such as Geraldo’s Pickles.
The rest of this path is a meme in CHIMPS mode.
Best paths: 301+

Bottom Merm 2

Alluring Melody’s long downtime severely cripples its use cases against fast ceramics.
Symphonic Resonance is “bugged” to be significantly weaker than before. Ninja Kiwi currently has no plans to fix this, as people have wanted Symph nerfs for a while now.
The removal of the BFBs grab limits what it can do on dense lategame rounds.
Can grab 2 MOABs at once with the middle crosspath. (Tidal Chill not needed)
The Final Harmonic can do some funny things to the BAD with Glaive Lord or The Bloon Solver.
Currently bugged to delete glue puddles from The Bloon Solver, which significantly hurt its strongest strategy.
The hero buffs are notable but not centric.
Best paths: 205

Top Engi 2

Sprockets lacks both camo and lead, but is a high power earlygame.
Sentry Expert is a well statted attacker in the midgame that can support lategame. Its AI can actively screw it over since the reactive system means the sentries are replaced only once every 6 seconds.
Sentry Champion is somewhat weak alone, but since aura buffs affect both the placement and attack rate of sentries, it can receive double the benefit from Jungle Drums and Call to Arms.
Recent buffs to Faster Engineering carry over very well to this entire path.
Best paths: 402, 520

Bottom Village 2

MIB is only used as DDT support. Often skippable, but sometimes necessary.
Call to Arms is fairly expensive and is similar to an Overclock, but for multiple towers.
Somewhat usable with towers that use subtowers like Carrier Flagship and Sentry Champion.
Homeland Defense is very expensive and typically not worth it.
Best paths: x3x

D Tier

Bottom Dart

Crossbow loves to miss its shots and is somewhat expensive, but is barely passable for earlygame.
Sharp Shooter is a decent early-mid that comes after Crossbow, but has very bad pierce and is reliant on crit RNG to beat ceramics.
Crossbow Master can beat midgame, but it falls off heavily lategame and isn’t a good investment.
The pierce path makes the tower too weak to single targets to be the optimal choice for all 3 upgrades.
Best paths: 023+

Mid Tack

Blade Shooter has a hilarious amount of range, but still struggles without any loops or curves.
Blade Maelstrom can be used to burst through dense rounds like 78, and will take out insides of BFBs.
Super Maelstrom is a very cheap burst damage tower, but requires too much support for not enough reward with limited ability uptime and low damage far away.
More Tacks allows it to burn longer rounds while Even Faster Shooting chunks through dense rounds.
Best paths: 24+0

F Tier

Bottom Boat {#bottom-boat-f Tier}

You receive: A Tier 2 Buccaneer. I receive: $34,400.
Buffs to other merchantmen is a rather powerful stat buff, but merchantmen suck too.

Bottom Village

Monkey City lets you get 1 free dart per round, taking 65 rounds to pay off. That’s what I call a long term investment.
If you ever accidentally put your village out of range, you can spend 14k to have the village reach.
If you ever forget what time it is, buy a Monkey City, as its clock tells you.

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