Diamondback

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Diamondback The Village Devourer
NormalElite
Skulls 5 (normal) 7 (elite) Theme Primal One Introduced Version 52.0 Description • Diamondback has multiple segments and regularly spits Bloons forwards on the track. • Diamondback's head blocks projectiles from piercing through to its body. • The Rattle Tail is shielded from damage, break through the shield to stun and debuff Diamondback temporarily! • Diamondback releases Diamond Bloons that only take 1 damage at a time. • When each skull is reached, Diamondback sheds a middle segment, spawns many Bloons and regenerates the Rattle Tail shield.

Diamondback, titled The Village Devourer, is a Boss Bloon in Bloons TD 6. It was introduced in version 52.0 as an exclusive Boss to the Frontier Legends DLC, before becoming available in Boss Bloon Events, Boss Challenge, and Boss Rush in version 54.0. It is the third original boss in BTD6 after Lych and Phayze. In Frontier Legends, Diamondback serves as the main antagonist to the story, where it destroyed the Sheriff's home and now threatens the entire Frontier.

This boss is composed of multiple segments, with a head that blocks all piercing attacks and a shielded tail that, if it takes enough damage, can stun and debuff the Boss. It is able to spawn large numbers of supplementary Bloons as it loses health. Every time it reaches a skull threshold, Diamondback will shed one body segment in order to spawn an especially large wave of more powerful Bloons, and regrow the shield protecting its tail.

Mechanics

Segments

Diamondback consists of multiple segments in a row: a head segment, a tail segment, and 5 body segments (7 body segments for Elite Diamondback). Each segment behaves as a separate Bloon and can take damage, but they all share a single health bar. Projectiles have their pierce reduced to 0 if they hit Diamondback's head segment, or reduced by 2 if they hit a body segment.

Rattle Tail

Diamondback's tail segment is protected by a shield with Fortified properties, represented by a secondary brown bar beneath its health bar. The health of the shield is always equal to 12.5% of Diamondback's maximum health for the current tier, including the extra health from co-op. When the Rattle Tail shield is destroyed, Diamondback becomes stunned for 12 seconds, and all segments take doubled damage from all attacks until the shield regenerates. While the Rattle Tail shield is disabled, the zig-zagging lines on Diamondback's health bar will turn dull, its segments will visually crack apart, and the tail's health bar will turn bright blue and display "Vulnerable" text.

Scattered Bloons

Each time Diamondback loses 1% of its health, its head segment and all of its body segments spawn a certain number of Bloons all over the track. The number and types of Bloons they spawn depends on Diamondback's tier and whether it is in Normal or Elite mode. These Bloons are briefly immune to damage upon spawning. Since each segment spawns its own Bloons, the number of Bloons spawned diminishes as Diamondback loses its segments.

Skulls

Upon reaching a skull, Diamondback loses one of its body segments, fully regenerates the Rattle Tail's shield, and spawns more Bloons all over the track from its head and body segments. It uses the same mechanics as its normal Bloon spawns, but with different Bloon types, which always include a number of Diamond Bloons. Diamondback becomes untargetable by attacks for 3 seconds after reaching a skull.

A single attack cannot damage past a skull; for example if an attack normally deals 4,500 damage and Diamondback has only 1,000 health remaining to the next skull, that attack deals only 1,000 damage.

Boss Rush

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Stats

Normal

Base health

Tier	1-player	2-player	3-player	4-player
1	20,000	24,000	28,000	32,000
2	95,000	114,000	133,000	152,000
3	444,000	532,800	621,600	710,400
4	900,000	1,080,000	1,260,000	1,440,000
5	3,800,000	4,560,000	5,320,000	6,080,000

Rattle Tail shield health

Tier	1-player	2-player	3-player	4-player
1	2,500	3,000	3,500	4,000
2	11,875	14,250	16,625	19,000
3	55,500	66,600	77,700	88,800
4	112,500	135,000	157,500	180,000
5	475,000	570,000	665,000	760,000

Speed

Tier	Base speed	Red Bloon speed
1	2	0.08×
2	2	0.08×
3	2	0.08×
4	2	0.08×
5	2	0.08×

Bloons spawned

Tier	Scattered per 1% health lost	Scattered at each skull
1	Zebra Bloon x1, Yellow Bloon x3, Blue Bloon x9	Diamond Bloon x1, Zebra Bloon x1
2	Fortified Ceramic Bloon x1, Yellow Bloon x6, Blue Bloon x12	Diamond Bloon x1, Fortified Ceramic Bloon x4
3	Fortified Ceramic Bloon x3, Yellow Bloon x9, Blue Bloon x24	Diamond Bloon x2, Fortified Ceramic Bloon x15
4	Fortified Ceramic Bloon x10, Yellow Bloon x12, Blue Bloon x30	Diamond Bloon x3, Fortified MOAB x12
5	Fortified Ceramic Bloon x30, Yellow Bloon x15, Blue Bloon x36	Diamond Bloon x8, Fortified BFB x6

