Resolved some cases where merging paths could incorrectly see Bloons on the last segment before swapping path as untargetable (Notably on Workshop) (bug fix)
Resolved a crash that someone had on Dark Dungeons
We’re happier with more recent freeze changes succeeding in some of the intentions of older nerfs, given the base tower value in races being hit far more than intended we’re going back over the pierce for Ice Monkey base & middle crosspath. Snowstorm continues to outshine any similar supportive options while being generally cheaper & more versatile. — Update notes
Glue Strike for the longest time has had crosspath that only technically grants separate intended use cases, this choice though felt too niche and janky so that crosspath requirement is being completely reworked to allow the ability to hit MOABs regardless of crosspath. Glue Strike will instead work around the standard glue crosspathing benefits of more layers or longer duration. — Update notes
The use of Pre-emptive with power mostly limited to damage only to top-layer leaves it in a small niche that can’t totally function on its own, so we’re slightly improving its ceramic cleanup and lowering the upgrade cost to allow more leeway for combinations to pair with it. — Update notes
Support Chinook struggles to do anything with its main attack due to the projectile spawn offset changing at this tier, so we’re slightly tweaking the main attack to assist it here. While the state of Comanche Defense has come a good way, xx5 still feels too expensive for what it offers. — Update notes
We’re looking to shakeup mortar in a couple small ways this update, along with Striker Jones changes noted further on for ‘multi-mortaring’ synergy. From the base level Mortar has far more pierce than should ever be necessary at low rounds but doesn’t hit beefy enough for the low fire rate, so we are trading up some base pierce for damage, instead moving this lost pierce up into crosspath. To reduce the great feeling of loss that some players feel when upgrading to Pop and Awe & losing their Artillery Battery ability, this upgrade is seeing a stat rework that considers Artillery Battery as now always active at T5 instead of pumping up the damage numbers. — Update notes
Much more of the potential power from this path is obtained at the T4 than the x3x, leaving Hydra Rockets as a mediocre save-up, so more price is shifting up from T3 into T4. — Update notes
We set up for this Wall of Fire change quite a while ago, however finally it feels that Wall of Fire has cooled off enough to smooth out the curve a little more, granting it seamless uptime with crosspathing and a lower price tag. Summon Phoenix price is increasing more along with a larger reduction in cost to the Wizard Lord Phoenix, however Phoenix will now also be able to gain seeking frontal breath attacks with Guided Magic crosspathing. Shimmer’s range/radius values are being adjusted to match the attack trigger area to the tower’s range but with a far larger radius on the actual effect once it is triggered, this reduces inconsistency where Shimmer would often hit only first camo target to enter radius then be stuck on long cooldown. As targeting improvements for Necromancer zombie spawns feel well ironed out now and deal with the old problem that increasing range used to have at T5 we’re bringing back the much larger range on Prince of Darkness which will now also benefit from these Shimmer changes. — Update notes
Minor strategic balancing for temple builds, as Military is very much intended to be the more range-based sacrifices that are ignorant of vision blockers. — Update notes
Flash Bomb’s long time between bombs, without improvements on the main attack leaves this as quite a bad stepping stone, for now due to this long downtime we want to try increasing the stun duration. The recent bug fix for xx4 Sticky Stacking ended up hurting Master Bomber’s viability as it was relying on that bug to have any real single target impact, now that it can be balanced with intended functionality we’re trying out much higher damage per explosion with slower attacks for single target performance as it has Shinobi synergy to bring this rate back up. — Update notes
Alchemist 220 stands out a little too effectively in the crosspath efficiency of Acidic Mixture Dip uptime combined with the reduced forced downtime at 320 and so is being reduced. Total Transformation alchemist when transformed have never been allowing damage to distribute to children layers of any targets, while this is an option we can use as an intended balance lever - we have instead decided to turn this blocker off as it isn't one we have used elsewhere and has made these upgrades perform far weaker against regular Bloons comparatively to Ceramic & MOAB-class due to damage buffs that have been given to transformed alchemists over time. — Update notes
Experimenting more with druid ‘life play’ functionality, similar to Heart of vengeance, we’re adding new functionality to Heart of Oak along with improved means of building into this with the Jungle’s Bounty upgrade, however the base pierce of Jungle’s Bounty is being reduced slightly to account for a higher buff potential it now grants itself. — Update notes
