Update history:Dartling Gunner (BTD6)

This is a list of changes to the Dartling Gunner in Bloons TD 6 post-release.

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As our most recently added tower we are very happy with all the excitement surrounding this beloved monkey tower and the general middleground play position. We’re happy enough with its time in the wild to make some first impression changes here which we hope you’ll continue to enjoy.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
4-X-X Plasma Accelerator
  •   Plasma Accelerator can now apply Laser Shock with the beam as well as focal point
  •   Beam: now also deals +10 MOAB class damage (bug)
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $110,000 → $95,000
1-4-0 Rocket Storm + Focused Firing and further upgrades
  •   Rocket Storm ability spread: reduction increased ― 30% → 60%
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $65,000 → $60,000
X-X-3 Buckshot
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $4,000 → $3,800
X-X-3 Buckshot and further upgrades
  •   Buckshot: now knocks back non-MOAB class Bloons a small amount on hit
Plasma Accelerator beam continues to apply shock and benefits from shock damage bonus as was added in 23.0 but the beam no longer unintentionally double stacks the tower’s MOAB Damage bonus
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
4-X-X Plasma Accelerator
  •   Beam: no longer deals +10 MOAB class damage (bug fix)
Base Dartling performance doesn’t quite offset the handholding necessary to use it well, so base price has been reduced to make those first couple upgrades come a little faster. Plasma Accelerator attack delay has been buffed so that now the beam ‘tic rate’ matches the attack speed at tier 3, overall giving it a 20% buff to all DPS which carries on up to the Tier 5. Finally Bloon Exclusion Zone’s price has as well been reduced slightly for edge case balance.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
0-0-0 base tower
  •   Cost reduced ― $1,000 → $850
4-X-X Plasma Accelerator
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Beam: attack cooldown reduced ― 0.25s → 0.2s
X-X-5 Bloon Exclusion Zone
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $60,000 → $58,000
Dartling Gunner’s Rocket Storm is currently overperforming versus Buckshot, so we made slight adjustments to the price of these upgrades.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-4-X Rocket Storm
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $4,800 → $5,100
X-X-3 Buckshot
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $3,800 → $3,400
Rocket Storm is currently too powerful as just a ‘spam whenever it’s ready’ without much thinking really required, its cooldown is being lowered so that it remains quite powerful but may require more timing. [sic]
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-4-X Rocket Storm
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Rocket Storm: cooldown increased ― 30s → 40s
Even though we like the theme of the slow hitting upgrade, Buckshot has struggled to live up to its potential, so attack speed has been further increased through all tiers. Ray of Doom’s damage bonuses have been shuffled around in order to not be so weak against Super Ceramics as by the time anyone reasonably affords this SCs are the only ones you’ll be seeing.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Beam: Damage increased ― 5 → 25
  •   Beam: bonus MOAB-class damage removed ― +20 → +0
  •   Shock DoT: Damage increased ― 15 → 20
X-X-3 Buckshot and further upgrades
  •   Salvo: attack cooldown decreased ― 1.8s → 1.5s
The MAD has come to stand out far too much in any Boss situation, often feeling like a crutch that must be used due to how perfectly it fits the Boss situation even though it wasn’t appreciated a great deal before that content was added. We’ve tried to pull it back in this situation with lowered damage per hit while making up for some of this lowered damage with increased pierce.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Rocket: bonus damage to MOAB-class reduced ― 750 → 550
  •   Rocket: pierce increased ― 8 → 12
The bottom path Bloon Exclusion Zone on the Dartling has had a lot of talk about damage types, with points raised on the viability here due to the high price. It did recently get a strong buff from the T3 up, but in order to work more into other synergies we have decided to finally do a damage type change here as well, starting from early on in the path.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-X-2 Powerful Darts and further upgrades
