Archmage is the Wizard Monkey's path 1 tier 5 upgrade in Bloons TD 6. It improves all of its own attacks, especially its main bolt, and grants the signature attacks of the Dragon's Breath and Shimmer: rapid flames and decamo auras. All of its attacks, including new attacks gained from crosspaths, attack twice as fast, and most have increased base damage and a bonus versus MOAB-class.
Dragon's Breath: Each flame deals 2 damage, +8 MOAB-Class damage, has 3 pierce, and an attack cooldown of 0.0675 seconds. Flames cannot damage Purple Bloons. The flames apply a burn damage-over-time effect, dealing 1 damage every 1.5 seconds and lasting for 3 seconds. With Intense Magic, Dragon's breath attack pierce increases from 3 to 5 and projectile speed from 125 to 250.
Shimmer: An aura that does no damage and removes the Camo property from up to 500 Bloons in a 75 unit radius, increased to 87.5 units with Monkey Sense. It has an attack cooldown of 1 second.
Fireball — increases its projectile count from 1 to 3, increasing its damage from 2 to 9 with +24 MOAB-Class damage, increasing its pierce from 19 to 23. Its improved attack cooldown is 1.1 seconds.
Wall of Fire — increases Wall of Fire's MOAB-Class damage from +2 to +6, and deploys Wall of Fires twice as fast. Its improved attack cooldown is 3.25 seconds.
Note: this list does not factor in Monkey Knowledge or other discounts.
Tiers
Total cost
Sell value
Easy
Medium
Hard
Impoppable
Easy
Medium
Hard
Impoppable
5-0-0
$37,670
$44,325
$47,870
$53,190
$26,369
$31,028
$33,509
$37,233
5-1-0
$37,925
$44,625
$48,195
$53,550
$26,548
$31,238
$33,737
$37,485
5-2-0
$38,605
$45,425
$49,060
$54,510
$27,024
$31,798
$34,342
$38,157
5-0-1
$37,925
$44,625
$48,195
$53,550
$26,548
$31,238
$33,737
$37,485
5-0-2
$38,180
$44,925
$48,520
$53,910
$26,726
$31,448
$33,964
$37,737
Strategy
This article is in need of research. You can help out by editing this article or discussing your findings on the talk page. The editor who added this notice elaborates: Determine these theories for strategy:
Maybe the strong seeking bolts getting more pierce is useful for off lane snipes on Quad or something during DDT rounds? In testing the two were performing the same on my end even then. On 98, 520 did more damage.
On Ouch and others, that sliver of DDT downtime for 5-2-0 can be a dealbreaker
Archmage deals great damage against blimps over long range with seeking, the ability to attack through walls, and decent pierce. It excels against DDT rounds due to seeking bolts damaging several DDTs at once, but it lacks enough pierce to easily handle clumped dense rounds, and due to its reliance on bonus damage it is very weak against Super Ceramics. It pairs well with strong cleanup like The Bloon Solver and stalling that can spread out blimps and reduce pierce issues like Giant Condor. Its range and seeking mean that it can perform well even on many Expert maps such as RavineCHIMPS.
5-2-0 does more damage to single targets and to clumped blimps due to the extra fire attacks. It will want external camo detection even with the Shimmer attack, as it's still too slow to decamo every DDT on split lane and short maps. Its Wall of Fire attack should be manually targeted onto blimps, as it depends more on its damage bonus against blimps than any other attack. Microing target priority between Last and Close can also help avoid using pierce on Ceramics, maximizing damage, while targeting the MOAB rushes that Last tends to leave behind.
5-0-2 primarily has the benefit of innate camo detection and range bonus, making it suitable versus Phayze, but is otherwise worse than 5-2-0 both for single target damage and against dense rounds such as 98.
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Second and third path upgrades get some fine tuning for more internal consistency. We want to make slow tweaks here to bring them into better balance — Update notes
”
5-0-1
Intense Magic now grants +2 pierce to Dragon's Breath ― 4 → 6
Arcane Blast's benefit to the base tower is quite small for the price and also doesn't carry on well as a crosspath to the other T3s since they add new attacks instead of buffing the base attack, the price has been reduced to add a little more value here along with more MOAB damage at the T5 to give it a little more value over Arcane Spikes. — Update notes
”
Overall cost reduced by $150 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)
Wall of Fire’s exceptional T2 power needs to be moved around for improved crosspathing, along with a slight nerf to Phoenix as it is currently performing too well, and both of these upgrades are shifting some of their power into Dragon’s Breath so it can stand out as more than just a buff to WoF & a stepping stone to Phoenix. — Update notes
”
Dragon's Breath base damage increased ― 1 → 2
5-2-0
Wall of Fire duration increased ― 4.5s → 5.5s
Wall of Fire no longer auto-targets but gains a target marker (like Cleansing Foam Engineer)
Wizard Archmage currently doubles the attack speed of the main attack along with adding a sizable MOAB damage bonus, but these benefits are not applied to the extra attacks that it gains as a 533 tower, which specifically makes the 520 crosspath benefits feel disappointing and the base dragon's breath it gains quite insignificant to the main tower. — Update notes
”
Dragon's Breath: rate doubled ― 0.1s → 0.05s
Shimmer: rate doubled ― 2.5s → 1.25s
Dragon's Breath: MOAB-class bonus added ― +0 → +2
5-1-0, 5-2-0
Fireball: damage increased to match Dragon's Breath bonus fireball damage ― 1 → 9
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. — Update notes
As Fireball becomes very forgotten at higher tiers and is hard to even see at Dragon’s Breath, we’re improving the crosspath and adding even more projectiles at T3 for wider explosive coverage. [...] As Shimmer is the slowest de-camo in the game it is important that it not miss when it does trigger, so pierce is greatly increased. — Update notes
”
Overall cost increased by $50 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)
Archmage’s secondary attacks are gaining bonus MOAB damage increases as due to Archmage’s unique mechanics, nerfs building up from Dragon's Breath have also indirectly caused an impact for the Archmage. — Update notes
Arcane Spike is now seeing some of the crosspathing benefits that Archmage recently received, although Archmage’s Wall of Fire is being reduced in power. — Update notes
Archmage’s MOAB bonuses are a little overkill and being lowered so we can justify a QoL buff with Dragon’s Breath’s scaling adjusting to match more crosspath improvements, meaning it will now benefit from Archmage’s range increase as well as bottom path’s projectile speed increase. — Update notes
Arcane Impale), increases their pierce from 7 to 11 (16 with 5-0-1), and has an attack cooldown of 0.1375 seconds. With 
Pierce increased ― 2 → 10
Overall cost increased by $900 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)
Wall of Fire no longer auto-targets but gains a target marker (like Cleansing Foam Engineer)
Archmage for all upgrades
500 Archmage using all of its attacks
Portrait
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