Elite

Base health

Tier	1-player	2-player	3-player	4-player
1	95,000	114,000	133,000	152,000
2	550,000	660,000	770,000	880,000
3	4,000,000	4,800,000	5,600,000	6,400,000
4	15,000,000	18,000,000	21,000,000	24,000,000
5	65,000,000	78,000,000	91,000,000	104,000,000

Rattle Tail shield health

Tier	1-player	2-player	3-player	4-player
1	11,875	14,250	16,625	19,000
2	68,750	82,500	96,250	110,000
3	500,000	600,000	700,000	800,000
4	1,875,000	2,250,000	2,625,000	3,000,000
5	8,125,000	9,750,000	11,375,000	13,000,000

Speed

Tier	Base speed	Red Bloon speed
1	2	0.08×
2	2	0.08×
3	2	0.08×
4	2	0.08×
5	2	0.08×

Bloons spawned

Tier	Scattered per 1% health lost	Scattered at each skull
1	Rainbow Bloon x1, Yellow Bloon x3, Blue Bloon x9	Diamond Bloon x5, Fortified Ceramic Bloon x8
2	Fortified Ceramic Bloon x1, Yellow Bloon x6, Blue Bloon x12	Diamond Bloon x10, Fortified MOAB x4
3	Fortified MOAB x1, Fortified Ceramic Bloon x3, Yellow Bloon x9	Diamond Bloon x15, Fortified MOAB x8
4	Fortified MOAB x3, Fortified Ceramic Bloon x12, Yellow Bloon x12	Diamond Bloon x20, Fortified BFB x6
5	Fortified MOAB x9, Fortified Ceramic Bloon x24, Yellow Bloon x15	Diamond Bloon x25, Fortified BFB x12

Strategy

This strategy section is empty or incomplete. See the strategy guidelines for more information on how to write strategy sections.

For more in-depth strategies, see Strategy:Diamondback.

Diamondback is a boss that rewards planned positioning of towers with high pierce to take the greatest advantage of its body segments each independently taking damage. While damaging multiple segments at once allows high-pierce towers to do immense damage to the boss, the head deletes all projectiles that touch it, rendering head-on attacks highly ineffective. Towers are best positioned in locations where they can attack from the sides or back of the boss, or at parts of the map where Diamondback's segments will tightly bunch up or coil, maximizing the amount of segments a single projectile can hit at once. Because of the boss' multiple segments, normally unstackable damage-over-time effects have increased effectiveness, with Sticky Bomb/Master Bomber in particular being able to attach multiple simultaneous bombs to the boss and deal major damage.

Ironically, the best way to approach the Rattle Tail is to simply not engage with it at all, as its high health and full regeneration at each skull makes it hard to destroy without dealing enough collateral damage to other segments to reach the next skull threshold. In addition, the debuff will usually lead to the next skull being reached near-instantly because of the massive damage amplification, immediately regrowing the tail and causing the debuff to wear off, making the benefits short-lived and usually unnecessary compared to attacking the normal segments with piercing attacks. The importance of damaging the tail may increase during events where Boss HP or Boss Speed is increased, as the damage multiplier and fairly lengthy stun (the latter of which persists for the full duration even if Diamondback hits the next skull threshold) respectively can provide a more significant advantage.

The greatest threat, particularly in early tiers, are the Diamond Bloons scattered by Diamondback at skull thresholds. As they require 100 hits to destroy instead of raw damage, are immune to all impairing effects, incur massive life loss when leaking, and release a Fortified Ceramic even when popped, very few early defenses are capable of handling them, with recommended ones including Alchemists, top-path Glue Gunners, and Overdrive/The Tack Zone. While Diamond Bloons are less of a threat in the later tiers, one must still keep a backup defense if the defense chosen to attack Diamondback relies on slow, powerful hits, such as the M.A.D or Ballistic Obliteration Missile Bunker.

Gallery

Screenshots

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Assets

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  Diamondback
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  Elite Diamondback
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  Diamondback (defeated)
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  Elite Diamondback (defeated)
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  Event icon
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  Diamondback menu icon
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  Elite Diamondback menu icon
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  Diamondback medal
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  Elite Diamondback medal
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  Logo

Trivia

• Diamondback's name is a reference to diamondback rattlesnakes and is visually inspired by the feathered serpent deities from Mesoamerican religions, with its head resembling the stone carved heads located at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in the archeological site of Teotihuacan in Mexico.
• Ninja Kiwi has stated that the boss is inspired by an enemy from Bloons Supermonkey 2. Although not officially stated, this enemy is highly likely to be the Worm.