  •   Damage Type changed ― Sharp → Shatter
  •   Gorgon Storm stun duration on MOAB class bloons reduced ― 0.5s → 0.1s
Dartling’s Ray of Doom is far too expensive for general use, so before looking at any further power related buffs we’re lowering the price. Middle Path rocket storm is too strong for something also so buffable so is getting some number changes. Additionally Rocket Storm has always fired through blockers as we didn’t want to cripple placement too much, at this point we feel like it should be strong enough of an upgrade to have to deal with the placement problems that come with blocking objects. Finally as the Laser Shock crosspath is not so favorable for Buckshot path dartlings, we have doubled down on the ‘Focus’ of Focussed Firing to also increase projectile travel distance.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $95,000 → $80,000
X-4-X Rocket Storm
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Rocket Storm ability: Damage reduced ― 6 → 5
  •   Rocket Storm ability: Duration reduced ― 10s → 8s
  •   Rocket storm ability: No longer ignores blockers
1-0-3 Buckshot + Focused Firing and further upgrades
  •   Focus Firing crosspath grants +25% distance to projectiles
Ray of Doom suffers from the downsides of being designed as a high piercing tower, for the price this makes it feel far too weak against the round 100 BAD if you invest in it too early without some other forms of single target, to bring back a little of the interesting sort of targeting that the T4 has and help with this single target problem it will now deal a massive damage bonus to the first target hit along the beam’s path.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Laser Cannon
  •   Pierce increased ― 4 → 6
3-0-2 Laser Cannon + Powerful Darts
  •   Pierce increased ― 6 → 9
4-0-2 Plasma Accelerator + Powerful Darts
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath beam width increased ― 2 → 3
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath focal point size increased ― 4 → 6
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Ray of Doom: Now deals +55 bonus damage to the first target
5-0-2 Ray of Doom + Powerful Darts
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath beam width increased ― 6 → 9
0-3-2 Hydra Rocket Pods + Powerful Darts and further upgrades
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath explosion radius increased ― 8 → 12
X-4-X Rocket Storm
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Rocket Storm ability is now grayed out between rounds
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   MAD height inconsistencies compare to Rocket Storm have been resolved (bug fix)
X-X-2 Powerful Darts and all crosspaths
  •   Powerful Darts projectile size increased ― 2 → 3
Rocket Storm being cheaper than its T3 when the T3 is more of a decent stepping stone into the good T4 didn’t quite sit right, so these prices have just been swapped. Buckshot pierce has been increased to help make its attacks cut through more for a chunkier hit. Focused Firing’s distance bonus on 203 due to how it is setup with projectile speed dropoff was a bit less than this written ‘25%’ realistically closer to 18.75%, so this number has been increased enough to give it roughly a true 30% increase in distance.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-3-X Hydra Rocket Pods
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $5,250 → $5,100
X-4-X Rocket Storm
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $5,100 → $5,250
X-X-3 Buckshot
X-X-4 Bloon Area Denial System
  •   Buckshot dartling pierce increased ― 4 → 6
    • Note: Bloon Exclusion Zone unchanged
1-0-3 Buckshot + Focused Firing and further upgrades
  •   Focused Firing distance bonus ― 25% → 40%
    • Note: Patch notes lists 203 but this is a typo
Laser Cannon feels it needs a small price buff. BADS on the bottom currently feels like it brings far too much power to carry the midgame for cheap so price is being shifted around from the T5 down into the T4.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Laser Cannon
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $4,250 → $3,750
X-X-4 Bloon Area Denial System
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $12,000 → $16,000
X-X-5 Bloon Exclusion Zone
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $58,000 → $54,000