The mid spike factory by many players has been ignored outside of few very specific situations for a long time and after fixing some issues, mainly a bug with the shotgunning of projectiles as they spawn, we’re trying a large power increase to more effectively balance the Shredder for its MOAB Damage purpose. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
All tiers
Spike Factory no longer can shotgun spikes for exactly one frame after spawning (bug fix)
Carpet of Spikes attack cooldown reduced ― 0.33s → 0.49s
Carpet of Spikes bonus damage to MOAB-class increased ― +5 → +9
Carpet of Spikes ability bonus to MOAB-class increased ― +5 → +9
Using the Carpet of Spikes active ability just before the passive ability triggers will no longer cause Carpet of Spikes to skip a passive ability activation (bug fix)
Applying pierce crosspathing to Sentry Champion only granting an abysmal +1 pierce to the explosion while an intended joke at the time still feels a little silly, we’re separating that up to get its own larger increase now. Some extra of a makeup buff for XXXL, while the crosspathing rework itself feels nice it ended up nerfing the high-level micro play of this upgrade far more than intended. — Update notes
Our most recently added tower, the Beast Handler, is still going through growing pains with a bulk of minor tweaks and small adjustments - mainly centered around merge mechanic value, so we’ll break this down path by path. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
0-0-0 base tower
Now usable in Contested Territory
“
Beast Handler’s general repositioning feels far too free right now, the reposition cooldown is being increased to a more reasonably noticeable number so this feels like a meaningful cost. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
1-X-X Piranha and further upgrades X-1-X Microraptor and further upgrades X-X-1 Gyrfalcon and further upgrades
Beast reposition cooldown increased ― 0.5s → 5s
“
Great White lacks a lot of pierce for an upgrade with a slower widespread AoE design for the price range. Orca we feel has both min & max power use cases, though doesn’t grow enough ‘along the way’ from un-maxed merging. — Update notes
Orca max bonus pierce from merge increased ― 24 → 40
Note: Max-power pierce increased from 44 to 60
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Velociraptor performs as one of the most exceptional early tier upgrades in the game. We’ve been going tame on this path so far as we’re happy for it to stay one of the top options, however it is too far ahead still so we are smoothing out the attack rates to match T-rex. — Update notes
Note: Max-power and mid-power ability cooldowns also decreased
“
Horned Owl’s pierce is too high in the base upgrade with very low value from merging, so more of this is shifting into the merge benefit. Condor’s pierce penalties to early MOAB Class are going up, however the max merged version will now be allowed to attack and damage targets that it cannot grab. Pouakai deals way too much moab damage right from base upgrade given how powerful it also is at controlling MOABs, base damage & pierce stats here are also seeing a shift over into higher merge benefits — Update notes
Gwen’s early game is just too much, especially far too excessive with the right combinations of knowledge / relic buffs so some of this power is being pushed up more with a makeup buff to cocktail at Lv7 where this has started to fall off by. — Update notes
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Levels
Changes
3–6
Cocktail of Fire ability pierce reduced ― 40 → 30
7+
Cocktail of Fire ability pierce increased ― 30 → 50
6–8
Base attack burn damage reduced ― 2 → 1
9
Base attack burn damage reduced ― 4 → 2
10+
Lv10+ Base attack burn damage remains +1 per level
We were hopeful to get this in early last year, however it was delayed at the time in favour of other things. Finally though, along with the other Mortar changes in this update it feels like a good time for Jones to learn a new Lv7 QoL ability designed around managing large numbers of mortars more effectively. — Update notes
Adora performs extremely well throughout the hardest rounds without any significant weakness that feel fairly comparable to other top of the line heroes. Due to very high ability uptime there is low strategic requirement to her ability timing much of the time, and a strong highly buffable baseline of power even when abilities are not active. — Update notes
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Levels
Changes
3+
The Long Arm of Light: cooldown increased ― 40s → 45s
To make things a little clearer for players attempting to be precise with their Paragon Totem farming, the number of totems placed will now be tallied up and listed whenever one is selected. — Update notes
For this update we’ve given Paragons their own section due to the large number of changes to this system. Also note, while we have provided the numerical changes do not take any of the raw damage numbers at face value - they will not be entirely equivalent to actual performance changes in gameplay
”
For more details on the Paragon Rework please check out this Reddit post by Ninja Kiwi as it explains most of the changes.
Upon purchasing any Paragon upgrade, the confirmation prompt now includes an option to inject extra cash into the transformation.
