Archmage is the Wizard Monkey's path 1 tier 5 upgrade in Bloons TD 6. It improves all of Wizard Monkeys attacks, especially its main bolt, and grants it a new flame attack similar to Dragon's Breath and a new decamo aura attack similar to Shimmer.
This upgrade doubles the attack speed Wizard Monkey's main bolts, increases their damage from 6 to 8 with increased MOAB-Class damage from +10 to +19 (or +20 with Arcane Impale), and increases their pierce from 7 to 11 (16 with 5-0-1). With Arcane Impale, this upgrade grants main bolts +1 Ceramic damage.
Archmage's new flame attack deals 2 damage with +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.
Archmage's new decamo aura deals 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.
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, and doubling its attack speed.
Wall of Fire — increases Wall of Fire's MOAB-Class damage from +2 to +6, and deploys Wall of Fires twice as fast.
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 strategy section is empty or incomplete. See the strategy guidelines for more information on how to write strategy sections.
Archmage excels at dealing high MOAB-class damage.
5-2-0 is the recommended crosspath as the additional attacks help to maximize the MOAB-Class DPS of the Archmage. However, 5-0-2 fulfills a solid niche in rounds with very dense groups of blimps, or if it's useful to have the bonus range of Monkey Sense.
This article or section uses Cargo to generate its content. It will automatically fill up as other articles are completed. To add to this section, create the articles it is looking up. Do not add content to this section manually and do not remove this notice until you are sure this section is complete.
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