While admittedly difficult to handle at T3, the recent changes made to attempt to give Buckshot an easier growth into BADS overall backfired and were a failure. Looking back, the difficult T3 required attention but was still not bad if used correctly and the improved handling at T4 was far worth this effort in the end. That seemed fine enough before and we don't like how it has ended up so walking those changes back. We have to admit when we miss and thanks for continued discussion on bottom path.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-X-3 Buckshot
X-X-4 Bloon Area Denial System
  •   Buckshot pierce reduced ― 6 → 4
    • Note: Does not carry over to Bloon Exclusion Zone (8)
X-X-4 Bloon Area Denial System
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $16,000 → $12,000
X-X-5 Bloon Exclusion Zone
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $54,000 → $58,000
We weren’t quite ever able to take Laser Shock in the direction we initially hoped to, and due to this the 203 crosspath has fallen behind in value and overall use, so we are improving some crosspath values here to fix up damage with bottom path Buckshocks
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
2-0-3 Buckshot + Laser Shock
  •   Bonus damage to shocked Bloons increased ― +1 → +2
2-0-4 Bloon Area Denial System + Laser Shock
  •   Bonus damage to shocked Bloons increased ― +1 → +3
2-0-5 Bloon Exclusion Zone + Laser Shock
  •   Bonus damage to shocked Bloons increased ― +1 → +6
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
Tiers Changes
X-3-X Hydra Rocket Pods
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $5,100 → $4,800
X-4-X Rocket Storm
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $5,250 → $5,550
Laser Cannon is not a great stepping stone for Plasma Accelerator, we think these are ok though so adjusting prices between them slightly. Focussed Firing feels too important for Rocket Storm with how wide the base spread is for the ability, so we’re improving base spread significantly.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Laser Cannon
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $3,750 → $3,650
4-X-X Plasma Accelerator
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $11,000 → $11,100
0-4-0 Rocket Storm
0-5-0 M.A.D
  •    Rocket Storm ability spread reduced ― 120 → 90
1-4-0 Rocket Storm + Focused Firing
1-5-0 M.A.D + Focused Firing
  •   Focused Firing crosspath Rocket Storm ability spread reduced ― 48 → 36 (undocumented)
402’s pierce increase is extremely hard to justify over fire rate which increases single target & grouped damage at the same time, so we’re giving it more pierce than it knows what to do with. Faster Swivel while a nice quality of life doesn’t add any power so also ends up difficult to justify on its own, we don’t expect this will change that too much but even faster swiveling should be much nicer for when you do desperately need that accuracy.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
4-0-2 Plasma Accelerator + Powerful Darts
  •   Pierce bonus increased ― +25 → +100
    • Note: Does not carry over to Ray of Doom
X-X-1 Faster Swivel and all crosspaths
X-X-2 Powerful Darts and all crosspaths
X-X-3 Buckshot and further upgrades
  •   Turn rate increased ― 360 → 440
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Laser Cannon
  •   Description changed ― "Rapidly fires much more powerful laser blasts that can pop Frozen Bloons." → "Rapidly fires much more powerful laser blasts that can pop Frozen Bloons, and deal increased MOAB damage."
Since Plasma Accelerator is a heavily MOAB-Damage focussed upgrade so we want to introduce this niche somewhat better at the T3 with a little starting MOAB Damage, while only doing one change here already we also knocked a little price off from Ray of Doom
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Laser Cannon
  •   Now deals +2 damage to MOAB-Class
    • Note: Does not apply to Plasma Accelerator or above
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $80,000 → $75,000
Plasma Accelerator’s cost is shifting further down to improve upgrade progression. Rocket Storm is gaining a greater bonus to Ceramics for better cleanup breakpoints, and at T5 damage is being moved out from base attack into the ability for a more significant burst of damage when used as currently the ability is underwhelming compared to the main attack at T5.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Laser Cannon
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $3,650 → $3,000
4-X-X Plasma Accelerator
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $11,100 → $11,750
X-4-X Rocket Storm
  •   Ability: Now deals +1 bonus damage to Ceramics