This scales from $0 up to the max amount of cash that could be spent to max cash contribution, and also displays a combined cost of this plus the base upgrade cost
This contributes to the paragon cash contributed by absorbed towers scaling value at 5% reduced efficiency
As most paragons were positively benefiting in terms of boss damage, we want to increase the intended Boss Damage multiplier a little more. — Update notes
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Paragon Boss damage multiplier each 20 degrees increased ― 20% → 25%
Dart Monkey is intended to be the ‘Cheapest’ somewhat entry level Paragon so being locked behind a $300k+ price tag meant that all other paragons would have to be higher than that as well - while we’re not too drastically lowering all paragons this update the new lower floor on paragon costs will allow for much more leeway in design going forward. We lowered the power somewhat to justify this new price however not that much as it was one of the more heavily nerfed in power from the bug fix as well, in addition to this now that the Ceramic Bonus is scaling properly, we wanted to increase the value of this bonus far more to really bring out that Juggernaut bonus against Dreadbloon+. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
Paragon
Paragon cost reduced ― $325,000 → $150,000
Cost per power reduced ― $25 → $6.375/$7.5/$8.1/$9
Base damage reduced ― 20 → 15
Damage to Ceramics increased ― +30 → +75
Base attack cooldown increased ― 0.35s → 0.4s
Resolved an inconsistency with Master Double Cross contributing far more to Paragon Degrees than it should be worth (bug fix)
Note: This inconsistency is a 4th tier 5 tower contributing an extra 10,000 power from the cash contribution resulting in a degree 30 Dart Paragon.This change also affects other Paragons but only in coop.
Has less Boss damage, especially on Elite and at higher Degrees
A few buffs for the Boomerang Paragon ended up being split up and spread out over a few updates, which resulted in repeated buffs which didn’t seem so necessary after the first, given the fairly high power level it had in v38, as well as suffering less from the bug fix than the Dart Monkey, it felt like it needed more general nerfs to justify any price reduction. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
Paragon
Paragon cost reduced ― $350,000 → $275,000
Cost per power reduced ― $25 → $11.685/$13.75/$14.85/$16.5
Range reduced ― 75 → 60
Main attack: damage to Boss Bloons reduced ― +60 → +50
Press attack: final explosion damage to Boss Bloons reduced ― +5,000 → +4,000
Press attack: base cooldown increased ― 2.5s → 3s
Orbital attack: damage to Boss Bloons reduced ― +160 → +150
Orbital attack: radius reduced ― 60 → 50
Has less Boss damage, especially on Elite and at higher Degrees
Wasn’t too impacted by the bug fix while standing out as quite powerful for a mid-range cost in general, so just nerfed a little to keep it around where it is after the buffs it is gaining this update from knowledge & the boss bonus multiplier going up. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
Paragon
Cost per power changed ― $25 → $23.375/$27.5/$29.7/$33
Turret: base cooldown increased ― 0.2145s → 0.25s
Plane forward attack: base cooldown increased ― 0.15s → 0.18s
Plane radial attack: base cooldown increased ― 1.5s → 1.8s
Has less Boss damage, especially on Elite and at higher Degrees
Limiting many changes to Ace for now, we feel that it wasn’t nerfed that badly from the bug fix and we also currently want it to stay one of the much higher level price tags. It has been performing incredibly well even as the most expensive paragon, however given it is very cooldown dependent and scaling that cooldown via degrees is going to be much harder now we want to wait and see the impact of the rest of that rework before anything more significant to it. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
Paragon
Cost per power increased ― $25 → $38.25/$45/$48.6/$54
Carpet Bomb: base cooldown increased ― 40s → 45s
Has less Boss damage, especially on Elite and at higher Degrees
Wizard was one of the more heavily impacted Paragons losing power from the bug fix, and had a few planned buffs aside from this anyway. We’re happy keeping it more on the expensive side with a higher skill requirement, so to keep justifying this higher price tag much more significant buffs were necessary to keep it in line. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
Paragon
Cost per power increased ― $25 → $31.875/$37.5/$40.5/$45
Small Zombie sub projectile pierce increased ― 20 → 50
Draining Beam: base damage increased ― 50 → 200
Arcane Spike: damage to MOAB-Class increased ― +200 → +250
Arcane Spike: damage to Boss Bloons increased ― +100 → +150
Dark Phoenix Firebomb: now deals +50 damage to Boss Bloons
No changes here for now - given that it did feel behind the other paragons previously, however this is the only paragon that actually got stronger from the bug fix rather than weaker — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
Paragon
Ninja Paragon has less Boss damage, especially on Elite and at higher Degrees
Cost per power changed ― $25 → $21.25/$25/$27/$30
Note: Despite what Ninja Kiwi said the Ascended Shadow did get a big boss damage nerf for most elite bosses.
No changes here as well, we know some people are still hoping for a redesign in general, but with everything else about paragons uncertain this was not a good time for that. We also want to have another Paragon in the support category dealing a DPS role before we seriously consider taking away the current only dps in that category which is already well balanced with strong competitive use. — Update notes
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Tiers
Changes
Paragon
Has less Boss damage, especially on Elite and at higher Degrees
Cost per power increased ― $25 → $27.625/$32.5/$35.1/$39
Drone Flying 101
Obyn's Gardening School
Grow Less Than Galaxili!
Beast Handler now enabled for CT
Custom Challenges will now display the version they were verified in rather than the version they are uploaded in
Boss Event and CT Boss default Penalty Time changed ― 10s → 10 + round number * 0.25
Cold Front
Hot Magic