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Main attack: Bonus damage to MOAB-Class Bloons reduced ― +550 → +450
  •   Ability: Bonus damage to Ceramics increased ― +4 → +5
  •   Ability: Bonus damage to MOAB-Class Bloons increased ― +18 → +250
Pushing around price for the underperforming T3, and pushing up the price further on the MAD that excels in MOAB destruction.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-3-X Hydra Rocket Pods
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $4,800 → $4,500
X-4-X Rocket Storm
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $5,550 → $5,850
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $60,000 → $65,000
Hydra Rockets fall off greatly in single target power so it’s receiving more damage, & Ray of Doom’s damage is also being increased to give more value for the save up.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Laserbeam: Damage increased ― 25 → 30
  •   Laserbeam: First target bonus damage decreased ― +55 → +50 (undocumented)
X-3-X Hydra Rocket Pods
X-4-X Rocket Storm
  •   Explosion: Damage increased ― 1 → 2
    • Note: Does not affect M.A.D
While Buckshot is powerful, the high effort requirement pushes favour to the middle crosspath to make up attack speed, so the harder to use crosspath is improving for better payoff. M.A.D has always had powerful single target but doesn’t see widespread use in standard gameplay so we have raised pierce to bump up its versatility without impacting single target performance
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Missile: pierce increased ― 12 → 20
2-0-3 Buckshot + Laser Shock
  •   Buckshot: Laser Shock damage over time increased ― 2 → 3
    • Note: Does not affect 2-0-4 Bloon Area Denial System (3)
  •   Buckshot: Bonus Shocked damage increased ― +2 → +3
    • Note: Does not affect 2-0-4 Bloon Area Denial System (+3)
Ray of Doom was a hard carry through most rounds, but just never felt satisfying against round 100 for the price, so we’re giving the first target hit bonus a significant damage spike.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  • Visually applies the Laser Shock overlay effect to the first Bloon that is hit (bug fix)
    • Note: The effect was applied properly before
  •   Bonus damage applied to the first Bloon that is hit increased ― 80 → 140
For such an expensive tower we wanted to add a little more niche synergy so Ray of Doom’s DoT duration is increasing significantly. To better align with synergy cooldowns Rocket Storm’s ability will take slightly longer, though it receives small compensation buffs for this as well so it isn't hit hard on its own. Buckshot is statted high in theory but in practice requires far too much babysitting, since higher tiers are already heavy hitters we’re boosting up the base rate for the path with a damage tradeoff to make it less of a chore to use.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Damage over time: Duration increased ― 5s → 30s
X-4-X Rocket Storm
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $5,850 → $5,000
X-4-X Rocket Storm
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Ability: Cooldown increased ― 40s → 45s
0-4-2 Rocket Storm + Powerful Darts
  •   Ability: Missile pierce increased ― 10 → 12
X-X-3 Buckshot
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $3,400 → $3,000
  •   Attack cooldown reduced ― 1.5s → 1.2s (attack speed increased by 25%)
X-X-3 Buckshot
X-X-4 Bloon Area Denial System
  •   Damage decreased ― 4 → 3
2-0-3 Buckshot + Laser Shock
2-0-4 Bloon Area Denial System + Laser Shock
  •   Laser Shock: Damage per tick over time reduced ― 3 → 2
  •   Laser Shock: Bonus damage to shocked Bloons decreased ― +3 → +2
X-X-4 Bloon Area Denial System
  •   Attack cooldown reduced ― 1.5s → 1.2s (attack speed increased by 25%)
    • Notes: Attack interval decreased ― 0.375s → 0.3s
    • Stacks with 0-2-4 Faster Barrel Spin crosspath:
      • Attack cooldown ― 0.99s → 0.792s
      • Attack interval ― 0.2475s → 0.198s
X-X-5 Bloon Exclusion Zone
  •   Damage decreased ― 8 → 6
  •   Attack cooldown reduced ― 1.5s → 1.2s (attack speed increased by 25%)
    • Notes: Attack interval decreased ― 0.25s → 0.2s
    • Stacks with 0-2-5 Faster Barrel Spin crosspath:
      • Attack cooldown ― 0.99s → 0.792s
      • Attack interval ― 0.2475s → 0.198s
2-0-5 Bloon Exclusion Zone + Laser Shock
  •   Laser Shock: Damage per tick over time reduced ― 6 → 4
  •   Laser Shock: Bonus damage to shocked Bloons decreased ― +6 → +4
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